(Cue the movie-trailer-guy voice.) Imagine a world where two thirds of
the Earth’s population has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Those
who are left have lost their ability to have children. As if that
wasn’t enough for the surviving Earthlings to deal with – a group of
aliens from another world have landed here, searching for a better life.
The Earthlings and aliens tough it out in
InZer0,
a new science-fiction series being filmed in Detroit. The show doesn’t
come to us from any of the major Hollywood studios; rather it is being
done on an independent basis by a talented group of individuals who
hope they will be able to sell it to the Sci-Fi Channel or a similar
network
However, the real story of this show isn’t a disappearing population or aliens from outer space. It is Detroit itself.
The creators of
InZer0
felt that they could have gone anywhere to tell this story. Yet, they
chose to film it in Detroit and to use Detroit’s talent and locations
to make it happen.
Jonny Victor
stars in the series as an ambitious courier named Themes. Victor is a
native of the Grand Rapids area who moved to Detroit a few years ago
and discovered a thriving community of independent filmmakers. He
worked on two feature length movies and several commercials before
taking on the lead role for
InZer0.
“Detroit’s
environment for filmmaking is so strong,” Victor insists. “I really
wouldn’t want to go anywhere else — especially someplace like L.A.
where I’d have to just wait tables for awhile.”
Forging Detroit's identity“Why not film in Detroit?” asks actor
Dave Durham, who plays Governor Winters — the man who presides over the fictional world of
InZer0,
trying to keep all of the various futuristic factions from killing each
other while trying desperately to create an heir for his
governorship.
“Detroit is my hometown,” Durham says. “If you
look at a place like New York, it’s a place that is already defined.
The same thing with West Coast, it’s already defined. Detroit, however,
is a city that is primed to find a new identity.”
That is why
the show is filled with Detroit – all of its shooting locations are in
and around the city. Every episode to date, for example, features at
least one scene that was filmed on board the Detroit People Mover,
which proves that, at least in a sci-fi future, mass-transit will
finally be popular in Detroit (but that’s a tangent for another
article).
The majority of the show’s cast, crew and writers all come from metro Detroit as well. The show was created by
Jamie Sonderman, who completed his first feature film,
The Passenger, and produced by Ed Gardiner of
Thought Collide Productions.
Of course, the thing that ultimately sets
InZer0
apart from all of the other independent film and video projects whose
corpses dot the landscape of American cinema is the overall quality of
this work and the public’s response to that quality. When the show’s
producers screened the latest installment at the Main Art Theatre in
early June, they sold every seat in the house.
Selling out a
showing is something that major Hollywood productions rarely manage to
do. The theater, in fact, added a second screening of
InZer0 in order to accommodate the overflow of Detroiters who were eager to see it.
From France, with loveHistorically apropos for a Detroit project,
InZer0 dips into an international, immigrant talent pool to produce the show.
Claude
Windenberger is a native of France who came to the Detroit area seven
years ago and settled in Hamtramck. “I like to start things from
nothing,” Windenberger explains. He plays the part of Scientist Straub,
who is one of Governor Winters’ key advisors in the fictional world of
InZer0.
“Detroit
is ready to burst out into something wonderful,” he says. “That is one
of the things that is happening with the group of people who are
involved in making
InZer0.”
Windenberger is joined on the set by fellow French transplant
Marc-Antoine Serou.
Serou joined the
InZer0
team as an editor and directed one of their episodes. Before coming to
Detroit, he worked in Paris, where he created commercials for clients
such as Nokia, Samsung and Motorola. He also worked in Toronto as the
lead editor for the movie
Dillenger's Diablos.
All of this talent, innovation and determination make
InZer0
one of the most interesting projects to happen in Detroit in years. The
story itself started with a very simple idea, but because of the people
behind it, the project has grown into something much more than that.
Whether
this group of independent filmmakers will be able to meet their
eventual goal of selling the show to the Sci-Fi Channel is something
that only time will be able to tell. The one thing that can be certain
is that they have proven that filmmaking, and amassing the creative
professionals needed to make it happen, is something that we can do
here. And that will be key to Detroit and its revival.
Episodes of InZer0
can be seen at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak on the first Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. A trailer can be seen online at http://www.knemonic.com/productions.htm#inzerotrailer.
Photos:
On the set of InZer0
Jonny Victor
An Alien in make up
Claude
Windenberger
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger