"I'm just in awe of it. I can't believe how people become so embroiled in something. It lives because people are so involved in it," Amber says. "It becomes something beyond what it started off being."
Tara may be floating in limbo somewhere, but Amber certainly is not. Apart from being an actress she's also scripted, directed and produced an independent film called Chance. More recently sties collaborated with thriller author Christopher Golden to script an online drama for BBCi called Ghosts of Albion. This isn't the first time the duo has teamed up. Both have previously co-written Buffy comics so Rob Francis, assistant producer of BBCi's Cult website (www.bbc.co.uk/cult), considered them ideal scriptwriters for its new online drama series.
Ghosts of Albion is described as a 'horror/adventure' story with dark, humourous undertones. It's a five part Flash animation with voiceovers from Anthony Daniels, best known for playing C-3PO in Star Wars, Leslie Phillips, known for his role in the Carry On films, and Roy Skelton, who did voices for Rainbow's Zippy and George, and the daleks in Dr Who.
The Beeb is being secretive about the exact storyline for Ghosts of Albion. The setting is 1830s England and the plot concerns a brother and sister who inherit the responsibility to protect the country from supernatural forces after the death of their grandfather, Ludlow, a famous stage magician. The siblings, who love to bicker, discover that not all of the old man's magic was performed on a stage.
"We're using some historical characters," says Amber. "Lord Admiral Nelson is one of the 'ghosts' in the tale -- others will include Lord Byron and Queen Bodicea."
Although Ghosts of Albion has some similarities with Buffy, Christopher and Amber were keen to try something new. "I think we're ready to move on," Amber says. "The reason the BBC approached us was yes, we have the Buffy connection, but there's an irony to our writing. We try and infuse our writing with a bit of self-referential humour. We make the audience a part of our world. We wink at them and they wink back. Buffy uses humour to put forward thoughtful ideas about society. With Ghosts, we'd like to head in that direction as well."
Not many American television series display this irony and, naturally, those which do are popular in the UK. "A lot of US television isn't very good," admits Christopher. "Programs like Buffy, The Sopranos, The West Wing and The Simpsons do well here and are intelligent. I think that there is a certain sense of irony people here appreciate that a lot of Americans miss."
To move the focus away from the Buffy theme, the duo wanted to go beyond simple characterisation. "There's a great mythology in Buffy,, but loss [Whedon, Buffy's creator] has been loath to explore it," says Chris. "Our ambition is to do both-to go with the characters and investigate the mythology."
When the series and website launch in March there are plans to split the site into two parts: A non-fiction section will describe the project, while a second strand will treat Ghosts of Albion as though the story is all true.
"It's like what they did with The Blair Witch Project," Amber explains. "You have this mythology that's created - like, did that really happen or not? People aren't sure. Chris is really into mythology and using part of reality to create quasi-fiction, so I think the audience is really going to be unsure whether this is real or not. There are some aspects that are real, and it's kind of fun to tease people."
Who's going to watch Ghosts of Albion?" I think anyone who's a fan of science fiction is going to like this," Amber says. "We're doing a bit of the ghosty, scary stuff and we're also doing a bit about real characters and real situations that change over the course of each piece. That appeals to both women and men."
Mail bonding
The BBC team in the UK, Christopher in Massachusetts and Amber in California have used email to share ideas and develop Ghosts of Albion.
"We'd piecemeal the project," Amber says. "Each person would create a segment, then it would go back and forth and be argued out until it was something we were all happy with. It became this giant, collaborative effort. We'd be vomiting out this very intense story- we'd get comments from everybody and try and incorporate the ideas."
Chris says it wasn't much of a leap writing for the Web as both himself and Amber are used to script writing and writing for comics. The five-part series, which will end up being around an hour long, will be animated after the cast have completed the voiceovers, and was much like writing a screenplay. The 'leap' comes in the post-production stages.
The team had to consider two versions of Ghosts of Albion - a Flash version for broadband users, and an audio-only version for anyone with a slower connection. So for those just listening to the story, particular actions had to be modified and explained.
"There's a lot of action," says Amber, "so if you're recording for audio only, you want to make sure that if someone's picked something up and thrown it across the room that the audience gets the action. It's almost like creating two projects at once."
Online dramas haven't been as successful as the media predicted in the mid-1990s, and Ghosts of Albion is being launched at a time when the BBC is being harshly criticised by commercial companies for spending too much of its licence fee money on online offerings. In the last financial year the BBC spent [pounds sterling]100 million on the Internet-double the previous year's figure. By the time you read this, the government will have begun an investigation into the BBC's online services.
But that doesn't seem to be deterring Rob Francis and his colleagues, who, as a Buffy, fan himself, is keen to make Ghosts of Albion accessible to as many people as possible.
Consequently, you may end up seeing it on interactive TV or even hearing Ghosts on the radio. "The animation is going to be at such a level that it will be broadcastable the way it is, Amber says. "We're pushing the envelope, and from the tests it looks beautiful."
RELATED ARTICLE: The price of fame
If you've never watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer you've probably never heard of Amber Benson, or the character she plays, Tara. But look on the Internet and you'll see literally thousands of references to Amber and her character, as well as numerous fan sites devoted to her (www.amazingamber.co.uk. www.amberbenson.ws and www.amberbenson.net to name a few).
This is the first time Amber has written anything exclusively for the Internet. "The fans who are interested in what Chris and I do are primarily Internet-based, and their interactions are very Internet-oriented," she says. "I feel connected to them."
Amber doesn't read what people write about her online. "I don't want to read the nasty things because they'd make me cry, and I don't want to read the glowing things because I'd get a swollen head."
Christopher, meanwhile, is more curious. "I read my book reviews on Amazon. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're awful, You become desensitised to the good ones when you run across the bad ones. I had one removed because it freaked me out. The reader was saying something like, how courageous I was, to have revealed 'what I knew to be true'. This person was a nutcase! But my favourite one was a person who said my book 'sucked donkeys...'"
In Buffy, Tara plays the lesbian lover of Willow, which means she has a huge cult gay following on the Internet and gets lots of fan mail.
"You can't respond to one person because then you'd have to respond to everybody. It then becomes a pick and choose situation and I'd rather not play that game."
Instead, Amber enjoys emailing and visiting sites such as Hats of Meat (www.hatsofmeat.com - now offline). "It's the most hysterical thing I've ever seen. It's hats.., made of meat! My.. sister found it in her computer class. Life doesn't seem so serious when people are making hats of meat. I can't help laughing when I look at it!"
Posted by kimgilmour at April 26, 2004 10:41 AM