Almost immediately after the cancellation of our web series, Viral, we were introduced to social media consultant and popular tech-blogger Jennifer Van Grove. She approached us in hopes of getting an interview about the life and death of the show, and we happily obliged. We set up a few cameras in the studio for a low-key interview, which eventually ended up on one of Jen’s many blogs, Startup SD. Jen and NAS maintained a close friendship from then on, and she often sent potential clients our way. Finally, around September of 2008, we got one that stuck.
Jen introduced us to Rob Lewis at the September SD Tweetup, a businessman who had an idea for a web series that he wanted to pursue. His partner, and would-be writer for the series, Darren Elwood of Strike TV, couldn’t make it that night, but we met him soon after at our first meeting. To our surprise, their idea was based on Jen herself and revolved around the life she led balancing her online and offline persona. At first Rob and Darren were interested in doing a reality-based show in which we’d actually follow Jen’s day-to-day activities, but everyone realized pretty quickly that this would be an intrusive, not to mention time-consuming task. Darren went to work writing immediately, and after a few months and several rewrites, came up with the script for our show: Jenn 2.0. Jenn 2.0 is a fiction based loosely on social media consultant Jen Van Grove, and follows Jenn as she deals with the struggles of maintaining real-life relationships while being consumed with her very online-based work and the endless online networks she is a part of.
We started production on the pilot in mid November, which spanned over the course of three days. All of our shooting took place in downtown San Diego, as we wanted this piece to be very reflective of the city’s culture and lifestyle. As with our first narrative piece, Cody directed, Josh produced, I D.P.’d, and Kevin was our go-to guy. It’s safe to say that we all had a blast shooting this piece, but I’d probably consider myself the luckiest of the group. I was privileged enough to get to practice with and operate the steadicam that we rented solely for this production. It would be an understatement for me to say that it was FRIGGIN AWESOMEEEE!!! By the end of the shoot I had a really sore back, really sore legs, and was absolutely in love with the steadicam and wanted one of my very own. Unfortunately, that’s not in the company budget quite yet, but perhaps one day we’ll get there. As for the show, I think we’d all agree that we did one heck-of-a job on production and, as always, learned a ton. I’ll say it a million times if I have to: the best way to learn about production is to do it, and we’re completely thankful for every opportunity we get to do video production. Our Pilot for Jenn 2.0 is currently airing at Koldcast TV and Strike TV–go check it out and tell us what you think.
