Geek Sites: WaTchers

For any Whedon fan, May has always been a tumultuous time. Season finales had us on the edge of our seats, both wishing the time away and not; all just so we could breathe a sigh of relief at seeing the end credits roll and thank whatever deity you prefer, that our favourite characters made it out alive for another year. However it was in May 2003 that fans the world over lamented; mourning the loss of arguably the greatest piece of modern day TV pop-culture, and another loss to the ever diminishing Whedonverse – after seven seasons, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” came to a humble end.

But somewhere out on the Internet a hope still remained, and not in those ultimately futile petitions that I we signed. A hope that would eventually lead on to become one of the longest running virtual series of a fandom that the Internet had ever known – WaTchers.

For those of you not in the know, fellow Geek Life staff writer Dan and I, were a part of WaTchers, and that’s how we initially met. Dan joined at the end of the second season, coming on-board as a writer when the call for new blood went out. I joined as an artist at the end of the first season, and by the time that Dan came along, I’d been promoted to Art Director after the previous left due to prior commitments. So while this may be quite the shameless plug, on behalf of Dan and the other WaTchers staff, we sincerely hope you enjoy what we worked so lovingly on for five years. Why bring this up now? Well, aside from “just ‘cus” and the fact that our readers are of like mind, WaTchers is returning in late August for a one-off, two part TV Movie, penned by Dan entitled, “Special Assignment.”

The brainchild of published author, CN Winters and best friend, Susan Carr, of whom met through previous fan-fiction works, WaTchers was conceived well before the series finale of “Buffy” and ran for five consecutive seasons.

They had the premise – Rupert Giles, Buffy’s Watcher, and Willow Rosenberg, her loveable sidekick with an aptitude for witchcraft and hacking into mayoral databases, rebuilding the Watchers Council in Cleveland, Ohio – the other canon confirmed site of a Hellmouth – after its destruction at the hands of The First in early season seven. The only problem was that they didn’t know who lived or died, or what would happen in the series finale. The one thing they did know was that WaTchers was a spinoff, not a continuation, and that Buffy, for whatever reason, would not be featured as the main lead so as to give the once-supporting cast the limelight. Thankfully for them, the majority of their initial plans worked out, and who they wanted to feature survived; and with that, production began on the first season.

Their vision was inspired and daring, and brought together all the elements of fan-fiction – writing, art, music – to make a series as far away removed from TV, into something which could compete and go toe to toe with the big names in current cult TV. One of the biggest compliments made were by fans asking where they could see “WaTchers;” what channel, day and time it was on; and an even bigger one saying how it rivaled TV shows on during the dry patch between “Angel” and the start of “LOST.”

Winters and Carr put together a crack team of fan-fiction enthusiasts – fellow writers, graphic artists, sound producers – from all over the world to create what hadn’t been done before.

Each season was in actual fact, a season. A fully produced, planned out season comprising of twenty-two individual episodes – in later seasons, going up to twenty-four, or if you count the final season, twenty-seven; after much discussion and the fact the series finale run too long, additional episodes were drafted so the story could properly be told. Winters as Executive Producer had a hand in each episode, shaping and crafting an overall seasonal arc, with a level of consistency normally only reserved for broadcast TV.

Writers would pitch their episodes to the rest of the staff, who would then comment and critique and add suggestions before first drafts were made. Each episode would comprise of a teaser and four acts, with a sometimes fifth or sixth depending on whether it was a finale or a special occasion. The teasers were approximately two to five pages in length, with the following acts anywhere between ten to twenty pages; averaging out on total to be about forty-five pages per episode; but for certain episodes, the page count could be as high as one hundred pages, plus. The uniqueness of the writing was in that it was not in script form, but rather prose with added film direction such as scene changes and cues. Plus, there were no “character thoughts,” keeping it strictly dialogue and scene description, citing “where would the suspenseful storytelling be if everything was on show.” To that end, fans had to carefully read each episode and pick up on hints as to characters motives and story progression as “everything has meaning” – or EHM, as coined by fans.

Also, each episode came accompanied by “screencaps” – images of what you’d see if you paused your TV. Sometimes even animated images. These were created by the artists who would use existing screencaps from episodes of “Buffy” and “Angel”, and other shows and movies that actors had featured. Then via various photo-editing software packages, they’d trace around and copy out the actors and place them onto different backgrounds, as directed by the Art Director; who would read each episode and draft a list of the needed caps and distribute them to a team of about four or five artists. As the seasons progressed, and the artists grew in confidence and ability, much more polished and complex screencaps were made, some displaying what would have been CGI-shots set to green screen if they had been filmed. With this, each episode contained around twenty-five screencaps, but in later seasons, could contain upwards of over thirty; and for special episodes, sometimes as close to a hundred screencaps.

Then there was audio – soundbytes that sound producers would go and make clips of from “Buffy” to accompany dialogue. There was even a soundclip of Patrick Stewart from “The Next Generation” saying “I don’t have to answer your questions, and I don’t give a damn what you think.” The virtual series even sported its very own theme music, composed by Track6, set to seasonal opening credits. Not to mention individual episode poster art, trailers, music videos.

WaTchers had a cast of hundreds, and an unlimited budget to do pretty much well what they pleased. They blew stuff up; split buildings in half; had a comic book episode; totally demolished the famous Hollywood sign; went to exotic destinations; had epic action scenes featuring the use of helicopter rotary blades; and even managed to secure William Shatner in a guest appearance role. Yet not once did they try to live beyond their means. One of the prime directives was that they wouldn’t do what you wouldn’t see on TV, and that held true for storylines, dialogue, you name it; and that sense of “realism” was one of the things that really set them apart.

When you consider that this was all done on a weekly basis, for five years, to a consistently high standard that great pride was taken in, the level of work and commitment is mind-blowing.

During its time on the “air,” WaTchers enjoyed massive success, winning numerous online fan-fiction awards, and even saw the American contingent of the staff appearing at WriterCon in 2006. WaTchers was even given a nod in the recent Buffy Season Eight comics by Dark Horse, where a blonde slayer was named after the original character, Rowena Allister. It was loosely confirmed by a fan attending a fan-fiction panel at a convention where one of the bigwigs from Dark Horse sat, who answered their question about whether or not they’d heard of WaTchers. He replied “yes,” and went on to say how impressed they were and how the screencaps helped to give an added depth to the reading experience and really brought the characters alive; especially how they felt that they could get to know better these original characters by actually seeing them interact with established characters, namely the aforementioned Rowena.

By the series end in late 2008, the staff of WaTchers had all honed their craft, with remarkable advances in their storytelling, writing, art, production. That wasn’t to say that earlier seasons were bad by any means, but the high level of quality and consistency shined ever brighter as we said farewell to the characters we couldn’t once let go off. But that wasn’t to be the end of this long running virtual fandom. An official spinoff spawned from great fan demand after the season one episode of the same name, “WaTchers: Restoration”. This spinoff of a spinoff saw the reincarnated souls of some of the characters in its parent show in a sci-fi future, where the Council was as much a political engine as it was a defensive one. “Restoration” ran for two seasons; the second of which where in the format of TV Movie specials due to commitment to the continued success of WaTchers, which from the start was always a priority.

The flames were kept alight by various features and the promise of a one day “movie” or two. It was all very much down to the fans. One of them added Skye, the obligatory resident snarky vampire, to the official Wiki page of vampires in popular culture, which sadly has been since removed. Another created yet another spinoff from a spinoff, entitled “Lone Wolves”. Someone else made an official WaTchers wiki and wikia.

There’s also an Atlas of all the locations featured in the fives years, powered by Google Maps and put together by Geek Life’s very own Dan. Be warned, they contains spoilers as they give a little annotation of what happened in those locales.

Even if you’re not a fan of “Buffy” and “Angel,” but a fan of fan-fiction and non-fiction literature in general, there’s still plenty on offer for everyone.

You can follow WaTchers on Twitter, @WaTchersVS and join the group on Facebook.