Ren is an original fantasy series about a young woman who, after a strange encounter in the woods, is marked by an ancient spirit. Cast out from her small village, she is forced to leave behind the family she has spent her whole life protecting and journey across the land to find the real meaning behind the mark she bears.
Ren is a new original independent fantasy series from producer and director Kate Madison, the creator of the hugely successful Lord of the Rings prequel Born of Hope which has had more than 35 million online views, and the award winning actor and writer Christopher Dane. Ren tells a serious story with amazing fights, epic scenery, a strong female lead, a splash of humour and fantastic characters to fall in love with.
How long did it take to create the set?
We were moving into our temporary ‘studio’ space (an empty industrial depot) at the start of July 2014 and started gathering materials and putting together the village market set almost immediately. Work continued on it right up until the first day of shooting which was the 18th September 2014. Actually in a way we never really stopped building, tweaking and adapting. We had the tail of a hurricane hit us at one point so we had to do lots of repairs. We also rearranged the market set to create the road to the village gate. We also brought part of the set inside to create the interiors for the end of our shoot.
What was the reasoning behind the time period chosen, over a present-day or futuristic setting?
I love the freedom that fantasy gives you. For me I prefer to escape the modern reality with TV and films and you can still tell human stories we can all relate to but just set in a world that’s not quite our own.
What (and/or who) inspired your series?
We took inspiration from many different films, TV shows and even books but one of the main ones was the TV series Legend of the Seeker. The idea of a small team out on the road in a quest to discover the truth is where we are aiming to take the show as we move into later seasons. Fantasy computer games were also an inspiration for Ren having a facial marking. In games you can often design your character to have facial markings and I thought it would be interesting to take that idea but make it unusual rather than the norm. Another inspiration for Ren is the character of Dax from Star Trek as Ren will have a similar symbiotic relationship with the ancient spirit that ends up possessing her.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome making this series?
As with most independent productions our low budget gave us challenges but we had an amazing team who didn’t let that fact affect the quality of work we were producing. The British weather was probably one of our biggest challenges. It was incredibly wet and sometimes windy and as we were mostly filming outside that often delayed us. Our actors also had other commitments during filming so many of our larger sequences were filmed in many bits with the actor on screen having to react to characters who were not there and just us crew members reading in the lines off camera.
How do you reach your audience?
Like many indie filmmakers we use social media and mailing lists to keep in touch with our audience. The show is on youtube so we also add a lot of our behind the scenes videos there and we’ll make videos of things like Kate our director visiting Melbourne Webfest to keep our audience engaged and interested in the production between seasons.
How do you finance your series?
We ran a Kickstarter campaign which brought in around £27,000 for the budget. Even though we were all working for free and trying to be as economical as possible the producers still had to add some of their own money to help us finish the first season. In the end we probably spent around £35k-£40k but watching it you should never realise the budget was so low. Although we managed to make season one for this tiny budget we plan to pay people a proper wage for season two otherwise the show is unsustainable so we are going to have to find a much larger budget next time.
Is your series an ongoing project? If so can you give us some clues about what comes next?
Yes that is the intention, we even leave season one with a “To be continued…”. Hopefully people have seen season one before reading this but if not SPOILER ALERT. Ren and Hunter who have been forced together have a lot to deal with, both getting to know and trust each other but also the larger journey that Ren has trying to learn what it means to be a Marked One. There is also discoveries about her family and the past and possibly even Hunter’s past that will shape their journey. More than that will be giving it away ;-)
Please tell us a quirky and/or interesting fact about yourself or team that’s unrelated to your web series?
Myself and my Co Creator Christopher Dane have both appeared in Dr Who, Chris had a proper part but I was a supporting artist. We also were both in a Colgate advert but I filmed the English version and Chris the Danish one and we were edited together into the same advert.
In what ways do you utilise social media to further your brand?
Christopher Dane does a lot of our images for social media which keeps a consistancy in our brand. We are on facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube and it can be hard to keep creating content. We don’t have money to pay someone to manage our social media but most of our core team, around 5 people, have access to our social media accounts so that when one person is busy another can try to post. It seems to work.
Describe the ultimate fan of your series?
Someone who loves discovering new fantasy worlds and characters and watching them grow. Possibly even influencing them as we have a forum and listen to comments on social media too that might be incorporated into future seasons. Being an online show we felt we needed to keep it tailored for a general audience, we didn’t want it to be as dark and sexual as Game of Thrones but not too fluffy and light like BBC’s Merlin. We aimed for Ren to sit somewhere in the middle. Hopefully we achieved that.
How many people worked on this project?
I think it’s getting on for 300 people in our cast and crew. Everyone was volunteering so some could only do a day while others worked for months. We also had over 500 Kickstarter backers who made the show possible in the first place.
What’s your background as a content creator? And how did you approach this project differently to previous projects?
I previously made a Lord of the Rings prequel feature film called Born of Hope which has over 35 million views on youtube. On my non Ren youtube account I also have short films, docs and vlogs. We had a much more professional set up for Ren in comparison to Born of Hope and having the studio space created a wonderful creative hub that really brought people together. I don’t think we could have made the show we did without it and the team we gathered.
From start to finish, how long did it take to complete this project?
I think the spark for the idea came in 2011 and scripting started. We ran a Kickstarter in 2013, pre production then started but in a way didn’t really kick off fully until we got our ‘studio’ in July 2014. We wrapped on 10th November 2014 and moved out of the studio at the end of that month. Post took over a year and the show was released during March 2016. In a way we’re still going though as we’re still completing and sending the final rewards for our Kickstarter backers and touring Ren around festivals and conventions.
Ren: The Girl with the Mark on the web:
Ren’s Website
Watch Ren
Ren on Facebook
Ren on Twitter
Ren on Instagram