OTHER: HITMAN 101 - The Web Series

Staven

Staven

Well-known member
This past summer I embarked on the hardest project of my film making journey. A 12 episode web series about a Hitman.

We began casting in April, even before I had written a script... this is actually the first project I've taken on that didn't have 'something' that sparked my story idea.
I decided I wanted to make a web series about a hitman - then came up with the idea for the story after already putting the wheels in motion I'd make a series.

Shot it over July to September 2011. Edited a bit while shooting then completed picture lock over Oct-Nov. Started doing the rest of post in December.
Released the first 3 episodes Dec 28th, then commenced a weekly release schedule while trying to keep ahead of the schedule completing audio, music and vfx - which
was a demanding task, but a worthwhile experience.

Thanks for checking it out and please feel free to share it with others if you enjoy it. We uploaded it best quality we could, so please feel free to watch it full screen and switch the settings to 1080p.













http://hitman-101.com
 
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woop dee doozy! this is great. I am impressed!
good work - your hard work paid off!
How much did you spend to make this and how many roles did you play in the production? (direct , write, edit?)
I love it!

I have some comments about style, but I'll only offer them if you are open to them - I like the series as is and you did a great job.

I also like - as a guilty pleasure - all the top heavy women you cast hurray!

Looking forward to the rest of the series! I see the twists are just about to begin!
 
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john threat said:
woop dee doozy! this is great. I am impressed!
good work - your hard work paid off!
How much did you spend to make this and how many roles did you play in the production? (direct , write, edit?)
I love it!
I have some comments about style, but I'll only offer them if you are open to them - I like the series as is and you did a great job.
I also like - as a guilty pleasure - all the top heavy women you cast hurray!
Looking forward to the rest of the series! I see the twists are just about to begin!
Click to expand...

Hi John.

Thanks for watching the episodes and pleased to hear you enjoyed them!

To answer your questions... I've avoided doing an actual tally of all the receipts I have because I don't really want to know how much I spent. The plan was to make it under $5,000Cdn, but I fear I went over. We had many roadblocks and speedbumps along the way with this project, which most of the time were remedied by money. I was somewhat forced to shoot sooner than I had wanted because of actor availability, which was good and bad. Good, because I had to throw caution to the wind and just do it, bad because I could have used another month or two of pre-production. Having time to plan saves money. (venture to guess I went over by $1to$2grand)

We had a skeleton crew of a make-up artist, a boom op, and me. The lead actor Georgie also constantly helped out doing whatever was needed when he wasn't on camera. I myself played way too many roles, hardest being the camera op as I do not consider myself much of a cinematographer and I find it takes so much concentration making sure the shots in focus and the composition is nice. I'm also the worst for camera shake but fortunately it isn't very noticeable because the camera we borrowed to shoot on (Sony NX5u) had a really good built in Steadyshot system.

Feel free to comment on style, I'll preface it with one note (which I cannot figure out if I should be proud of or ashamed of, or if I should mention on a forum of filmmakers...) - because I was so intensely saddled down trying to have stuff ready for any given shoot, I did not become filmmaker guy until the moment I put the camera on my shoulder on the day. No shot lists, no planning, entire scenes and sequences figured out in the moment. I'm guessing because I wrote it, there was already a map in my head of how it could look, but other than that it was "now how am I going to shoot this" moments before calling action.

You're welcome in regards to the ladies (lol). Vancouver is blessed with beautiful actresses and I was fortunate to have some of them in the series.
 
Episode 4 is live. (and above in post 1)

And fun news... The series was listed by Indie Intertube (one of the only webseries new/reviews sites) as the "Dramatic Pick of the Week" this week.

http://hitman-101.com
 
Liked and shared!

(and gotta give a chuckle to the Final Cut Pro book in the bg of episode 2. lol)

Feels really professional, especially considering the budget constraints. Wouldn't hate to hear what you shot it on, etc.
 
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Brian_Rice said:
Liked and shared!

(and gotta give a chuckle to the Final Cut Pro book in the bg of episode 2. lol)

Feels really professional, especially considering the budget constraints. Wouldn't hate to hear what you shot it on, etc.
Click to expand...

Hi Brian. Some info:

We started shooting on a Monday, on the Saturday before I broached the question to a buddy who had camera access if we might have access to one for the shoot (and if not the entire series would have been shot on the pov cam). He brought up a newer camera he had access to, a Sony NX5u Camera. I played around with it on the Saturday night and said what the hell. Read the manual and on Monday we were off and running. Camera spent most of the time on a Cowboy Studio Shoulder Support - which I first saw on Cheesycam.com. Our go to lighting was a couple LitePanel Micros (I think they were micros) which were often handheld. One item we used and I was quite happy with was the Sennheiser G3, which we used so the boom op wasn't connected to the camera via cables. We just recorded directly into the camera via xlr. I was expecting a hell of a lot of ADR for the series because we shot in some horribly noisy places. Then my boom op/sound editor introduced me to a program called Izotope RX and my ADR sessions have become almost nonexistent.

Thanks for watching ans sharing it!!
 
Episode 6 went live today and is embedded in first post. It is my personal favorite episode in the series, because the shoots had the least amount of stress and we all just "played". The funnest time on set and the result is pretty decent too, (imo).
 
Cool news for us is we were officially selected for the LA Web Fest in April... oh and episode 9 was just released and is in the first post!
 
We made it to the finish line! Episode 12 was released today and is included in the first post. The series was accepted into another fest, the Hollyweb Fest in LA and episode twelve already garnered Drama of the Week on Indie Intertube.

Now the hard part begins - getting people to watch. Hopefully learning the pitfalls of marketing is fun. Thanks to any dvx'ers who watch the series, we appreciate the support.
 
We had a bit of success! We went for a weeks vacation to LA that ended at the LA Web Fest and us being honored for 9 awards including the Grand Prize - One of the Top Ten Series Officially Accepted into the Marseille Web Fest in France - which includes a free trip! Hopefully winning the award turns into some exposure for the series, but regardless, attending the LA Web Fest was awesome and something we recommend any web series creator to do.

Here are the other 9 winners, if you ever felt like checking out some web series: El Porvenir the Series, Out With Dad, Clutch the Series, Divine the Series, Booth at the End, Gigi Not Quite American, The Syndicate, Off Screen, and Fight Night Legacy.

Here is a page with direct links to the winners, plus a bunch of others series: http://badguyfilms.com/hitman101/link-world

Thanks to those who watch our show!
 
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