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Finding Independently Produced TV Shows?

Posted by timothy on from the look-in-the-studio-dumpsters-for-scripts dept.

bornagainpenguin writes "Slashdot recently reported that Stargate Universe was canceled, taking with it yet another of the vanishingly smaller network Sci-Fi shows to watch on TV. In the comments of that story someone mentioned Pioneer One as an alternative to traditional network series. I'm downloading it now and looking forward to seeing it, but I'm wondering what else is available that is independently produced and has a greater emphasis on plot and actually finishing the story? I'm already a fan of efforts like Batman: City of Scars, Starwreck: In the Pirkinning, and Star Trek: Phase II so I know that great things are possible, I just don't know where to find them! Can you help by making some recommendations?"

15 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Working links? by Anonymous+Cowar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here ya go!

    http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/10/12/17/1943224/Stargate-Universe-Cancelled
    http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/06/18/batman-fan-film-city-of-scars/
    http://www.starwreck.com/
    http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
    http://www.pioneerone.tv/

  2. If you like Star Trek: Phase II... by Mage66 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You'll like:

    Starship Farragut: http://www.starshipfarragut.com/

    Starship Farragut Animated: http://www.farragut-animated.com/

    Star Trek: Intrepid: http://www.starshipintrepid.net/

    Frontier Guard: http://www.frontier-guard.com/

    These will give you a good start...

    1. Re:If you like Star Trek: Phase II... by Mage66 · · Score: 2

      You obviously haven't watched it in a LONG time.

      Star Trek: Phase II is a labor of love, and it's insulting to call the performers "shitty". YOU put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to make one of these things. You'll have more of an appreciation of the work that goes into it.

      And, they just don't have the money to hire many real actors, because they have to be paid a certain amount of money based on the time they spend working due to SAG rules. Not-for-profit productions just can't afford to use SAG actors on a regular basis.

      Just for full disclosure, I was crew on two episodes: "Enemy: Starfleet" and "Kitumba".

      There are now 6 released episodes, and one vignette. There are another 4 in post production with another episode slated to be filmed next summer. The quality of the show is much improved over the course of the shows, just like ANY show.

      The first few episodes of TOS and TNG were nothing like the quality of later shows.

      Give the later shows a try. You might like them better.

  3. Look at it from the other side. by blair1q · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We're seeing the availability of new Sci-Fi content on TV decline.

    But the people who would produce Sci-Fi are letting it decline not because they're mean jocks who hate geeks. They'd love to make money off Sci-Fi fans. But it's clear they're seeing a decline in ROI for it.

    Possible metrics that are declining:
    Fewer viewers for that kind of show.
    Fewer of those viewers being observable by the viewership tracking system on which the ratings, and thereby the revenues, are based.
    Lower payback to an advertiser for any given viewer.

    And why? Probably because Sci-Fi fans are being distracted by all the online stuff that's available, or by their smartphones and gaming systems. I'd mention time-shifting, but most of those boxes report usage, which means the time-shifter demographic are even more deeply tracked than the Neilsen system, which has only one box per N thousand TV sets. But maybe they're time-shifting and sharing. And then there's the fact that in a declining economy there's just less of a profit and Sci-Fi has always been the marginal edge of TV, not its loamy bottomland.

    But answer me this question: does Summer Glau count even when she's not doing a geeky show?

    1. Re:Look at it from the other side. by h4rr4r · · Score: 2

      I use netflix. If I want something not, I watch online legally or I buy the dvd. In the case of net series I donate.

      Try again, oh painter with the wide brush.

      What you meant is this audience will not tolerate as much commercials and as cheap a program as the average $Nation_Idol, other reality crap and WWE watchers. Thus they chase the biggest profit percentages never realizing that they are many that must share one pie.

    2. Re:Look at it from the other side. by Buelldozer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No money, hmmmm.

      So please explain:

      All of the Batman movies and series.
      All of the Spiderman movies and series.
      All of the Star Trek movies and series.
      All of the Star Wars movies and series.
      All of the Stargate movies and series.

      Yes some of those are comic superhero series but you're delusional if you think there isn't a majority crossover between the audiences.

      Sorry, but reality says that you have it wrong.

      There *IS* money to be made with a fanbase of Geeks, you just have to do it RIGHT. You can't throw your typical half assed TV schlock at it and expect it to work.

    3. Re:Look at it from the other side. by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hi, I'm executive producer on four TV shows and I've pitched several that didn't get picked up, so I believe I can provide your explanation.

      For a start, you've cherry-picked the biggest franchises, and completely ignored the hundreds of failures.

      Many of the series you mentioned are cartoons, which are easily sold for morning timeslots or dedicated kids cable channels; consider the Tamagotchi series, and you'll understand how easy it is to sell even the most stupid idea in that market (as long as there's an action figure set to advertise). Sure, there's a crossover between the superhero and sci-fi audience, but that doesn't translate into advertising revenue, it's that base kids market that pays for most cartoons, some extra eyeballs in an adult time slot is just gravy. Hey, I like the wry humour in Batman: The Brave and The Bold, but it is aimed at audiences aged 7 and older, once you go PG you lose your main cartoon audience (what can I say, most people grow out of cartoons, but that's their loss).

      There hasn't been a TV series of Star Trek for 9 years, Stargate's last spinoff has just been cancelled (and the first TV series came as a result of the movie anyway, so all the props and sets were already paid for), the last English language live action Spiderman series finished in 1978 and Batman in 1967 (both cancelled after two seasons), and there's never been a Star Wars live action TV series, so all of those examples are exceptionally bad if you're trying to argue that TV sci-fi is commercially viable today.

      In the case of the movies, Batman, Spiderman and Star Trek all had long existing fan bases to build from, and unlike the Flash Gordon movie and cartoon from the 80's, were done well enough to stand on their own merits and attract new fans (not counting Batman Forever or Batman & Robin, of course). If you're trying something new you're starting from a fan base of zero, so there's no word-of-mouth promotion, no nostalgia factor, any publicity buzz has to start from scratch and the show has to be good enough to overcome that inertia. Besides, the economics of movies and TV are different: in television there are no ticket sales, the only source of revenue is indirect (until the DVD release, but if you do that before the show airs the networks won't touch it).

      You can't throw your typical half assed TV schlock at it and expect it to work

      And there's the problem in a nutshell. To make a successful sci-fi series you need a premise that isn't rubbish (which means you're not appealing to the network's imaginary core audience of idiots), intelligent writers, actors who can babble convincingly (it may surprise you to learn that most actors aren't scientists, they really have no idea what they're talking about even when the science is accurate) and a budget for props, sets, makeup and special effects sufficient to create a consistent and believable universe for the characters to inhabit.

      That's not impossible on no budget, as Starship Exeter demonstrates, however because everyone involved in that is donating their time the production progresses as fast as their free time allows; in other words, not very fast at all, certainly not fast enough to fit a 13 week season's production schedule into a single year, and TV networks can't operate with shows that turn up occasionally.

      I'll close with the piece of advice I give to everyone I meet trying to get into film and television who hit these brick walls in reality: if it was really as easy as you think it is, everyone would be doing it.

      --
      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
    4. Re:Look at it from the other side. by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 2

      You're quite right, the startup costs are the biggest barrier to sci-fi (I think "speculative fiction" is a tautology since all fiction is speculative by nature, and if "sci-fi" was good enough for Asimov it's good enough for me, but it's really not important...a rose by any other name would still be a hydrocarbon emitting reproductive organ of the Rosa genus). The two genres you've chosen are a good comparison, since they both usually involve high tech gizmos, interweaving story lines and special effects.

      Real spies are basically civil servants who work in fairly nondescript offices for the most part, so you don't need a war room style C&C centre unless you want a big screen for a cartoony supervillain to deliver an ultimatum (but when you do that every episode it just gets silly. Note that when they have a C&C centre in a Bond film it's borrowed from the military, not an MI6 asset, and for a one-off like that it's not too difficult to arrange a traffic control room or similar). A slightly tricked-out office space filled with computers loaned on a product placement deal and dimly lit around the edges to hide a lack of detail will do for the bookend set, maybe a nice conference room for briefings, and you can use real locations for bridging shots and exteriors. Costumes are standard modern day clothing (either second hand or more product placement), and makeup rarely goes beyond fake blood and moulage. In all, a good looking pilot can be done for about $150k, provided you leave the effects heavy shots and helicopter stunts until later in the season, but what we're really talking about here is a sophisticated cop show with some wire work and extra explosions (the BBC's "Spooks" is a good example, though "24" follows the same principle IIRC).

      You lose all of those advantages with sci-fi, since technically it's period drama and you usually can't let the real world creep in; nobody will believe your ship's computer is a Dell running Windows 7, and a Seiko watch in the year 2400 is anachronistic even if it does pack an electromagnet, laser and circular saw. The sets have to be built from scratch if you want to avoid trainspotters*, which costs as much as any stud-frame construction with unique interior decoration, so you're looking at anywhere up to $70k for a single large set once you've paid the carpenters, electricians and fabricators. Space exteriors and other CGI assets have to be final quality to impress the commissioning editors (no matter what they say, they can't imagine the final product), so there's the modelling and rendering costs, the makeup has to be good enough to stand up in HD, and costumes are usually short run custom creations or one-offs. It's easy to go over $250k on a three-set piece before a single live action frame is shot.

      Obviously the biggest difference is the sets, and savings can be made depending on the story. "Caprica" cleverly used a retro-near-future style which let them raid any period in the 20th century for props, costumes and architecture, "Sky Captain" was notable for it's entirely CGI world, and from memory much of "The Man From Atlantis" was shot in the back of a shaggin' wagon.

      The figures I'm bandying about here are considered bargain basement, "Jason Of Star Command" level; seamless shows like "Space:1999" and "ST:TNG" cost around $1.5M per episode (adjusted for inflation) with the startup costs amortised across the first season, so the pilots would be closer to $6-7M in today's money (both of those shows were presold, however, so I'm not sure anyone knows the figure precisely).

      Not really a conclusive answer, sorry, but there are so many variables it's hard to estimate accurately, and that's kind of the problem: other genres present a more certain profit margin for the networks on the same viewer figures, and like any business they're in it for the profit. Hey, ho.

      *I'm one myself; when watching old Dr Who episodes I can't help but laugh at the

      --
      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  4. Miro by Khopesh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Miro, previously called Democracy Player (as previously noted on slashdot), is an aggregation of independent TV programs. I believe it is exactly what you are looking for.

    See also the Wikipedia articles on Web series and the (now defunct) Open Media Network ... and YouTube.

    Other recommendations would include Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and The Guild as well as others listed on Wikipedia's Internet television series.

    --
    Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
  5. Iron Sky by vgerclover · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You will have to wait some time, but if you are like me, you'll be first in line for Iron Sky.

    Moon nazis. What's not to like?

  6. Journey Quest by RingDev · · Score: 2

    From the makers of "Dorkness Rising" (Greatest indi movie EVER MADE!) Journey Quest follows a humorous troop of adventures along their quest... err... journey... err... well... you get the picture.

    Anyway, great series. I think most of Season 1 is up and their funding for Season 2 is coming along.

    http://www.journey-quest.com/

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  7. There are about 10 good shows out there, and... by Eugenia+Loli · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm an indie filmmaker myself (used to be a tech nerd a few years ago, but turned into movie magic 3 years ago). I'm constantly trying to find such good shows too, online. And I have quite a list for you. :-)

    - Continuum, scifi: http://www.facebook.com/ContinuumTV (shot with a Canon 7D dSLR)
    - Pink http://www.pinktheseries.com/
    - http://mindseyeseries.com/
    - http://www.minglemediatv.com/CursedWebSeries.html
    - http://www.crackle.com/c/Trenches
    - http://www.crackle.com/c/Fear_Clinic
    - http://www.asylumseries.com/ (shot with a RED One)
    - http://www.crackle.com/c/The_Bannen_Way
    - http://www.crackle.com/c/Urban_Wolf
    - condition:Human http://vimeo.com/user1160921
    - http://compulsions.tv/
    - and of course, the videos in these two Vimeo Channels: http://vimeo.com/channels/hd and http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks if you have a Roku, or a GoogleTV you can view most of these shows above via RSS, or via the Vimeo application for these two platforms. The videos in these two Vimeo channels, are really, really good indie work.

    There's one more sci-fi web series coming out soon, but I can't remember its name. They use Canon dSLRs to shoot it.

    Feel free to email me btw, if you like to discuss any of that, I'm a lot into indie filmmaking: http://eugenia.queru.com/

  8. Re:SyFy just doesn't get it by morari · · Score: 2

    It's happened to everything. Sci-Fi and TechTV are only but a couple that have succumbed to the lure of being SpikeTV. Really, television isn't even worth watching nowadays. All the channels are pretty much the same.

    --
    "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
  9. Bar Karma by gerry_br · · Score: 2

    I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of this: http://current.com/shows/bar-karma/

  10. Re:SyFy just doesn't get it by PrimaryConsult · · Score: 2

    Ah yes, animation, probably the best hope real scifi has left. Unlike live action, two aliens talking on a space ship costs the same as two guys talking in a kitchen. A battle using advanced weaponry or psychic powers costs only slightly more than a good fistfight or car chase.

    But unlike Japan, the US has an aversion for animation being used for anything other than comedy or kids' shows. Even Stargate Infinity was targeted for young audiences and aired in a kids' block.