Monsters Anonymous - Joe Heath

Posted by Steve on 21 January 2011 | 4 Comments

Tell us about your sci-fi web series.

My show is Monsters Anonymous. It's a sitcom about a werewolf named Seth who goes to a Monsters Anonymous meeting to deal with his various supernatural issues and homelessness problem. There he meets a vampire named Bob and an invisible man named Nick. He moves into their apartment and meets their wacky next door neighbor, Death. Hilarity ensues.

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

My dad and I thought it up in the car one day. We had the idea of taking classic movie monsters and putting them in an AA-type situation. Then there was a sitcom pilot contest for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, so we took those random ideas and gave it a more sitcom-esque plot. We wrote a script for a 5-minute video that I never filmed because after I read the rules, I found out I was too young to enter. So it sat on the shelf for a while.

Then I became friends with Vincent E.L. over the Internet (because he lives in Sweden and I don't). I told him about the script and he thought it was a cool idea and over the course of that night, we had figured out a six-season plan. Then we broke down the first season and wrote it in the course of a few months.

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

First off, anything Joss Whedon. Buffy and Angel specifically for this show. Classic horror movies like Dracula, The Wolf Man, and The Invisible Man were certainly in mind when creating the details for the show. Most of the influence, though, comes from sitcoms like Arrested Development, Seinfeld, and Spaced. I can't say what inspired Vince.

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

Not the fanciest of equipment. Working on a very small budget. I'm using a Panasonic PV-GS300 to film with. I record audio with a shotgun mic plugged into a Zoom H2 recorder onto a SD chip. I edit with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 7.0. Some characters are voice-only, so they record their own audio and send it to me over the internet. I get a rough cut of the episode and send it to Vince and he tweaks it a bit and fixes the audio with his own programs, as well as adding music.

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

I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but four of the main actors live nowhere near me. Vincent E.L. (http://www.swenglish.nu) who plays Nick lives in Sweden. Ray Friesen (http://www.donteatanybugs.com) who plays Gary lives in California. Jez Layman who plays Random Person lives in Chicago. And I'm not even sure where Lewis Lovhaug who plays The Host lives (Linkara from http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/)!

Monsters Anonymous can be found online, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Monsters Anonymous - SciFinal Page

More behind the scenes from Monsters Anonymous below:

Bob and Seth

Bethany weilding a sword (dig the Ash photo in the background!)

Seth high five

Deadpanning

Joe Heath sporting a SciFinal shirt!