More Remnants
I was happy to get such a strong reaction since posting the pilot for The Remnants. Every few days, we get a surge of hits as new sites link to it. A fan even set up Draft The Remnants to get people to pledge their love.
For something that’s been sitting on a shelf for a year, it’s really gratifying.
Viewers had a lot of questions, so I’ll do my best to answer them here.
It’s actually not about zombies.
When I pitched the show, I described it as a cross between The Office and The Stand. Something Very Bad has happened, but we’re focusing on the survivors and their dysfunctional attempts to reestablish normalcy. Like Stephen King’s book, there are good people and some very bad people — but they’re not the living dead.
I completely understand why viewers might expect some shambling corpses. Mia claims that she’s “not one of them,” and former group member Stan apparently “went Jurassic Park.” The bad people, “them,” are truly scary — but also incredibly organized and sneaky. Think fascist.
Think V, not Z.
In the final scene, Mia and Josh both admit they don’t really understand what happened. That’s important.
MIA
I don’t know if the world got invaded, or if this is something we created ourselves...
JOSH
It’s nano-technology from the future.
MIA
Really.
JOSH
I have no idea.
The correct answer is an amalgam of all three.
How did you get that cast?
I knew Ben Falcone and Justine Bateman, so I wrote those parts with them in mind. Ze Frank is a friend of producer Matt Byrne, and I had a hunch he could act. So I wrote the part hoping he’d do it.
Robert Ulrich, who’s been my casting director on several projects, graciously agreed to help me find actors for Chas, Mia and Wallace. You’d think that given my credits, it would be easy to get people in to meet and/or audition, but several agencies simply refused to send their actors out for a web series.1 I deliberately hired people with a writing or improv background, because I knew from shooting Part Two of The Nines that I’d need to let people veer far off the script in order to get the feel I wanted.
Because Justine is very active in SAG, she got us to test out their new web series agreement, which basically allows guild actors to work on experimental projects like this for less than scale. From cast to crew, everyone got about $120/day.
How long did you shoot? How much did it cost?
We shot three pretty easy days, with most departments getting a day to prep and a day to wrap. With six actors and a fair amount of improv, I didn’t want to feel rushed. We shot two cameras (the HVX-200) most of the time, generally gunning the same direction for a wide and a close-up.
All in, the show cost $25,003. Depending on your perspective, that’s either expensive for a web show or mind-blowingly cheap for television show. We paid for locations, permits and other details a scrappier web show would just ignore. And we had more crew. Some web shows are literally just the actors and a guy holding the camera. We had 15 people. We were more like an indie feature, but without trucks or trailers.
We could have done it cheaper. Of the $25,000, more than $17,000 went to pay people, and a lot of those folks probably would have worked for free. But I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t replicate for a series of 10 episodes. You can’t ask someone to work for 25 days for the love of their craft.
I saw the pilot as an experiment not just in storytelling, but production. I wanted to it to be sustainable.
Why isn’t this a web series?
There are at least five answers, all of which are obstacles.
The lack of a major advertiser who wanted to sponsor it. That was the original goal: to find a company that would promote the show as hard as we would promote their product. Pringles is sort of a placeholder. We could swap that out for almost anything: Coke, Ace Hardware, Duracell.
Actor availability. Every actor in The Remnants works a lot. The writers’ strike was a major reason why so many great people were available. And no, I’m not wishing for an actors’ strike.
My schedule. I don’t know when I could do it. I haven’t announced the post-Shazam projects I’m working on, but trust me, I’m really busy with features. Doing ten episodes of The Remnants would be three solid months of work.
The lack of a viable business model. A series of ten similar webisodes wouldn’t cost that much (maybe $300K), but there’s still no model for how investors could get their money back. If I thought there was, I’d pay for it myself.
My ambitions. I need to write another movie to direct. The more things I put in front of it, the longer it pushes off that goal.
All this said, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Remnants, and have mentally moved it from the “Impossible” to “Unlikely” box.
What happened at the Grand Canyon?
Something so awful it still gives me nightmares.
(That’s the answer I gave actresses when they asked that question in auditions.)
The Remnants from John August on Vimeo.
- Props to William Morris and ICM for taking us seriously. ↩
Filed under: Projects, Remnants, The Show, WGA, Web series
Articles
January 21st, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I was there. At the canyon I mean. But, the Skywalk was too expensive so I bailed. Thank God!
January 21st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
What?! No AD?! John, you are rebel.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
So they were invaded by fascists from the future who got here using a time machine invented by our government. What about reverse vampires?
And the Grand Canyon? Let’s just say you can walk across it now.
Whoa! Now I’m going to have nightmares.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@tcambpell:
It was small enough that I could AD it myself for shooting. For bigger logistic stuff, the producers took charge.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Hi John,
I’m planning on shooting a short film in the near future with about the same budget you used for The Remnants. It will also be shot in three days as well, but I was wondering, how did you get your crew together for it? Did you tell everybody that you were going to pay them $120 a day? I like the idea of paying everybody a single flat rate as it leaves more money to go up onto the screen, but a lot of times, people don’t want to work for that rate particularly people who are in the unions (i.e. ASC) Also, if possible, can you please post the budget. Sorry if this post runs a little long.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Hi John, It’s very honorable that you paid everyone a fair wage. I’m putting together a short film and I don’t really plan on paying anyone anything. I’ll feed them and put their names in the credits twice, but that’s all I can really do. I’m 20 and a nobody with a cheap camera. I’m one of the people who sees that budget and thinks “Whoa. Where did all that go?” So thanks for breaking it down. But if I fund mine on favors and free backrubs, am I morally bankrupt or just doing what I gotta do to break in?
January 21st, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Thanks again John. You are a great resource.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Okay, I laughed really hard at “Brands don’t matter.”
Max: as someone often in your position, I would personally say that if you don’t have any money, and the people who work with you know they aren’t getting paid and are doing it because they want to, there’s nothing “morally bankrupt” about it.
If you COULD afford to pay and didn’t, that would be pretty screwed up. But since you can’t, you do what you gotta and people will choose to help or not.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 am
John:
Didn’t Dr. Horrible make all wonders of buckets of cash? I mean, they certainly made up from the production budget (and then some) of $250k, based on Hulu revenue, iTunes downloads, and DVD sales. I’ve seen figures that iTunes downloads alone counted for north of $2 million.
Certainly something that was far less at $25k per episode (less than that, as you say, for all ten) could make its money back, even if you don’t have a Whedon-sized fanbase.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:09 am
Dear John, please use direct-access link to “The Remnants” on Vimeo (and elsewhere…):
http://vimeo.com/2755105
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Why isn’t this a webseries?
Because it’s a TV show. This would be great in prime time on some network to cash in on all the Lost viewers waiting for the next show structured around revealing a mystery through flashbacks. But there’s nothing about it that caters to the medium of the internet. It’s just a (good) TV show that happens to have episodes online.
I don’t think anyone has figured out quite how to take advantage of the internet with a web series. LonelyGirl15 pretended to be a video blog, and was interactive. Dr. Horrible purports to be a blog and has catchy songs, but I still think the medium is ripe for something we haven’t figured out yet.
Remnants, as great a show as it could be, isn’t it.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 am
That was horrible, John.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
I can’t wait to hear more about those post-Shazam projects.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Fantastic! I hope this can be picked up at a later date via web or cable. Great sense of humor!!!
January 26th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Very interesting to read about the project and see the result. Thank you.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:00 am
I pledged 10$ as I am also fascinated by the premise and I have a lot of loose change I dont want to have to roll. Just promise me there will be a reference to cigarettes as they have a short shelf life compared to canned food. When the cigarettes all go stale then it will be a crisis. I’m not a smoker myself I just live in Virginia.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Thought you might be interested in this article: http://newteevee.com/2009/01/23/is-there-life-left-in-the-remnants/
January 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Are there other episodes written? Any chance you might post them?
February 5th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
it’s been a few weeks since watching this, and i now realize i will never again pass a fridge without wondering why it’s textured. damn you john!