Behind The Scenes of "IVY"
“Camera rolling.”
“Sound rolling.”
“Ollie and a TF. Wide-shot. Take 1. Action.”
A fashionably disheveled student, beanie and all, saunters through the door and slumps down into a chair across from a serious-looking blonde girl. He apologizes for his tardiness as he rummages through his backpack and pulls out his laptop. “Take your time,” she responds, in a voice that’s simultaneously understanding and agitated.
It’s a Wednesday morning, and the room has a soft glow, with the window shades pulled down to cover most of the bright winter light streaming in. The cameraman sits perfectly still, his stabilizer forgotten in a dorm.
Ollie and the TF continue their meeting, but no one seems to be leading the conversation. The silences are painfully long—“awkward” doesn’t do them justice. The student is utterly unprepared and mumbles words that do not constitute responses, while the TF tries her best to be patient.
“Cut.”
Eli Wilson Pelton ’16 stands and performs a short dance of satisfaction. “I feel like that was weird, but good,” he says. Suddenly, the seemingly incompetent Ollie has become a charismatic director. He checks in with the sound man, who’s actually the writer filling in for the absentee sound director. Next he hops over to the camera and watches the clip. The cast and crew are sleepy, but cheerful, joking with one another before they repeat the shot.
This is the set of “IVY,” an upcoming web series led by Wilson Pelton and based on Harvard undergraduate life.
“I had the idea to do a play…and over the summer I started to watch web series and thought I could maybe do that,” Wilson Pelton explains, sitting amidst his cast members. They seem as much friends as colleagues.
Web series are a staple for this generation. Television is no longer the singular bastion of serialized entertainment—young people across the nation flock to their computer screens for everything from “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards” to smaller-scale productions like “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” and “The Guild.” “IVY” plans to release the premier for its own online show within the month.
“I had an idea all semester in the back of my mind to make a web series. Over Thanksgiving break, I was with Yinka [S. Ogunbiyi ’16] and my friend Alistair [A. Debling ’16]—who’s doing cinematography for the show. [They] were like, ‘just do it, just write it’,” Wilson Pelton adds.
In addition to being the director and lead writer for the show, Wilson Pelton plays Oliver (or “Ollie”).
Since writing the pilot, Wilson Pelton has worked to assemble a cast and crew. The actors came together last semester after meeting through a theater production directed by Debling. “Eli basically saw this play, which was on last semester, called ‘Flies,’ and took pretty much the entire company from it,” says Archie I. H. Stonehill ’17, who plays the character DK in the show.
The cast remarks that promotional materials for the show have been compared to “Skins” and “Degrassi.” However, Wilson Pelton says “IVY” is similar to these shows only in that it aims to document specific parts of modern youth culture. The new HBO show “Looking,” about a group of gay men living in San Francisco, was one Pelton had in mind when developing “IVY.”
For Wilson Pelton, what makes those series so successful is their focus on generational concerns. The pilot episode will seek to mimic this approach by focusing on the issue of identity.
“I don’t want to give away too much, but the pilot centers around [the characters] having to declare, since they’re all sophomores,” Wilson Pelton explains. “That’s sort local college issue, but also the more macro issue of ‘what does this say about me?’—a moment of questioning your identity.”
In addition to covering common points of Harvard experience, such as declaring concentrations, the characters represent a variety of “tropes” of Harvard students.
Ogunbiyi plays Layla, a classic Harvard overachiever, whose priorities lie in working and socializing. Layla’s roommate, Harley, played by Juliana N. Sass ’17, provides a striking contrast to Layla. Harley’s interests and passions lack direction, but Sass says this leaves a lot of room for the character to grow in “IVY”.
“I play DK. It might not be a coincidence that his name sounds like ‘dick’—it’s apt, to put it that way,” Stonehill says of his character. DK is described as a brilliant student, albeit loud, forceful, and assertive.
Wilson Pelton’s character, Oliver, struggles to reconcile a large ego with concerns about self image.
There is also a fifth character, Luc, portrayed by Matt W. G. Walker ’16. Luc’s an athlete and, according to Wilson Pelton, a bit of an outsider within the Harvard community.
Wilson Pelton finds a unique set of challenges in writing a show so close to his own life. Particularly, he explains a confusing experience of living at Harvard while also writing these experiences into the show. “Often, something will happen and then I’ll write it down,” he explains. “Or I’ll be having these weird moments where I’m doing something and I wonder, ‘Am I doing this because I want to do this? Or because it would be good for the story?’” To Wilson Pelton, it’s a strange sensation.
Lacking a clapperboard, Dorothy C. Donelan ’14, who plays the TF, claps to start the next shot.
Clap!
“Camera rolling.”
“Sound rolling.”
“Ollie and a TF. Wide-shot. Take 2. Action.”
The scene begins again but is interrupted when a man walks in to start setting up for an event that will take place in an hour. He tries to set up quietly, but the noise can’t be ignored. Later, the clock strikes 11, and there is an uproar of sound from outside as students walk to and from their classes.
These students aren’t professionals, and this isn’t their only work. “I’ve been awake for 51 hours,” Donelan says in between takes. “They say once it’s past 32 it’s like you’re drunk.”
Wilson Pelton responds, “Well there’s always one person drunk on set.” He seems serious.
Once satisfied with the footage, Wilson Pelton concludes the shoot: “And that’s a wrap.”