Creators’ Statement
We spent our COVID-fearing, internet-addicted quarantine fictionalizing our first six months out of college, trying to capture how it felt both to live and to recall that life. The two definitions of viral split the word into two realities just as becoming an internet personality may bifurcate your sense of self — on social media, you perform your reality even as you lose touch with it. VIRAL aims to embrace the challenge of making a series that functions at the consciousness-altering speed of the web. It was made in ten months from the beginning of writing to the end of editing and premiered four months later in June of 2021 as one of four selections in the NOW category at the Tribeca Film Festival. We’re thrilled to be releasing it online a year later as a time capsule and artifact of our 23rd year.
—Miles Blim and Chloe Howard
(L to R) Zack Lobel, Hatuey Rodriguez, Miles Blim, Chloe Howard, Leo Gallagher, Camille Casmier, Zoë Olson, and Jessica Levin
We were lost in a language of images.
It was growing difficult to speak. Yet talk
Was everywhere[…]
The images gave us no rest yet failed over
And over despite the immensity
Of their realism to describe the world as we really
Knew it, and worse, as it knew us
—Ariana Reines
Chloe Howard (Creator, Actor)
Chloe is a New York-based actor, singer, and creator from the California Bay Area. She will be attending the Yale David Geffen School of Drama in the Fall to pursue her MFA in Acting (‘25). She is a graduate of Northwestern University. www.chloe-howard.com
Miles Blim (Creator, Director, Actor)
Miles is a Chicago-born, New York-based artist. He recently graduated from Northwestern where he studied theatre. He’s eager to explore the full range of his artistic interests beginning with VIRAL, his first foray into writing, directing, and screen acting.
Camille Casmier (Director)
Camille is a director who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Since graduating from Northwestern University’s directing program, she has directed theatre, music videos, promo videos, and shorts and has worked in development at Tiny Reparations and Endeavor Content.