What I did right and what I did wrong: 5 Lessons I learned from creating my first web series

Let me set the stage:

December 2017. Night shift. Englewood, Colorado.

I was busy watching Mark Duplass give the 2015 keynote speech at South by Southwest and was starting to feel very inspired. I turned to my co-worker Kyle and told him he had to watch it.

After he did I said “I want to make a web series” and he said “cool, sounds good.” We just finished doing a 4 month long feature screenplay challenge and I was ready for the next thing.

I waited a minute before saying “No, I mean for real. Like, I really really want to actually make a web series and see what happens.”

This was where the whole journey started and resulted with the poster that now takes up space at the top of this post.

That talk changed me. The idea that I could simply look around and see the things that I have available and build a story based around that seemed like such a foreign concept to me. I mean, I’m sure that I heard it before at some Screenwriting Expo or some Robert Rodriguez talk or something, but in that moment it finally struck a chord.

At this point I had been playing the spec game for about a decade, taking the single water bottle tour, and not getting anywhere. Frankly, I was tired of going to parties, introducing myself as a screenwriter, and when I got that question “what have you done that I’ve seen” I never had an answer.

And I hated that.

Thus the journey to creating something that I would be proud to show off and could tell people about began. From that initial “okayyy let’s go,” we created a rough outline of what 2018 would look like and all of the steps that we would need to accomplish in order to have an awesome web series.

Before I give everything away, let’s get into the real meat of this piece.

I’d like to talk about things that we did right from the beginning, things we didn’t expect and had to fix, and the one big thing that I know I darn right failed at.

I hope that you find this blog post helpful and if you have any questions or want to know more about a particular step please feel free to leave a comment below!

The Right:

Writing

This was the one step that I was not going to be short on. Considering that screenwriting is my primary background, the one edge that I knew I had against the rest of the competition that I saw out there was that I could write at a higher level than a lot of the amateur work that I was finding online.

Think about it. Even hearing the phrase “web series” just sounds kind of…gross? You might think of lonelygirl17 or Quibi (IT WASN’T THAT BAD AND I DIE ON THAT 10 MINUTE HILL), but any other thought probably screams amateur. I dunno, maybe just me.

But I wanted to change that! So, the writing was the key.

I knew this would take the most amount of time so we agreed to spend the first six to seven months of the year taking the kernel of the idea I had and blossoming it into an episodic series. Since Kyle and I worked most of the same shifts we were able to discuss aspects of the series and offer random cool ideas or other fun things during breaks or in quiet moments at work.

Nothing was off the table and no idea was too dumb or crazy. At one point Kyle had an idea to turn it all into a murder mystery at the last second! After breaking his heart, we really nailed down our concept and thus the outlining could begin.

We came to the idea that eight 13 minute episodes would be best, leading up to a longer season finale that would have a runtime closer to a 1/2 hour dramedy. We broke things down into 7 episodes, effectively making 7 and 8 one big episode and worked to make sure the series characters would end up in a nice little bow at the end with a cliffhanger that would make our audience demand to see more.

After months of drafts and a few friends saying it was pretty damn awesome, we were ready to go.

I don’t regret for a moment taking all of the time to do character charts, plot motivations, track flaws and tags, and create strong set-ups and payoffs. Again, these are basic things that would set us apart from our peers, so we knew we had to nail this part down.

If you are interested in reading the scripts for the series, please click here.

Team/Crew/Actors/Actresses

As we were getting closer and closer to the final draft of our scripts we knew it was time to start assembling our team. To that effect knowing that we really didn’t have much money at all I started asking around my office and got connected with a couple of different people who were currently going through film school. Even met a few industry vets!

I got a link to a bunch of incredible Facebook groups as well as other people who were just interested in making something awesome. I actually got introduced to an agent who told me to email her for a casting list (and unfortunately never heard back from her, which tended to be something that we would learn would come as time got on) and networked, networked, networked.

We got introduced to Elle, who is a cinematographer and really took a likening to our script. We assembled our producers and from there had to ensure that our script was complete and ready to go in order to start auditioning actors.

Auditioning. What incredible fun. I had been on that other side of the table before, but to be the guy behind the table? That part was such a blast. For the first time in my life, I got to watch people read lines that I wrote and perform and interpret them in such a way I didn’t imagine.

So. Freaking. Cool. 10/10, will make another thing another time in the future.

So by networking, casting a wicked wide net and joining various film making groups, I was able to craft a team.

The Music/The Asking/The Editing

Probably one of my favorite lessons came with the music. As we were creating the story I would create different playlists on YouTube and listen to music that inspired different character choices. I found a lot of cool new songs and was reminded of some that I loved from the old catalog of bands I used to really listen to a lot. But alas, you’re never supposed to fall too in love with your music, because rights are expensive and it’ll never happen and blows raspberries.

This is when I learned one of the most if not the most valuable lesson and I seriously cannot stress this enough so if you’ve made it this far here’s the biggest take away that I can give you:

If you do not ask you do not get.

There was this song that I kept hearing time and time again while I was writing the script that actually helped us craft a really powerful ending. It’s called Paper Hearts by Silver Trees (the link is above, listen to it). I loved this song. I wanted this song, no, I need this song.

And through a lot of digging I was able to track down the email address of the band. I wrote them effectively a love letter saying that if I couldn’t use their song I would not want to make this series. I actually got an email back from the singer Paul (You absolutely should listen to everything he makes, by the way)
and he graciously allowed us to use that song, free of charge.

(Canyon City is his current music project, please subscribe to him!!)

This was the start of us emailing out many other artists to see if we could use their music for free or for a small fee to help enhance the look and feel and most importantly the sound and mood of our web series. As somebody who is naturally introverted, this was a difficult thing for me to do at first but since I had already received so many rejections through the years from my screenplays it actually wasn’t as hard as I thought I would be!

(This whole record is unreal good OMG)

So to that end friends I just want to encourage all of you that when it seems like the task of asking for use of something would be impossible or to use a certain actor or anything like that, I have to encourage you again and again to ask anyway. What’s the worst that could happen? They kill you? No that’s ridiculous! The worst that could happen is that you just hear nothing or they totally say no.

But one thing that we started saying in our house is what is the best thing that could happen? If the world could you one thing, it’s more positivity…It could use other stuff, but for about half of the questions that we asked for our series the best thing did happen.

We used every location with the promise of making a small commercial for the business at the end which we hoped would drive traffic to their establishments. This was another thing that helped our series look more real than just some dudes in an apartment.

Again. You don’t ask, you don’t get.

The Wrong

Audio audio audio and Other Post Production Woes

100% to Kyle’s credit, he kind of called this one.

When we were first starting to list out the things we would need for production, lapel mics came up and I disregarded it at the time.

Now I wish I hadn’t. This was the biggest mistake I made and I do regret it.

We did order a fancy boom mic and would trade off running the boom, but that audio you hear in the series is the only audio we have. The cleaning we did often was not enough for a completely fluid experience.

As a back-up, we did closed captioning. I wish that wasn’t the way people had to rely on enjoying the series, but it is what it is. If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, it would be this:

“ADR. Good LORD in heaven, ADR.”

We had a deadline of making the show, editing it, and premiering it in the summer of 2019. Knowing what I know now, and we’ll talk about more in the next section, I wish I would’ve taken the time to bring back each actor and ADRed each and every line they had.

Whatever project I do next, I won’t shirk this step.

I don’t want to pass the buck, but the delays of the editing were less on our parts and more on the parts of others who wanted to help out. This leads me to my last what i did wrong:

The Wrong Help/Lies, Liars and Delay…lies

Not the above! Every single person in this picture is amazing.

Let me start with the first genuine hiccup of the series:

I was not supposed to be in front of the camera on this one.

We had auditioned all of the parts and at best, Kyle and I would do a Hitchcock random appearance. Both of us had acting in our background, but between writing, directing, editing, producing, and so many other hats, acting was one job neither of us wanted to add to our plates…

But alas, that didn’t come to pass.

The character that I played (Kevin) was already assigned to another actor who at less than a day before shooting, got his schedule confused with another project and decided [in an incredibly unprofessional way] to rage quit/abandon us entirely. ((No need to list his name, as part of living is folks having the right to make mistakes and I don’t want this on their profile))

This meant that I would now put on the hat as Kevin. A character that is in almost every episode.

There were other incidents where people promised us things, whether that be help, money, resources, or locations that all blew up in our faces. One post production person promised to help with foley, but ended up only doing 1.3 minutes of episode 6 and nothing else before abandoning us. This happened with other aspects of post production that we hadn’t planned for fully delaying our release by 8 months. This is specific to the folks who volunteered to help, then were give the things we needed and chose to do nothing. Then it resorted back to us.

Hard to find good help? Not really. The big difference was the big fat dollar.

This is where the bigger crux of most of the troubles with the project came to a full understanding: THIS IS TOUGH WITHOUT MONEY.

Our main producer Greg provided most of the funding for this project which was no small feat. Truthfully, all I wanted to do was pay people for their time. Every single person in this production DESERVED full SAG day rate. I just couldn’t find the cash.

This breaks into somewhat of an off topic rant, but I see this constantly on facebook pages, where losers say things like “If you can’t pay your cast and below the line people, should you even be making stuff in the first place? No of course not you rich capitalist!”

No joke.

My obvious rebuttal? Yes. Make stuff. Do it for free. Ask for favors, but also, don’t be an asshole about it.

It’s easy to say we bent over backwards for the cast and crew for most requests, but at the end of the day that was the absolute bare minimum (next to feeding them) that we could be doing for not paying them.

BONUS CHAOTIC NEUTRAL THOUGHT: Festivals that don’t matter

I don’t want to write this one, but if I’m going to be transparent and honest with this blog post and with myself, I gotta be completely honest with all aspects.

Almost every laurel we have on our poster is from a festival that has no affect on anything in the industry aside from us getting palms on our poster.

They’re like participation trophies that you pay for.

There are TONS of festivals. Tons. Half of them (again, being honest here) just take your money and give you palms (or laurels or whatever you wanna call ’em). At least half. Maybe more. Then there are international ones that help you pad your resume for broadcasting in international waters. That feels good knowing that we’ve played everywhere but Antarctica and hey, it’s pretty freaking cool too, but DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING?

Maybe 2-3% of film festivals could actually change your career/life. We all know which ones they are too: Tribecca, Sundance, Slamdance, Cannes, LA (maybe) and past that? I couldn’t say.

Closing Thoughts

I do get asked when is there going to be a second season. It always makes me smile when people do. I have a few answers as to why, very sadly, I will not be pursuing season 2:

Longish answer: I tried to treat this series like a regular TV series airing on regular broadcast cable. That meant one episode released a week and then advertised all the places we could advertise. When I look at the numbers of total viewers now, we still don’t have a thousand people for episode one and that number is really low for the last episode. No network would renew a show with low viewership. That’s just a fact. That and other projects, work, life and other things all suffered due to the amount of time and energy put into this pup. I couldn’t justify it for my family’s sake to do a second season without a clearer vision of what would happen with it.

Medium answer: The issues with post production and some of the troubles during production made me not want to go down the rabbit hole again. Places and people promising help and assistance, backing out at the last second and then forcing Kyle and I to scramble and do everything really took its toll. Again, if we had money, it would have been a different story.

Short answer: Everyone moved away and I can’t afford to bring them back. I would work with every actor again (save 1, it’s not important) and Elle and Brandy and Greg and Bergen again, BUT I don’t feel right doing it without a proper budget. I dunno, gotta pray on that more.

Even shorter answer: Covid ruined everything.

So there. I hope that puts a nail in the coffin of a series I’m damn proud of and that you can watch RIGHT NOW (until the end of 2022. After this year, I won’t be paying vimeo’s exorbitant $80 a year just to host it):

https://vimeo.com/showcase/6660369

Once that goes down, you can still watch it by following the link below. There’s a small cost to watch it on Indie Nation Network:

https://inationnetwork.com/

The Real Last Thought

There were moments of incredible stress, but also incredible fun. The question now becomes, would I do this again?

Holy crap, yes I would!

I don’t know about doing another full series, though. I think doing a short or a pilot make more sense for my future creative goals. For anyone sick of not seeing their words on screen, I’d encourage you to give it a shot.

Here’s a tiktok that makes me think about what we did and why we did it: