Thank goodness for great writing. When I watch a new series, I want to be hooked from the first episode. I want to be familiar with the main character and I want to be invested. I found all of that and more, because I couldn’t stop watching until I reached the last episode, 8. I’m talking about INSiDE, a pandemic inspired comedic thriller, grappling with one’s reality and paranoia. The cast is flawless and Morgana O’Reilly (Rose), Josh Thomson (Adrian) and Sam Snedden (Sam James) carry the bulk of the weight but honestly, everyone is extremely talented in this series and it’s not a wonder why it won Best Drama, Best Screenplay and was nominated for Best Directing at the 8th Annual T.O. WebFest!
The story is brilliant and the idea so unique. It breaks all the rules and I absolutely loved every episode. It’s co-created by an extremely talented group of writers, Shoshana McCallum, Daniel Musgrove, Peter Salmon. Some of the other writers include Thomas Sainsbury, Nic Sampson and Kura Forrester. Peter Salmon also directs the 8 episodes like a boss! With the series being shot in one location, it’s not easy getting interesting shots/angles – however, Peter has quite a flare for marrying the camera lens to the actor’s performance. So much so that he’s actually married to the very likeable lead character, Rose (Morgana O’Reilly). Peter Salmon is a multi-Award-Winning director and multi-nominated for Secrets & Lies, Nowhere Boys, Letters About the Weather and won Best Director for one of my favourite shows, Wanted. Inside is a 2-time winner and nominated for best directing.
The 8th Annual T.O. WebFest ran from July 16 – 23rd, 2021. It was held online for the second year in a row. The T.O. Webfest is a multi-day festival that connects, promotes and celebrates independent content creators from Canada and around the world. Focusing on digital content creation, the festival will feature panels and workshops, special events, awards, web series screenings from July 1st – 31st via Filmocracy.com, and much more.
“Some of the most innovative content creators are coming out of the web series world. If you want to see the future filmmakers and showrunners of tomorrow, T.O. Webfest is the best place to meet these creators and to see their work firsthand,” said Rodney V. Smith, of WebSeries Canada. “Canada has one of the largest and most active web series communities in the world, and we’re proud to showcase their work alongside some of the best international content.”
I had the extreme honour and privilege in speaking with one of New Zealand’s best, Peter Salmon and I got to meet his wife, as we spoke over Zoom. Roll the tape!
HNMAG “You’ve been writing, directing and producing for quite some time now. Do you prefer to wear all three hats?”
PETER “… I dunno. I’ve been questioning what it means to be a director these days. I think the writing comes in handy and makes the directing a little better, but I don’t often physically write, I sorta collaborate with writers.”
HNMAG “You’re listed as a writer in the series and also as a creator. Whose concept was it before the writing started?”
PETER “I have a couple of collaborators that I work closely with. We were all on Covid lockdown here in New Zealand and we all wanted to make something. New Zealand On The Air (NZ On Air) is our government funded body and they put out a fast Covid response pitch, looking for Covid related production for ‘on air’. The deadline was in one week, so we all sat and chatted on Zoom about what we could do. I was pretty keen on doing a modern take on Alfred Hitchcock’s, Rear Window – using the screen as the window. We went down this path of someone that was able to observe people’s Zoom calls. They work for a video conference company and they observe a murder in the background… but did they really observe a murder or didn’t they? We pitched it and we got the money, which wasn’t a lot. It was 19,000.00, which I believe is cut in half in Canadian dollars. We wrote the pitch in a few hours and brought a broadcaster onboard that was willing to take us through the steps. This all happened within a few days and once we got the money, we had to sit down to write it. We soon discovered that the idea of her observing a murder and investigating it, was going to be quite tricky because we weren’t allowed to leave our houses. I’m luckily married to a good actress that plays the lead and it was decided that we’d do it at my house and I’ll shoot it on my iPhone. We decided to write bigger and developed a roommate and a villain. Luckily, by the time we were finished writing, lockdown levels had gone down and we were able to have a small crew. We pulled in our frames and made it at my house.”
HNMAG “I really like the balance you maintain between the characters virtual reality and her own reality. Was it difficult to strike that balance?”
PETER “We definitely didn’t want it to be all computers and Zoom calls. It was really important for us to have a balance outside those screens. We shot all the Zoom meetings separately, recording them much like we’re doing now. That was quite a technical undertaking. While we were shooting the main unit footage, we were also shooting the Zoom calls at night with a bunch of other actors and friends. We were also asking people to submit stuff of people chatting.”
HNMAG “When I watched it, I didn’t realize you had based it on the story of Rear Window, but now that you mention it, I see the similarities.”
PETER “That show has always interested me and I’ve always wanted to make a version of it. I love the paranoia of it and the uncertainty of not knowing what you saw was real or not real, and what goes on in your mind. It’s definitely the theme of Inside. It was a great opportunity to use that but in a digital modern age.”
HNMAG “How much in advance of shooting an episode would you write the script?”
PETER “What we did was, we wrote the entire series from start to finish, in 2 weeks. We organized a Zoom writer’s room with the writers and we met for 3-4 days. We plotted the entire series, then assigned 2 episodes to each writer and told them they had 2 days to write it. They went away to do that and while we were starting to do notes on the first 4 episodes, they were starting to write their second 4. Luckily, we had them ready in 2-weeks, which is when we started filming. We also had a very small crew, so we didn’t have much time to plan. We sort of improvised as we went along.”
HNMAG “How did you find your writers?”
PETER “Two of them are my business partners, Shoshana McCallum and Daniel Musgrove. For the rest, we just used our friends that we thought were funny writers and had a good sense of humour, who could get the tone of the actor right and write fast.”
HNMAG “Can we anticipate a second season?”
PETER “We’ve got a pitch for the 2nd and 3rd season but they’re not related to the first season. Much like an anthology series – Black Mirror. The second season would be a stand-alone season that’s set in its own world that plays with the same ideas. It might be the same cast playing different characters, so they’re not playing the same person anymore.”
HNMAG “Having read your imdb page, I see that you’ve worked a lot in television. Are there plans to expand this series into a network series?”
PETER “I haven’t had much time to explore that but I think we should. I think it’s a strange time and a lot of networks are closing their doors. The response we tend to get from Broadcasters, is that everyone is over the pandemic and they really don’t want to watch anymore shows on it. The show has never been about Covid at all, it’s about this woman’s anxieties from being locked down and isolated. Because it has the backdrop of Covid, I feel that networks are shy to make shows like that.”
HNMAG “Do you have any other projects you’re working on outside of Inside?”
PETER “We do have an 8-part series with ½ hr. episodes we’ve been working on for a couple of years now. It’s a large- scale story about a woman who clones herself. The premise is that she wants to kill herself but she can’t leave the responsibility of her life behind. She’s able to clone herself and find a replacement but it goes awry and she ends up with 3 clones. The series is about her dealing with herself, really.”
I absolutely love the way Peter and his team flush out the dilemma and keep it moving the story forward. A skill that requires intelligent writing to keep an audience engaged – pure gold.
HNMAG “When the team comes up with another idea for a new show, is it usually generated by a few minds or does it start with one person?”
PETER “Usually the spark will come from one person, they’ll bring it to the table and then we’ll sit on it for a while – we’ll think it through and mull it over. I think the three of us are quite interested in stories that are a little bent, a little strange with a different angle – that’s when we get excited! It can be a genre to a certain degree but it has to have a lot of heart to it and be about ‘something’, not just a horror or thriller.”
HNMAG “When you were casting for this series, did you have to go outside of your social network?”
PETER “They were everyone we knew. New Zealand is such a small place, so we know everyone. It was also a strange time because everyone was stuck at home. We contacted some friends and apart from the 4 cast members that came to the house, the rest we hadn’t met, it was all over the Zoom calls… we chatted over the phone and went on to capturing it. I’d like to do more work like this (laughing), it was pretty simple. We had a few people in England that were in it, but that didn’t matter, you couldn’t tell. One of our writers lives in London, which worked out well for us because he could write while we were sleeping. We’d wake up to a new draft, then give him notes while he was sleeping, which allowed us to work all the time, it was great.”
HNMAG “How long does it take to put each episode together?”
PETER “It took 14 – 15 days to shoot it all. It took a little longer than expected. Everything shot looking at the computer screens were done last because we were still shooting everything that was happening on the screens. Morgana (Rose) was acting in front of a blank screen the entire time. It took us a little longer than anticipated to get those shots onto the screens. I think we took another couple of days to edit. Episode 1 is the longest at 16 min but it goes down to 11 min. throughout the series. We sent that to the broadcaster, they sent us back some notes and we made some changes. We went through the sound process. It was entirely done remotely. They did the music, the sound and it was done… complete.”
HNMAG “I really love that song on the acoustic in the 1st episode. Who wrote that?”
PETER “Dan, he was the writer of that episode and had great fun writing that one.”
HNMAG “Considering that New Zealand is now reopened, will you continue with the theme of isolation going into the second season?”
PETER “Yes, that is one of the big themes and there is also isolation of the characters mind, that keeps them from joining the community that they need to be part of. Being trapped inside is really the theme – whether that’s inside your mind, inside your family or inside a jail.”
HNMAG “We’ve come to the ‘fun question’ part of the interview. Now you have 3 modes of transportation to travel 50 miles. You can use a boat, a motorcycle or a hot-air balloon – which do you choose?”
PETER “A motorcycle. I think a hot-air balloon scares me. Those things always crash, I don’t want to be in there (laughing).”
HNMAG “If you had the option to travel to outer space and orbit the earth for a day or travel to the deepest part of the ocean for a day, which would you choose?”
PETER “Outer space! I’m a diver, so I go underwater quite a bit already. I would love to go to outer space, that’d be good.”
Peter Salmon was my first guest from New Zealand. He was extremely cordial, funny, humble and has great character. His directing is magical and he makes you feel like the third man in the room. He and his collaborators are making waves and I hope we all get wet.