McCracken at the LA Web Fest

So I'm at the La Web Fest and although the festival started off a bit disorganised it has turned out to be quite an informative and worthwhile experience. What amazes me are just how many creatives are using this platform to tell their stories and the amount of web series out there. Some good, many bad. I have attended a fantastic workshop tonight which discussed where the medium is headed. I'm glad to hear that web series is a new frontier and being a part of it made me feel good. Hollywood studios are now funding high quality web series content and giants like YouTube are requesting material wanting to change peoples perception of their brand.

Something that was discussed at length was how we go about monetising web series content. It got my brain ticking, especially when one of the panel speakers mentioned creating an mobile app of your production house and anything you produce is available through the app. Pilots, trailers and teasers are released for free on Youtube (or some free platform) and then die-hard fans can watch whole series by purchasing your app. Of course, you have to establish a pretty solid fan base and reputation if this was to work.

In the meantime, something else that was mentioned was a crowd funding system where fans can follow a link at the end of an episode and contribute to the budget for the next episode if they wish to see more made. If you start making crap they will just stop contributing but if they keep liking what you do, you may just be able to have your web series funded. The company that have pioneered this system is Patreon.

Me Fielding Questions on the Q&A After McCracken Screening

I also did my first post screening Q&A panel which I was quite nervous about although once I got up on the panel my fear dissipated and I relaxed into it. One of the questions I asked was what advice I had to aspiring web series makers who had little or no money.

I explained that the one thing that doesn't cost money in filmmaking is the writing of the script, provided you write it yourself. So my advice was to put as much work into the script writing process as possible, because this is the one thing you can control without the need for money. If you you put the work in and end up with a tight script, you will have a solid foundation to do everything else for cheap by simply telling a quality story. No special effects or multiple locations though!

We didn't win any awards although what I really appreciated were people who watched McCracken and then recognised me at the festival as McCracken. They seemed both stoked and amused to meet me. A couple of British dudes would yell out "Oui McCracken!" whenever they spotted me across the hotel foyer. So people obviously like the character and see the potential there.

Watch below the new trailer for McCracken - The TV Pilot. The whole 24 minute pilot was made for two grand. To be discussed further in the next post.

McCracken Episode 1 - The Unplanned Shoot

McCracken wasn't initially intended to be a web series, but only a one off skit for Wayne Bradley's online sketch comedy series. I had approached him with the character, McCracken, which he was willing to give it a shot as long as I organized the shoot. I needed a location that resembled a trucking companies office. My girlfriend works for a landscape sales company and she said their old office had been abandoned up the back of their site and I could use it. Perfect. I scoped it out and it was full of dust, falling apart and just basically shit. It would have to do.

Now I had to find my crew. Seeing as though I only had a couple of days until we shot and no money, I called upon a colleague called Abe who owed me a favour from a film course I did. I was happy to do it as long as I fed him. He would take care of sound too. Sweet! I had my crew - Abe.
So we all met up at this crappy office abandoned at the back of a landscape yard and set up inside the office. Wayne (who plays Boss), Abe and myself (who plays McCracken. None of us really knew what we were doing. Wayne decided to direct and set up a basic two shot of us sitting down doing the scene. It was a while since I had done any proper acting so it took me a while to get into it, and Abe talked too much but besides that it went pretty smoothly. There was no power up there so we had to rely on natural light through the windows. We only had one mic so we had to alternate depending who the shot was on. After four hours we were done. I ordered subway sandwiches for lunch which cost around $20 and ended up being our entire budget.

Wayne's normal editor had moved overseas and I couldn't afford a proper one so Wayne was good enough to teach himself final cut pro whilst editing the sketch. What a legend!
He put a rough cut together and after getting some feedback from a real editor he polished it up pretty good - for a first time editor I'd say damn good actually.

Then the complications came. First Wayne's collaborating partner didn't think the production value was high enough to be part of their sketch comedy series. Of course, myself having created this character, took it personally thinking it was "me" that was shit and not the "production value". Subsequently I went on a bender. I had completely returned to my own pattern of behaviour and had to go to rehab. On top of that I found out Abe was in jail detained over an alleged murder charge… next time I will research my crew a little more thoroughly.

So here I was - in rehab, my sketch and character having failed, and I still had to break the news to Wayne that our cinematography was a potential murderer. Thankfully Wayne took that news quite well. He also lifted my spirits back up expressing that he liked and believed in McCracken. He said he wanted to post it on his own Youtube channel and possibly make a little series out of them.  

While this both excited and frightened me at the same time, I set about writing several more episodes whilst in rehab.

Episode 1 still remains one of my favorites, purely because of the rawness of it and the fact it kick started the whole journey. It currently sits at about 30,000 hits on YouTube since September... Not bad for a cast and crew of three and budget of twenty bucks! You can view Episode 1 here:

McCracken: Truck Stop - Part 1 "The Job Interview"

 The only photo of the original McCracken played by Tim Roberts from Episode 1

 The abandoned office up the back of the landscape yard