Zoltan, owner and producer at Delicatessen Films, was recently featured in the Inner West Courier after his and Ric Forster‘s web series trailer entry was selected as one of the finalists in Movie Extra WebFest. Zoltan met Ric at a speed networking event held by Metro Screen at the Bondi Junction Apple Store. After chatting for 5 minutes at this event, Ric and Zoltan arranged to meet up again to further discuss their individual projects and found their skills to be very complementary. Ric had numerous scripts and concepts that needed a producer to bring them to life and Zoltan had ideas that needed a skilful writer to mould into stories which could be further developed into web series’.
While working on another project they discovered the Movie Extra WebFest competition and decided to enter it with one of Ric’s TV pilot scripts ‘Third Base’. Ric quickly re-worked the script to create a 60 second trailer whilst Zoltan secured locations, crew and with Ric’s help secure the cast. They only had three weeks to organise the production, shoot and post production including special effects.
Here is a short synopsis:
17-year-old RILEY COLE is forced to follow his father and relocate to Mars’ THIRD BASE. Living in a research station with thirty scientists, engineers and their families. Caught taking drugs with the base doctor’s daughter MISHA, Riley finds himself locked under curfew – along with all the other under 18s. But when an explosive decompression threatens their lives, Riley’s forced to take charge and makes the shocking discovery. All their parents are dead. With three months before the next shuttle can arrive from Earth, Riley and the teens are forced to fend for themselves.
Zoltan came up with the idea of using the laser skirmish area at Strike Bowling Club Chatswood as their main location. The space, already designed to look like a space base station, was already built meaning they could shoot with a small budget for production design. Zoltan organised a location recce with the Director of Photography, Chris McHardy of Cinegear, and Ric. Chris brought his brand new Sony F3 camera and some nice lens’ and together they shot some test footage which they later reviewed in the studio. Everyone involved was very happy with the outcome and the location and camera equipment was locked in.
Having organised a large scale casting session earlier for ‘Schoolies’ and ‘My Backpacker Story’ (another of Zoltan’s web series projects) they had plenty of great young actors to choose from, and everyone except the lead role was cast. Ric eventually found Katelin, who clearly suited the role, on Star Now. She went into Delicatessen Films, located in Balmain, for the casting which Zoltan filmed and later sent to Ric, who was on another shoot at the time. Ric and Zoltan decided they had found their lead and let her know later that day.
Having already locked in the interior skirmish area, they needed to find an outdoor location. After visiting Chatswood the guys found the newly built, and only very recently opened, Concourse building in Victoria Street. It was absolutely perfect for the opening shot they needed and could not have been more appropriate. Unfortunately they only had 3 days in which to secure a location permit from Willoughby Council, Peter from the Council was very helpful in securing us the newly opened Concourse area despite it having to go through management as we were the first people permitted to shoot there.
Having spoken with Matt from the marketing department of Strike Bowling earlier in regards to another project, they were able to come to an arrangement to have full access to the skirmish area for the shoot. The staff at Strike were extremely helpful and accommodating, especially Anna and Sarel. It was a huge day with three locations, two at Strike and one at the Concourse, starting at 6.30am and wrapped up at 8.30pm. Zoltan later mentioned that it was one of the most grueling and intense days he has ever worked. It wasn’t over yet though as they still had to edit the footage, record actors voice overs, do the special effects and plan and implement all the marketing, which involved creating the official website, Facebook fan page and start posting on the Movie Extra WebFest fan page.
The trailer was uploaded just before the deadline and instantly started to get views and votes. Within a couple of days the votes were over a hundred and counting, which was really encouraging for the team, as their trailer was quickly catching up with ones that have been uploaded weeks ago. The Facebook fan page was very popular and within days the page attracted over a hundred likes; it now has over 500 fans, as well as it being covered in a number of Sci-Fi blogs such as RevolutionSF, atypical tales, and Cosmic BookNews. Third Base was then selected as one of the top 15 finalists and the race to get more votes and views, therefore more publicity, began, with the whole crew and cast including friends and families pitched in to promote the series. Third Base was leading the top 15 for a while but ended up with the second highest amount of votes at the end of the 5 day intense publicity period. The amount of votes, as well as the marketing strategy, and their ability to promote and prove its popularity were all to be taken into account in the judging process.
Unfortunately ‘Third Base’ did not win the competition, but has received a lot of publicity and encouraging words from industry professionals.
Ric and Zoltan are now looking at further options to fund and produce the series, such as finding brand investors to produce the web series in Australia in 2012, but have also received some interest from the US with regards to turning the series into a feature film. The probability is high for Third Base coming to a screen near you in 2012, big and/or small.
