Bubbleblabber UK Exclusive Interview: Brett Snelgrove gives updates on New Eden
Juvenile Troll: Talk a little about New Eden and how you came up with the show. Were you inspired by Star Trek?
Brett Snelgrove: When I had the idea of the show it was based around, definitely influenced by growing up with things like Star Wars but I wanted to make something that was as that was as far removed from Roddenberry’s altruism and Lucas’mythos if possible. So something that was a bit more irreverent.
How does Hamilton fit in??
he’s the long lower class working schlub who’s been ignored all his life. So he’s the guy – he’s, you know, cleaning the trash compactors.Essentially. And if you’re talking about Star Wars universe, he’s actually on the ship. He was a shift supervisor who one day dreamed of actually becoming a New Eden officer but that dream was taken away from him when they crashed on the planet. He had hoped…
So you wouldn’t consider him like a Picard character. You would consider him more like a janitor.
Yeah, he’s definitely someone who’s kind of in the lower class of the crew. It hasn’t made it into the scripts at all because it’s a bit too in but there was definitions of the people, the classes that exist in the crew on the ship. There were the New Eden officers, there was Murray. He was an officer. And then the lower class people are called wild oats.
Wild Oats?
So, yeah, it’s just the nickname I kind of came up with that they were given as a kind of, you know, lower class characters that were on the ship. So there’s a real status and kind of class defier – like between Murray and Hamilton as well as being in terms of, you know, their personalities and who they are.
Murray’s a bit more of a traditional sci-fi character. Like a Han Solo or a Riker from Star Trek. Would you say that or…
Yeah, to a degree. He’s, you know, he’s someone who’s gonna – adventurous spirit who’s not afraid to jump into danger. And because of that he’s also a great foil for Hamilton where Hamilton’s always very pessimistic and cool. And Murray, on the flip side, is always very optimistic and gung ho and is always seeing, you know, the positive in things. And always, you know, he’s – Murray’s led such a blessed life that he can’t foresee anything that happening which is why that he’s so up another.
So you would say that he’s just always gonna look at the best of a situation even the human apocalypse, so…
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Like he’s still, you know, and in the pilot he’s still optimistic that people will come and find them. That surely, you know, surely this isn’t the end. I think it’s set up really nicely between those two characters in the pilot and to their situation.
So the way you’re dealing with the apocalypse like, how likely is it that it’s the end. I mean, we’ve only seen two characters but…
Yeah, we’ve got HuHa introducing this current series this year and then the good thing is we haven’t made any firm decisions about it but it just leaves lots of opportunities for future series in terms of yes, they could – maybe they could meet other survivors. And what happens when they do? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? You know, are we working with or against the other survivors, all that kind of stuff. So this first series is very much kind of setting the groundwork in terms of the characters and then, you know if we have a chance to move onto the second or third series we can start exploring it more and more.
How was your experience working with people from HuHa! and putting things together?
Really good. Really good. So the company’s called Channel Flip and they essentially run – they have their own kind of YouTube network where they look after a lot of high profile UK YouTubers. Quite a lot of them are animation YouTubers. We’ve got a really great relationship with them because they helped us with what we should deliver this year in terms of content. They gave us advice on how we can – from what they’ve learned so far at that point about the HuHa! Channel and what would work. The head of – their content director, Jamie Lennox, who just last week I interviewed for the blog. He reads all the scripts and provides really useful, helpful notes often helping to punch up gags or make things work a bit better or tighten things up. So it’s been good. We spent a year beforehand. We had the pilot and we had a series of shorts and we spent a year pitching New Eden around. And it was what we were really looking for was like HuHa!. Someone who could come in and just give us the floor and to be able to help us access a bigger audience than we could access ourselves.
Is the entire purpose of it sort of to punish these characters?
It is in the sense that, you know, in the back of my – when I was coming up with the series and the idea for it was that with thrusting these characters into a situational world where they’re suddenly gone back down to the bottom of the food chain. So everything’s a challenge for them which makes for great comedy. And we like to, you know, as much as possible throw out a good surprise and sometimes that’s with a gag and sometimes that’s with really, you know, brutal kind of confrontations or action that goes on. And the great thing with animation is that you can pull all that kind of stuff off.
Like laughing monkeys? Laughing monkey sex? Things like that?
Yes. That was like, you know, the mummy video, the mummy episode where they encounter the little baby critter and they end up using it to kill the mummy critter.
So when you come up with the concepts you sort of – do you find yourself sort of going – is that too far? Have we gone too far? Or do you step back or how’s that work out?
What do you guys have planned in the future for the show? Like you’re on episode five and you have the two promos. So what’s next for the show do you think?
Do we know if Hulu will be the only entity to have the dub, or if it will be on other platforms, too? The show in general is definitely going to be on multiple platforms.