OzGirl - The Finale

The OzGirl, season finale live event kicked off with a familiar occurrence for LG15 fans, the site crashed. The official explanation is that Ning decided to do network-wide maintenance just as the event was about to start; however, unconfirmed sources have indicated the presence of 436 in the area. Nevertheless, after a furious round of twittering, most of the audience was rounded up and herded to the UStream site. Nicholas, Shanrah, and Sophie were joined by Nicola Collie, who played Lisa, Richard Askin, who played George, and a rather large Scotsman named, Shaun, who claimed to be a cinematographer, but personally I think he was just there to add another accent to the mix.

After a live airing of the final episode, the cast and crew fielded questions, and a few marriage proposals, from the audience. Some of the more interesting factoids to come from the chat were that Sophie is an amazing singer who studied African music, Lisa thinks Kiwis (New Zealanders) are the friendliest people, and Richard looks likes Toby McGuire. Some of the more substantive information to come from the finale chat was the fact that much of the dialog was improvised, including the infamous bucket speech, there are plans for a season two of OzGirl, and Shanrah will be starring in a spinoff series, produced by the one-and-only Jenni Powell. Lastly, season one DVD’s will be going on sale soon, several copies were given away during the chat, and will contain numerous deleted scenes and special features. Truly, it is astonishing that with limited resources and so little time they are able to put out a DVD. They also have t-shirts.

Lastly, while we here at LG15 Today strive to maintain a certain level of snark, it is the Internet after all, and there is a quota, I have to say how genuinely impressed I was with the cast and crew. These individuals, barely into their 20’s, Nicholas is only 19, managed to produce a professional and engaging series with no budget and no outside funding. More importantly, one cannot help but get the sense that they genuinely appreciate their fans. One of the more striking moments came at the end of the evening when Shanrah Wakefield began thanking individual fans from memory. This level of interaction, this symbiotic relationship as Apo put it, is what makes web series unique, this is why we stay up to 4:30 in the morning to watch them, and why individuals like the cast and crew of OzGirl make the series. Nicholas, Sophie, Shanrah, and the rest of the cast and crew should be proud of what they accomplished and deserve a great deal of credit for pulling off such a difficult feat.