Posted: 30th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development
On the developmental question whether to include Jill in the ‘Sorority’ vignette, how much of her story to reveal, and what that meant for Jack.
As a writer and a consumer, I really like mysteries. I like the large unknowns with only hints and allusions, I like the unanswered “what happens next” more than a perfectly-wrapped package, and I don’t think it’s much of a secret that this type of storytelling is a big influence in Night Zero. Right in our first vignette ‘Jezebel‘ I went for the ending of ambiguous fates, rather than pegging down where Jezebel went, whether Tracey followed or stayed behind, and whether Clint died, turned, or survived. The entire backstory of ‘Special Delivery‘ remains a secret, as do Jezebel’s motivations in ‘Devon‘ and the fate of Tom and Sadie from ‘The Things You Take‘.
It was with this same desire for non-closure that I put together the ending of ‘Inertia‘, where Jill and Jack take their chances out in the world while Richard and Elisabeth remain in their room and await rescue or death. In a perfect fictional world, that would be the absolute end, but I already knew deep down that Jill would become one of the primary messengers in Episode Six, so it never was an air-tight ambiguity. That said, though, I thought leaving the time between ‘Inertia’ and Episode Six a mystery would be suitable, letting the reader wonder what happened to the two of them, how Jill ended up with the messengers, and whether Jack is still alive.
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Posted: 23rd September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Concepts & Development
On the reintroduction and transformation of Jill from the ‘Inertia’ vignette to ‘Sorority’, and the unexpected surprises along the way.
In every fiction serial, especially those in visual media, one of the great creative freedoms comes from the opportunity to show existing characters in dramatically changed roles. From alternate-timelines like Fringe and Buffy, to space/time-leaps as seen in Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, and all the hundreds of alternate/non-canon comic book lines, there are few things as rewarding to the long-time fan as the complete displacement of a character (or characters) into a new environment, a new perspective, and a new aesthetic.
With Night Zero’s non-linear vignette style, we’ve done a number of time-jumps with our characters with varying changes (but no parallel universes or time travellers… yet). The ‘Sisters‘ vignette placed the Nazarovs back in time but without much noticable shift in personalities, mainly because not much of their personalities had been revealed in the serial to that point. Yevgeniy’s appearance at the end of that story was a fun change in appearance, but his real character change was in the vignette ‘Devon‘, which looked at him as a fresher, more rambunctious leader. And of course there’s the character of Jezebel, who changes dramatically at every turn and yet still remains ever the same.
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Posted: 16th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Concepts & Development, Serial Episodes
On Night Zero’s accomplishment of five hundred published pages, a true milestone in photographic novel history.
Today represents a major milestone in Night Zero’s lifetime: our five-hundredth page. It’s only approximately our five-hundredth online update, between the occasional holiday non-update and the occasional two-page-spread double-update, but page 19 of Sorority is the five hundredth page in the Night Zero photographic novel collection, counting back through our vignettes, serials, and the pilot.
People sometimes asked why we didn’t maintain all our comics online, and honestly, it wasn’t a ploy to get you to buy our books (although if you do, we sure appreciate it). It was honestly because our early stuff just wasn’t as good, and we didn’t want new visitors to start at the beginning and give up based on the quality they saw. Our hope was that visitors would check out some of our best vignettes, see the high quality of our work, and be more forgiving when they bought the books and saw much different it was in the beginning. It was a strategic selection, showing only our best face, but not anymore.
That’s right: in celebration of this milestone, every single one of our five hundred pages is now available to read on nightzero.com, including the plotless pilot and the awkward first two episodes, with special forwards prepared for the occasion. If you haven’t read through some of our earlier works in a while, take a wander through the archives and revisit the past. You may be surprised by what you find there… I know I sure was.
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Posted: 9th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development
On the origin of the hallway chase sequence, a shelved vignette known only as the ‘relay vignette’, and how its transplant into ‘Sorority’ led to some interesting decisions.
The hallway action sequence that separates the two acts of ‘Sorority’ is a piece that I’m very proud to have included, for a brief but action-filled interstitial. The sequence itself is more than a year old, and was initally developed as the third act in a story that never got so far as a real name, only a working description: the relay vignette.
The relay vignette was a sequence of three separate scenes, hitting on three separate factions of post-apocalyptic Seattle and underscoring how, despite their differences (differences which are fully explored and understood in the serial), each faction can be brought to work together given the right motivation. Additionally, it was intended to be an action-heavy piece, developed during production of the action-light Episode Five, as a way to continue challenging ourselves and keeping things fresh.
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Posted: 2nd September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, On Location, Photography
On the first shoot day for the ‘Sorority’ vignette, covering the two sisters’ drama and the hallway escape sequence.
The first act of Sorority (Lucy and Dee) and the interstitial segment (the hallway chase) were shot together on our first day (of two) for the vignette. Based on some of our multi-day and multi-segment shoots in the past, we decided to shoot the days’ work out of chronological order and instead approach from most-difficult to least-difficult work. For the morning, when everybody was fresh and ready to go, we’d take care of the complex and extensive hallway action scene, and in the afternoon, when the cast and crew would be tired from the morning’s work, we’d shoot the relatively sedate and stationary sisters’ scene.
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On the theme of zombie stories with characters ‘trapped’ together, how the common motifs of these stories draw parallels to our experiences, and how Night Zero tries to avoid rehashing while continuing to explore this topic.
One of our favorite things to do in Night Zero storytelling, it seems, is to trap some people in a room in the midst of the zombie apocalypse and watch their relationships develop or collapse. We had first considered a “trapped” scene as early as Marion’s flashback in Episode One when her boyfriend comes home wounded, but in that case (for pacing reasons) we decided to jump straight into the action. So, our first true “trapped” story was our first vignette, ‘Jezebel’, and in the following years, we visited variations on this theme with the ‘Midnight’, twice over in ‘Inertia’, and now again in ‘Sorority’… not to mention the handful of unproduced scripts and treatments in our back-catalog, all addressing a small group of survivors stuck together in a collapsing world.
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