I was ready for my interview with Vancouver filmmaker Brianne Nord-Stewart but I needed another minute to compose myself. I had just finished watching the Motorcycle Guy episode of her soon-to-launch web series, The Dangers of Online Dating, and had been laughing so hard I had teared up. Sprawled before me on the floor were my notes on the series, the November 23 launch party date, and my trusty tape recorder for catching those all-important quotes. I was still grinning when Brianne answered and I apologized for calling her a couple minutes late. “I had to finish watching the episode about the Motorcycle Guy,” I explained. And we dove into one of the most fun interviews I have had to date!
Our conversation about The Dangers of Online Dating – a comedy series filmed in Vancouver about Paula (Paula Burrows – Motive, The Killing), a sexual health nurse just coming off a year of abstinence, now foraying into the world of online dating…with a fear of the consequences of casual sex – was funny, personal and had me excited about attending the upcoming launch party.
Nord-Stewart explained that she first started writing this show in 2012. “At the time there was no mobile app for online dating, there were only websites and people weren’t talking about [online dating]. People were doing it, and people that you knew were doing it, but it definitely wasn’t part of the social fabric. It was way more common to say, ‘We’ll tell people we met at the library or whatever.’”
Season 1 | TRAILER | The Dangers of Online Dating from Brianne Nord-Stewart on Vimeo.
She delved into her own online dating experiences, which have inspired specific episodes of this series; the theme that runs through these is this idea of being able to totally misrepresent yourself or what you are looking for in a relationship when you’re filling out your dating profile or even in the initial communications with a potential date. Then you show up on the date and you’re not who you say you are or they’re not who they say they are. And you’re back to square one. (Therein lies the danger…).
Nord-Stewart, originally from Edmonton, has been based in Vancouver since 2005 when she started film school at Emily Carr University. She then studied for a year at The Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne Australia as part of that degree after which she landed a contract in documentary television. Since that contract, Nord-Stewart has been primarily working for herself as an independent filmmaker. She has managed to carve out a niche, making people laugh about and think about sex through her films. The comedy series is, of course, meant to be comical but also weaves sexual health activism into the conversation.
The Dangers of Online Dating makes its debut on November 23 on YouTube but you can celebrate in person at the launch party! Enjoy the buzz and chatter around the show, watch all 9 episodes from the first two seasons, walk the red carpet, and grab tonnes of pictures with members of the cast and crew. There will be guaranteed laughs while you also support OPTIONS for Sexual Health, a Vancouver-based non profit, with your admission by donation.
Follow them online on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
And meet them:
November 23, 2017 7:00-10:00 pm
The Penthouse Night Club
1019 Seymour Street, Vancouver
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