Made up of Harley Neville (27), Guy Pigden (27) and Nic Larsen (27), Pigville Productions prides itself on high-quality, low-budget guerrilla film-making and a lot of toilet humour.
The Project, which was launched on Ziln's LaughTV last Tuesday, is a semi-almost completely-true story about two aspiring writer/actors and their quest to get their television show made.
Neville said he was excited to be part of it and believed the nine-part mockumentary was a universal story.
"For a long time it was only our friends and family who laughed at our misfortune, but now Ziln are giving us the opportunity to be laughed at by the whole of New Zealand and we couldn't be more grateful.
Most New Zealand comedy loses it's edge because, in order to get their show on national TV, the creators have to bend over backwards and sacrifice a lot of their potential just so they can `New Zealand-up' their story.
Meaning the networks insist on making all the shows somehow more `Kiwi' even if it doesn't fit with the story ...
We are lucky to have partnered with LaughTV and Ziln because, as New Zealand's first online TV network, their content providers can bypass a lot of the palm-greasing and back-patting associated with conventional television and concentrate on the important stuff - creating entertaining funny content."
Pigden, who also does screenwriting work for non-Pigville projects, said being part of Ziln was "like seeing the light at the end of a very long dark tunnel, a tunnel that took three years to walk through".
"Within the New Zealand TV industry, for years the same select group of people get to make the same type of shows over and over again.
That means that a lot of the content you see is made by people in their 40s and 50s.
We're trying to provide a decent alternative through the internet for people who feel like these shows don't represent them."
Neville, who works six months of the year as a cruise-ship videographer, said there was scope for a second season.
"There is definitely room in the story for a second season. We already have a lot of ideas and have already drawn up an outline for a second season.
"Whether or not we go ahead with it is, of course, subject to the success of the first season. If people are actually watching then, hopefully, we will be able to make a second season.
"Perhaps one with a slightly bigger budget, that way we can afford to pay our actors more than the Tim Tams and Budget Cola they got for the first season."
Ziln co-general manager of Paul Brennan said he was delighted to have The Project on LaughTV.
"This is what Ziln is all about, providing a platform for talented Kiwis to screen their material to an ever-growing online TV audience, bypassing the traditional broadcast channels completely."
Pigden said each episode of The Project was between five and six minutes long, and the first three episodes were available online.
The remaining episodes will be made available over the next six weeks.
The trio was recently selected as one of 12 teams for the Escalator scheme, which is a low-budget film-making initiative run by the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC), Neville said.
"The NZFC select four winners who will each get $250,000 to shoot their first feature film.
"There were over 250 applications for the initiative and our proposal was the only one out of the 12 teams to be selected from the South Island.
"It's a huge opportunity and hopefully you will see a Pigville feature film begin production next year with actual funding."
