Maybe Sunshine is a web series I’m producing starring Lisa Hammer and her band Radiana. The show was pitched to me in 2014 as being tonally like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lisa and her husband, and show co-creator/director, Levi had some ambitious ideas about the project and I was sold on it pretty quickly. Since our initial meeting we’ve worked closely together to make the series happen. Being a low budget project shooting around schedules was necessary and with a large cast including the full band that stretched out production quite a bit. As of my writing this we are nearing the finish line, with our episodes in post-production and only a little more to pick up to finish up the project.
I connected with Lisa and Levi while I was looking for music for my film Time Signature. I discovered Lisa’s music and the album from her band Radiana, and I knew that’s what I wanted for the film. So, I reached out to them. We didn’t connect right away, but by coincidence Carolyn Maher, my Assistant Director for Time Signature (who then became my Producer for Meme), had an exchange with Levi about the web series he and Lisa wanted to do. Remembering that I had mentioned Lisa’s music and that I had said I reached out to her, Carolyn connected me with Levi. I had brunch with Levi and Lisa and discussed using the Radiana music for Time Signature and they talked to me about Maybe Sunshine and I was immediately interested in getting on board.
It took us a little bit of time to get off the ground and Carolyn also joined the project as a Producer. There were a few hard deadlines we had for shooting certain episodes based on certain events and availabilities. That really helped us get rolling. I brought in Director of Photography Myles Tyrer-Vassell, who I’d worked with on another web series where I served as Assistant Director. The first episode we shot was number 4. It features a showdown between our band, Radiana, and their rival, Late Cambrian (also a real band, and they’re wonderful and you should check them out). Late Cambrian was due to go on tour for several months and it was decided we wanted to shoot that episode with them before their tour. It was a bit of a crazy shoot running from a late call time to the early hours of the morning with all sorts of little issues and the team finding our pace working together, but it all came together and the results were great. The rough cut of that episode even won the Audience Choice Award at the Indie Works Web Series Month 2015 event. Soon after that we shot our other episode that had a hard deadline: the finale. I won’t get into exactly what the final episode is, but it ends pretty spectacularly. Since those initial shoot days we’ve been picking up the episodes when we can get everyone together and soon we’ll have wrapped the whole first season.
As of now we have some level of rough cut for almost every episode of our first season. It works! The show is funny. It looks good. It sounds good. It has some meat to it. I’m really looking forward to being able to premiere the show. I’m really looking forward to being able to promote the show too as we’ve got some interesting plans for that. I’m really excited about this project and the potential it has.
It’s been a fun series to produce and it’s been interesting for me personally to be able to sit back and take on mostly just a producer role. Most of my projects are my projects and that means that all the responsibility falls to me for those. This is a bit different in that my role is to support the vision of the creators Lisa and Levi. My role is to help them make this project what they want it to be. It’s different. It’s fun. I’m looking forward to being able to do it again on more projects.