Sheltered - New Show Online now

[Luis Caffesse]

A new show I'm doing is now online.

It's called "Sheltered"
Each episode focuses on a different animal in a shelter - the stories are told through "first person" perspecitve interviews with the 'animals.'

Its very 'documentary' style - I was trying my best to keep it straight and matter of fact - I didn't want something too melodramatic (given the subject matter).

Hopefully we have some animal lovers here - otherwise you're just going to think it's cheesy.
:thumbsup:

Let me know what you think -

Check out the first two episodes of "Sheltered" (http://pets.onnetworks.com/videos/sheltered/sweetie)

[Luis Caffesse]

Damn - actually I just watched them online and the encoding seems messed up.
If anyone watches these - let me know if they played smoothly for you.

Thanks.

[Indywannabe]

Now we know why you posted for suggestions to shooting from a low angle.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=103576

Looks VERY good. Just watched about half the first episode and did not see any issues.

How is this going to be marketed?

[Luis Caffesse]

Looks VERY good. Just watched about half the first episode and did not see any issues.

How is this going to be marketed?

Well, if you only watched half of it - it couldn't have been that good.
:)

I'm not certain what the marketing strategy is going to be, that's really in the hands of OnNetworks (the company that contracted the show).

There are 4 episodes total in the first batch I'm doing for them - they have the 3rd, and I'm still working on the 4th. After that, they'll probably gauge interest - see how it does on itunes, etc... and look for some form of advertising sponsorship.

The encoding issue is being sorted out at the moment - so hopefully they'll play smoothly as of this afternoon.

[Luis Caffesse]

A new episode of 'Sheltered' went online today:

Check it out if you're interested (http://onnetworks.com/videos/sheltered/holiday)

[iDV8]

I like them.

[Isaac_Brody]

I like Luis. Interesting to give the dogs a voice.

All the vids played fine for me. The first vid I watched stuttered at the title and then played fine. Good work wook. :thumbup:

[greg121]

What kind of mic did you use to record the dog's voice? Did the dog eat the furry wind filter thinking it was a cat?

good stuff.. I like it!

[Jeff Anderson]

sweet I love talking dogs! Good stuff Luis - did you do the writing too? Nice work keeping the dog thinking like a dog - or at least how i think they think... Would be fun to have a whole series with more interaction between the dogs, a la The Office but The Shelter. Nice camera work too. The low angle follow the dog shots work really well.

[Luis Caffesse]

Thanks guys.
Actually we didn't do any "writing"
I sat down with the actor doing the voice, and just did an improv interview.
I asked questions and they answered from the animals perspective...then we did a 'real' interview where we just talk about them. I took alot of audio from sections where they are talking about themselves and used that to hopefully make it feel a little more 'honest'

It's actually done really well so far.
I did a couple of radio interviews promoting the show - got a write up in a couple of publications...

all from a talking dog.
Who knew?
:)

[Spartacus]

What a great idea!
Really like the concept and how you produced it!

[Luis Caffesse]

Thanks Spartacus.
:thumbsup:

Let's just hope the show continues.

[Jeff Anderson]

I'm telling you Luis - talking dogs are the wave of the future! Novel way to get the audio - worked fantastically and sounds a heck of a lot easier than trying to write the script and keep it conversational and fresh. I think the concept as a whole will really help the shelter place the dogs as well. Much better than petfinder or any other standard site with a pic and short description. Even if its just a few "select" dogs I bet the shelter will get more traffic.

[Luis Caffesse]

Well luckily every animal I've done a show about has now been adopted - including the older Chow that had been in a shelter for the past few years. And it seems like the shelter has gotten a bit more traffic -so its doing something. It's also helped them with donations I think (which is good).

On top of that, I'm taking a portion of each episodes budget and donating it to the shelter that I shoot at for that episode - so hopefully by supporting the show people will be supporting the shelters. It's been a good setup so far for all involved.

As far as the writing - yeah, I chose to go that route because I was worried that if I tried to write these things out all the animals would wind up with the same 'voice' (mine). I've also always been a HUGE fan of both 'This American Life' and 'Creature Comforts' - so this style was kind of a combination of those two approaches (well, in my mind it was anyhow, the final product may not reflect that). So what we do is get the details from the shelter for each animal (backstory, how they wound up there, etc etc), I give that to the actor and then we watch the footage... then we go from there. Anything we don't know about the animal we simply improv. It's been alot of fun.

Thanks for watching.
:thumbsup:

[Denis Haineault]

I like animals but don't consider myself an animal lover. I really like these videos and think the concept you used is very effective. The fact that you stayed away from the cheesy/sobby path is what makes it work so well.

Keep it up

P.S. "...a TV would be nice" cracked me up :)

[Luis Caffesse]

Thanks - that was one of my goals, to do everything I could to keep it from getting too melodramatic and cheesy. We're doing what we can to keep it as matter-of-fact as possible. I mean, we're already dealing with animals in shelters...we don't need to add sad music to it.
:)