Look out, NBC, FX and Netflix. A new comedic series, [“Somebodies,”](https://www.youtube.com/user/SomebodiesSeries) may be headed your way.
With the help of their Kickstarter campaign that raised $3,000, the MU student-led production company Peace Frame Productions has written and produced six episodes of the series.
“When you tell people you’re starting a web series, they don’t usually take that seriously,” MU senior Bryan Petcoff says. “(But) now, we’ve gotten to the point where we can do more because people believe in us.”
Petcoff, co-founder of Peace Frame, ensures that the production company is much more than something “college kids are doing for fun.”
Peace Frame has also done short films, wedding videography, music video production and video editing services.
Petcoff and the four other Peace Frame co-founders (all Mizzou students or alumni) specifically have high aspirations for the future of “Somebodies.”
The group is currently working on submitting the series to NBC Comedy Playground, the network’s contest to fill spots for two new series, which will be launched in 2015.
“Our goal with the web series is to pitch it to a network — if not NBC, then a smaller one,” co-founder Mitchell Bequette says. “The biggest goal is to get as many people to see it as possible, so we can gauge what we are and aren’t doing well.”
“Somebodies” centers around a group of friends who try to become famous on the Internet through their sketch ideas. The cast varies from episode to episode, but includes co-founders Petcoff, Bequette, Samuel Ott, Michael Coleman and Matt Suppes, as well as MU students Abigail English and Hailey Moore.
“We like that we can do a satirical but almost raunchy comedy that also brings up a lot of real life situations that are relatable,” Petcoff says.
Although the group is trying to get their individual projects discovered, Bequette wants Peace Frame to be able to develop along with the series as well.
“I want Peace Frame to be able to grow so we can produce our own films and be able to fund our own movies,” Bequette says. “It would be awesome to have it still be a part of the process of getting to a network … we want it to be discovered as a legitimate production company.”
Petcoff and Bequette advise everyone to check out Peace Frame’s films as if they are any other work — and to make sure to do so before it “blows up.”
“The thing that stands out to me the most about what we’re doing is that everything is a passion project for us at this point,” Petcoff says. “All of us are working tirelessly all the time because this is something we care about; (because) we are doing this around other jobs and school and everything — that alone is a reason for someone to give it a chance.”