Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy - Travis Richey

Posted by Steve on 24 August 2010 | 2 Comments

Tell us about your sci-fi web series.

Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy is a sitcom web series about a guy who loses his boyfriend and puts out a Craigslist ad for new roommates. When the only two to respond are a Robot and a Ninja, he is forced to accept his quirky new roommates, and over time, even become friends. It takes a lot of queues from sitcoms of the 70's and 80's, like Three's Company and Perfect Strangers.

The style of the show is along the lines of Arrested Development with very strong influences from the writing of Joss Whedon.

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

About three years ago, X-Box was having a contest where they wanted web series pilots, so I got a few of my friends together from ACME Comedy Theater (a sketch and improv theater in Los Angeles) and had a brainstorming session. Curtiss Frisle offered up three concepts - one of which was Ninja, Robot & Gay Guy. There wasn't much more than the title and the idea that it was a roommate comedy, but I was just starting out in web production with The Musecast (A year-long documentary project that ran for two seasons on Youtube), and we simply didn't have the finances to produce anything, so I sat on the idea for two years. Finally, after I'd been dating Rob [Wood, Director] for a while, we started talking about producing stuff that he could direct and I could act in, and Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy (RNGG - the title had switched around by then) was at the top of my list. I'd met Eric Loya a few years ago, and he actually was part of the second season of The Musecast. From that, I was able to get a sense of how seriously talented a writer he was, and asked him to be the head writer for the show. He said yes, and then not much happened for a short while. Rob and I were looking for an apartment, with an eye for something we could also use as a set for both RNGG and another series I do called 2 Hot Guys in the Shower. We found a great place and then out of the blue Eric sent me three episodes of the show to read. In his email he said, I'm not in love with these at all, so if they suck, that's okay, I just wanted to do something. I was laughing out loud at the scripts, so I decided, with no equipment and VERY little money, to go into production the next month, July 2009.

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

The show itself is an homage to the great 70's and 80's roommate sitcoms like Three's Company and Perfect Strangers, but we also draw heavily on all those shows where there's a being in the house who shouldn't be. ALF, Bewitched, and to a lesser but more thematically similar extent, Small Wonder. I've always been a huge nerd, and almost all my stories have had some sort of supernatural element to them. I'm an avid comic reader, though my budget for comics has dried up in recent years. I love video games. I think Star Trek is probably the best franchise in the world, but I also loved Star Wars (up through the Timothy Zahn books - I think Lucas effectively killed that part of my childhood with the prequels). I love Joss Whedon's various series and his writing. He's amazing.

I know that Eric Loya is also a big fan of Joss Whedon, and is heavily influenced by his writing style. We both really appreciate smart writing. We like a story where you don't have to tell your audience everything. Let a plot detail simmer for a little bit. We'll come back to it. Wait, did Robot just say he was going to kill everybody? When are we going to hear more about that? Don't worry, we will. :-)

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

Oh, the technical aspects of the show. This is a tough one, because we have very little to work with. I've put in about $10,000 into the first season, which is a minuscule amount. We shoot on a Canon Vixia HF200, which is a beautiful little AVCHD camcorder. Only $600 on Amazon, but it's full HD, and it's CMOS sensor gives really nice detail in low light. In episode three we switched from putting the camera on a tripod to using a Glidecam HD1000. That gives the camera itself some life, and I think has gone a long way to giving the show more energy. I edit all the episodes myself, and I use Final Cut Studio, which I basically taught myself how to use from scratch on a short film I wrote called Another Life (an unconventional superhero story, by the way - see it on my Youtube channel sivartis). You can see as Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy goes on that I continue to learn new things about filming and editing. For instance, I didn't know how to properly color correct until episode 9. I cringe at some shots in earlier episodes, but I promise, they're all going to be fixed for the DVD release. But when you're working with no budget, you kind of just have to make it happen, right? We're hoping to up our production value a little with a new camera for our next series, as well as subsequent seasons of RNGG.

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

Ha! Yes, we've got plenty of stories. All sorts of plans that went wrong. Adaptation has been a must on our set. For instance, we originally planned on shooting the first 4 episodes in one day. We got through one and a half. We originally were going to work with two cameras, to make things faster, but that backfired. And worst of all, while we were shooting "Origin Story," the combination of the HDMI cable to the monitor and the XLR microphone cable for the boom caused us to pick up a Mexican radio station, which was really loud and heavily featured a women screaming. We ended up switching the boom mic over to our second camera, and everything was suddenly ok. The sound seemed a little off, but still much better than the Screaming Lady. As it turned out, we had moved the boom mic, but not the monitoring headphones, so still had an overpowering Screaming Lady on audio. We ended up having to ADR the entire episode from scratch, complete with foley.

Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy can be found online, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy - SciFinal Page

More behind the scenes from Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy below:

Eric Loya, Ryan Churchill, and Rob Wood on location.

On locatiion with RNGG.

Rob Wood, Brian Giovanni, Travis Richey, and Nicky Brendon on location with RNGG.

Travis Richey and Ryan Churchill on screen as Eric Loya looks on.