Potential Production - 17/11/2009
After quite a while of not updating this blog as often as I’d like, I have a bit of progression with one of my writing projects.
Having been going to Hackney for almost three months now (how time flies), Laurent came up with the scary idea of actually making the first episode in order to use it as a pitching tool to look for funding from proper companies/people. But having thought about it, the first episode is probably easy enough to film quickly and on a ‘micro-micro-micro-budget’ budget (couple of hundred quid). I use the words “probably easy enough” with extreme optimism seeing as I have no idea exactly how hard or expensive it is to film anything of any real quality.
But the main problem I project this early on won’t be the actual filming or even the crew that does it. It’ll be the cast. Why? Well, the crew are going to be people who have the freedom to potentially leave the project at any time (not that I won’t hold it against them!) to be replaced with anyone else that can do that job. They’ll also be close to my age, (most) will have taken a media production degree at university, have a love of film/television/web video and a passion to enter that industry. But the cast don’t really have the freedom to leave when they so want, will be younger than me, might not really know what they want to do with their lives and might just take an acting gig to fulfill a bit of narcissism and get their face in front of the camera.
The series hinges on a group of older teenagers who are together for an extended time, and I’ve already heavily plotted out the thirteen episodes of the first season and written a third of them. In a proper production with a budget including cast salaries, the money can be a motivator, and even on a micro-budget web series with unpaid adults, the dedication is going to be at a slightly higher level with people who know they want to act for a living and are willing to put up with the long, exhausting days involved. But with unpaid teenagers, the excitement is going to wane a lot quicker and I can see at least one or two having second thoughts.
Not only have I plotted out the first season, I’ve also already started thinking of plots for two further seasons, and it’s imperative that the same main cast stick around because the series as a whole focuses on the growth of these characters from teenagers just out of school to young adults in the real world. So if one leaves, not only will the audience feel a little let down by not knowing what happened to them, but it could also rip apart a great storyline I’ve been planning and foreshadowing for quite a while.
But hey, time for some more optimism.
Right now all I need is the cast, the crew, the time, the money, the locations and the equipment to shoot the pilot (easy, huh?). So I’m going to get that out of the way first, and if I need to reshoot any scenes due to actor changes between the pilot and the main series being shot, that’s something I’ll have to work through then. Then again, I could end up with the greatest young cast there ever was that are dedicated, hard-working, great actors and genuinely funny. Weirder things have happened to me, half of which are inspiration for the series itself!
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