The Journey

The Ultra Clean journey from October last year to now has been a very exciting and satisfying one.  It’s been amazing for me to see the pilot script I wrote go from paper to the screen, to see such a dedicated and professional team form around the project.

Since its premiere last month, the Ultra Clean pilot has had over 1000 views on YouTube.  A huge thank you to everyone who tuned in and watched the crazy antics of our favourite cleaning team.  Since that time, pilot director John Wood and I have had a lot of feedback – good and bad – about the show.  A lot of people loved the characters and the humour and were eager to see more episodes.  There were also a lot of people who felt the show could be better.  John and I have spent the last few weeks sorting through that feedback and working out our next move.

It’s with some regret that we announce that we won’t be making any more episodes of Ultra Clean.  Making the pilot was rewarding and fun, and we learnt a lot from the process.  One of the big things we learnt was that we can do better.  We can make a shorter, sharper, punchier show.  So that’s what we’re going to do.  I’m currently going back to the blank page and scripting an entirely new series.  When the scripts are ready and we know what our characters look like, we’re going to start production from scratch, building our team of actors and crew from the ground up, according to the needs of the new show.

In some ways this is a sad announcement, but more than anything we hope it’s an exciting one.  If you liked Ultra Clean, there’s a better show coming.  If you didn’t like it, there’s a better show coming.  You can’t lose!

We’ll continue to make announcements about the new show via this blog and at the Ultra Clean Facebook page.  You definitely haven’t heard the last of us.  Once again, we’d like to thank everyone who watched the pilot and who has followed our story so far.  And of course a massive thank you to the cast and crew who put so much into the Ultra Clean pilot.  You guys were awesome!

Okay, now, back to that blank page…

Presenting... Our Pilot

Our Premiere!

The pilot episode of Ultra Clean is going to premiere on YouTube on Thursday the 10th of January!

It's been a long road to get here, and at the same time it's all happened very quickly.  It's hard to believe we've fit so much into just a few short months.  But we've come up with a pilot we're very proud of and that we hope will attract the attention of viewers and sponsors alike.

Ultra Clean now has a YouTube channel at youtube.com/ultracleantv, so go over and check it out.  That's where the pilot will be premiering, and it's where we're currently running an Ultra Clean promo.  Watch the promo 17 times - it gets better and better!

Final Edit!

We have now officially signed off on the final edit of our pilot! Well, except for the music, that is. We still need to put music on the show. And maybe we'll tinker just a little bit with the sound. And there's maybe one or two cuts that could be tightened a bit. But essentially we're completely and finally signed off.

Here's wishing everyone out there a fantastic holiday season from the whole Ultra Clean team. Stay tuned at the beginning of January, because 2013 is going to be the year of Ultra Clean!

After the shoot...

We shot our pilot last Saturday and it went great! It was a thrill for me to see this brilliant cast and crew come together and put all their talent into some silly words I wrote.

Now it's time to edit, which is going to take a while but will be tonnes of fun. Hours upon hours of fun in a tiny, enclosed space, watching the same moments over and over again until they lose all meaning. As I say, fun!

We'll keep you up to date on the blog and on the Ultra Clean Facebook page. Come for the coffee, stay for the intensity! (I don't know what that means.)

Show Week

It's show week!  We shoot this week!  Everything we've done so far has been leading up to this moment.  This is the week the script, the actors and the vision of the director come together.  We're going going to capture our pilot episode, and thus the essence of our show this week.  And I'm beyond excited about it.  I'm shrieking like a marmoset about it.

This is a marmoset:

Wait, that's a marmoset?  Seriously?  Do those things even shriek?  Then what the hell am I doing?!

Regardless of all that, I'm a happy fella this week.  A happy, busy fella.  We've been running around locking down costume, props, locations and making sure the script delivery is smooth as silk.  It's nuts and it's going to get nuts-er.  But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Hooray for the industrial revolution, which step-by-step led to this moment in time, effectively making all of this possible!

A Writing Meeting

We had a writing meeting last night. Normally a writing meeting for a comedy show means sitting in a sweaty room with a bunch of men, drinking in the odours of jam doughnuts and feet. But ours was a much more civilised affair.

Joining me, the head writer, were actor James Chapman, series director John Wood and friend of the series Sally Davies. See? We're already better than most comedy shows because we have a woman writing with us. We'll probably be pulling in some more writers as the series progresses, but our little group of four was perfect for a start.

L to R: James Chapman, Tristram Baumber, Sally Davies (John Wood taking the picture with his hands)

Together, we started tossing episode ideas around, as well as little scraps of ideas that couldn't possibly make a whole episode but were nonetheless trapped in our brains and had to see the light of day otherwise our heads would explode. Ideas of that type were mainly mine.

We're planning on writing 12 episodes, so now is the time to lay out the plans for what each of those episodes will be. Lots of ideas were suggested, although sadly no episodes about robots. I like TV shows about robots. As well as individual stories, we were also planning out some long-term story arcs. These are the stories that take place over whole seasons, or even complete runs of a show. For example, on a TV show about robots, the writers would plan out everything that was going to happen to the robots as the show progressed, episode by episode. Or on Lost, the writers wouldn't plan anything, they'd just pretend to.

On our show there are several stories that are going to continue episode to episode. It's our way of making the show a bit "soapy" and getting people to tune in each week. I'll talk about this more in our next blog but right now a giant robot that claims to be my secret brother-in-law is taking me and my whole family to court, risking our fortune, and I have to open this envelope containing my important medical test results.

(See what I did there?)