Sonny Vrebav and Alijin Abella in Hunter n Hornet.
Hunter n Hornet, a new Australian comedy series made primarily for iPhone viewing, follows the plight of two wannabe Lotharios and their struggle to seduce women.
Created by NIDA graduates Sonny Vrebac and Aljin Abella, the 21 part series focusses on loveless characters Sade and Cade and their journey throughout Sydney hot spots in pursuit of finding their dream women. Too scared to actually speak to the women they covet, Sade and Cade practice their pick-up techniques on each other instead.
“Initially it started off as a writing exercise,” Vrebac tells IF. “I had a feature film idea and I just finished reading Robert McKee’s scriptwriting book [Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting] and it was sort of saying that instead of tackling the whole feature film, you really need to master a scene first.
“And so this idea came about… It was just me and a friend of mine role playing this stupid little scene and this idea popped into our heads about two guys, one of them pretending to be a girl and the other one starting to make moves on him.
“So as a bit of an exercise we started writing one episode, and then we started to really get into it and started writing more which I then began sending through to people. And the feedback was coming back really positive so I thought, ‘ok there is actually something interesting in here,’ and I got hooked.”
Seeing a gap in the web-series market, Vrebac decided to utilize an app as a distribution platform in addition to YouTube as a viewing platform. Assisted by Screen Australia via the Multiplatform Production Grant, he was then able to create deeper user engagement and interaction with a number of features as well as the appisodes themselves.
Features include the PU Cube and ASK and SNAP; the latter two revolving around different pick up themes and allowing users to customize their experiences.
Vrebac says he finds the platform to be “terribly underutilized” – an opinion he backs up with the fact it has already been downloaded 10,000 times.
After attending MIPTV in Los Angeles, Vrebac says the series received immensely positive feedback and that he and Abelle have “actually had a couple of distribution offers from distributors for a TV series version.”
A new Hunter n Hornet episode is made available every Thursday.
View the teaser below: