ManHeat

It may look easily slapped together, but a one-man web series production is actually very challenging — often taking over 12 hours of total production time just to create a 60-second cut.

With my latest episode, I have a deepened appreciation for these 8 types of pros:

1 Camera Operator - Someone operate the camera and keep me in focus so I could focus on my performance.

2 Script Supervisor - I misspoke a few key lines, and missed one altogether I had to re-dub, so someone to feed me lines would have been helpful. I also forgot to wear reading glasses for one character. A supervisor would have saved me the trouble.

3 Stand-in - With operating the camera and remembering my lines, doing the trigonometry to figure out where to look became a bit overwhelming. Stand-ins would have been helpful, if not a few potted plants.

4 Make-up and Hair - Wanted to have a nice beard for the old guy. Instead I just dipped my face in flour. Didn’t work out as planned, but good enough.

5 Wardobe - This one was supposed to have a lot of tweed, dammit!

6 Key Grip - Setting up a proper, flattened green screen and lighting would have saved me not only time setting up, but hours of “fixing it in post”.

7 Editor - A seasoned pro with a sweet editing suite and muscle memory for all the shortcuts likely would have taken just 1 hour to do what took me 8.

8 Executive Producer - A real stakeholder who I could pitch the project to for a second eye, offer improvement suggestions, and say yay or nay to giving it the greenlight altogether.

Honorable Mention: Acting/Dialogue Coach - Though I think I sufficiently pulled off cartoonishly aristocratic Englishmen.

Indeed, one must be truly passionate about what they’re doing to put so much work into something that reaches such a small audience. But when the day comes that I have the budget to not have to do everything myself, I’ll know who to reach out to first.

If you’re considering creating your own one-person web series, beware of these hats you’ll need to wear. (And hats off to these people!)

Did I leave anyone out? Please let me know in the comments.