LOCALLY-SHOT WEB SERIES GOES GLOBAL THIS FALL >>>
It was the young man lying on the street with a bullet in his belly that got us laughing.
I hadn't been on set of the upcoming web series Look Up in the Sky an hour, and already I could spot little annoyances slowing down the shoot. Sunday's late-morning sun kept ducking in and out of clouds and messing with the cameraman's exposure. And so many cars drove through that seemingly quiet Northeast Tacoma neighborhood, it felt like the "Game on!" scene in Wayne's World.
At some point a film crew needs to collectively release built-up frustration by getting a bit silly. The moment came when the prostrate actor with a prosthetic stomach wound went into a none-too-shabby Schwarzenegger impersonation. The effects artist and another actor joined in with their own renditions, and I soon began warming up to this small batch of strangers.
Just as with making a movie, the plot behind Look Up involves different people coming together for a common goal - in this case, 12 acquaintances reunite seven years after high school to try and save the world from an alien invasion. Or, as producer Ashley Cozine describes it to an elderly passerby, think "Cloverfield or Lost...meets Indian Summer meets Battlestar Galactica."
Cozine also has an on-camera role in this season, which has very nearly wrapped shooting and consists of ten two-minute episodes. (And we'll see even more of Cozine this fall at the Tacoma Film Festival, in director Chad Ruin's homegrown feature A Perfect Life.)
Cozine expects to release the first episode online in September or October, with subsequent episodes distributed each week or so after. Joe Shapiro, who directed this season's last five segments and edited the controversial 2007 Seattle doc Zoo, will also handle post-production on Look Up in the Sky. Though Cozine hasn't yet decided on a precise online location for her project, she may not limit the series to only the Web. "I'm looking for all sorts of outlets for it," she says.
As producer she scouted for shooting locations and handpicked her cast and crew, the majority of whom live in the Seattle area. This dream team has pleased her immensely: "I'm just really lucky that I got such a positive, professional group of people on board. It's really been one of the nicest independent sets that I've worked on. They are people that you look forward to coming to set to work with."