Masthead

Shadows is a scifi/supernatural thriller television series produced by Growling Dog Productions for Boston University's butv10.

Created in 1995 by Pilar Flynn and David Kalbeitzer, the show has produced over 50 half-hour episodes. This blog supports the Shadows Wiki in documenting the series.

Watch Shadows online

If you have memories of working on Shadows that you would like to share, please email shadowswiki@gmail.com



Thursday, December 6, 2012

Episode 38 - "Salesman"

It all starts to come together. Off the multiple disasters of “Trust of the Fallen”, we forged a crew that was primed to be more organized. And also more fearful of disorganization. Julie sat in the director's chair, and was eager to get to work. Kendal was being proactive in the producer's role. She also did a great job with the editing. This episode required no last minute crazy editing crises. She took the footage, went away with it, and just fucking did it. She showed us a rough cut and we gave some notes but it was pretty much locked in, the most painless editing experience we had.

This episode also benefitted greatly from Phil Tatel, a great director of photography. It's a position that we often don't have the luxury of having, but I think it's one of the things that makes a huge difference. The episodes with designated DP s tend to look the best. Even with a skeleton crew, a DP is worth it. Notice how the colors and moods are in keeping with each other from scene to scene. There's no blow out or underexposure. It makes for a much more professional looking product, and all it really takes is thinking deliberately about your camera settings. Having the DP do that for you is a good way to do that. In training our crew, we tried to have a checklist of things to consistently do every time. White balance, focus, f-stop, etc – training the routine of the process. One thing that butv never had that I was always agitating about was getting a light meter. Using that simple tool really makes a difference, even shooting on video.

We lucked out with a relatively smooth process and a great cast. The script showcases some of Jay's humor and warmth, human warmth being something that my writing doesn't always bring to the table. I love how Ford and Meyer develop the chemistry they have. I specifically assigned Jay those scenes, because I wanted him to make them his own and develop them in future episodes. I wish we got more of Ford and Meyer, but we ended up with only one more episode - “Pest Control”. The Scrambler 3000 was Jay's idea, for example.

Garytt Poirier is really the scene-stealer though. The pathetic, Willy Loman character could have been very dull, but Garytt made him likable at the same time. There's that wonderful scene where he talks to his girlfriend Rachel. It was shot over by South Campus, and had just begun to snow. The flakes fall on his shoulders and stay there a moment, like all the troubles that are falling on him. And then a homeless man, in the midst of filming, walks up to the payphone and checks the drawer for change. Priceless! As Orson Welles always said of directors, they preside over a series of accidents.

A word about makeup. Up until that point, we hadn't the expertise to employ good quality makeup. Fortunately, Nicole Herrington had it, so the makeup for Jakob's deterioration scene was very cool. I enjoyed going to the bathroom in COM and washing off afterward – it looked like someone had been murdered. I also wet my hair down with mineral oil to give it that oily, sickly quality. Makeup is not that difficult, but it requires some study and some basic principles. I wish COM taught that kind of stuff, it would have been very useful to us. We began Jakob's deterioration in “Trust of the Fallen” and I think the arc works. In each scene he rots a bit more. It was a long process that we felt was justified by its novelty, but we hoped would become more casual and frequent as time went on. We needed to prepare the theoretical audience for the change. But once the changing had been established, we didn't need that preparation every time. Casting Garytt who was obviously so good (just look at the scene at the end where he has clearly changed his personality) altered the plans to recast Jakob more frequently.

The transformation. Ah. Well none of us were special effects people. The bass lure and cherry pie filling was the best I could come up with at the time. A bit laughable in retrospect. But here's the thing – special effects are overrated. Immensely. How many times when you are watching a movie do you say “oh, that giant monster must be real”. Of course nobody does that, even children. Everyone knows that they are watching a movie or a TV show and that what they are seeing is in some sense, despite the genre, a product of trickery and illusion. We know it and we buy into it. Sometimes we don't know that it's an illusion, as is the case with good greenscreening or a well-executed glass shot. But for the most part we can tell that the spaceship is a model. We suspend or disbelief, just like in theatre, and accept the reality. The Muppets operate on the same principle, and they are even more artificial than most special effects are. What I am trying to say is that the cleavage between good special effects and bad special effects isn't actually whether it's believable or not, (the audience suspends their disbelief so frequently that they are quite versed in the process) but whether the effect conveys the information or not.

Andrew Cartmel, Doctor Who script editor and one of my heros, talks of this problem frequently. The BBC departments often didn't work in concert with each other, they didn't always get what the tone or the style or the approach to the material should be. Thus they delivered brilliant period sets and decors, and horrendous futuristic ones. During the story Battlefield, they were called on to produce a model of an underwater lair, a cave where resided the tomb of King Arthur. The model that they built simply didn't convey what it was supposed to be. A key detail of the plot of the story is that King Arthur is an alien from a different planet, and the tomb at the bottom of the lake was actually his spaceship. Now, the model might have been very pretty, very “believable” as people like to say, but it wouldn't have made any difference at all, because the effects team didn't realize what the story required of the model. The difference between good effects and bad ones is simple: good effects convey the necessary story and character information in a way that is in keeping with the tone of the material. Bad effects fail at this task. Thus, the bass lure parasite in Jakob's regeneration scene is a bad special effect. Not because it wasn't “believable” enough, but because its construction didn't fit the tone of the material. It didn't serve the story well enough, despite Julie's direction. That was my fault.

“Salesman” was a great success. It proved our concept and our methods. I think the key there was our organization and our teamwork. But we were still short on content, and I was worried that Shadows would never be able to compete with Bay State, the giant of butv. We could never do as many episodes as the soap opera, but we could do more than we had been. And a core body of work meant a potential audience. You can't develop that audience without a certain critical mass of content. The next semester, my last, we pushed out even further. We divided up our production group into two teams, and set to work on two brand new episodes, “Pest Control” and “The Prisoner's Dilemma.” Two episodes that challenged us in very different ways.

- Justin K. Rivers

Episode 37 - "Trust of the Fallen"

I don't know that The X-Files has really remained in the modern media diet. Certainly it was still well known when I was in school, but it fell off quickly and I don't think it has the draw to successive generations for some reason. Like a good wine with no finish, it has dissipated in the culture.

X-Files is a very good example, however, for looking at the juggle between ongoing narrative and single-episode stories. One episode is a monster of the week. Another is a mythology episode, furthering the series backstory. This was our direct idea for the Agency re-boot – propel some long-range backstory gradually, while solving a case or monster of the week in the meantime. The problem is that you need a backstory that can survive without tying it to the cast, which we knew would change frequently. Episode 36 is a monster story that introduces the setup, just like “Rose” was with Doctor Who in 2005. Exact same mechanics.

Episode 37 is the mythology episode. The lengthy teaser was meant to lead into a scene that is now missing. You see in the chase the back alley behind Warren Towers, a brilliant bit of Retro Ugly architecture. Fortunately nobody saw our fake guns.

Throughout the episode you can see that we are still not quite in command of the PD-150's, our f-stops are all over the place, and our color temperatures are not deliberate enough. Sometimes monkeying with the white balance produces some nice results. But its not replicable to do that.

The filing cabinet in the Agency was an old COM discard. I found it in a junk pile and hauled it back up to Studio East.

The story begins to fall apart right away. The lost tape meant that we had a big hole that we could never quite work around, and trouble with casting meant that we couldn't get the actor in to patch up that problem. We also ran out of time and didn't get another scene, which went at the end of the episode, where we're supposed to demonstrate that the Parasites have infiltrated our society. Ok, perhaps a bit ambitious. But we planned on getting some shots to make that happen. I remember Kendal Stavros and I standing at the top of the stairs at Government Center, shivering in pain, on the coldest day in the history of reality, hoping that the next person who came through the doors would be one of our craigslist extras. Alas, none of them showed. So we went home with almost nothing.

I talk about the Parasite backstory elsewhere, so let me just say this: we either should have established it more or established it less and metered more out over time. I think that was a mistake on my part. Because of the technical difficulties with losing footage, losing cast members, losing our director (Sam had serious commitments to school projects, and justly had to focus on them), with me stepping in to finish the shooting on the episode, we were never able to achieve what the show needed to achieve. And I didn't want to scrap the episode even though it would probably be better that way, because we needed content. A show that produces no content is not a show, and with butv10 just starting up at that point, we needed content more than quality. We needed to prove to the world that we existed.

There are some moments that I am very proud of in “Trust of the Fallen.” It was a new Shadows out in the real world, going for a spin around the block, and experiencing the necessary growing pains.

The long term impact of the episode is that I decided that I needed to not be onscreen, so the next episode obviously had to establish the precedent for re-casting Jakob. I had the idea that Jakob could be a different actor in each episode, but it didn't turn out that way. The episode also cost us some mythology. By muddling it, we didn't establish what we needed to in order to support a pillar in the story structure. After a sour experience working on this episode of Parasites, we all wanted to do something different. But the best thing that happened is that our crew – Marcus, Darcy, Kendal, Julie, and the rest – got a really great crash course in how things can go wrong. And I think that we learned those lessons as an organization, which is why the next episode was so good.

As a post-script, “Trust of the Fallen” is not on the butv web site. I have no idea why. It was on there at one time, and then disappeared, which screwed up the episode numbers. “The Agency” is listed as Episode 37, when it's actually 36. “Trust of the Fallen” fits in between “The Agency” and “Salesman”.
- Justin K. Rivers

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Episode 36 - "The Agency"

The cycle of every long-running institution is the same. It is a bit of a boom and bust, with highs and lows and transitions. I'll talk about the early episodes (31-35) later. For right now it's episode 36, “The Agency”. I guess we call it the “agency reboot” now, but basically it was a new series that we just kept calling Shadows. And it works. Written in 2004, Jay Fuller and I (with a lot of input and planning from Sam Rosenthal, who worked with us to plan the format and style), set out to build a brand new beast. Sam and I established our template after experiencing the problems that the original series format presented to us. But we didn't know how to make establish the new thing in 30 minutes. The obvious choice was to start with an outsider.

Notice that we didn't have an Agency perspective in the episode. We follow Lauren, the FBI agent, who gets fired because she insists her husband was killed by a werewolf. There's a plot hole there, as you can probably see. Was he buried? He's supposed to appear at the end as (surprise!) the werewolf in question. Anyways, the FBI thinks she's nuts but she's too square to back down. She writes a tell-all report and gets canned. A mysterious fellow FBI agent sends her off for an interview with The Agency and thus we gain entrance to the supernatural world of Shadows.

Things don't work out right. The first thing to know is that we thought we had a CGI werewolf. We had shots where it would plug in, with the idea that we could use practical werewolf arms. We just never figured it out, and by the time I edited the episode Sam had moved on and there was no time and not enough footage to make it work. But that's why the scenes with the monster are so thin – we literally had nothing and no way to shoot new material at that point. The result is an attempt at Val Lewton's Cat People. If you haven't seen any Val Lewton films, by the way, I highly recommend them. They're probably the single most useful reference for how to operate Shadows on such a shoestring budget.

Despite the flaws, the story does achieve it's objective, to pull us into this other world. It would have been even better, I think, to have a few more minutes of Lauren's existence pre-Agency. We have two status-quos to disrupt. One is her domestic situation. The other is her work situation. Rightly, the work situation takes the bulk of the episode, but what is the inciting incident of the story? Is it the death of the husband or being fired from her job? Her willingness to go along with the Agency is a change from her more stubborn nature, it's part of her arc, but I'm not sure we fleshed that out properly. And in the end, she shoots and kills the monster, which is supposed to be her husband. The dialog remains, but without a setup in the teaser, it doesn't pay off.

Dave Rogers was our cast member from Apocalypse, here reprising his role as Jack Flynn. The hard man of action comes out of our conception of having Jakob be Bosley to the Angels. With the Board of Directors as an invisible Charlie. We needed Agent Flynn to do the work, and also to establish that the Agency is poorly funded and resourced. They are frayed, desperate people, fighting a losing battle. It ups the stakes. Dave had to move on after only a few episodes, but that was ok – indeed, that was the point. Agents can come and go. The structure remains.

Marcela (Lauren Clay) was not an actress, though she's a very talented woman, who worked for McKinsey last I checked. She was also one of the founders of the BU Editorial Society which published the Back Bay Review, so I knew her from that as well. I don't know that she was completely comfortable with acting on-camera, and I regret that I don't think we offered any of our actors as much support as they needed.

Joe Maddens, who plays Jay, was a good friend of mine from Liquid Fun, the BU improv troupe. He gives a great performance here, as he always does. His energy is always infectious, especially here as the doomed asshole on what I merely point out is an unusual job interview. And frankly the conceit doesn't quite make sense but again, it gets us a tour of the Agency.

The shoot was particularly challenging, we were doing a lot of stuff late at night in the cold, and our most intense shoot consisted of a grueling night in the sub-basement of Marcus and Sam's apartment in Kenmore Square, a dingy place that was locked of course, but could be reached by climbing through an unlit crawl space beneath the floor and unlocking the door from the inside. It served as a perfect location for the werewolf lair, and I think the texture and the lighting worked well for that. You can see at that point, we're beginning to get a handle on the iris, which is one of the things that TV students consistently overlook. The film program is more precise in terms of using and calibrating the f-stop correctly.

We chose the BU castle as the external shot of the Agency for obvious reasons – it looked cool and it was always available. I was never completely happy with it, because everyone knows it so well. It would have been better to find a cool old building in the North End somewhere, that was the urban aesthetic I wanted, but logistically that would have been difficult. During our first shoot at the castle, the camera malfunctioned, so when I captured the footage to the hard drive the images were corrupt, staccato frames, a mess. I ran out of time and, a year later, ran out of Marcela time as well, so I had to use that footage and couldn't reshoot. What's onscreen are stills picked out of the faulty footage assembled like a slideshow. A makeshift solution that I try to imagine evokes surveillance. Another example of a consistent problem the show has always had, which is the editing backlog. In fact, the three biggest problems, chronically forever seem to be:
  1. completing episodes
  2. keeping up with the editing backlog
  3. cast turnover

As a first effort, Episode 36 could have been a lot worse. And it certainly did its job. Some things got dropped, like Wilbur, the Agency secretary etc. But we got the harshness down, the crazy weird world. That's what makes the show flexible. It can and should accommodate a wide range of storytelling, once the core Agency structure is set down. The idea was to do a string of “Agency” based episodes and then break the format in the next few after that, to establish a precedent as to what does and does not constitute a Shadows episode. I think perhaps we should have been more aggressive in breaking our own format, because the subsequent runs hew fairly close to the Agency itself. I always thought that the series should be set in the world the Agency inhabits, using the rules of that universe. And that the Agency should be the main story of that world, but not the exclusive one. There's still opportunity to do it. 

- Justin K. Rivers

Monday, November 26, 2012

Interview - Dave Gilbert, Shadows Editor 1995-98

The Shadows History Blog is very pleased to have an interview with Dave Gilbert, the chief editor on Shadows during its formidable years, 1995-98. He graduated from the COM television and broadcasting program in 1998, and is a video game designer based in New York.

Shadows History Blog: How did you get involved in Shadows?

Dave Gilbert: This is going back - gosh, 17 years? - so I'm not sure I remember it exactly, but I was a sophomore at the time. I was interested in learning more about video editing, but COM's requirements left me unable to take any technical classes right away. I read somewhere that a sci-fi show was being edited on a certain day at a certain time. so I just sort of wandered in and asked if I could watch and/or help out. The next thing I know, I was made chief editor for the show.

SHB: How many episodes did you work on?

DG: The show averaged around 2 episodes a semester, and I was involved for about three years, so I'm guessing I worked on around 12 episodes altogether.
SHB: What was it like editing on videotape?
DG: UGH - this question makes me feel old. :) I enjoyed it. I have great memories of spending hours in those editing rooms in front of two big 3 1/4 inch decks, with the editing machine in the center. There was the "master" deck and the "raw" deck, with various dials and buttons that controlled both. I would flick the dial just slightly to move the footage frame by frame, I'd set the in and out points, and then hit "preview" and watch while the decks squealed and rewound themselves to the specified places.  Once I was satisfied with the edit, I'd hit "perform" and it would transfer itself to the master tape. That was always a nerve-wrecking experience. Once you hit that "perform" button, it was set in stone. Woe befall you if you realize you made a mistake several edits back. You would have to go back and redo lots of work.  So not the case these days. All that stuff is done by computers now - heck, I bought a piece of software a few months ago for $80 that does everything that those machines did and more - but I do miss those big, clunky machines. It might be nostalgia talking, but I think they gave me more direct control.

SHB: How was the production team structured? For example, were there producers and directors responsible for specific episodes or was the work grouped together?

DG: It was a university show, so there was lots of turnaround. Whoever was director or producer at the time directed or produced all the shows. It wasn't done episode by episode. Each semester there were different writers, and usually a different cast (as people tend to graduate, or take a semester abroad, or whatever), so it had to be pretty flexible. I don't remember the details.

SHB: What were some of the problems you encountered working on the show?

DG: There were no problems, exactly, but the biggest issue was that nobody was WATCHING it! We'd write them, cast them, tape them, and then edit them, but they were never broadcast. Not while I was there, anyway. It was a definite shame, since everyone put so much work into it and it was a bit discouraging. Nowadays, streaming indie TV shows over the web is an everyday occurrence, but that didn't exist back in the dark ages of 1996. I wish it did!

SHB: Were there any moments you were particularly proud of?

DG: I remember a minor character's voice sounding really muffled and impossible to hear in one scene. I wanted to get it redubbed, but the actor had graduated and was no longer around. So I just redubbed all of his lines with my voice! Fortunately the character was only in a few scenes and didn't have many lines. But even still, nobody noticed! Or were just too polite to say.

SHB: How did working on the show impact you?

DG: For me, it was my first ever experience of working with a team to create something. We had deadlines, and we had to hit them. It might have been a bit ramshackle, it might not have even been totally professional, and maybe the end results weren't as nice as we would have hoped, but we all took it seriously and got it done. It's a lesson that still applies to my work today. I'm very aware of the clock ticking on a project, and the need to be creative and make the occasional compromise in order to get it finished.

SHB: What do you do now, and what are you working on next?

DG: For the last 7 years, my wife and I have been running an indie video game development studio here in New York. We focus on old-school adventure games (King's Quest, and the like) and we sell them off our website. Our current project is called Primordia, and will be out in early December.


Thanks to Dave for being interviewed for our project!

Shadows alums, we want to hear from YOU as well. You can contact us at shadowswiki at gmail dot com.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Shadows Manifesto 2004

An essential part of any organization (or any society for that matter) is self-perpetuation. The components of our social structures do all sorts of different things, but in the end, they always have to survive.

Below is a "manifesto" that I printed up and posted around the butv office and in the Shadows cabinet where all the props and tapes were housed (2004-2006).

The goal was to create and strengthen inter-organizational culture, with completing episodes the most important goal. Only with completed product (regardless of quality) could an organization based around a TV show truly survive in the long run.

Shadows

MANIFESTO

We are here to:

  1. Complete each episode completely.

  1. Be organized, professional, and prepared.

  1. Leave behind a capable crew to carry on after we’ve graduated.

  1. Make each episode asskickin’ damn good.

The Secret Agency Backstory - Justin K. Rivers

This is a document I wrote in 2004, I think - as an explanation of the Agency and its backstory. As you can see, it's a bit far out, a bit spacey, but was something that could have been used to draw inspiration from. The idea was to inform the episodes with flavor and allusion to the backstory, so there would be a cohesive "past" connecting things, without ever actually explaining it. Here ya go:

The Agency's Backstory

Far away from Earth, an epic battle raged. The Naroks have nearly triumphed, their parasites spreading and eroding the foundations of civilization, collapsing all resistance. The Directors, a small, ragged collective of nearly extinct races and the last stand against the onslaught of The Naroks, have been defeated. The survivors flee into the farther reaches of the galaxy, resisting covertly, carefully avoiding discovery out of fear of being crushed utterly. They turn their attention to the frontier worlds, thwarting The Narok vanguard and protecting planets such as Earth from the forbearers of invasion.

The Directors came to Earth and made alliances with some enlightened humans, and The Agency was born. But the Directors remain in the shadows, hiding, protecting their identities. Jakob is their perfect front-man, but his exposure to the field is limited, because he alone knows who runs and directs The Agency. If he were captured, all would be lost.

The Naroks cannot be seen in their true form, except under special light. They are otherwise invisible and intangible. The only clue to their presence, which is only occasional and imperceptible at best, is that body temperature can sometimes drop, as the Naroks mind drains the energy fields of those around it. The brief ripples of cold, the sudden shiver in a crowd of warm people, all indicate the passing presence of a Narok. They are among us.

The Naroks are working towards a specific goal, which is still a mystery to The Agency, a goal which is the lynchpin of the undoing of human civilization.

There is a reason that Earth is important. These two warring factions are the result of some ancient bifurcation, a divergence between order and chaos, and with the waning of the Directors, an imbalance has formed which must be corrected. Hidden somewhere on Earth is the secret to righting that imbalance, a secret which both factions are desperate to get their hands on…

THIS BACKSTORY MUST NOT BE DIRECTLY MENTIONED OR EXPLAINED IN THE SERIES. IT SERVES ONLY AS A BACKDROP TO EXPLAIN TO US THE MECHANICS OF OUR UNIVERSE.

Friday, March 2, 2012

My Time on SHADOWS - Matt Burns

Matt Burns
"Reese"

I'm pretty sure I auditioned for SHADOWS on two separate occasions. I think it was the end of my freshman year and the crew was looking to re-cast the part of "Daniel". I remember going to the audition and reading a monologue from the book A Clockwork Orange. I probably freaked everybody out with my impression of Alex, that psychotic droog. The SHADOWS crew ultimately decided I wasn't quite right for the part, but they wanted to find something else for me to play in the future.

Flash-forward to the beginning of my sophomore year. The SHADOWS team basically scrapped all their old characters and plot-lines and started the series from scratch. The producer Melissa Carelli wanted me to audition again for a character whose name was still Daniel but later turned to Reese. The audition took place on the evening of 9/11 and I remember stressing over my audition pieces, still not fully aware of everything that had taken place earlier that day in New York, Washington D.C. etc.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I got the part and played Reese for the next three years, off and on. By the time junior year came around, I started getting more involved with the production, helping to build the sets, operating cameras etc. The lighting director and DP Jake Kassen kind of took me under his wing and showed me everything there was to know about lighting sets. About midway through my junior year, I replaced Jake as Director of Photography and had a good time designing the lighting schemes for all the scenes that were shot on the soundstage. The funnest scenes to light were ones that took place at night. I'd use blue gels to create moonlight and blink a red light to imply that there was a flashing neon hotel sign nearby or something like that.

All in all, my experience working and starring in SHADOWS was kind of a blur. We would shoot every Friday afternoon and I just remember how tired I was by that point in the week. I was writing papers, writing screenplays, shooting short films, working at a supermarket and juggling my load of other course work, all on top of SHADOWS. But I'm glad I was part of it. It was a magical time and I realize now that a lot of the girls I co-starred with were rather sexy. I wish I had urged the writers to put me in more kissing scenes.

I appear in several episodes around the 2003/04 era, including episodes 32, 33 and 34.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ctDTU9Yvc&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9bJNEYXInk&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p_ULyewgHIA


Thursday, March 1, 2012

Behind the Scenes, Episode 37 and 38

Rare (silent) footage of the making of Episode 37, "Trust of the Fallen", filmed by Darcy Forlenza:




And some more footage from Darcy, this time Episode 38, "Salesman":

Download links, Episodes 39, 42 and 44

For those who want to download copies:

Episode 39 - "Pest Control"

Episode 42 - "The Captives"

Episode 44 - "The Brotherhood"

Let's see if this works, I haven't quite figured out Rapidshare yet.

Creating the Agency - Justin K. Rivers

Sophomore Year

Sam Rosenthal lived a few doors down from me in Sleeper Hall freshman year. He got involved in Shadows that second semester, and played a henchman and was also a crew member. Sophomore year, Sam and I found ourselves neighbors again, this time in Towers. We had similar ideas about the show, and shared an interest in darker and more stylized aesthetics.

Jeanne left a semester early to study abroad in London. I remember a dark, rainy night outside her apartment in Student Village, where we made plans for the future. “What do you want to do with the show?” she asked me. “Scrap the storylines and turn it into an anthology series like the Twilight Zone,” I said. She wasn't really into that idea. So I became Head Writer, and she appointed Sam the Producer and Alex Peterson the director.

On our first shoot with our new roles, it was obvious that Alex and Sam were in the wrong positions. Alex commanded the multicam setups like a pro, but we were doing more single-camera location work, and it was clear that Sam was more interested in that. So they just switched one day, outside the Brookline Holiday Inn, and it worked well.

At the end of Sophomore year, we brought the original storyline to a close, with an apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenario that consisted of some bluescreen and a few pillars from the prop room. It was a bit thin, but we did the best we could with literally no money at all.

But we still hadn't completed any episodes. The ones we shot were languishing. We needed to learn final cut pro.

The Agency

Sam and I used the Towers dining hall as an office. It was there we sat and talked, hashing out what to do and why. We were inspired by Dani, a one-off character from “Kshama”, who I think (Jeanne can speak more accurately to this) was supposed to be a law enforcement agent, investigating students' disappearances. But by the time the next episode rolled around, the actress Adrienne had disappeared (we think she moved). So we had to introduce a new character to pick up that strand of the plot, and we got Dave Rogers to be Jack Flynn, Dani's partner. And in customary Shadows fashion, Dani was killed off, off-screen, in a single line of dialogue: “Dani's dead.” We morphed things a bit, and decided to have Jack be an agent for a different organization. In this way, Dani, onscreen for only a few minutes, became the first member of The Agency.

We needed to start over, and use the structure of the series to solve production problems. We also wanted to move into territory we thought might be more fun according to our tastes. We wanted paranormal noir. With an episodic structure rather than a soap serial, we could tell a complete story in a single episode. The “agents” in this private firm could change from year to year as needed, jut like Law and Order. The Agency would remain – vague, sinister, full of mystery. We brought my character, Jakob, back as a “Bosley” figure, but it wasn't really my character. We imagined this new Jakob Resh as a weird future version of the Hawthorn University student. The truth was, we needed someone to be a dispatcher for the cases, and we needed an actor who would be reliable and available. Because I was also a member of the production team, and would be around for another two years, I stayed on as Jakob. The best part, though, was that Jakob could now switch bodies, and they could replace me with a different actor.

The Setup – Shadows and Doctor Who

I'm a huge fan of Doctor Who. I go to the convention in Los Angeles every year. Around the time Sam and I were working on the new Shadows format, I was also reading Andrew Cartmel's memoir Script Doctor. I wanted to apply his methods and philosophy to our show.

Andrew Cartmel became the Doctor Who script editor in 1987, and inherited a show on its last legs. He made several key observations. Futuristic elements didn't work. Any time the show went to a spaceship, it looked cheap and unrealistic compared to the writer's vision. Lights were too bright, costumes and props were in the wrong tone. But period drama was something the BBC did extremely well. Give them a time period, and the various departments created a rich, visually interesting, and believable setting.

Darkness hid many faults. Lowering the light levels could hide the dilapidated state of the TARDIS sets. And special effects needed to express the aspect of the story they were required to convey. They didn't necessarily need to be perfect or believable. People still harp on about that, particularly about shows like classic Doctor Who. “The special effects aren't believable,” people say, “they remind me I'm just watching TV.” Um, you are staring at a screen inside a box with flashing lights and sounds and pictures (to paraphrase Toby Hadoke). It's not real.

I tried to apply Cartmel's lessons to Shadows. First, we lowered the light levels. Set things at night, used one key light and let everything else drop into murk. We switched to single-camera shooting which allowed us to get more expressive angles and quicker setups, because the studio cams were so bulky and static. Sacrificing shot stability meant we could get more interesting compositions more quickly. When we used the studio, it was for Jakob's office, and the shabby wall flats felt appropriate for that. I saved an old filing cabinet from the trash heap, and stuck it in the prop room. Plus, the office was the only setting we would consistently need, so it made sense to have it be a studio set, as it would always be available.

We could imply versus show, use dialogue and montage to convey what the budget wouldn't let us. We could afford to be more theatrical and dialogue-driven if need be, because the noir heritage has a rich literary quality that is in keeping with it. The film Brick is an interesting example of that.

Mystery was another thing that Andrew Cartmel tried to address. On Doctor Who, the character of the Doctor became too well-known. In 1963, he had been a mysterious traveler, a fugitive from his own world, on the run from an unspoken horror. By 1987, we knew too much about him and the character had become less compelling. Cartmel rehabbed the Doctor and injected more mystery, with opaque motivations and a more manipulative streak. This McCoy-era Doctor is the direct inspiration for Jakob's somewhat sociopathic manipulation of his agents. He plays games with their lives for a greater purpose that they are not privy to.

The biggest obstacle facing Shadows was the institutional structure itself. And it probably still is. Because the actors and production team turn over every four years no matter what, the show struggles to build and maintain institutional memory. By switching to a procedural format, in which each “case” takes place over the course of a single episode, we could circumvent this problem. We only needed an actor for a semester. It also allowed for more flexibility. “The Prisoner's Dilemma” is a weird almost abstract concept that is surreal and somewhat opaque. In the same semester, Jay Fuller's “Pest Control” was a great comedy – which I wish we had done more of. Jay was always much better at comedy writing than I was, and the humorous moments in our collaborations were usually Jay's contribution. The show could be whatever we wanted it to be for the course of 30 minutes. And in the next episode, could be something different. It just needed to take place in the same universe.

To solve the casting problem, we turned to one final homage to Doctor Who – the regeneration. Having different agents over the course of time could work, as long as the Agency itself (or more importantly, the universe it occupied) remained as an anchor. But we felt that we needed a character to remain for continuity as well. Thus, Jakob became not just a person, but an alien parasitic being with a latent backstory, who could jump from body to body as needed. I think originally, we had conceived of him as changing bodies more frequently, perhaps every episode. But when you get Garytt in there as Jakob, you understandably want to keep him around for as long as possible. And I think it was probably our most successful choice. We killed my Jakob off as quickly as possible, introduced the regeneration in “Salesman” and never looked back. I was free to direct “The Prisoner's Dilemma” the following semester, and the show was free to keep going forward, staying the same and changing rapidly at the same time.

The Board of Directors

“Mystery” is an essential ingredient that Doctor Who periodically runs out of. In any long-running show, we come to a point where the audience knows too much, and needs to be introduced to a new big thing to discover. The X-Files dealt with this multiple times, as did Doctor Who. Andrew Cartmel had to fix this in the late 80's, and more recently, Steven Moffat has had to do the same thing with the 11th Doctor – reign in the knowledge, up the mystery. Shadows would face the same problem in the future. What happens when you find out too much about Jakob? Now, the backstory we created for him was never quite revealed all the way, in fact we dropped it and ran off into other directions. Which is fine, but it was always there if we needed it. The Board of Directors was an extra card to play.

We created Jakob's secret backstory, the stuff about the parasites trying to take over the world, the idea that Jakob was a parasite creature who had rebelled against them. The Board of Directors were Jakob's mysterious bosses. I think the idea was that they would turn out to be aliens as well, waging a covert proxy war, but that was something we were never planning to reveal. It was just like Cartmel's instructions to new Doctor Who writers. He gave them a sortof secret description of who the Doctor really was, with direction to be mindful of it but to never actually state it. In this way, the flavor of mystery seeped into the last two seasons of Doctor Who, informing the characterization across many stories without overpowering or calling attention to the red thread.

We never returned to the Board of Directors. I think they are only mentioned maybe three times in the series. That might always change, should they be needed. At the very least, it's a card to play, a clause to invoke if the audience comes to know too much. The effect was simple enough – a string of christmas lights taped to a black velvet curtain, waved gently with a piercing sound effect.

Wilbur

Akin to James Bond's Q, Jay came up with the idea of the Agency having a gadget man. It's a great idea – a simple, effective way to deliver plot devices to characters as needed. Plot devices are often maligned. Sometimes rightly so. But at their best, they are simply tools for skipping ahead to the important bits. In a half-hour drama, they can be essential to cut through red tape.

Good examples of plot devices are the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper in Doctor Who. A locked door is a mundane and common obstacle. In a story that requires all the time it has to deal with more pressing issues, the locked door is just unnecessary, but it's part of the reality of life. Doors are typically locked. People are typically suspicious of eccentric strangers in blue boxes. Enter the sonic screwdriver and psychic paper, and suddenly the mundane obstacle breezes by. The Doctor rushes full steam into the awaiting plot. Of course, these two examples can also be cited as instances of Plot Device Fatigue, when everything, even the Big Stuff, gets solved by the wave of a magic wand.

Wilbur himself didn't quite work. We ran into two problems with Wilbur – tone and casting. In retrospect, we needed to either tone down the humor of Wilbur or inject more levity into the surrounding story. My tendency was toward relentless darkness. Jay was keen to add more humor to balance that out. Jay achieved that balance later on in the series, particularly with “Pest Control” which I think is the funniest episode the show has done, and one of the most well-written. Here, I screwed up and didn't adjust the two tones properly to coexist in a productive way.

Casting didn't help. Once John McGuinness was cast, the character was locked into an expiration date. Even if John had been available in later semesters, at some point he would cease to be. We hadn't learned the Rob O'Reilly lesson as well as we thought. (Rob was cast in “Kshama” as a homeless man, who was pivotal to the plot. In the following episode, he blew us off, leaving us in the lurch at the last minute). What we should have done was create a position instead of a character, and establish quickly that the position would change people regularly.

What's the Point?

I'm bothering to write all this for two reasons. I think the wiki and the blog are important. The show has created a community over the years, but it's a community in bubbles – groups of people who work together and graduate – that don't interact with any of the other groups. Shadows is, after all, designed to be a resource to students. But it can't do that effectively without history and continuity.

The other reason is that, when I joined the show, I had no information about it. There weren't any episodes available to view. The original series tapes languished in the cupboard, dusty and forgotten. When I left there was only one 3/4” u-matic tape deck left.

Documenting the series in this way allows institutional memory to develop. The wiki was not a tool that existed ten years ago. But it's available now, and has proven effective in many different applications. We have seen how, because of the nature of the college production environment, institutional memory developed by small groups is not easily or successfully preserved or passed on. I was hoping that by rearranging the work flow, this problem could be solved. But there need to be outside resources, non-people resources, to store and perpetuate knowledge about the show. Only a wiki can address this need. I hope it will, because Shadows has been, and continues to be, a powerful tool for learning the craft of series drama.

It's also a lot of fun.

Writing Guidlines/Show Bible 2005

Written in 2005, I think, I called it the "shadows writing guidelines" but it's really the show bible. The idea was to commission playwrights and screenwriters to write for the show, in order to get outside writers who would only be writers, specialists, if you will. It was more difficult than I thought. In the end, I was only able to get Emma Tosch for The Prisoner's Dilemma. Everyone else came from the Shadows team. But I do think the idea still has merit. In any case, this is what I would sent to prospective writers:

SHADOWS

Writing Guidelines

By

Justin Rivers

The format for Shadows is designed to be flexible. The most important rule to keep in mind is that an episode of our show, in order to qualify as an episode, must take place within the Shadows universe. It cannot break the basic rules within the story’s setting. It must be unified within itself, while at the same time maintaining a complementary relationship to the show’s canon.

The Script Development Process

This process is guided at each step by the input the script editor/head writer, and supplemented by the producer.

  1. come up with an idea

  2. tell us about it, by explaining it to the head writer

  3. write up a treatment (prose summary, not too long) of the episode

  4. if we like it, go write it

  5. the head writer will oversee the script’s development and make sure you meet your deadlines. Meeting deadlines is extremely important.

  6. after the script is submitted, it will be reviewed and edited; the production team will sit down with you and go over everything.

  7. the production team begins pre-production on the episode, then shoots it.


Physical Guidelines

We broadcast in a half-hour episode format. This means that essentially, each episode should run about twenty-five minutes. This also means that scripts should be at least thirty pages in length. The general rule for screenwriting is that one page of a script in the proper format (using film form, in Courier New font) equals about a minute of on-screen time. It is always better to write more at the outset than to write less. If a script is longer than it should be, it is always easier to condense and abbreviate rather than to pad it with extraneous scenes or dialog. Each episode has a segment airing before the title sequence, called a teaser. The teaser sets up conflict, hooks the viewer with a highly dynamic sequence, usually of action, and establishes the basic parameters of the subsequent episode. If there is a radically new element being introduced into the Shadows universe, it should be set up in the teaser, at least to a certain extent. The classic rule for screenwriting is that if the laws of your story’s universe are different from the laws/parameters of real life, then they have to be introduced within the first fifteen minutes of a film. For an episode of Shadows, they need to be introduced in the teaser. The laws/parameters I’m referring to are magic, fantasy, aliens from outer space, things like that.

Our Basic Story Format

  1. Teaser – introduce problem, show some action, make it compelling (3-5 minutes)

  2. Act I – Two agents (one male and one female, preferably) are given an assignment by Jakob Resh. They begin the assignment. The act ends with a commercial break. (12 minutes)

  3. Act II – Coming back from the commercial break, the two agents solve the problem, which is related to some basic theme. The episode ends. (12 minutes)

Arcs and Themes

There are two types of characters. Supporting characters are those people who are used to populate the story, to move plot, set an environment, etc. These people don’t change. They remain themselves and instead serve to help the story to enact change on the main characters. Each main character, in experiencing conflict, should have an arc. In a half-hour format, we don’t have room for a lot of Ally McBeal-type stuff, but a basic rudimentary arc of some kind, no matter how brief, is necessary. Likewise, a central theme is also important. We don’t need to tackle issues that are heady and grand, although we can. But for each story, there should be some type of unification in it, a central premise or message or idea that ties the story together, that answers the question of “why is this story worth being told?”

Content Guidelines

Anything prior to Episode 36, “The Agency,” is considered quasi-canon. That is, elements of the original series, such as the character of Jakob Resh, have been retained and morphed into their current identities. But the plots and villains of the original run of the show are not be used, recycled, or revisited in any way. They should not be alluded to. This isn’t terribly hard, since nobody has seen the original episodes anyways. We set our canon-meter at Episode 36, which serves as the pilot episode for our new format.

The Agency

Episode 36 introduces us to the Agency, a private investigative organization that deals with supernatural phenomenon of a wide variety. The Agency’s purpose is investigation and containment of harmful and threatening things that public institutions, such as the FBI and the local police forces, cannot deal with. The real world cannot recognize supernatural threats and circumstances, so The Agency is left to deal with them. It does not have a large budget, and relies mainly on the grunt work of a loose, rag-tag network of devoted but often rough-around-the-edges agents. The Agency is led by a mysterious man named Jakob Resh. The stories are usually investigative-driven, focused around a mystery that the agents need to solve. Some characters may reoccur throughout the series, but the main agents driving the story do not have to be the same from episode to episode. This is designed so that the lead actors for each episode do not have to be the same. Unity for the show relies on adherence to the general environment of The Agency, and by the unifying factor of The Agency’s leader, the mysterious Jakob Resh.

Jakob Resh

Resh is a holdover from the original series. During his college years, he encountered and fought an ancient, evil being who was the president of the college Resh attended. President Hawthorne tried to bring about the destruction of the world by merging it with his own dimension, called simply, “the shadow world.” Resh and his friends, aided by a member of The Agency, succeeded in stopping Hawthorne and sending him back to his own dimension. During the battle, several of Jakob’s friends were killed, including Reese Doyle, “the chosen one.” Jakob fled to Europe, to escape his past. This element of his backstory is not to be referenced, since it occurs before the new format was put in place. But this experience has helped shape his character, so be aware that his past is filled with tragedy, death, and desperate struggle.

In Europe, Resh he devoted his life to battling evil in a variety of capacities, and eventually became host to a parasitic, alien organism. This organism was a renegade from its own species, an army of parasites slowly proliferating within the human race with the intent to conquer and enslave Earth. Returning to America, Jakob became a member of the Agency, and was later appointed the head of it. He has no official title, since bureaucratic conventions seem to be counter to the Agency’s general rules of operation. By the time we meet him, Resh has been running the Agency for some time. The parasite he carries within him has absorbed his mind and his memories, and because it is feeding off of his life-force, Jakob’s body will eventually wear out. In Episode 38, that is what happens. This sets a precedent for changing Jakob’s body whenever it becomes necessary to do so. In other words, the character of Jakob, for all episodes subsequent to Episode 38, can be played by a different actor each time, without any explanation. In fact, there shouldn’t be an explanation. Once we have set the precedent, it would be cheap to keep alluding to it. Jakob’s role is similar to Bosley in “Charlie’s Angel’s.” He is the boss who hands out assignments from his desk and guides the directions or emphasis of certain cases. He has the experience and intuition to understand a great deal more than many of his agents do, and often manipulates them into achieving his goals. He only cares about the end result, not about the means or methods. He has the big picture in mind. Because of this, his actions may at times seem opaque to us. Jakob always has a good reason for what he does, but he is not infallible. He sometimes shares the big picture with select senior agents.

Jakob is, essentially, immortal. While his body may change frequently, his goals and motivations are always the same. His personality is different, and should be different. This allows us to change the tone of the Agency and of the series as needed, and keep the character fresh. Since Resh is the only character who has a constant presence in the show, this is an important function of the body-switch device.

The body-changing aspect of Resh's character solves a major problem that Shadows has struggled with since the original run of the series in 1995 – namely, how do we retain some type of continuity when there is a complete personnel turnover every four years, at maximum? The answer is two-fold. One type of continuity comes from the Shadows “universe”, the overarching world we have created and the mythology we develop with it. The other source of continuity is Jakob Resh, a character who can essentially be played by any actor, and still retain a continuity of purpose and design. Jakob's most significant role is as a plot device, a dispatcher to keep plot moving when needed, and to retain the credibility of an Agency that over time seems to burn through a lot of agents. His body-hopping characteristic can also be used for dramatic deaths and revivals, sparingly. It is the universe, and the struggles within it, that are the story of Shadows. Not Jakob Resh.

The Board of Directors

Although he is nominally in charge of The Agency’s operations, Resh is not the true head of the organization. He is the front-man for an even more mysterious Board of Directors, a group of individuals who guide the overall efforts of the Agency and coordinate its true functions and intensions. Resh is privy to most of this knowledge, as he is the only direct connection the Directors have to the Agency. Throughout the series, the true identity of the Directors MUST NEVER BE REVEALED. The show hinges on this secrecy and the constant uncertainty surrounding their purpose. One thing is clear – they are the mortal enemies of the alien Parasites. Characters on the show may encounter people who are members of the board, but their purpose or exact identities can never be explained. We can show the Board meeting, in a limited way. For example, it would be appropriate to have the Directors meet in a dark room where their identifying features are concealed by shadows. It would NOT be appropriate to show them meeting in broad daylight and discussing domestic topics while sipping stale coffee. The implication is that the board may in fact be alien or supernatural beings disguised as humans, and concealing themselves for unknown security reasons. Jakob, as their secret-keeper, is closely guarded and well protected, and rarely leaves the Agency.

In episode 38, “Salesman,” the Board is visualized as a series of pinprick lights, like glowing eyes, that swirl in a black vortex emitting a shrill alien sound. Since this has proved a highly effective and popular realization, I suggest this be continued. In the future, however, it may be necessary to give them a specific “voice” that can articulate actual speech. A simple booming voice, or a figure cloaked in shadows would suffice as a “speaker” for the directors.

The Parasites

We have shown the parasites briefly onscreen, but as of yet have not named them. Their history is somewhat obscure, but we do know that they come from another planet or dimension that is very distant from ours, and that their goal is to conquer earth in order to harvest humans as host organisms. The parasite that lives inside Jakob Resh is friendly to earth, and works with the Board of Directors to protect the earth from being conquered. The specifics of this are shrouded in mystery. The parasites can jump from body to body, and when they infect they leach the consciousness of the individual and acquire that knowledge as their own. This is why it is imperative that Jakob Resh be protected. He alone can give away knowledge of the Board of Directors and what is going on behind the scenes at the Agency. The Parasites do not actually know who runs the Agency above Jakob Resh, but they suspect that it may be the Board of Directors. The Board and the Parasites are ancient enemies…

Content Guidelines

We broadcast on a closed-circuit cable station run by students and funded by the school. There have been no attempts to censor us as of yet, and we are not planning on pushing the envelope or fighting battles that we cannot win. To do so would be detrimental to our show. Therefore, we should refrain from extensive swearing when possible. Shit, damn, and ass are probably ok if used moderately. Fuck is off limits. We also cannot have actual nudity, but sexual content itself will not be a major problem if we are careful and respectful. Violence in relation to sex is probably not a good idea to put into a story. Remember, we can put ANYTHING into a story by implying it, so if such an element is justified by the story and worth including, its best to imply the notion rather than explicitly stating or showing it.

Rules of the Universe

There aren’t a lot of specific rules. Rather, I will describe how the design of the show functions, and what design points to keep in mind.

The Agency operates within a modern American context, utilizing a wide network of field agents and informers to carry out their tasks and investigations. They keep lots of dusty files on various things, but have little in the way of technology. They do not use computers, unless they can help it, and their level of technology is very Industrial and seems cobbled together, makeshift, from a variety of sources. The Agency technician, Wilbur, picks through scrap heaps of other more powerful and wealthy institutions in order to get the materials he needs. In other words, the Agency is dirt poor. It relies on favors and covert usages of mainstream sources. It operates behind the scenes, with the Agents tricking their way onto crime scenes, using the powers of suggestion and persuasion to get into a situation, get what they need, and get out of it. They do not fly on planes; they do not have cars on their own. If they met up with the X-Files crew, they’d laugh at how pampered Mulder and Scully seemed.

Agents can and will carry guns. Firepower is cheap, especially when purchased on the black market. Quality is not cheap. Their guns, thus far, have proven reliable. But that is no doubt the exception rather than the rule. To an Agent, it is more important to have common sense and a good eye for details rather than to be a good shot. Guns are often a useful threat against human activity, but most monsters do not respond well to bullets. It is worth keeping in mind that a de-emphasized use of guns, forensic gimmicks, and legalese, in contrast to the current mode of police procedurals (i.e. shitty Jerry Bruckheimer shows) allows us to stay within our budgetary limits. It also gives us the ability to exploit our strengths and hide our weaknesses by concentrating on characters, monsters, and stories, rather than on expensive gimmicks to lure viewers.

The Agency has everything stacked against it. They succeed against economic, logistic, and political odds. They are underdogs, underground, and underpaid. This basic setup has two important functions. It ups the ante, and makes the Agency’s problems more insurmountable. It also keeps our costs down. Visually, the show is dirty, worn, and cluttered. It is easy to dress a set in garbage and grime. It is not easy to make crappy wall flats or unused rooms look like a brand spanking new forensics lab. We don’t want things to look nice, because it gives an air of despair to our stories, and is a visual design we can realistically accomplish.

Overall, our world is grittier, more surreal and bewildering, and shabbier than the world portrayed on most modern TV shows. There is a distinctive Noir quality to our show, which is in part because we’ve been overdoing the melodrama, and also in part a result of another aspect of visual design: shadows.

Lighting

Lighting and shadows are used to create depth, form, dimension and texture. All the things I have been talking about in reference to what our show is trying to convey is reflected in the lighting design, and this should be kept in mind while writing or planning an episode. Darkness is good. It is our best friend. The worst thing we can do is turn up the lights and let the audience see our flaws. If things are dark and murky, then they cannot see our mistakes or notice how flimsy everything looks. A dark, expressively lit Allston college ghetto looks less like the place we party on Friday nights, and more like an interesting location. When there is a technical aspect of the story, a special effect such as a monster or something that proves problematic, its always worth keeping in mind that if we imply something deftly, the audience will buy it and not linger on our inability to portray a big effect. This also applies to action. One character punching another doesn’t make much of an action scene in comparison to most big budget Bruce Willis flops. But, if we spend the time and make that one punch come from one character to another in a poignant, biting, actively tragic circumstance (in other words, if we make that one punch COUNT more) and if we portray that punch as if it were a real live punch, then we have achieved something more than the biggest Matrix rip-off could ever achieve. We will have gained credibility and have impacted the audience in a visceral way. Keep in mind, a punch in real life hurts more. If we keep our action to a realistic level, the fantastical elements of our stories can be carried with much less effort. The responsibility we inherit from being science-fiction/fantasy is that our stories, which are inherently less realistic on the surface, must be more tangible and thoughtful than a realistic drama.

Sound

Play to our strengths. Another trick to keep in mind is that we can provide a soundtrack for any circumstance. We can make the audience hear the most out-of -this-world crazy shit you could possibly thing up, no matter how expensive it might be to visualize it. Sometimes leaving things to the imagination and just sticking a sound effect into a shot can work wonders. So, don’t be afraid of going over the top visually, if there is enough of an audio component to correspond.

A look of fear on someone’s face is scarier than the fearful thing itself.

Where we are going

The goal of our show is to produce as much quality content as possible. We should be able to produce at least two episodes per semester, and have a que of scripts in development to feed our production team. That way, when we have extra scripts waiting to be produced, we can pick the best of the crop and also ensure that, if there are problems with an episode or a script falling through at last minute, we will not be compromised by this. It is also important to remember the structure of the show, since it is critical to the successful execution of the series. The reason each episode needs to be self contained is that we can’t guarantee that the actors will last for more than one semester. Another reason is that, if we do multiple episodes per semester, we will need to have one primary writer do the script for each of them, and have each episode shot separately as if it were a different production, with different crews and actors.

In terms of story, the possibilities are endless. Monsters always make good stories. Espionage/intrigue can work well too. We’ve done werewolves, vampires, gremlins, and we have the alien parasite angle as well. The basic mystery of what the Agency is really here for and where they are going is a driving force behind the future of the show. It should seem like the audience is getting closer to the truth, while in actuality, no such thing is happening. Throwing little bits of truth and hints of the “bigger picture” can make that happen, while successfully guarding our secrets. Remember what happened with Twin Peaks. After the mystery was solved, nobody cared any more. And remember what happened with the X-Files. Once people knew the truth, or thought they knew the truth, it collapsed in on itself. The more self-referential we are, the weaker our stories will be.

There are two types of stories.

Case-based stories – problems or cases are investigated by Agency personnel, or involve them in some way, in which the central problem exists outside The Agency itself. A vampire clan attack, a vengeful zombie, etc, can all be case-based stories. These types of stories should comprise about 2/3rds of the output of the show.

Agency-based stories – these episodes will delve into The Agency itself – how it works, what’s really going on, how the alien Parasite people are fighting with The Agency, the Board of Directors, etc…wherever the central problem lies within or directly related to The inner Agency. This type of story should only comprise about 1/3 of the show’s output, and is akin to the X-Files “conspiracy” episodes. They advance the central mythology of the show and are built, in part, upon the previous continuity of the show.

Influences

The Shadows format bears similarities to many different shows and movies, the most prominent being Kolchack: The Night Stalker, and The X-Files, which was inspired by the former. These two series exemplify the best and worst of what we are trying to do. They are a source for inspiration and also caution, especially in the case of X-Files, where Chris Carter’s work gradually devolved as the conspiracy-stories grew wildly out of control. The reason the show failed in the end was because it became masturbatory and self-referential, to the point at which it no longer worked to present stories to the general public. This same problem is found in the mid-80’s seasons of Doctor Who, which is another essential influence on the template for this show. In surviving for 26 years (and then being revived recently in several wildly successful new seasons) Doctor Who shows how a variety of format changes can directly impact the quality of content. The script editors periodically changed the format compensate for various problems, technical limitations, and the changing concerns of new generations of viewers. Where they went wrong is instructive for us. Where they went most right (in the last two seasons of the original series) is where they realized the limitations of their f/x budget, and instead crafted compelling drama with rich conflict and complex, layered characters around what minor f/x they could successfully produce.

Explore New Directions

There is only one more thing necessary to address. It is this: you are not bound by a formula, so much as a conception of a world. As long as the Agency is somewhere in the background, an episode can count as part of Shadows. It doesn’t always need to follow the two investigators/procedural template. Different episodes can focus on different parts of this world, including characters outside of the Agency, or loosely connected or even not connected at all but having some proximity to the Agency that is meaningful. The biggest asset we have is a format that is flexible enough to accommodate different tones and types of story from episode to episode. As long as a script is true to the Shadows design, it can work for us. Experimentation is fantastic, as long as it is grounded in a unified purpose with logic and structure. Flexing the format of the show is, at times, extremely necessary. Breaking new ground is essential. But none of these things can be done without keeping in mind, and ultimately returning to, the basic format I have outlined here.

And remember, all rules can be broken if you break them with specific purpose and vision. But don't forget the long-term aspect of that vision. Keep in mind that, underneath all of this work, is an effort to build and maintain a storytelling structure that can survive subsequent production teams and ensure that Shadows will continue to be a vital part of the butv lineup for many years to come.

Now, it is time to write.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Episodes on Youtube

Here are some old episodes uploaded to Youtube.

Episode 32 - "Vanished"
Lainy Callahan has disappeared, and her friends are trying to find out what happened to her.

I don't have a copy of episode 31, although I did complete it. It's a long story but basically, in Spring of 06, I was working frantically to finish the new episodes and wanted to get all the old ones out of the way, too. But I ran out of time the last week of school and never was able to output episodes 31 and 35. I hope they still exist somewhere. Episode 35 was complete except for some greenscreen fx which I wasn't able to create.


Episode 33 - "Gone"
Reese, Jakob, Jillian and Rob are in trouble - President Hawthorn is after them.


Episode 34
The gang have found a magic medallion. Jillian gets a new roommate, and Hawthorn finds a new magic mirror.



Episode 37
For some reason, the butv web site has mislabeled the pilot episode of the Agency reboot. "The Agency" should be episode 36. The episode posted below is the actual episode 37, "Trust of the Fallen," in which the Agency is infiltrated by a parasitic creature, setting up the backstory for Jakob and the Agency's ongoing fight against the Parasites. Which we never got around to in the end. perhaps just as well.

In two parts.
Part One:


Part Two:

Monday, February 27, 2012

Auditioning - Justin K. Rivers

Auditioning, Fall 2002

I auditioned for Shadows 1st semester freshman year. Would've been Fall 2002. I read for the part of Jakob Resh. Around the same time I showed up for Bay State auditions as well, figuring if I couldn't get into Shadows then the soap opera would at least give me the chance to flex some acting muscles and learn how to act in front of a camera better.

The auditions were held in the BUTV studio – I forget what the name of it was...studio B maybe? It was pretty roughshod at the time, but scared little freshman Justin didn't notice the chipped paint and the scuffed floor, only the three big pedestal cameras and the control room with the mixing board and the banks of monitors.

The Bay State audition consisted of a cold read of a scene in which a lecherous RA harasses a student. My RA Amy Muething worked on the show and encouraged me to show up. It didn't go as planned. I mean, I knew how to do creepy pretty well, but I didn't get the part because (I found out from I think Arestia Rosenberg or someone like that) I had been too creepy. But the Shadows audition went better. Fewer people showed up, I think that helped. I recall Jeanne Haight (head writer), Melissa Carelli (producer), Liska Ostijic (director), and Matt Burns (co-star) being there. I can't remember who I read with but it must've been a scene from Episode 32. I imagine the DVCAM tape might still be around somewhere.

Being cast in Shadows was very exciting, it was part of the reason I decided to go to BU in the first place. The tour of COM the previous year had included a glimpse at the studio, and the show was always featured in their promotional material. What I didn't realize was that butv didn't actually exist – it was a group that made episodes and never aired them, because there was no cable station at the university at the time. Apparently, they had at one time aired their content on a local Boston cable channel – the 3/4” Umatic tapes of the original Shadows run included hilarious old commercials and PSAs for the National Guard.

In fact, no new episode of Shadows had been seen or completed in several years. Overexposed, the sketch comedy show, had gone dormant. So had Inside Boston, the newsmagazine. Only Bay State kept going, powered by its own momentum and the broad appeal of its content. A lot of people were involved with it, which attracted more people. The plot lines allowed for characters to enter and exist with the typical flow and turnover of a student population. It was easier to keep it going.

The students who worked on Shadows didn't seem to have the low-budget sci-fi background that I had. I thought it was odd, because it was a show that had a lot of potential, but nobody seemed to know how to kickstart the thing or how to fix what was wrong. Or even what was wrong to begin with. That was a subject Sam and I would discuss a lot in the following year.

Hawthorn University

The character of Jakob Resh was originally a freshman from Hawthorne University, the BU stand-in, which was run by an evil president (har-har, John Silber!). President Hawthorne was played by a very nice man named Kimbrough...I think Charles was his first name. Anyways, he was someone's dad from a while back and although he wasn't the greatest actor in the world he was very kind to us and continued to play his part long after his son had moved on. And he wasn't going to graduate on us.

The show was in an impossible position – the characters who had initiated the pilot storyline in 1995 were all gone, of course. And I'm not sure anybody can successfully trace the paths back to them. I think by that point the entire plot had run its course. Plus, with the multicam setup for shooting, we couldn't do more stylized visuals. We couldn't even build more than a few sets, because all we had were a few wall flats and some props and broken furniture. These things had to look like dorm rooms and offices, and all they really looked like were fake walls.

The first year I was really just an actor. But I showed up regularly and was there on time, which I think the rest of the crew appreciated. At the time, we shot one episode per semester. I'll have to go back and try to find the footage and scripts to recall what the story was. So, I was an actor in Episode 32 and 33, which would have been Fall 02 and Spring 03 respectively.

I'll have to defer to someone else about what was exactly going on with the production, but I think for various reasons the group that had got together, coalescing around the producer Melissa Carelli, was splitting up. Melissa was graduating. Liska was unavailable for the following year. We lost a few more actors. Jeanne, the head writer, offered to let me get involved in the writing for the next episode.

Which I did.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Welcome

This blog is intended as a repository of information, recollections, and interviews with the people involved in the butv television series Shadows.

In this way, we can document and collect information about the series and use this blog as a primary resource for citations in the Shadows Wiki.

I invite all past and present shadowers to contribute.