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Hilarie Burton: Hey everyone! This is Hilarie Burton and you have tuned in to the Southern Gothic Productions podcast, a weekly look into the inner workings of a production company. So sit back, and enjoy a peek into our journey.

Denise Gideon: Denise Gideon here for the Southern Gothic Productions podcast. We’re joined by the guys this week: Kelly Tenney and Nicholas Gray are joining us on the podcast. It’s, kind of, a different dynamic. We’ve had all kinds of combinations, and this week it’s me, Kelly, and Nick, so welcome to the podcast, guys!

Kelly Tenney: Hello!

Nicholas Gray: Thank you, Denise!

DG: Before we, kind of, get started, I wanted to do something really quick. You guys had some fun this weekend. We’re going to talk a little bit about that, and, kind of, your experience in your second filming of your webisode, but before we, kind of, get started, I know you guys have been doing a lot of fun things on the website and getting some things moved around, and you were doing some interesting things. You’re going to add on to it, and I just want to give a shout-out, if you guys don’t mind, real quick, for taking this time to your web masters, Andrea and Megan. Kelly and I call Andrea the wizard, but I just wanted to really quick just say that these guys have done a great job of helping you guys get this website where you want to, and it’s another… it kind of ties into what Hilarie was talking about last week about bringing people in to help you guys, and I just wanted to do that real quick.

KT: Yeah, no, I mean…

NG: Shout out!

KT: Shout it out!

NG: Shout it out!

KT: [laughs] They… yeah, we wouldn’t be where we are today with our website without them. That I can honestly say without any hesitation. So, yes, many, many, many thanks to the two of them.

DG: Alright, let’s talk a little bit about something you guys did on Saturday, and that would be the second episode of your web series, ‘Friendship Union Community Theatre,’ so I’m opening it up to you guys just to kind of tell us what happened, how things went, and if you were happy with the results.

NG: Well, starting out, we are... just to clarify… It probably will be the second episode. It’s a little bit up in the air. We aren’t yet totally defiant as to whether this is going to be the third episode or the second. It was written to be the third, but there’s nothing, information-wise, that would hold it back from being the second, so we’re pretty sure we are rolling forward with this one as the second one, but it could go either way, right, Kel?

KT: That’s right. That’s right. I mean, it’s called ‘Walter Impossible.’

DG: Ooh.

KT: And it’s wonderful. Nick, again, I don’t know why I always act surprised when I get such well-written scripts from him, but this one is really good, and he really did go the extra mile, and write something that I think everyone is going to enjoy, everyone.

NG: I think that as we, kind of, continue to move forward with this, I think we’re taking a bit of a different angle on how these are being produced with the sense that we’re still kind of developing the tone of the show, you know. It could go any number of ways, and I think with Kelly directing this one, it was important for me, as the writer, to know, you know, the kinds of things that he felt comfortable with, and so, you know, we had a lengthy conversation about that, and the script that I ended up producing, I think, was, you know, as relevant as possible to the style that he wants this.

KT: It absolutely was. I mean, he… I told him, basically, I would like to shoot in a certain location, and Nick went and visited it, and he basically wrote it perfectly. I couldn’t have asked for a better script.

NG: I wrote another script that had a lot of nudity in it, and he didn’t want it. [Kelly and Denise laugh] I’m just kidding.

KT: That’ll be the next one. We’ll let James direct that one. [Nick laughs]

DG: Nick, you wrote this script, tell me the difference between doing this script and your very first one. I’m sure there was a lot of difference in the fact that you were able to have your characters, kind of… you kind of got a feel of them already, so it was probably a little bit easier to get in the flow, I’m thinking.

NG: It was, and it wasn’t, Denise. We only have two characters that were in the pilot in this episode.

DG: Okay.

NG: There’s three new characters in this episode. I think… and this is the main challenge, you know. What it initially… when we came up with the idea to do something about a theatre… we chose it because we thought it was going to be really easy because we have a location in town that, you know City Stage, the theatre that they’re, you know, so gracious to let us use, even though this episode we did use another location… It was an easy thing for us to do, but then when you actually think… you know, one of the big things with web series is that you need to make sure your number of characters is limited, because you’re in such a short period of time, and with the audience having such a short attention span, you need to restrict that as much as possible, and when you really think about how many people are working within a theater, behind the scenes, it’s a lot more than five or six people, you know. You have the actors. You have the stagehands. You have an audience. You have the costume designer. You have the lighting designer. You have the director. You have the assistant director. You have all these different people, and so we do want to try to work as many people as possible into this, so there is a bit of a challenge in trying to work all that in, and to not make it very expository in having to reveal new characters; just try to bang it out. But I think we succeeded with this episode, definitely.

DG: Well tell me… maybe from both of you guys. I’d like to hear both perspectives…. the difference between this one and your very first one. What did you learn from the first one that you applied to this one that, maybe, you didn’t make that mistake, or maybe you corrected something to help it flow a little bit better.

KT: Well, Nick wrote and directed the first one, so I guess, go ahead Nick.

NG: Well, I think that, personally, being in the editing suite with Mick Shane, our editor, you know, I saw a lot of things that it would have been good to have been able to prevent, but at the time we weren’t necessarily aware of all those things. You know, with the first episode we had some audio problems…

KT: Yeah.

NG: … so with this episode we wanted to make sure that we had… our camera operator in the first episode did such a great job that I feel like we overwhelmed him by also having him on audio and sound duty, and so there were a few things that were a little overlooked, and so we wanted to make sure, on this one, that it wasn’t going to happen, so with that respect we needed to make sure we had somebody singularly taking care of our sound. You know, other, like, small things here and there, like that. This time we had an exceptional monitor that we were able to see everything on. I think that, in general, this shoot went more smoothly than the first one, but I think that if we move on, we’ll always say that this shoot was moving more smoothly. I think that, in general, that’s how it’s bound to progress.

KT: Yeah, as we work more with our crew, it will get much easier. This was, again, with our crew, for the most part… the shooting crew that is, and they jumped right in. They were very good, very quick. Got the job done in about 11 hours, a long day.

DG: Well, Kelly, and you directed this episode.

KT: I did. I was given the opportunity, and I took it, and I have not directed in many, many years, so it was kind of interesting. I had a little fear factor in me [Denise laughs] going into it, but again, Nick was there to support me, and he helped a lot with the performances, because I really spent a lot of time on the technical end of it. Anytime I would start to lose focus, or miss something, Nick was there to back me up, and get through it, through the process. I think, next time…

NG: And that’s something that, you know, I’m more comfortable with. With, you know, my theatre background, I view performance as being most important, which Kelly and James, in their film and television background, they have a greater capacity for the technical elements, so together we are really able to make sure all the angles are covered.

KT: And we work so well together. I mean, all of us listen to each other, make sure that at the end of the day the project gets the best possible view of it.

NG: And I was also on set as producer of the hourglass of the day…

KT: He did!

NG: … to make sure we were running on time.

KT: And Nick did come to be, and it was awesome. It was really cool. He was like, ‘Dude, you’re supposed to be done in 20 minutes.’

DG: Wow. [laughs]

KT: Yeah, I don’t see it happening unless you start cutting some things, and it was great! It was just that little prod, and…

NG: At the end of the day, we definitely got everything that we needed, and we got a lot of stuff that we didn’t know we wanted, but we were in this space, Denise, that just really had… the space that we were in is called ‘The Scenic Asylum,’ and, I think that what the owner of the space does, is he ends up buying sets from Broadway tours, and so he has all this stuff in this space, and you know, we went and did our scout, and then had gone back to set everything up, and you see everything in there, but you don’t really know the capacity of how it can be used until you are kind of, like, in the space, and the next thing you know, people are riding around on a mini-vespa! [Nick and Kelly laugh]

DG: Tell me, guys, about the scout. Since we’re the podcast, I’m just trying to let everybody know the insides and outs, not only your fans, but hopefully people that want to learn more about shooting a web series. Tell me a little more about… you had this idea that you knew what you wanted in the script, and just to go on through and finding a location that would fit what you wanted.

KT: Well, again, I think Nick had an idea of the episode before we scouted, and then… because I think he’d been there before, so you kind of had something in your head, and then we went and scouted and started moving pieces around and then he went back and wrote the episode from what he physically saw in the building.

NG: Right, with a few limitations. I mean, like I said, there’s so, so much in this space that we could have worked with. I think if we were shooting something that’s planned to be more than five or six minutes long, we probably would have taken advantage of a lot of these pieces more so. But, you know, we went with our cameras. We took as many pictures as possible. I kind of like took a look at all these pictures afterwards and thought, like, ‘Well, is this something we want to work in? Is this something we want to work in? Ooh, a box of explosives! That might be something we want to work in.’ [all laugh] But, I mean, legitimately, there were just so many things in there. Truly, I wish I could have taken advantage of the space a little bit more, but at the same time it’s five minutes, I mean, we still want to tell the story.

KT: Well, we were outside shooting for the first page and a half or so, so…

NG: Right.

KT: Exterior. So, yeah, there was a lot in that building we could have shot more of, but maybe next time!

DG: Nick, do you like that… How do you like that as a writer, most of the time, if you’re being paid to write, they tell you what you are supposed to write, or if your idea and it’s your intellectual property, you write what you want to write, but just, kind of, taking what you have and creating a story around what you have?

NG: It’s just kind of another challenge. It’s something that I remember from school. You know, we would have all these mini exercises, you know, something that I really like to do. You would be given, like, a photograph or something and you have to tell a story drawing inspiration from that photograph. Even things like, you know, they would give us five words, and they would say use these five words in your script, and they would be the most outlandish kind of things, and it’s all that kind of practice that you can just, kind of, take with you, and hopefully you can get better as a writer, but that is kind of the limitation that we’re on. You know, we want to make sure that we’re working within the confines of what we are allowed, with respect to space and our talent. So far, I think we’re moving forward in a way that we want to. It’s also… you know, I have no idea… that’s the only thing about the show, is that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. [Kelly laughs] I have no idea at all! You know, it’s going to depend on, you know, well, where do we want to shoot? You know, we talked about… we are always welcome to go back into the theatre and shoot there as many days as we’d like, but we, you know, you also don’t want that environment to become stale. I think for our next episode we’re talking about shooting outside, which also makes shooting a little bit easier, because as long as we have a good day…

KT: … and nothing bails on us, right.

NG: … as long as we have a good day and it’s not raining on us, it definitely makes it easier, because then we don’t have to worry about a bunch of lights, we just need a few bouncers and we’ll be good. But, I do, I do, I enjoy the challenge of it. And, you know, on the other end, I also enjoy the challenge of just coming up with something, you know, from the ground up, and bringing it to completion, like something like a feature, and then giving it to, you know, whoever later, and allowing them to say, ‘Let’s make these changes based on this.’

DG: Well, guys, to close out this segment, tell me what’s the next step.

NG: Well, now we move on to editing!

KT: That process starts tomorrow! [sarcastic] Yay… I get to sit in that chair for a while.

DG: Oh, so you’re doing editing this time, Kelly?

KT: I’ll do the first edit, and then Nick will do the producer’s edit, and yeah, we should have it done, hopefully, in four weeks.

NG: We are hoping to use the same editor from our first episode. I really like working with him. He makes everything really easy, and what Kelly’s going to do is he’s going to put together the first edit as best he can, and then, the best thing about it is with logging footage and everything… that’s one of the things that takes a lot of time, and looking through all the footage, since Kelly did direct this episode, he needs to have the opportunity to choose his best takes and what he feels most comfortable with, and then once he’s done that, I’ll move forward with Mick, hopefully put together a pretty final edit, get some music on there. I’m hoping to move forward a little more quickly than last time! [Denise laughs]

KT: Yeah, absolutely. Need it done.

DG: We are going to close out, as we always do, with a fan question, and this one is specifically for you, Nick, and I can hear Kelly breathing a sigh of relief already.

KT: Yes!

DG: [laughing] And the question is from Niamh, she says, Nick, ‘You’ve mentioned that ‘Pedestrian’ began life as a novel, given that it has now been transformed into a screenplay, and in light of your recent success with ‘Population:8’ and the web series, do you feel that your strength lies in that more dialogue driven writing?’

NG: Always, always. I think that it’s just something that I enjoy the most, and I think when you find what you enjoy the most, it naturally becomes what you’re the best at, because you have a lot more passion for it. But, I am always interested in challenging myself, you know, it is, you know, with respect to dialogue, that’s certainly one of the things that I’m looking forwards to in scripting our graphic novel, because for the most part, that’s realy all I have to do, and you know, with working with our artist, that’s going to be the person that helps us move our acion forward, but, you know, on the flip hand, with respect to this script that we just finished shooting, it I think was a bit more action based than dialogue. There’s a lot more physical comedy in this episode that wasn’t in the first one. So, I’m always up for a challenge, but I really enjoy smart dialogue. It just gets me.

DG: Well, thanks for answering Niamh’s question. It’s always nice to get a question in and get your guys insight. So, just want to thank you guys for coming on the podcast, and telling us a little big about your shoot last week, and kind of getting everybody excited for the second episode, the third episode, however we’re going to call it, and the future of these webisodes.

NG: Cool. Thank you, Denise.

KT: Thanks for listening.

DG: Have you got a question for Southern Gothic Productions? There are three ways that you can get your question answered. You can send your question to sogopropodcast@gmail.com. That’s sogopropodcast@gmail.com. Or you can send a message via Twitter at SoGoPro. Or you can leave a voicemail message at 828-398-0310, and you too can have your question answered by Hilarie Burton, Kelly Tenney, and Nicholas Gray.

HB: Thank you guys so much for listening to the Southern Gothic Productions podcast. We hang out on Wednesdays, so be sure to check us out! See you next time.

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