Yuku free message boards

All right, I've rested enough I guess. Gather 'round and I'll tell you the story of Ark.

No, not the story of "Ark", you'll have to wait to see that. I mean the story of the making of Ark. And I'll tell it in hideously elaborate detail, so you'll know what a weird hybrid of big-budget Hollywood and guerilla filmmaking this beast is. But that's the really interesting part, and it's also why we'll be needing your help.

So get comfortable. Hey, you in the back - scootch closer. Yes, you.

Okay, so -

Some time ago, a fella named Robbie Thompson had an idea for a sci-fi tale entitled Ark. I think he originally intended it as a comic book story, though I'm not completely sure about that. But let's pretend that I'm always right or we'll never get through this.

About a year ago Robbie pitched his idea to Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah, producers of such fine TV fare as Freaks and Geeks, Life As We Know It, and the new 90210 (coming this September on the CW network). Gabe and Jeff liked it, so they optioned the idea from Robbie in hopes of someday doing something with it.

About the same time, at Comic-Con 2007 I had a chance meeting with a lady named Niki, who was Gabe and Jeff's assistant at the time. She'd seen Pink Five, and told me her bosses were thinking about making web shows, either as self-contained projects or as a starting point for something bigger.

Since I had a track record of making fx-heavy videos at discount prices, that led to me getting hired by Gabe and Jeff to make little demo "trailers" for six show concepts, one of which was Ark. The other five were various show ideas they'd optioned from other writers, or come up with themselves.

For some of the trailers, they gave me a script to follow. But for Ark, they just said: "It's a sci fi story about people who find themselves on a big spaceship and they don't know why. Ready, go."

So I came up with a kinda interesting visual way to suggest that idea, one that I could do for the budget I was given. Which was zero dollars.

An actress named Milly Sanders, whom I'd never met but was a friend of a friend, agreed to come to my house and appear in the demo, which we shot in my backyard literally fifteen minutes after we met. (Side note: Milly was great, and has since made her own webseries called Meet Me In The Graveyard, check it out on YouTube. )

I edited the footage of Milly, added a lot of visual fx tricks and a soundtrack, put the end result on a DVD with the other five demo trailers I'd made and delivered them all to Gabe and Jeff.

For several months, Gabe and Jeff showed the demos around, looking for someone to fund the projects. The writers' strike happened right in the middle of that, which put a damper on things for a while. But the whole time, the one that kept getting the most interest was Ark.

Finally Sachs-Judah found a buyer, a company called 60 Frames that makes content for the web. After a lot of negotiation - which also involved a company called Oni Press that would be releasing a comic book version at the same time - Ark was greenlit as a limited web series.

Robbie wrote the script for it (and that's when I finally found out what the heck Ark was about) and I was given a budget to make it. Can't say how much, other than it's a lot less than you think, and a whole lot less than I would have liked. Which meant this was going to require a cast and crew who'd be willing to work really hard for much less money than they deserved.

First, I re-enlisted most of my Pink Five crew because they're as nutty as I am, and thank goodness for that.

As far as casting, Gabe felt very strongly we should go with unknowns. That way there'd be no expectations - we could put the thing online without fanfare and see if people responded to it. It made sense to me, and besides, Gabe's the boss (Jeff is too, but Gabe's the one I usually talk to).

Naturally, the first person I approached to play the lead was Milly. She'd earned the right to it, and I knew she was familiar with the craziness of making low-budget internet thingamabobs.

Milly really wanted to do it... but she wasn't available. But we had the other roles to cast anyway, so we put out a casting call for the lead role while we were at it.

There are standard places that casting notices are published - everybody from the big studios all the way down to indie folks like us use the same procedure. You publish your notice describing the role and the shoot schedule and who's making it, etc. So we did that, and then waited.

The next day, I got a call from our casting director.

...and I'll stop there for now.

But come back for the next chapter, in which Trey says:

Wait, WHO did you say was interested???