The Weatherman

First things first - what is The Weatherman? Well, it all started a few years ago with a simple idea: what if the most trusted man on television was also the most insecure? For some unknown reason, that concept tickled our collective funnybones, and after a few months of writing feverishly and calling in as many favours as we could muster, we had managed to cobble together a pilot episode of half-hour television comedy based around that initial premise of celebrity meets insecurity. And so, The Weatherman was born.

From there, we were (somewhat inexplicably, we're still not quite sure how) accepted into the New York Television Festival, where we were lucky enough to meet Aubrey and Noah Levy from Mobcaster, whose belief and enthusiasm convinced us to attempt the seemingly impossible: to source a budget for an entire first series of The Weatherman, entirely via crowdfunding. So, armed with a wing, a prayer, and as much virtual propaganda as gmail and facebook will allow, we launched a campaign to raise a budget of $72,500. And here's where it gets crazy - we hit our target. In fact, we even overfunded by a little bit. So here we are, eternally grateful for and humbled by the extraordinary generosity of our amazing fans who made this all happen - and equal parts excited/terrified about creating the best television series we possibly can.

The production of series one of The Weatherman is now in full swing, the final product to be released later this year. You'll find all the latest news, press, behind-the-scenes videos and bonus content scattered around this site. So please, take the time to have a look around, check out what's going on behind the scenes, maybe watch the original pilot, and learn a little of the life and times of Tony Turpinson: The Weatherman.

Tony Turpinson is the most insecure man on television. A weatherman past his use-by date, he is desperately trying to find relevance in an increasingly hostile TV world. Before long, his fixation with minutia and uncanny knack for faux-pas sees him inadvertently offend and alienate just about everyone around him.

The Weatherman is currently in production of its first season, having successfully financed a budget via crowd-funding platform Mobcaster. It is currently the world's first and only crowd-funded television series, set to be released in 2012.

Tony is played by Robert Grubb, an Australian acting veteran of productions such as Peter Weir's Gallipoli and Mad Max, as well as a host of Australian television programs, including the incredibly successful and popular outback serial The Flying Doctors. His amazing dedication and willingness to work on a passion project for an insultingly low (and oftentimes non-existant) wage is a major reason for The Weatherman's success thus far. Speaking of insulting low/non-existant wages, Robert is joined by tremendous young actors Brendan McCallum, Nicholas Gunn, Shanrah Wakefield and the lovely Nick Colla, as well as slightly less-young (but no less tremendous nor lovely) Tony Porter, in bringing remarkable dedication and enthusiasm to their various roles, and bringing The Weatherman to life.

The Weatherman is created, written and directed by Lucas Crandles and Timothy Nash. Their previous work has garnered over three million views online, meaning they are now more popular than several minor biblical characters. They have also won multiple awards for their work, including Best Writing at the New York Television Festival and Best Animation at the Independent Television Festival (Los Angeles), a feat which few, if any, biblical characters ever managed to achieve. You can visit them at their brand-spanking-new website, dhp.

I Started a Joke...That Started the Whole World...Waiting?

We'll miss you Mr Gibbs. But now we're out of our grieving period, we can break our apparent radio silence and share a little news on the show.

Though we've forgotten the feeling of the warm sun on our pallid, fading flesh, we haven't forgotten you! We've just been spending an awful lot of time working on getting the scripts for the first season as right as they can be. In the past month, there's been quite a few lovely updates on the production side of things, but just to be difficult (and to ensure we flesh out this updates page) we can't quite share them yet. What we can share is that pre-production is right where it should be and the show we'll be shooting will (hopefully) be stronger than its haphazard though well-intentioned pilot.

As things progress, so too will the frequency of our updates, particularly when production time rolls around and we can introduce you properly to our gorgeous cast and our it's-what's-on-the-inside-that-counts crew. Oh, and we'll have a video surprise for you at the start of June with a wee bit of good news too.

Stay tuned, Turpites!

Web Design 101

One doesn't like to bandy about terms like 'genius', but when the DHP team decided a new, dedicated Weatherman website was in order, resident co-creator Timothy Nash put up his frail, withered writing-hand and volunteered to learn CSS, HTML and jQuery from scratch and build it himself.

One also doesn't like to bandy about terms like 'lunatic', but sometimes it's just the right word. So, welcome to the new look website! Going forward, this will be your one-stop-shop for all things Turpinson. We'll have behind-the-scenes videos, greetings from cast and crew, press updates and more. This way, we don't have to annoy you senseless with Facebook updates, emails, tweets, texts and door-to-door visits preaching the gospel of Turpinson. So bookmark this little number and check back once in a while, ya hear?

Herr Nash also spent a week or two re-doing our production house website, which you can view here.

Disclaimer: Though one doesn't like to bandy about terms like 'narcissist' either, Timothy Nash neither wrote nor approves of this update.

We Did It!

Well, not strictly true; you did. Thanks to your support and generosity, The Weatherman has become the world's first crowd-funded TV series!

We're going to level with you here - when we launched this campaign and its overly ambitious funding goal, we were cautiously pessimistic. We'd had some great feedback on the pilot, but to reach a target like this on a brand new platform and with little to offer but our gratitude and a promise to produce the best darn TV show we could...it seemed almost impossible. In the last 24 hours of the campaign, we noted on our 17th coffee that we had acquired less than half of the target. Less than half - in the remaining 24 hours of a 90 day campaign. To use a well-worn Australian colloquialism; we had Buckley's chance. But somehow, something miraculous happened.

That gorgeous little wheel of funding filled from 60% to 70%...

In one hour, 85%!

90%??

And then, silence.

The wheel turned from orange to a preternatural blue...and it was all the way full.

It even kept going, proving 'full' is not a word the chaps at Mobcaster actually grasp...102%.

We could tell you about that moment; the relief, the joy, the creeping realisation of extraordinary performance pressure (something we're all too familiar with), the excitement of the cast and crew as we told them, the collapsing into our celebratory beers at 5pm, some 36 hours without sleep. We could tell you about that, but what you really want to know is - 'when's the show out chaps?'. Well, we're on it. We're essentially shutting down all other operations, creative and commercial, here at DHP. We're committing our lives to this show for the foreseeable future. We just hope you like it!

Stay tuned, there will be many more updates to follow and once again, on behalf of the entire cast and crew - THANK YOU!

Article in TIME Magazine

"..The Weatherman's over $70,000 full-season funding represents the third largest episodic programming tally across all platforms, and that's including crowd-funding mainstay Kickstarter."

The Weatherman recently received some press in none other than the prestigious TIME magazine. The article, which focuses on alternative models to mainstream network television and the rise of digital distribution, was run in both print and online editions of the magazine. You can read the full article here.

Article in Forbes Magazine

"The platform's first success is a sitcom called The Weatherman, now in preproduction starring Australian actor Robert Grubb."

Forbes recently ran some wonderful press for both The Weatherman and our good friends at Mobcaster. The article, which discusses the potential benefits crowd-funding may impart upon the television model, was published both online and in the printed edition. You can read the full article here.

Newspaper Piece in The Australian

"Television, with its high production costs, used to force people to watch whatever the networks thought was viable," Mr Crandles said. "Really, we don't have to have a huge audience to make TV. We just have a dedicated audience willing to fund what we want to make."

The Weatherman recently received a fantastic write up in The Australian, Australia's only national broadsheet newspaper. Focussing on the difficulties and benefits of the crowd-funding model, the article ran in the national print and online editions of the Media section. You can read the full article here.

Radio Interview with Star FM

Lucas Crandles, co-creator of The Weatherman, recently had a chat with Star FM's Sami and Jay about the trials and tribulations of crowd-funding a television show. You can listen to the full interview here.

Article in AIMIA

"Melbourne-based Dark Heart Productions is attempting to break new ground in the TV industry – create a TV series, entirely independently and solely based on audience support."

The Weatherman recently received a friendly write up in the Australia Interactive Media Industry Asociation newsletter. You can read the full article here.

Article in Indiewire

"…and they've already got a series in the works — "The Weatherman" is an Australian half-hour comedy that's raised over $73,000 for its first season ."

The Weatherman received a nice write up over at Indiewire recently. The article, which focusses upon the rise of independently produced television, cited The Weatherman's world-first crowd-sourced budget as a big step forward in the independent realm. You can read the full article here.

Interview with Media Wave

Lucas Crandles, co-creator of The Weatherman, recently spoke to Simon Britton of Media Wave about the project. You can hear the full interview here.

For more information about the show or about us, please feel free to reach us at the following address:

Dark Heart Productions
420 Victoria St
Brunswick, VIC
Australia, 3056

Telephone:
+61 3 9940 1542

Email:
hello@theweatherman.tv

Or feel free to visit us at our website, dhp.