With the fall of some of the early web content studios like maniaTV, 60Frames and ABC/Disney’s Stage 9, there were some web series projects that went down with their ships that we thought might never see the light of day. Trenches, a sci-fi action series from creator Shane Felux was one such project. Our last check in with Felux was in August of 2008, when Stage 9 had released its pricey comedy series Squeegees to mixed results. A few months later ABC shuttered its nascent digital studio, leaving Trenches in distribution purgatory.
Now the series has found a new home, with Sony Pictures Television licensing the project from ABC to be released starting February 16, 2010 on Crackle. Set in the future on a a distant war torn planet, the story centers around two groups of opposing soldiers fighting against each other only to realize that the real enemy is something else. The 10-episode series, each one being about 5 to 7 minutes, will roll out with three on the first day and then continue steadily through March 5.
Shane Felux still describes himself as “a little indie guy making films in my basement.” He first popped onto the map of online fans—and ABC’s digital execs—with his breakout Star Wars Revelations fan film and follow-up, Pitching Lucas, which in 2006 won both the George Lucas Selects Award and the Audience Choice Award at the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards at Comic-Con. When ABC execs called him up he ended up pitching what would become Trenches over the phone, using a mocked up web site that he built to walk them through the concept.
Felux, who directed and produced the series which was based on an original story by Felux’s wife Dawn Cowings and Sarah Yaworsky, pitched three different levels of the project to ABC—one being “easy and cheap,” another being “middle hard,” and then an “extremely hard” one. ABC asked for the latter, essentially “calling my bluff,” as Felux recalls. Though he thought it would take about $1 million to pull off that elaborate version, he was given a reported budget of $250,000, similar to what was spent on Squeegees.
This meant “calling in a lot of favors, and paying myself very little,” said Felux who still had to work his 9 to 5 day job while shooting. Still, he was able to assemble a talented ensemble cast that included Mercy Malick, Aaron Mathias, Micci Sampery, Lev Gorn, Hong Chau, Daz Crawford; Kelley Slagle , Scott Nankivel, Tom Reuel, Orlando Williams-De La Rosa, Chaney Tullos and Paul Stober. The shoot was in April of 2007 in Northern Virginia and Maryland and Felux and his crew managed to get through the 56 pages in 14 days, all the while balancing night shoots with his day job.
