Filmmakers Hannah-Rae Meegan and Monique Terry discuss authentic storytelling and making hit web series TOUCH

From the makers of the YouTube hit The Formal – an Australian created web series that explores the Year 12 formal through the lens of queer high schoolers – comes TOUCH. Queer filmmakers Hannah-Rae Meegan and Monique Terry, saw The Formal become a huge online hit thanks to its authentic queer storytelling.   

Now the creative duo is back with web series TOUCH. Screen NSW recently spoke to Hannah-Rae and Monique about why they are passionate about telling diverse stories through a queer female gaze and what inspired them to tell a queer story, set on the footy field.

TOUCH follows the story of Cameron, who attempts to get revenge on her cheating ex-girlfriend by beating her in the local touch footy competition. But when Cameron develops feelings for new teammate Angie, she must keep her plan a secret to win the comp — and Angie’s affection. After the huge success of your previous web series The Formal, what motivated you to turn the lens to the competitive world of touch footy, while maintaining the SLAG model of authentic, heartwarming LGBTQI+ stories? 

We really wanted to make a sports story that had queerness at the centre of it. There are so many sports films that are beloved in the LGBTQIA+ community that hint towards queerness without actually being queer, so it was exciting to us to make a really gay sports show! I (Monique) grew up playing touch football and love the sport so much, so it was a no brainer to set the series in the chaotic world of local touch footy.

This is the first time you have worked on a sports series. Can you share with us some of the content that inspired you, as well as challenges you faced and insights you gained while creating TOUCH? 

Whip It, Stick It and Bend It Like Beckham were huge influences for us. These films are so queer coded that they feel like a part of queer cinema without actually being queer at all. It just felt weird there wasn’t a queer sports story already, so we were super excited to make an Aussie, queer sports show. The main challenge was shooting the sport itself. Mon grew up playing touch footy so she was our guide to the sport. We did some training sessions with the cast and taught everyone how to play. Then we treated the sports scenes like choreography, so everyone always knew where they had to be. It was definitely a challenge, but we (hopefully) pulled it off!

You are both passionate about bringing authentic queer stories to the screen and talk about the strong responses you receive from audiences about watching heart-warming content in this space. What do you think are the key factors in making authentic content like TOUCH and why do you think it, and others like Heartstopper, are resonating so much with audiences? 

The response we’ve received from TOUCH has been overwhelmingly positive. In the comments of one of our TikTok episodes people were organising to start their own queer touch team. For our audience we know the joyful nature of our content is exciting and affirming. It’s so important to see yourself and the life you lead represented in a positive way. We love to tell stories where the issues our characters are overcoming have nothing to do with them being queer, they just happen to also be queer and I think audiences notice that. When writing queer content, it just always comes back to letting queer voices do the writing. It's authentic because it's us and it's our life.

What do you enjoy most about making online content? 

It’s really easy to directly engage with your audience when making online content and it’s the most satisfying experience to receive immediate feedback on your work by the people who love it most. We feel like we’ve been able to foster a little community around our work online and it’s an extremely positive, loving place! Which is not what people usually say about the internet but for us it’s been incredible.

You have an impressive 15K subscribers on your YouTube channel, not to mention the incredible viewership for all 7 episodes of TOUCH, that continues to grow daily. What are some of the strategies you use to build your audience and what advice would you give to someone wanting to create online content? 

Engaging with your audience is so important. Not necessarily just responding to comments but taking note of what they want and what they don’t like. When we were creating The Formal we noticed that our audience really didn’t respond well to a biphobic storyline we had in season two. It was clear that they preferred our two main characters fighting for something as a team, as opposed to fighting with each other. This really influenced how we wrote season three and four. For TOUCH we built an audience through multiple platforms, we used the high engagement rate of TikTok to push audiences over to our YouTube, and we teased the eps on TikTok encouraging them to watch the full eps on YouTube. This really helped to grow our YouTube subscriber count. The advice we’d give to someone wanting to create content online is to make sure your project is created for whatever platform you're planning on releasing on. Your work needs to feel native to the platform and fit in to the content around it.

As key creatives, you also wear many hats, straddling Head of Department roles, as well as performing in your content as well. How do you approach that and why has that been your approach? 

It started as a matter of necessity because we made our very first web series in the middle of lockdown with just us to write/direct/act/edit/distribute and our neighbour to shoot. We didn’t have any money, but we did have a lot of time due to the lockdown, so we figured out how to make an entertaining, short form series from our bedrooms! Then we were hooked. We love writing, directing, acting, and producing and have found that making web series allows you to wear many hats, so why not!

TOUCH was created through your production company SLAG Productions. Can you tell us a bit about that and the long form content you are wanting to create through the company? 

We’ve made each of our web series through our company SLAG Productions which we founded in 2019. The company has a focus on telling diverse stories with a queer and female gaze. We’re excited to be continuing and expanding our online work while also moving into television production as well. We’re so proud of what we’ve been able to achieve so far and can’t wait to bring our audience what they love on a larger scale in the near future.

Watch TOUCH on YouTube now! 

Image: Still from TOUCH. Credit: Kate Cornish.