Webseries: A Cappella Show (Untitled)

Mattykins

Mattykins

Cute Member
Status: Advanced Development

Currently funding: www.indiegogo.com/acappellashow

Premise: We follow Bass Instinct The trials and tribulations of collegiate a cappella. Think Glee, just less melodrama, more realism, better music, and no instruments. And people are more likely to get drunk instead of slushied.

If you want to get a taste of our music, head to the Bass Instinct site. We preview the last minute of the pilot song.

I figured I'd share our experiences with a webseries. Plus, I haven't been too active here for a while. So might as well make my return with (hopefully) something cool.


Show Creators: Matt Watkajtys (me), Ariel Arbisser, Robert Dietz
Showrunner, Exec. Producer, Director: Matt Watkajtys
Producer, HMU: Ariel Arbisser
Producer, Musical Director: Robert Dietz
 
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Current Status:

Finalizing the pilot episodes. We are shooting two pilot episodes for the series and uploading them on youtube.

Our writing process right now is has myself and my two-coproducer's working through the first revision ourselves. We have four writers on staff to help with revisions. They make notes and we incorporate those notes into the scripts. So the final draft version never actually leaves the producers.

We initially started the project with a Head Writer and a small writing team (which makes up three of the revising writers now) but due to creative differences and workflow issues, we eliminated the head writing position and took over the writing ourselves.

Development on the project started in August of this year with a quick meeting I set with my co-producer Ariel. And the project hit the ground running from there.

Production drafts will do to the cast this week as we are finalizing everything and we technically lens up on December 1st. Shooting the 1st, 4th, 5th, 1tth, 12th, and 15th.

Our campaign on Indiegogo has been a huge success. But we are still looking to extend our episode order already. So any bit helps. But we blew the funding mark away in the first few days. Which surprised all of us. We were hesitant to start funding, but I can only pay for so much of the show. And when I was starting to overextend, we knew we had to do something to up our production values so we can actually put together a show that's kinda awesome.
 
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Music:

Since this is a series about A Cappella, music is pretty important in things. We intend to have one song per episode that is contextually related to the episode. Basically, we want music to play a huge part in the series. Without the song, our episode shouldn't make sense.

Our cast is comprised of people from Ithaca College's Ithacapella (including our other co-producer - Robert), Cornell's Chordials (two major college a cappella groups) and a lot of really talented singers from all over.

Robert arranges all of our pieces for a cappella. We rehearse with the cast in an hour to run through the song, and then we move straight to recording. Which is actually done at Ariel's house. You'd be surprised how many albums are produced inside people's houses rather than recording studios.

Recording takes place over three days, most people are there for 45minutes to an hour. After recording, Robert takes the raw tracking and lays it out so it can be engineered. He times everything, I think he might pitch correct some stuff (very gently), then we bounce the files to a music engineer.

Ed (the engineer) makes some type of musical magic happen, and we are presented with a studio produced track.

It's quite the process (and costs a good deal of money) but we always get something amazing back. And it makes me a really happy person.
 
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Over the past few days we've been writing, revising, revising, meeting, revising, re-writing, and meeting some more. But now I think our script is lockable. Which is a very good thing. Today I am waiting to get the final script notes back from Rob and Ariel which are correcting lingering typos and clearing up some action lines. Then I'll add the scene numbers and lock both scripts. We have a table read on Sunday night, which is going to be essential and hopefully allow us to work out any issues before we shoot.

Everything is going well. The only issue now is equipment and crew. I have most department head positions filled, but I'm having a hard time filling the remaining positions. Which has never been an issue before. Worst case scenario, I have to downshift our crewing requirement and go with only essentials. Which will work perfectly for the smaller scenes. The only parts we need a massive crew will be the musical shoot days, which are the 11th and 12th of December. And we still have a lot of uncommitted equipment rentals floating around. Hopefully I can lock those by Monday so we have our gear in place...

That's what we've been up to recently!
 
Today we are in the final hours of funding for the series. www.indiegogo.com/acappellashow

Today is also the day we'll be holding the final rehearsal prior to shooting. We are going over wardrobe selections. Reading the script. Getting the script on it's feet. It's going to be a big day. We hit a few roadblocks along the way. Mostly regarding locations and some key crew positions. We lost our DoP on Monday due to scheduling conflicts. So that screwed us up nicely. We are trying to recruit another DoP to very mixed results by Saturday. We are still trying to lock our major location too. We lost our main location this week as well. The joys of filmmaking....

But it's still on track, we'll make this work. That I'm sure of.
 
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