Green Thumb is a web series I worked on from October 2020 through June 25, 2022.
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Questions:
What does it mean to take up responsibility vs letting the ball drop?
Is it cool to live your life around drugs?
What do we do when our surroundings are less than ideal?
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I wrote, edited, produced, Directed, and lent my voice to the series.
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I also art-directed and produced two paintings.
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The first painting (on the right), I worked with Chelsea
Miller to create an image that was a visual
representation of what the main-character felt inside.
I asked her to create a mix of a tiger, wolf, and a shark.
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I didn't know it at the time, but the style trash polka,
and the color scheme would end up being a large
thread through the entire series.
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The second painting (on the left), I worked with
Tom Tesser to create a combination of two visions I had
during deep meditative states (using this guided
meditation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9R2Y6UMbE0&ab_channel=TheHonestGuys-Meditations-Relaxation).
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The point of the second painting was to have a bookend
to the series, and to use as a cover for IG when I
released the series.
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Working with both Tom and Chelsea was a pleasure,
and each way of working was very different.
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When working with Chelsea, I approved the sketch,
and she surprised me with the result.
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When working with Tom, he and I were in contact
every day for about 3 weeks tweaking the details,
talking about life, and what we wanted this painting to
mean.
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The shooting script we ended up using was draft 51.
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I started working on a short film about a girl who had
just broken up with her girlfriend and went back to her
ex's place because she saw a candle in a window, which
reminded her of her ex. I think the script came out really well, and someday I'd like to shoot it, but when I finished the script and got to the budgeting phase, I realized I did not have the skill to produce the short nor the budget to afford it.
I spent about a week or two trying to fit the same story into a new setting, but nothing was working. The characters weren't jelling like they should; the emotions didn't make sense in the new context, and the climactic scene was killed.
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One day, I sat down to write, and magically, Green Thumb came out in one rush. I had only wanted to make a short film, and when I saw that the script I'd written was 25 pages, I was frustrated. I spent a few weeks trying to cut it down, but nothing was working -- so I ran with it.
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I did know, though, that every time I see a first-time director's piece online, and it's 10+ minutes (sometimes running over 30...), I get disgusted at the hubris of an unproved talent demanding so much of a time commitment from a first time audience. In that respect, it let me know I needed to make this work episodic so as to not demand as much time, yet to allow me to tell the story I needed to tell.
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I made an LLC (Steven M. Fried Productions), wrote up a budget, put myself on a stringent budget to afford the work, and began the pre-production process.
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- I interviewed talent (eventually hiring James Matthew and Brooke Baumgart
- I hired Charlie Lederer to run sound and cinematography
- I hired makeup artists
- I setup the shoots
- We get to work
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On Jan 9 2022, I had finally wrapped production.
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It took me a month to finally be able to sit down and begin the edit without cringing at everything we'd shot. Turns out you need some distance to be able to see things objectively.
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After about 2-3 months, I finished the edit.
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I directed and produced all of the title cards for all the episodes with Hossein Askari.
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That was a wild process. I knew we needed to have graphic visuals, which would hypnotize the eye (through some type of overload/disassociation) and provide a cue as to entering another realm/world.
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After 3 months of back and forth conference calls/online chats (as Hossein is literally across the world from me), Hossein was able to level up his game and provide some visually stunning work.
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I then hired Joe Cutick to do the color.
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I worked with Chris Perepezko and Walter Bianco to complete the sound design and mixing.
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On June 25 2022, I held a premier in my backyard.
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I setup a screen, and a few friends and myself sat back, ate some pizza, had some drinks, and watched the first 4 episodes of Green Thumb.
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It was a draining few years working on this project, and I'm extremely glad to have gone through the process. Now, I'm releasing, rebuilding, and looking forward to my rebirth.
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In Mid-October, 2022, I will officially begin my next project.
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Until then...
