See 7 local pilots competing in New York fest at MWFF

The Katydids in “Teachers”

In these days of increasingly affordable production value and proliferating outlets for episodic content, getting an independently produced series picked up for a TV deal is more attainable than it once was.

Just ask Cap Gun Collective

Cap Gun TV, the production house’s content incubator division, produced the comedy web series Teachers, which was picked up for a 10-episode run on TV Land, in a deal announced Oct. 1. 

Improv troupe The Katydids write and star as a sextet of highly inappropriate elementary school instructors. Matt Miller directed the original web series, PJ Fishwick produced, and Matt Abramson EP’d.   The shows will shoot and air next year. 

Cap Gun aims to duplicate that success with its new project The Apartment Guy.  Writer Bill Boehler stars in the Office-style comedy, as a hapless housing agent struggling with Chicago’s rentals surplus.  Alex Fendrich is director, and Abramson is producing.

Apartment Guy is one of an unprecedented seven Chicago projects among the 62 entrants competing in the 10th annual New York Television Festival, Oct. 20-25.  The festival brokers dozens of development deals between featured properties and TV networks.

All seven NYFF selections showcase at MWFF

The Midwest Independent Film Festival Tuesday, Oct. 7 features all seven local shows from NYFF in its Chicago Pilot Showcase.

Rich Seng of Gigity.tv and Nicholas Charles Peters of ButterViZion Media Productions present Love Spitters, a game show in which rappers compete in a freestyle tournament for the heart of a “hip hop vixen.” 

(Seng has kicked around several iterations of this battle rap game show concept over the years.  I was at an earlier version at Subterranean where a fight broke out when one contestant’s rhymes apparently struck a little too close to the bone.)

Pedro and Ramiro Castro of Big Dog Eat Child’s comedy Jones Sweet Ass TV features a larger-than-life local commercial pitchman giving the hard sell on a television vehicle built around his own outsize personality.

Angie Gaffney’s Pilsen-based Black Apple Media produced The Wake, by LA-based directing duo Jeff Bloom and Noah Kloor, AKA Jeff and Noah.  The Wake is a post-nuclear web series they describe as nothing less than Lost meets Game of Thrones meets The Walking Dead.

Daniel Klein’s Bad Ambulance is a psychological horror about a gang of blood thieves posing as paramedics.  An earlier version screened in the Tribeca and Chicago film festivals.

Jim Kozyra’s comedy The Jamz features Kozyra and Chris Petlak as a late-night DJ duo jockeying for a morning timeslot.  Tim Clancy is director.

Shawn Bowers and Colin Hogan’s Man Scout features Hogan as a man-child competing for the merit badges he was denied as a boy.

The Chicago Pilot Showcase is Oct. 7 at Landmark Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark St.  Doors open at 6 p.m., producers panel at 6:30, screening at 7:30, reception follows.