Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand Comedy collective Viva La Dirt League are an internet sensation.
The group made up of actors, gamers and filmmakers make sketches who make sketches for “nerds on the internet” have millions of subscribers and billions of views across platforms various platforms.
Prior to turning Viva La Dirt League into a full-time business the trio all had jobs in traditional media. Adam King a TVNZ director, Alan Morrison an NZME video producer & Rowan Bettjeman an actor.
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“Most of our audience are in America, then there’s a large amount in Europe and a fair amount in Southeast Asia.
“We went to Germany recently and wow, every time we went out for dinner, we’d be in the restaurant and we’d have multiple people come over and say hi or we’d be, walking down the street and just constantly being stopped by people.”
At a recent convention the trio even needed a security team to escort them, he says.
For years, the creators and their crew worked out of houses, cafés and improvised locations around Auckland, King says.
“We kind of started growing and we’re like, God, we really need a home. And we’d love to have a studio for some permanent sets and a place to store our growing costume collection.”
They launched a Kickstarter which they hoped would raise $500,000, he says.
“That would help us find a very small garage that we could put up a little pop-up green screen and a few desks here and there.
“And we ended up raising $4.5 million and managed to get ourselves a very large studio out west, which we’re now in.”
Now the trio has funding from NZ on Air to make The Internet’s Guide to Mental Health , which exposes the gap between how the internet talks about mental health and day-to-day reality of human messiness. King says.
“Here at Viva La Dirt League, we a lot of us, us boys, the rest of our actors, a lot of our crew have struggled with mental health in the past or is currently to this day.
“It’s something we talk about a lot around here. We’ve done a good 10 or 11 mental health sketches over the past five or six years, and they’ve been very well received by the audience.”
The funding means they can explore the subject in more depth, he says, but with creative freedom.
“There’s no one saying, oh, you can’t say depression there or you can’t you can’t say that there or you can’t say that person needs to eat an apple and smile. You know, we can still create the videos the exact way that we want.
“I don’t really think anyone in the audience has critiqued us for taking government money to make more mental health comedy videos.”
One of the sketches for the series is The Menu , which satirises “fatuous and optimistic” mental health messages, King says.
“If you’re having a depressive day or you have an anxious day or you’re having OCD or any other struggles that someone might be going through. Why not just be happy?”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
