It’s interesting to look back and see how our team has coalesced over time and see that the quality of our productions continually improve.
In the early days, Jim, myself and a few friends would walk around with a camcorder and look for inspirational settings, hit record, and do on-the-spot skits. It was a lot of fun and not serious at all. We made dozens of tiny videos, with a few of them offering laughs. One day I hope to dig them up, put them online and embarrass all involved.
Then Jim made My Trip to Liberty City, a foray into machinima, in which he visits the world of Grand Theft Auto. It was clever and different enough to be written about in the New York Times.
We wanted to make a movie, but knew it was too much work for one person to do unpaid. Jim hit upon the idea to break it down into chapters, having different artists each direct and edit their own segment. At this point we knew enough to bring a mic, even if we didn’t know how to use it. The result was Infest Wisely.
With Jim writing, Anthony producing, and myself acting in Infest Wisely, the beginnings of the Haphead team were forming.
Once the multi-director structure had proved itself, we set out to make something with higher production values. Ghosts With Shit Jobs was born, a sci-fi mockumentary in which western economies have collapsed and China is the new first world. Ghosts was filled with many highs and a few hard lessons.
For the past year we’d been throwing around the idea of making something new and again upping our game. In early December, 2013, Jim emailed Anthony, Tate and myself a link to the Independent Production Fund (IPF) web series application. The IPF invest in several productions a year. “You Guys Should Totally Do It” Jim said. He was super busy with The Hand Eye Society and preparing for his role as the AGO’s Artist In Residence, but he offered to write the script and provide guidance. So with Anthony and myself producing and Tate directing and editing, Haphead started to roll.
By this time we’d made many connections, established good relationships, and shown that we get things done and we get them out there. We put together a great team. Many people were from Ghosts, and we had a few newer faces including Tony, our DP and Elysia, our lead. Everything fell into place almost perfectly for our Haphead trailer.
We’ve received amazing feedback for our trailer and I’m looking forward to what we create next.
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