Hank has said that he partly wanted to do this show because it was his wife’s favourite story. Why did you feel so passionately about Pride and Prejudice?
It’s my mother’s favourite story. I really didn’t understand it until I dove into it doing this project, but my mother just loved this story so much and would watch all these things, and would always talk about it. I had read it, but I didn’t really feel as close to it as she did. Then the opportunity came up, and I told her about it, and she was like “Oh, you like that story?” But I looked at it more as what a cool idea. I really wanted to see if I could do it and give it my all.
“It was a challenge going into it, it was a challenge the whole way through.”
But going in, the challenge was a big part of it, and the pressure was big, too. I don’t know how much pressure the audience thinks we put on ourselves, but I put a lot of pressure on myself. I was like, this is my mothers favourite story. This is one of the greatest stories of all time. And I’m going to adapt it into a new format – it better be great. If it’s not great, it’s not because I didn’t try. If I fail, I fail, fine.
But I am going to give it everything, and analyse and hyper-analyse, and bring the right people along with me, get the right team, do my due diligence, cast correctly, look at every line as much as I can; even the tweets, even the transmedia. So I gave it my all, and the challenge was what really fired me up to do the show. Then as the fans responded to it, it just fired me up more, like “Oh, its working! Whatever this is, it’s working!”
Now that it’s finished, what aspect are you most proud of?
I’m proud of how it’s received, and not just in the fandom. Even the critics, who didn’t like a lot of what we did – especially towards the end when we got into the Lydia “downfall,” and beyond with the Catherine de Bourgh thing. A lot more criticism came out then, and that’s fine, because I felt that they were comparing it against a great piece of work. They were saying, “We want a great piece of work, and to us, it’s not quite that, because of these criticisms.”
I accept that, I totally understand that, because that’s what I wanted. I don’t want it to be seen as, “Oh, because they shot it with a stationary camera, it’s just a pretty girl talking, it doesn’t deserve it, it’s just silly.” That’s that stigma that web video had, that it still has in a sense, because it’s not television, it’s not a movie.
“If they’re taking the time to criticise the show, then it clearly means that they value the quality of the show.”
That to me, I’m proud of. Even though it is hard, it is hard to read criticism about yourself. I had to stop doing it, it was just going to drive me crazy. But I do welcome it, that it’s being talked about, it’s being said, it’s being discussed.
It’s eliciting a response.
It’s eliciting a response that’s comparing it to a “legitimate” piece of work. And to say that it’s being compared, and being put up against the great adaptations in history, as a storyteller that’s the ultimate to me. Something that will live on for years and be studied as an adaptation – amazing. What else can you ask for?
Do you think shows like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are helping to increase appreciation for web video as a platform?
I think so, because The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as it is now couldn’t really exist on television. The one camera for a 30-minute episode thing, I don’t know if that really works on television. And also, the beauty of a lot of Lizzie Bennet is the extension, is the parallel storytelling, the shared experience, the transmedia, and those aren’t on television either. It’s a story designed for this specific format of web video, and if anything I hope that it evolves the format a bit.
Not to say that web series aren’t good, but a lot of people think of web series as just web video, meaning just video. There’s a key word there – web. To have it all feed together and feed one another, it really felt like a web. I think the show, well I hope, it will inspire other creators and artists to really embrace the other platforms of the medium, and not just think of it as video and do TV shows. That’s what I hope, whether that happens or not, I don’t know. It’s my hope for myself as well, as I create other things, but whether I get to do that continuously remains to be seen.
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