When planning, I strongly recommend not to make your goal "to make money."
Why?
Because if you are focused only on money you will find that you will make poor decisions based on chasing the audience rather than focusing on actually improving your show. If you make a good enough show and push it hard enough, you have a good chance at making a success of your show. Making money is a good target, but it should not be the sole nor guiding goal for your project.
Instead, you should have a goal that is better suited to getting the most out of the project you plan to make. And your plan needs to be focused beyond distribution. As I like to say, the real work starts once your series goes live. If you don't have a plan regarding what happens once you go live, you are going to have issues.
With The Winding City I had some ideas as to what I wanted to do after the show got online, but once the first episode went up I realised that I had kind of hoped in some ephemeral step to occur. Kind of like -
- Write Cool Series
- Shoot It
- Put it online
- ?????
- Profit!
Now I have a plan in place for that series - but going into Urban Numina, I want to lay out a stronger plan from the start.
Goals and Pre-production
So - first the goal. To show that a great series can be made without needing lots of expensive equipment and software.
To this end, I procured two Flip Minos with free travel tripods to shoot the series on. The script will be written using Celtx and editing will be done on a readily available piece of home video editing software. (Currently I am considering iMovie but one of the production team, Amy, is investigating free programs just to see what else we can find. I'll post more about the editing software when we get there.)
Now part of my plan requires me to be realistic about certain things. We need quality music. MingleTV recently had some great advice regarding this - they recommend finding a band via MySpace to work out a deal with them where you use their music and promote them through your site. I have a band in mind and later down the track in this series I'll be writing to them and covering the mission to find music for the series.
The next thing is visual effects. Although I plan to use minimal visual effects, there will still be some. It is likely we will be using professional software for this stage, but I will be discussing again with Amy and Craig regarding possible ways to do this on the cheap as well.
My goal is to start shooting end of April - which gives me a tight schedule to write in. I intend to write a four episode first season at 7 minutes per episode. I will need to do a treatment of each episode first and then write the full script.
I've decided to shoot most of the series in a single location. I have access to a flat that has commanding views of Wellington and is near great public locations on foot. For storyboarding I will be using an iPhone storyboard app, Cinemek Storyboard, at these locations once the script is written. This will help me to also visualise the shoot and provide a good indication of camera placement and cast placement.
For the series to be a success it will need to have a strong following. A common mistake made is to chase the audience once you are online. I made this mistake with Winding City. With Urban Numina, the process of developing the show in a public forum hopefully will help draw interest in the show. I have already set up the blog and a twitter account as we move closer to production I will add a facebook page and twitter accounts for the main characters to generate feedback and interest among fans.
Casting will be a big challenge. I intend to explore a number of avenues - from posting on 48 hour forums to using a local website called The Big Idea. While some of these are semi-professional resources they are accessible to everyone, so it still fits within my main goal. I also intend to video tape all the auditions and display them on this site for audience feedback. This will require all actors who audition to fill out a release form so that I can use their image. There is a great form available via the Guerilla Film-maker's handbook. I'll also hunt out some alternates to link to on the site when we get to auditioning - to help others keep their costs low if they choose to follow in my footsteps.
Readings and rehearsals will be held on location at the flat we intend to shoot in, this will help the cast develop an idea as to how they want to move around the space we will be using and gets them comfortable.
Production
The next stage of the plan is the shoot itself. At seven minutes per episode and using the same core location, we will shoot by episode rather than by locale. Normally I would split scenes up by location and we'd shoot the entire series at once, with each location being a single block of shooting.
With the plan to shoot at a single location, we ought to be able to shoot chronologically instead and can shoot a single episode in a weekend. Generally it takes two days to shoot approximately 5-10 minutes of useable footage. This includes reshoots, extra angles etc. With two cameras we should be able to cut down on the time factor there - but it is important to plan for all eventualities. I recommend that you aim for 3-5 minutes a day. If you find you shoot all your scenes and still have time for more - that's just a bonus. Plan for 5 minutes maximum a day. Especially if you are inexperienced, a lot can go wrong on a set and you want to have flexibility in your schedule.
Editing should take about a week per episode. There will be no composing of music - we will stick to pre-recorded tracks. While I do have access to good quality royalty free music, I'm going to try to avoid using it if I can, as that music was gained through professional channels. It's a ballsy decision, but I really want to meet my main challenge of making it easy for anyone to make a series without having to spend a huge fortune doing it.
Due to the nature of Flips being able to download straight to computer, we can start editing while shooting - this should help to keep things moving quickly and efficiently.
Post Production
I don't want to plan too tightly for post production. This is because we wont know how well the actual production phase will run. Ideally post will occur concurrently with production on this project. I will plan this side more once I have complete scripts and a better idea regarding the post production requirements such as visual effects and pick up shots.
The aim will be to have post-production be efficient and structured enough to be able to go from raw footage to completed episode in the course of a fortnight.
Distribution
So what happens after we go online? I have already procured the URL for the website. During the production phase, we will be working on a website for the series that will have a link to this blog, but will be more focused on presenting the finished product.
This will be the point where we get the fans to help spread word of the series. If anyone watches the show it will be a success, but for my own goals I want to see engagement from viewers. I want to see fans drawing others to the show. This will require networking and keeping up content post distribution.
This is also the point at which to enact any monetising plans. Ideally these will be set up during the production/post-production phase and I will discuss this more at that point.
The aim will be to have enough interest to work on a second season. Part of my plan for the second season will involve writing treatments and scripts during the early production phase of episodes one and two, so that a second season is ready to go after the first season wraps.
I want to be able to give the cast and crew a rest before diving into a second season.
From a networking perspective, I will be discussing my experiences of making the series when applicable during the #webserieschat run by Slebisodes and MingleMediaTV on Twitter. A great many webseries creators and ideas people are involved in these chats and are well worth making contact with. You can learn a lot from them and their advice not only will be invaluable to Urban Numina, but they will help spread the word if the series is good enough.
This is just a brief glance at the process of planning, and I will continue to adjust my plans as we proceed. The key thing to take away from this is that you shouldn't be thinking about just making money. The best approach is to make the best series you can and not worry about things like "what does the audience want?" That is a difficult question to ask. The better approach is to set yourself a goal that you are passionate about and do the best you can. And believe in what you are doing.
If you work hard enough and are passionate enough, you will find an audience.
Next up - The Treatment: Characters.
Conan
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