Journal Zero

If you live in the Seattle area, you can now pick up a copy of Night Zero: Volume One at any of these fine comic stores. Worldwide fans can purchase directly from us, or on Amazon.com.

This hallway sequence is visually one of my favorites from this episode, because of the great textures and details of the location. From the gritty brick wall to the Windows-screensaver-esque pipes on the ceiling, this is the kind of complex background that HDR really takes well to. The shooting space itself was not ideal, constrictive not just in being terribly narrow, but also in only having two electrical outlets in the span of the entire hallway. Rigging the lights and framing the shots wasn’t easy, but the sense of confinement clearly comes through, and I’m pleased with how the tone changes from the conference room to the basement.

The challenge of not using any green-screen or digital backgrounding is the need for us to find shootable locations for every sequence in the story. While illustrated comic artists have no restrictions on where their characters can go, we have to produce Night Zero from the mindset of a film crew, making adjustments to the action and dialogue to balance out what the writer first drafted and what the location scouts deem feasible. On the other hand, using still photography instead of motion film gives us the advantage of jumping from set to set and blending the locations together without having to actually show them connecting.

I’m reminded of the television show The West Wing, where the White House set was initially split between two locations with an identical hallway in each one. The camera could never show the characters walking from one half of the set to the other—they always had to cut in that hallway. Night Zero can have sets on opposite sides of town that act as adjacent rooms, blended seamlessly together with intuitive framing. While this is something we regularly plan for, it happens that this hallway and quarantine room are both in the same location—a theater rental space in the Seattle Center. The rooms are regularly used by local theater and improv groups as rehearsal spaces, and through special permission we were able to shoot this brief sequence in the hallway as well.

We’ve now got our first introduction to the peacekeepers, the closest thing to a military and police presence in the new world. They’re the second of the three major factions in this story (the messengers being the first), and are definitely the most expensive to suit up. In episode three we’ll meet the leaders of the squad, called the 151st, as well as their adversaries from the third faction.

In other news, the “characters” and “gallery” pages on nightzero.com have been merged and updated into a new “world” page, which will continue to grow with background information and supplemental materials about the world of Night Zero. New characters will be added to the page as they appear in the comic, two or three more this episode and a whole bunch in the next. The new gallery photos include art from episodes one, two, and three, so if you’re sensitive about possible spoilers, consider yourself warned.

On Monday I’ll be heading to Germany for a couple of weeks, but if all goes to plan the comic and blog updates will continue as scheduled. When I return we’ll be going right into our booth at the Emerald City ComiCon, and we hope to see many of you there.

Eli photographs himself photographing himself during setup.

Forest is happy to be on set

Katrina adjusts her costume before the shot

Alexandra keeps the cast updated on the shoot progress

Alex and I wait around the corner for the shot to be cleared

Justin watches while Eli plays with lens flares

Forest and I review the framing before Katrina's shot

Alex stands his ground

The Volume One books have arrived, and are simply gorgeous. We’ve already started shipping out some preorders, and will have them all en route by next week. If you haven’t yet ordered your copy, it’s easy to do so now.

At long last we’ve returned to Marion, Claire, and all our friends in the New City. While “Jezebel” was a fun and interesting diversion, it feels good to be back on track and moving forward with our serial story “City Planning.” This second episode, “Quarantine,” will run until mid-Summer, and has got plenty of fun within it.

This opening office scene, continuing where we left off, also sets a new record for time-to-release on Night Zero. Half the scene was shot on September 28th of last year, which is consistent with our usual 4-5 month leadtime, and half of the scene was shot on July 6th, more than seven months ago. The second-place prize for lag goes to episode three and a scene which was shot two weeks ago, but won’t be online until August (six months from now).

These office shoots were the first time the full cast met each other, and the last time they’ll all be together for quite a while. It was a lot of fun working with such a diverse crew—Alix, an acquaintance of ours, Alexandra, an improvisor at UW, Ben, a local actor who attended a casting call, Jana, a local improviser who I’d worked with, Katrina, a UW actor and improviser, and Tamara, a UW student who also attended a casting call. Of this team, only Alix, Alexandra, and Katrina had met each other prior to Night Zero, although by this point Katrina and Tamara had shot a number of sequences together.

The downside to having all the principles at the same time, though, is the challenge of getting all their characters out there with minimal screen time. It’s not until episode three, when we have a variety of one-on-one scenes between different combinations of characters, that we can really explore each one individually. Marion and Claire being the exception, of course… we’ll be exploring their relationships and histories in great detail these coming weeks. But at the cost of individual face time, we gain this great group dynamic and can play with the different approaches each character has towards the others.

This scene also ends our small cast list, which was a simple way to keep the production under control but limiting in what we could do. These five that we know and love will be joined by a wide assortment of supporting characters, from suave to creepy, saviors to killers. Night Zero has grown enough this past year that casting has become quite a bit easier—as our circles expand and our reputation spreads, dozens more people join our network every month to help us fill the cast and crew registers. That means more stories to tell, more relationships to reveal, and of course, more potential victims of infection, conspiracy, and malice. I can’t wait.

Forest sets up for the establishing shot while I survey the set decorations.

Eli brought his fisheye lens to the shoot this day.

Forest Gibson in charge.

Setting the establishing shots.

Director adding some direction.

You'd be surprised at how much a table-sized map can cost.

Flynn balances our light sources.

When in a room windowed on both sides, reflections must be taken into account.

Framing, lighting, directing, and acting, all at the same time.

The DP at work.

The messengers await their cue.

This is the last week to preorder Night Zero: Volume One, so if you’d like to have a beautiful, tangible copy of the first batch of Night Zero stories, don’t delay.  The Jezebel vignette ends on Monday with a double-page update, we hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the survival stories of some new characters. Maybe we’ll see them again later on (wink wink).

The original Night Zero concept did not follow a serial episode arc like we’re currently producing—the design was to have a variety of unique characters, each with their own stories and objectives, all living their lives independently from (but connected to) each other. Stories would be told, cycling between the characters, as they developed and intertwined over time. Our first script was designed and drafted in this vision, but before production began we revisited this approach and decided that, while an interesting story mechanic, it would be too scattered and difficult to follow in a webcomic format, and that characters would be forgotten before they returned, storylines dismissed before they had a chance to gain traction. At that point we shifted to the six-episode story arcs that we’re now producing, and that’s got us to where we are today.

The vignette approach is a return back to that concept, of telling short complete stories about new characters and new situations, and it’s a ton of fun. We have a catalog of vignette stories that we’ll be producing this year, exploring as many sides and stories as we can fit. Vignettes have an great return-on-investment, where one day’s work produces ten to twenty pages of comic (compared to the serial episodes, which have ten to fifteen shoots over a few months, yielding forty to fifty pages). Even more exciting is the opportunity to work with new actors, who wouldn’t have an immediate place in the serial comic.

The Jezebel vignette is an extreme example of the fast-track production process. We had originally scheduled the production of a fan-contributed story (yes, we love fan stories), but sudden and dramatic weather postponed the production indefinitely. In the span of a week, the untitled “garage” story was conceived, drafted, given characters, cast, and storyboarded. Nearly the entire comic was shot in one day, with three actors we’ve wanted to work with but never had the opportunity. It was a great chance for them to be a part of Night Zero, and was a fun break for myself and Forest to produce something dark and gritty without the weight of the serial comic.

The day began early with coffee and egg casserole while all the cast and crew met, got costumes and makeup, and scoped out the shoot location. Even though we had designed Jezebel to avoid the cold-weather-troubles that shelved the previous vignette, we were still shooting in a subterranean, unheated, concrete garage. Being on-camera was the enviable position, standing under a toasty-warm trio of 650W stage lights. As always, the blood became sticky and the air remained cold, but everybody trooped on and we ended up with something fabulous. The first page went online the very next day.

Because of the fast-track that Jezebel took, the script lagged behind a bit on copy-editing and revision work, so the following two weeks were applied to the story even while it was running online. After receiving some cuts, reworkings, and substantial backstory reveals, we had a second shoot to fill in the gaps and flesh out the story a little more. It’s rare that we overhaul a story so substantially, but the difference made was absolutely worth it.

The postponed vignette is now scheduled for production in March, when it’s reasonable to have a horde of scratchers running around without coats, and will run online mid-summer. Around that time we’ll be producing another vignette, perhaps one we’re holding in our portfolio, perhaps the original episode we wrote last year, or perhaps one submitted by our readers. In the meanwhile, we’ll continue work on Episode Three (which had its first production shoot last week), and move tirelessly forward towards Episodes Four, Five, and Six.

Next week we return to the story of Marion and Claire, the New City, and the warehouse fires. Episode Two: “Quarantine”, begins Wednesday.

Graham gets gored. Gross.

The entire shoot was in a 9' x 11' space. Cozy, but freezing.

Characters at a costume party, how fun!

Tracy was a bee, in fact. Hence the silly headband antennae.

Graham seems... surprised, that there's a camera here.

The beautiful Meagan, waiting patiently for her shot.

The lights were the only source of heat on the set.