Our biggest project to date, Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, comes out on Monday. This project has been a very long time in the making, and it is so surreal that it is finally here. We are all so excited, nervous, and giddy to share it with you.
We here at Shipwrecked–Sean and Sinead especially–have been working on this project for what is now years. There was a time where we had given up on it ever being a possibility, because it just seemed too incredulous. How could Shipwrecked Comedy, a group that had put out two small series with tiny casts and crews the combined runtime of which was less than an hour produce a series that cost exponentially more with a host of characters and what needed many shoot days and a full crew? It seemed too much; it seemed almost silly.
Putting up our kickstarter was terrifying. We all thought that if we made around $5K in the first day, that would be a pretty good start. We were totally blown away when we made nearly three times that in the first 24 hours. Over the process of our entire kickstarter campaign, something that was scary and that we sort of dreaded at first became so fun, and we got to know so many of you through it, and the constant support you showed for us genuinely cheered us more than we could ever say. We felt like you guys did really want to see this story happen, and if you wanted to see it happen–enough to fund us $17K over our goal (every penny of which we desperately needed)–then we could do it. We would figure it out and do it.
During the two months between the end of the kickstarter and the beginning of the shoot we gathered an amazing team full of people that we are still pretty astounded wanted to work on this with us. Joe Stribling was game to direct, and as we talked with him about what our vision was for the show, his own take fit perfectly in line and we knew that he was the person to helm this zany adventure. Brent Madison and Ryan M. Murphy at American Black Market were our saviors. They actually know how to produce a thing and how to work with the budget that we had, and they guided us through this process every step of the way. Having a cast that was so excited to rehearse, and to delve into these characters and fully explore them was so wonderful. We couldn’t have been blessed with a better team.
Every day on set was a dream. We went into this shoot extremely scared–we were shooting ten pages or more a day which is, on the whole, unheard of. Whenever we told anyone that we were shooting what was essentially a feature film in the span of ten days their eyebrows would raise. We were afraid we wouldn’t get it all done. And yet, due to our unbelievably dedicated crew, our incredibly prepared cast, and the scheduling genius of our AD, Wes Middleton, we did it. Some days we even wrapped early. Each day felt like a huge achievement, and by the end of our shoot we were a family. We laughed with each other, we encouraged each other, we knew that we were creating something extremely special together. Everyone seemed happy to be there, and the four of us just constantly looked around, pinching ourselves, amazed at the set and the working environment we had created–well, when we weren’t going over our lines or watching the monitor or hanging up everyone’s costumes.
The entire Poe Party experience has been, by all accounts, a dream come true for us. We love the story we’re telling, we love the people who were willing to help us tell it, and we love those of you who will receive it. We feel, and hope you will too, that we’ve created something different, and fun, and spooky, and truly special. Making work and putting it out for people to view and consume and react to is unbelievably terrifying. But it has been so rewarding already, and we hope that the experience of watching the show will delight you as much as making it delighted us.
We will be conducting some transmedia to accompany the release of the episodes in a similar way that we’ve done in the past. We hope that the episodes will inspire you to write and create your own art in response, and each week we’ll be providing a prompt for you to build fanfic, fan art, fan crafts–whatever you desire–around. Episodes will come out on Monday, and you will have the entire week to post your creations with the tag #poe party ftw so that we can be sure to track them. Get your creations in by Saturday at midnight, and each Sunday before the following episode every member of Shipwrecked–Sean, Sinead, MK, and Sarah–will pick a favorite and Shipwrecked will reblog it. We hope that the show will inspire you to make things because we always love seeing the things you create!
Also, as a note, we will be keeping all of our social media accounts spoiler-free for the first 48 hours after an episode breaks. After that, however, we may reblog content that relates to the most recent episode and could be spoilery so please be on guard! We hope that will give you enough time to watch it and catch up before we blog/post things that have to do with the most recent events of the show.
All in all, we are so excited to have been able to make Poe Party, and we hope you will love it as much as we do. Thank you for being a part of this process and cheering us on from start to finish. We couldn’t have done it without you.
This entry was posted by jbc on Sunday, August 21st, 2016 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Tumblr.
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