Contagion - Ray Holycross

Posted by Steve on 2 July 2010 | 0 Comments

Tell us about your show.

"Mash-ups" on YouTube. We have all seen various fake movie trailers (Brokeback to the Future) that have taken a movie or two and joined them together for a few laughs but Contagion is different. Combining existing footage from multiple shows and movies (with the aid of some CGI trickery) to form a completely new storyline. Dialogue has been remastered from all seasons of each show, picked up and spliced to form a completely new story. You have seen mash-up trailers before but this is different. All characters will retain their personalities and traits. Music and even the visual styles have been combined to form something new, from the visual style of Supernatural, to the ticking clock of 24 and locations and darkness of the X-files. The series when it is finally all online will run around 47 minutes, about the length of an episode of television.

Where did the idea/concept for your series come from?

Watching Twilight one night I was so bored with the movie I was browsing Facebook on my iPhone. Someone had posted a Photoshop altered image of Blade standing behind the two Twilight characters. I had a laugh and then watched a link on YouTube that was a trailer mash up of Terminator and Batman. It just popped in my head at that time that this was something I could try and pull off. Originally it was only going to be about 15 seconds long, but I had a break in-between shows so the plot just came together and grew over the course of a few days.

Name some of your sci-fi influences. Any favorite movies, TV shows, novels?

Besides the obvious group of 24, X-files and Supernatural, I have quite a bit of love for any sci-fi from Ridley Scott (Alien and Blade Runner) and the look and feel of the video game Mass Effect. Anything with zombies or destroyed cities gets an automatic pass from me as well.

Tell us about the technical production of your show. What camera & equipment did you use? Editing software & hardware? For visual effects, etc?

The entire show was put together by myself in my spare time in between production. I took nine seasons of the X-Files, four seasons of Supernatural, four seasons of House, seven seasons of 24, three Resident Evil movies, Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland, two Twilight movies and finally the Blade trilogy as well as the show that used to run on Spike TV, and sat down and watched a little of each. After deciding what clips and angles to use to fit my draft of the story, I digitized all the footage onto my computer and cut a rough version of each episode with Sony Vegas. After I have the timing down, I'll do any and all visual effects in Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. This can range from some minor light and color correction to rotoscoping out an actor and pasting into existing shots with other characters. Color Correction is completed using After Effects and Magic Bullet.

After all of the visual FX are completed a new cut is assembled in Avid. The music is a custom remixed (In FL Studio) combination of the various themes of the shows along with about 27 minutes of new music composed by me and conducted by my piano, a guitar and the magic of MIDI and FL studio. The dialogue is taken from various episodes and shows that feature some of the actors, extracted and spliced together then altered in post to sound slightly more fluid. Fortunately for the last few episodes I was lucky enough to record brand new dialogue with about half of the cast.

Can you tell us any interesting facts or trivia about your show? Any funny stories?

Since the show is done completely on the computer, there are no bloopers or goofups on set. However there have a been a few directions that I took the story and decided to change it later, or sometimes a scene just wouldn't fit (problem with dealing with existing footage only). Most of these will eventually end up online as deleted scenes.

Contagion can be found online here.

Contagion - SciFinal Page

More from Contagion below:

Behind the scenes from Contagion

Behind the scenes from Contagion

Behind the scenes from Contagion