The Men Behind Megabots

Geek To Me: Who first came up with the idea for Megabot?

Micah Fitzerman-Blue: Megabot was an idea that we hatched within our company (5432Films) that (being) myself, Nathan Kitada and Aaron Umetani, the co-directors. And Jonako Donley who's a producer.  And the idea, a lot of our sensibilities come from Saturday morning cartoons and video games just gone horribly wrong.

G2M: (laughs)

MFB: So we're big fans of Voltron and we watched over our little sister and brother's shoulders as they got into the 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers' and we thought 'here is a great opportunity just to kind of skewer it.  And we just started talking and you know on one of our endless kind of 'neo-meetings.' (We asked) what would happen if these hand-picked, multi-ethnic ideal American teenagers, who were lucky enough to fight crime in a big robot,  um, what if they just kind of kept doing it?  And what if the stakes didn't really change?  What if the problems of a quarter-life crisis, what if they sort of began to creep in?  And that's were we started thinking 'Bots was going to be a hilarious little web-series.

Megabot, Ep. 1
So what we did is reach out to our friends at Cherry Sky Films.  Cherry Sky is an independent film company and we decided to ask them if they would give us the financing to turn a whole season out.  So we shot five episodes and they said 'yes' graciously.  We cut it and did a lot of post-production. You'll notice on our 'gag reel' on YouTube that it was all shot on green screen, we did that later.  And then we found a home for it on Atom.com.



G2M: On average, how long did it take to produce an episode?

MFB: We shot all the episodes over the course of three days.

G2M: Wow!  That is fast!

MFB: And (there was) heavy pre-production and post-production.  The reason why we could do it so quickly was because we were shooting on green screen.  What we would do, and I'll try to describe this as visually as possible, is Nathan had an old desk and we put that in front of a green screen.  We took Nathan's desk chair and we made different swatches of color - you'll notice the different background of the chair corresponds to the color of the characters - and then Aaron drilled holes in the desk and screwed in two joysticks.

The Megabot Crew at work - photo courtesy Megabot.TV

We could shoot one character at a time.  So, one character would get in costume and the rest of the cast would sit just off-camera, and do the episode.  So we record one of them, do all of Red's episode one and he would switch off.  So they were all reading through the whole episode with all the characters, but only one character could be (recorded) on screen the whole time.

Then we reached out to the geniuses of Friend of a Friend Studios who do our post-production.  They built what you see, what is a composite image, along with those cool kind of 'slidey' animations, when two characters are talking, then three characters are talking then all five are.

And then - and here's the kicker - Aaron, our director, kinda went 'off the grid' for a few weeks.  And he built himself a robot, the 'Megabot' that you see, he built that all out of paper and cardboard.  And fitted it to himself, put it on (over) a Halloween astronaut costume (that was) shiny underneath.  Then we built a little cityscape outside in someone's backyard.  And we shot those components last of all.

The Megabot Robot - photo courtesy Megabot.TV

G2M: That was going to be my next question.  Who actually dresses up as the Megabot? (laughs) Were you aware he was going to do this?

MFB: Well we knew he was up - we had an idea of what he was doing, but he didn't want to show us the full thing until it was ready.  And it was a sight to behold.  It was awe-inspiring.  

We sort of joked between us (that) he was working so damn hard, all that time looking in the mirror, talking to himself kind of like in Taxi Driver, as the robot.

G2M: (laughs)

MFB: You know, getting into character.

G2M: With all the segments being shot separately and with so much interaction between the characters, did you find that especially difficult? Was there ever a time when someone did their take better when they were off camera than the time they were in costume?

MFB: You know, it was definitely a concern of ours to sort of simulate interaction even though there was only one character on screen at a time.  That was a real concern.  I think we owe any of the success really to the editing job that Nathan, our co-director did, along with Friend of a Friend, to make it seem like a conversation.  

But, yeah, there were certain takes that were 'oh god, if only they were on camera' but each actor in the cast gave us so much to work with so many different kinds of looks and different reads.  They were consummate professional comedy actors, so it made our lives pretty easy.

G2M: You have Fran Kranz of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse series as 'Blue.'  How did you guys land him?

Fran Kranz & Aaron Umetani - photo courtesy Megabot.TV

MFB: We are huge fans of Fran.  Nathan and my fiancé both went to Yale with Fran.  So, if we have something good enough, Fran will read it.  And we were lucky enough to get him on set for those days.  You know, I would be lying of I said the part wasn't written for him. It was who we had in mind from the very beginning and he said yes.  

G2M: The first episode revolves around 'Red.'  Do following episodes switch and center on other characters?  How do you see the formula happening as the series progresses?

MFB: Well, Red is the leader as the series begins.  And he's also the one who's having the most trouble in his head.

G2M: (laughs)

Miles Fisher as 'Red' - photo courtesy Megabot.TV

MFB: It is Red's decline - which we foreshadow in the opening - his decline is the catalyst for everyone else to have their own freak out.  It disrupts the whole ecosystem of the robot.  So Red basically goes on a bender and everyone else has to fill in for him.  And Blue, who's his best friend, has to cover for him and defend him.  But you know how long can you defend someone who has an obvious problem?  

G2M: And of course we'll find out as the series progresses.

MFB: Oh, definitely not.  What are you talking about?

G2M: (laughs)

MFB: Oh yes, of course.

G2M: The first season is how many episodes?

MFB: The first season is five episodes.  It adds up to about a half hour of content.  

G2M: Are there plans to release the series on DVD?

MFB: You know we hope so.  (But) at this stage, what we're most excited about is getting the people at Atom to give us a second season, and to have it up there in the first place.  Just to have it on Atom is an end in and of itself.

G2M: Micah, thanks so much for calling me.

MFB: Thanks a lot.  We'll geek out together sometime when you're in L.A.

G2M: Awesome!