Into the metaverse
Neal Street Productions execs Pippa Harris, Julie Pastor and Nicolas Brown take DQ inside the making of HBO’s meta comedy The Franchise, reveal why it’s a love letter to filmmaking and offer an update on the latest season of Call the Midwife. On the set of Tecto: Eye of the Storm, the eponymous hero is facing off against a dangerous villain, surrounded by figures known as Moss Men and the Fish People. Watching on are the crew responsible for making the outer-space blockbuster – and watching them are the crew of The Franchise, HBO’s workplace comedy where the office just happens to be the set of a multimillion-dollar superhero movie. If that sounds like a mind-bending concept for a new TV series, spare a thought for those who worked on it, directed by lanyards that denoted whether they were part of the real crew of the eight-part series or the fictional crew responsible for bringing Tecto to life. “It was a very meta experience making the show,” executive producer Julie Pastor tells DQ. “One of the things that was very important was that in the world we’re depicting, you really believe you’re on a film set, and everyone who was on that set works on sets. “We had two lanyards. There’s the Franchise lanyard, which was one colour, and then the Tecto lanyards for the movie within the show – blue and yellow – otherwise you really couldn’t tell if the person standing there operating the monitors is from our … Continue reading Into the metaverse
