Aware that his audience was dying, the head of Rocky Mountain PBS set out a year ago to create something to attract young viewers. It would have to be able to play on TV, as well as on the Web and mobile phones.
The local station’s then-president, James Morgese, approached Craig Volk, a veteran Hollywood television writer currently teaching screenwriting at the University of Colorado Denver.
The resulting project is proudly ambitious, despite the embarrassingly small budget.
The broadcaster wanted a piece that was locally written, produced and performed. Volk came through with the concept, the location (inside the Tivoli on the Auraria campus), writers from his class, local actors and musicians plus area professionals who worked for nominal pay.
And he expanded the idea into a series.
The result is “Good Grief,” a seven-episode dramedy slated to air on RMPBS starting Jan. 26 at 10 p.m., running for five consecutive nights plus two episodes on Feb. 2 and 3.
Created by Volk, the series is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS, dc dakota films and the University of Colorado-Denver College of Arts and Media.
“On short notice, talent agents sent people from a great pool of local talent,” according to executive producer Steffanie Two Eagles, former program manager for the Colorado Film Commission.
The storyline was built around character, in ways “both practical and creative,” Volk said. “I had in mind three actresses I knew. I wrote toward their strengths.”
The setting is The Campus Grind Coffee House inside a converted brewery. The Tivoli proved physically suited but posed an array of audio problems.
Each episode ends with a local band playing in a music video, including Hearts of Palm (picked before their success in this year’s Denver Post Underground Music Showcase), The Autumn Film and The Panic.
Post-production is under way at Post Modern in LoDo. A second season has been mapped out and is being written by Volk’s students.
If it clicks, “Good Grief” would confirm Volk’s theory that, in the YouTube generation, the East Coast and West Coast are no longer mandatory destinations for TV production.
“Regional centers can now control production,” he said.
After all, the creative process increasingly is happening in front of computers, fueled by pajama-wearing geeks in basements and cheap apartments all over the world. Who needs Hollywood?
“Good Grief” was shot at breakneck speed using 87 actors and 30 musicians over nine days last summer. Where a typical Hollywood production would shoot six pages a day, “We were doing 20 pages a day,” Volk said.
And it was accomplished on a shoestring budget.
“The budget was $30,000,” Volk says, laughing. Network series he’s worked on in years past (“Northern Exposure,” “Key West”) probably spent that on a month’s craft-services catering budget.
Amazingly, “Everybody got paid,” he said, except the musicians who donated their music in exchange for DVDs and the promise of a bit of exposure.
The story centers on the struggles of three Latino sisters who run a coffee shop on a university campus. Their customers are mostly college students and staff from a nearby medical center. The sisters’ brother, who funds The Campus Grind, is in Iraq but due back at the end of the week.
Each episode takes place during the half-hour before closing time on seven consecutive nights leading up to the brother’s impending furlough. The consistent opening shot is the disembodied image of a band playing what the script specifies is “a Denver sound” at The Campus Grind.
A wide variety of music and musicians is highlighted; music videos conclude each episode. Eventually that music will be available via laptop or handheld device.
Volk, who has credits on more than 100 hours of television for commercial networks, says the biggest creative difference in working on “Good Grief” was the fact that most TV is contrived by committee.
Here, he had the freedom and responsibility to oversee the project mostly unimpeded.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an editing error, a headline misidentified the college working with Rocky Mountain PBS on the show “Good Grief.” University of Colorado Denver College of Arts and Media students are working on the project.
