ABOUT HEROES OF THE NORTH
Genesis and Conception
They were talking about their current frustration in finding funding for various projects. Projects they would actually like to do. The discussion came towards past failed attempts at making a superhero movie. And then the flash came: technology would permit us, at its current level, to pull it off for cheap, as long as the shows were not too long. The web series format appeared to be the ideal medium for those limitations.
They started talking characters, coming up with names while Andy started sketching some looks and designs. Realizing they would not have the time to write most of the stories, they put an ad in Craig list to recruits writers and the rest followed suit.
Three main writers were originally selected and a few others were hired to complete other stories that came up later in the development process.
The original episode plan was as follows:
Episode One: Genesis (currently episode 6 and a portion of episode 7).
Episode Two: Brothers in Arms (Episode 8)
Episode Three: Kiss of Death (Episode 7)
Episode Four: Cold Turkey (Episode 10)
Episode Five: Crimson (Episode 12)
Episode Six:Fashion Statement (Episode 13)
Episode Seven: Enter the Zombots! (Episode 14)
Episode Eight: Secret Lives (Episode 9)
Episode Nine: Wardrobe Malfunction (Episode 15)
Episode Ten: Brave New World
What sounded like a great plan soon changed. As we discussed the stories, we decided to add the five origins stories to supplement the storyline, as we were afraid that people would need more background to care about totally new characters.
Initially, those origins were designed to play in between the first ten episodes. That plan obviously changed as we moved ahead. We thought it would be better to show the Origins first. It was not our best move.
The look was killer, the model had a definite Gen13 look and we know a good thing when we see it. We immediately got in touch with Marie-Claude to offer her a role in the series and as soon as she said yes (it took some convincing), we got to work on writing an additional episode, which was labeled Episode 11 and got the title of Hornet's Nest. We did not even have to do a character design for that one. The look was settled real fast.
That brought the total episodes to be shot to sixteen.
By that point, we had our cast all lined up - we had been auditioning since the spring. We had all our costumes and actors. We were finally ready to go! But we were quickly running out of weather!
Latex being a heat exchanger, meaning that it takes your body heat and sends it away, basically making you colder than if you were naked, shooting outside in the first cold days of November proved to be most challenging for our valiant actors...
As we started putting together the show, we realized that some things were perhaps not clear enough or that some characters needed more room to breath (like Masquerade). So we started writing a few more shows. Episode 11 (All that Masquerade) was born that way.
At that point, we figured we might as well go all out and make 20 episodes. Episode 16 was born out of many coincidences we cannot reveal without spoiling the show and Episode 18 (Past and Present) came to be a mean to tie everything together in one organic story.
The bulk of the shooting was done on two, sometimes three Panasonic HVX-200A. We made copious use of the Fig rig but most of the show was done handheld with sporadic use of a tripod. All the shows are cut on Final Cut Pro 7 in 720p 24fps HD.