Meatspace Production Blog - #1

Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is Trilbee and if you're reading this then it means you're a Patron of Trilbee Reviews and are currently helping towards getting my 'Meatspace' pilot made and (hopefully) get it taken further.

Pre-Production on 'Meatspace' started a week ago so I thought you folks might be interested in knowing what is going behind that process and exactly what I'm doing, but for those of you who don't know I'll give you a bit of background on the project.

Over a year ago, I started studying Fiction Film Production at the University of Salford in the UK. Salford is the home of a place called MediaCityUK which is like a smaller version of a London production area. Diet London, or London-Lite if you will. It's where many programmes are filmed and it's the home of BBC Sports, ITV Granada, RED Productions, Baby Cow and many more. It's a great place, geographically speaking, to get involved in media production.

One of the places it's home to is CBeebies which (for those of you outside the UK who might not know) is an arm of the BBC which specialises in content for those aged 4 to 6. I will not name the particular person by name but she was a producer for CBeebies and she was collaborating with the University of Salford as well as another woman from ITV on a module of my course called "Producing" where the students were tasked to do the whole pre-production process of a project of our choice.

This included calculating salaries, arranging locations, filming dates, finding the talent, getting prices, insurance, catering, accommodation, travel, having the scripts written and more. Basically, by the time our work was handed in, we had to be at a stage where we were ready to film if we were given our budget. We would then have to pitch this idea to the woman from ITV and the woman from CBeebies.

My project was 'Meatspace'. A six part sit-com revolving around 4 students; Jamie, David, Lydia and Megan. All four characters were named after people I spent my first year of University in Scarborough living with in Student Accommodation (though they don't resemble them in terms of personality, save for the occasional quirk). They'd be given Facebook profiles as well so that they could post in real-time as the episode progressed as a new way to engage the viewers. That's where the title "Meatspace" came from. These four students would be living in student accommodation together and the production conceit of the series would be to film with unknown actors (cheaper that way) and have the stories take place in isolated locations and have it be character-driven. This would keep costs down which would make my production portfolio much more manageable (remember, this was a part of my University course first-and-foremost).

The woman from ITV told me that the average hour of high-quality UK television costs £250,000 to make.

By the end of my task, I had budgeted six 30-minute episodes of 'Meatspace' at £110,000 which ALSO includes an insurance fund should something go wrong during filming and additional money was required.

Going through the figures and what the ITV producer had told me, I thought I was insane to put this project forward. That I had done something dreadfully wrong, or that I had miscalculated. £110,000 for three hours of content when one hour normally costs £250,000? That £36,000 for an hour. Where did the remaining £214,000 go?! I handed in my project (along with a "taster-tape" scene which had myself as Jamie and a female actor who volunteered to be Lydia which was a stand-alone scene from a script to show the characters in action and the setting and the style of humour) and I was dreading the results. "I must have done something wrong with those numbers" I told myself.

But a few weeks later, the results were in.

Top marks. They loved all the work and the project.

They were equally amazed at my number-crunching. But the math checked out. Everything in the pre-production stage for a series was accounted for. The numbers made sense to them. 

But I loved putting this thing together. I was kinda hoping that since this series was so cheap to make that they'd give me the green-light right there and then, but that was a bit optimistic. It was still a student project and I had 7 months of my course left. But I grew attached to these four characters. I wanted to develop this premise more.

Jamie - The hot-headed online blogger. The know-it-all.
Lydia - The enthusiastic gamer and aspiring novelist
David - The stoner-musician who was carefree and laid-back
And Megan - The clumsy, ditzy, slightly scatterbrained but well-meaning student who knew very little about online culture.

Yeah, if you saw the September 2014 broadcast then you'll know that these four characters changed DRASTICALLY over the course of re-writes and re-tooling. Especially Megan, but that's for another blog-post.

What happened next? I'll talk about that in future instalments of this written series, but I think it's a fitting beginning as I'm now back at that pre-production stage, but this time for a single, 45-minute episode where even the original £36,000 an hour idea is WAAAAY beyond what I can hope to put together. It's all well and good doing the pre-production for something and calculating the budgets and allocating the spending...but you've got to have something to spend.

That's what these early pre-production stages are all about. The script is written and the cast are game and we have a production company willing to put something together. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to show potential and be in broadcast quality HD. So we can afford to cut many corners production-wise. This 45-minute pilot will be filmed and showcased to broadcasters as a proof-of-concept so let's put it together.

The first step is to read the script and mark off EVERYTHING that is mentioned in terms of locations, props and costumes. For example, one of the first scenes is a flashback of Jamie arriving at the flat and meeting David for the first time.

We need the flat for the boys to live in. Jamie has his suitcase. David is wearing a Zebra onesie and is eating a Cup-A-Soup. Those are the ESSENTIAL things. Those are prioritised in the budget.

A suitcase we can get for free. Just bring it from home. A zebra onesie, can we borrow one from someone? If not, how cheap can we get it? If we can't afford it, does David need to be wearing one? What else can he be wearing, or doing?

It's that type of process. It's more complicated for the whole production because we need a flat that's furnished, with background dressing (it'll be cheaper then finding a non-furnished place and stocking it). Can we find a place like that? How much for? And for how long? Can we give a favour to the landlord and maybe put his company's logo in the credits? That way he could discount the location in terms of price.

It sounds intimidating and it is. But as long as you know what you want and the availability of your cast and crew, you can work around it and know exactly what you want and when you want it. The first port of call will be locations. If you don't have those...you're not filming anywhere. Props and costumes, for a project this small, as usually provided for free as the cast might just wear their normal clothes unless you need something really specific (Zebra onesie), but even then it can be a case of compromise.

This has been the process for the past week. Going through the script and listing off the essential locations/props/costumes to find out what we need to we can figure out the budget. Once we have a budget, then we're cooking with gas.

So that's been this week. I hope you've enjoyed reading this chapter (exclusive to Patrons) and I'll report back in a week or two with more updates!

Thanks for reading and thanks for being a Patron!

- William "Trilbee" Carlisle