Everyday is like Sunday: Web series Interview
By Elize Morgan (ElizeMorgan.com)
Published October 14th, 2012

Everyday is like Sunday, the new series from the team from Daylight on Mars.

The team, Brian Robertson and Pavan Moondi, have an IndieGoGo campaign currently running. The show, which features the New Pornographers’ Blaine Thurier, watches like a love letter to Toronto hipsterdom (whether you think that’s a good thing or not probably relates to how you think of hipsters). The ten episode series is from iThentic.

Elize Morgan: With three years of development what was the hardest thing to keep motivation on?

Pavan Moondi: Without a doubt, the most important part was learning how to respond to rejection, especially early on. It’s obviously key not to get discouraged or give up, but it’s also important to be able to step back and view what you’re selling from the point of view of the people who you’re hoping will get involved. In that sense, the last two years of working on the project were largely devoted to just mitigating the inherent risk that comes with any type of film or web series. It’s a lot of work that needs to be done on a purely speculative basis. So I produced a no-budget, 22-minute pilot, wrote a full script for the entire series, and started attaching talent both in-front-of and behind the camera. It was demanding, and you have to have faith in the material, but because there was some addition to the project or tangible movement forward every few months­ – that continual progress served as motivation in itself.

What was the process of everything like – from initial concept to execution? What was your favourite part?

PM: The process was fairly traditional, we started with a concept, then a full script, then packaged it and eventually found a little bit of funding. The part that was a little unique was that we obviously had a long development period (the script was completed a full year before we rolled cameras), but our pre-production phase was something like ten days. So just ten days from getting the green light until we started shooting, which was primarily the result of scheduling around our actors and director.

Brian Robertson: The pre-production phase was crazy. We just sat in my living room every day. That was our pre-production office. My computer was broken so we were sharing Pavan’s six-year-old laptop and just making phone calls all day. Walking around the city booking locations, casting actors, trying to assemble a crew at the last minute, getting equipment. It was insane but it was also a lot of fun.

PM: Yeah, for sure. I think the shoot itself was probably my favourite part. It was grueling a lot of the time and it was easy to lose sight of how much fun this kind of endeavour is in that moment, just because there were a lot of external complications throughout the process. But we shot for ten days over a twelve day period, so we had a couple days off in the middle. We rented a house that everyone was at constantly, and it felt a little bit like being at camp. We had great food, lots of beer, there were no super-gruelling 18-hour days or anything. It was fun.

How much in advance to shooting was everything written? Did anything change when you got to shooting it?

PM: The script was finished in July 2011 and we shot exactly a year later. When we got the green light, we did a final pass just tailoring a few things to some of the actors and updating some of the material, pretty minor stuff. Aside from a few specific instances, we were pretty flexible with the actual wording of each line, but what we shot is pretty representative of what was on the page. There are a handful of improvised tangents that usually came at the beginning or end of a scene that we’ve used but it’s probably about 90% scripted.

Since having shot it, is there anything you would change?

BR: I don’t think we’d change anything. We did some re-shoots during our actual production phase just because we wanted to change our aesthetic. We started out with each shot very carefully composed, perfectly lit, every shot on a tripod.

PM: We found shooting it that way, for this type of content, was just putting us to sleep. We were shooting largely single camera, and so we were doing every scene many, many times and the energy was getting lost on-camera. On top of that it was insanely time-consuming. It just didn’t make sense for the amount of time we had available to us to shoot in that fashion. We ended up using a lot more handheld, worrying less about lighting and more about performance. Making that change was definitely the right call. We’re happy with how it all turned out.

You’ve released the teaser as a sort of IndieGoGo Push – can you describe how that’s been going for you?

PM: It’s tricky. We were reluctant to launch the campaign because we didn’t expect a campaign for an unreleased series, and most significantly: already in post-production, to generate a lot of interest. However, we did have some costs we needed assistance in covering, things like music licensing and sound mixing.

BR: Yeah, I mean anyone who looks at the campaign knows that we already shot the series. We’re done. If we don’t reach our goal, it’s not like we’re going to pack up and go home now, and so there’s definitely less incentive to donate. And so we put out the trailer but we haven’t pushed the campaign like it was the be-all-end-all. You know, we did our best to spread the word and get it out there, but we’re not on camera begging for people to donate their spare change. If you have a few dollars free and you’re debating giving it to us or to somebody who’s trying to raise money to make their film, somebody who may not be able to make their film otherwise, we’re not going to beg you to give it to us and not them. We’ll be fine. But at the same time, we wanted to have an opportunity for people to get involved and contribute, and maybe more importantly, to become aware of the project at this stage. In that sense, it’s worked well for us. We’ve had bands, post-production help and audio engineers contact us after seeing the campaign and wanting to work with us on this project. Stuff like that doesn’t show up in the amount tallied, but it’s a huge contribution for us in the sense that it even further lessens our reliance on the fundraising.

Is there any plan to release it as a feature in the film circuit as well?

PM: Right now that is the primary plan. We’re cutting the feature film version first, which is almost completed. We’ll be submitting it into a handful of festivals and then having the series version premiere online shortly afterwards. That dual-purpose aspect of it is something we’re interested in experimenting with, and will likely do something similar on our next project.

What was the production schedule like? What were some of the snags that were found?

BR: We had ten shooting days scheduled over a twelve-day period. Just about all of our locations were procured for free and because we’re a very low budget production, our main actors have other commitments they need to work around. They work in the industry, they have gigs coming up unexpectedly that we can’t expect them to turn down, which is completely understandable. So the scheduling was tricky in the sense that we often didn’t know which scenes we would be shooting over the next day or two. There was a lot of last-minute juggling. It would’ve been nice to have more time, just so we didn’t feel rushed all the time, but ultimately it somehow worked out.

How long were your shooting days?

BR: They really varied depending on the day. We had two long days that were around 14-hours each, but every other day was generally around 6-8 hours. We had a couple days that were only around three hours each. Again, this was the result of accommodating schedules, locations, things like that.

How big was your crew?

PM: This varied by the day and depended on what our scenes demanded. At its largest, we had a couple days where we had a nine or ten person crew. On the flip side there was one long scene we shot with literally the DP operating the camera, myself directing and script supervising and Brian holding the boom. So anywhere from ten to as low as three people depending on the location and the nature of the scene. There’s obviously a benefit to having a small crew for scenes that require more intimacy or emotional content, so it’s really about just weighing the content versus the technical and logistical demands.

Any advice you would give to new web series creators?

PM: I think it should be said that this is still a learning process for us so any advice we have should be taken with a grain of salt, as its only based on our experiences with this particular project. I think that patience is pretty key. It’s tempting, because the cost of the technology to produce something that is technically polished has gone down, to just go out and make your web series. And if that’s truly all you’re looking to do ­– “get it done” – then go ahead and make it. But the reality from what I’ve seen is that the market for web series is so saturated, it’s very easy to pour your heart and soul into a web series, make something that is at least technically very decent, and then you put it on YouTube and it gets more-or-less buried, a couple thousand views and then that’s it. My advice would be that if it’s material that you really care about, or have a personal investment in, then take the time to come up with a strategy that will ultimately allow your work to be viewed. Whether that’s pursuing talent to open doors to distributors, or production companies with established connections, or funding opportunities. Beyond that, taking that extra time can be beneficial to make sure you have the right actors in the right roles and that creatively, your material is as strong as it can be. Putting content out there that is only half-way there won’t do you any favours and is partly the reason why the market is so saturated in the first place.

Source: http://www.elizemorgan.com/2012/10/everyday-is-like-sunday-web-series.html