- When I started writing "The Fledgling," I thought it was a movie.

So there was, it just became apparent to me that as people were reading it, and it was like halfway through the writing process that people were like, "I kind of think this is a show, dude."

And I was like, I was kind of pushing that away because that meant more work for me, because it meant I would have to further develop each episode, you know what I mean?

And then, so it became, four episodes became six, became seven, became eight.

And it just kind of organically, the characters were just sort of telling me where it was going at that point.

And I just stopped fighting the urge to like, not make this a TV show.

- When you go about making a TV show, basically you need a showrunner at, its base.

So you need to find somebody, usually with clout and industry experience to be able to take your episodes and string them together with multiple directors and sometimes multiple directors of photography into seasons of a show, or at least into one.

And usually how these things get made are through pilots.

So you make a pilot that's like the proof of concept for how things are going to work.

And then that pilot gets picked up and then greenlit for a series.

In our case, as independent filmmakers, we didn't have a lot of those connections that people typically have with TV.

And so we chose to go through the festival circuit, which meant a shorter film, a shorter pilot.

'Cause the shorter the film is, the higher chance it has of being programmed.

Now a lot of people know that your length does kind of determine sometimes what festivals you get into, especially with features.

But then to let that short run the festival circuit, which it's really had an incredible run.

Citrus, which is the genre festival of genre festivals, Film Quest, which is probably one of the most highly revered film festival amongst filmmakers on the circuit, internationally, just for how it treats its filmmakers, and, you know, Seattle and Flickers, Rhode Island, which is an Oscar qualifying festival.

We, you know, it was a finalist there.

So we're really kind of, we're taking that TV model and we're applying it to the festival circuit.

So we're doing it a bit unconventionally in some ways, but in others we're taking the same pages out of the same playbook.

- And a lot of that comes down to how we put together our pitch package too.

Finding ways to differentiate ourselves, think outside of the box, like making a children's book for example, instead of just a normal lookbook.

We have that as well, but, you know, how many times does an executive look at a PowerPoint throughout one day?

Maybe that children's book might stick out more as a way to tell the story of our show that we are willing to go a little further or think a little bit more differently.

- Yeah, and the goal is just to get it in front of people.

'Cause a TV show doesn't get made if it isn't seen.

Right?

And you also need a following.

So, you know, we've been incredibly thankful to our talent for being able to tap into that, you know, Buffy sphere of fans.

It helps give "The Fledgling" just more appeal potentially and more potential exposure.

So the name of the game, is getting it out there and getting it seen and then eventually hopefully getting it picked up from that awareness.

There's something about the fledgling, when you read it, that has a very universal connection and it speaks to a lot of different people.

It's written from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, which I think first of all is very interesting considering that Joe wrote it and he's tapping into something that's bigger than him in a way.

It basically takes this whole world and compresses it into Branson, Missouri and you from just, you know, watch the film and you'll see the world just kind of expands and expands and expands and it gets bigger and bigger as you go along.

And the show is very much like that.

It's gonna pick up from that and just continue and keep expanding.