On March 1st, Kate Madison’s new fantasy action series will premiere free online. Ren: The Girl with the Mark is an ambitious show full of custom-made sets, props and costumes, yet it was made on a crowdfunded budget of just £36,000. We talked to Kate and her team to find out how this seemingly impossible project made it to the screen.
Born of Necessity
Cambridgeshire-based actor/filmmaker Kate Madison is no stranger to ambitious fantasy projects. Born of Hope, a Lord of the Rings fan film released online in 2009 which she directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in, has had 35 million YouTube views to date. “It created a bit of a buzz and it became known in the industry,” says Kate, who spent the next few years developing feature film ideas with her writing partner – and Born of Hope’s lead actor – Christopher Dane. “We spent what felt like a number of years just not going anywhere. We concluded that with the internet – there’s an audience there, our audience is there.”
After Kate came up with the idea of a girl shunned by her village for the strange markings on her face, she and Chris launched a Kickstarter campaign in summer 2013 with a £35,000 target. “It’s a lot of money to crowdfund,” Kate admits, “but not very much when you’re doing a fantasy show!”
Director Kate Madison. Photo: Laura Radford
Even with the money in the bank, preproduction was slow at first, with location scouting failing to uncover any suitable locations that were affordable. “We started to think, is there another option here?” Kate recalls. With co-producer Michelle Golder she began looking into disused warehouses where a set could be built, eventually discovering a huge depot in the Cambridgeshire village of Caxton. “We were going to get a really good deal because it was sitting empty. And we would have the freedom to build whatever we wanted.”
Ren Studio
When Kate, Chris, Michelle and costume designer Miriam Spring Davies moved into “Ren Studio” the production immediately kicked up a gear. “It’s fantastic nowadays that you can communicate with people all over the world, but you can’t beat a face-to-face conversation with someone and being able to look at the same picture and point at it and talk about it. It meant we were able to achieve a lot more in scope but also in quality.”
Over the summer of 2014, the production held regular “making weekends” where fans and followers of Kate’s work were encouraged to come along to Caxton and volunteer. “The joy of filmmaking for me is the collaborative nature of it,” says Kate. “People would come in and help and maybe end up designing a dress.” Led by Chris in set construction and Miriam in wardrobe, the volunteers put together over 100 costumes and built an impressive medieval village square in the depot’s car park.
Dagron (Nick Cornwall) and his daughter Ren (Sophie Skelton). Photo: Laura Radford
Principal photography for season one of Ren: The Girl with the Mark took place over 36 days between September 18th and November 10th 2014. Volunteers were again called upon to populate the scenes as extras. “Without villagers, there would have been no village,” says Kate. “It’s amazing that everyone turned up, working for free and spending their entire weekend on set with us.”
Great British Weather
The cast and crew often found themselves at the mercy of the Great British weather, with a number of days of shooting rained off. An excursion to Essex to shoot on location in Epping Forest proved no drier. “We had a night shoot,” recalls actress Dita Tantang (Lyanna), “and it rained relentlessly. It wasn’t stormy – it just rained and rained and rained.” Although it was a miserable night for the Ren team, the resultant footage provides a dramatic opening to episode one.
The crew of Ren: The Girl with the Mark in action. Photo: Ashram Maharaj
But it was weather of a different kind that posed the greatest threat to the production. In October, the tail-end of Hurricane Gonzalo swept through Cambridgeshire, wreaking destruction on Ren’s village set. “We lost a lot of thatch, we lost Ren and Dragon’s house, and we lost the shingle-roofed house,” Kate remembers. Fortunately the high winds came just as the crew were preparing to reconfigure the village square into a street, and with the help of the loyal volunteers, the set was soon patched up and pressed back into service.
It was a welcome change for the cast and crew to switch to interior shooting at the end of October. Chris – who was playing the role of Karn in addition to his set construction and co-writing duties – had the unique experience of performing in a set he had created for his own character. “I built Karn’s house,” he explains. “To me, that was one of the most pleasurable things to do. They always say Daniel Day Lewis is a method actor, but I bet he didn’t build the White House when he did Lincoln!”
Swordfights
A Kah’Nath officer (Daniel Tyler Smith) and Hunter (Duran Fulton Brown) square off. Photo: Laura Radford
“There was a lot of action throughout Ren,” says actor Duran Fulton Brown. As Hunter, he had plenty of fight choreography to learn. “Some of it was very challenging. We were working on quite a tight schedule, so we learnt a lot of things as we went along.”
“I’ve got the scars to prove that I’ve done the fighting!” laughs Chris. “Not only are you in costume, but you also have all these other elements to think about: the choreography, the swords, the safety, the drama.”
Ironically, it was an injury sustained before the shoot which caused the most problems. “There was a filming day when we had some of the fight team and extras as Kah’Nath soldiers on set,” recalls Dita, “and we had to plough through a lot of choreography. Unfortunately prior to that shoot day, I had dislocated my shoulder not even doing any fighting! I had such limited movement, it was so frustrating, a mental challenge as opposed to physical.”
Kate Madison directs Dita Tantang as Lyanna. Photo: Laura Radford
The Way Forward?
Wrapping the shoot heralded the beginning of fifteen months’ postproduction as sound editing, colour grading, visual effects and music composition were carried out once again by professionals donating their time around other commitments.
So are web series the way forward for filmmakers? “Ren is going to be an interesting experiment,” muses Kate. “Can people watch something that, if we stuck [all the 10-minute episodes] together would be a pilot for TV – will they watch that on the web in the same way they would watch a TV thing or will they get bored and go and watch cats? We’ll see how this first season goes. We’d love it to become sustainable and a show that we can keep putting out and people can enjoy.”
Kate certainly seems set to deliver on the promise of Born of Hope by immersing viewers in another epic fantasy world, this one entirely original and with the potential to tell a long-running story. With season one of Ren: The Girl with the Mark now complete, the five episodes will release weekly at 8pm GMT on the website rentheseries.com and on the Mythica Entertainment channel on YouTube from March 1st. Check out the trailer below to get a better feel for the project!
Neil Oseman
Neil Oseman has 20 years’ experience of independent filmmaking. After making two micro-budget features as director/producer in the early 2000s, he focused on cinematography. His DP credits include Netflix’s The Little Mermaid, and on Amazon: cult horror Heretiks, multi-award-winning comedy road movie Above the Clouds, and multi-award-winning fantasy series Ren: The Girl with the Mark. Visit Neil’s Instagram feed to see lighting diagrams from these productions and many others.
1 Comment
Absolutely hooked just by the captivating 12 minutes of the first episode and looking forward to more!! Thank you for bringing this story to the “computer” screen for me. Would love seeing this as a full on series and shown in the U.S. as well as all over the world. Good luck to you all in this remarkable endeavor.