Frequently Asked Questions
Your idea sounds cool - so tell me about the crowdfunder!
So the first thing to say about the crowdfunder is that there isn't one. This is not a crowdfunder. A crowdfunder asks for donations - it may have some little rewards, as incentives for people to donate, but ultimately it's just asking people to give out of the goodness of their hearts. This is not what we're doing.
Think of this as more like pre-ordering a DVD before it comes out. You pay for it, you may have to wait a while to actually receive your goods, but you eventually get what you pay for. When we make our series, we'll put it in public, but behind a paywall - but if you contribute now, you'll get immediate access for free.
Where can I pre-order the series?
You can pre-order the series right here. We're charging £10 per episode or £50 for the whole series (there will be six episodes, so this will be the equivalent of one episode free.)
How much will you need to raise to make the series?
We've budgeted for £200,000 (which sounds like a lot, but is still a lot less than industry standard, which would be around six million). This will mean donations from around four thousand people. It's a lot of people, but we think this is doable - our pilot episode always gets really positive reactions from test audiences.
When will the series be made?
There isn't that strict a time limit, but we'll be assessing where we are in October 2024, and hopefully getting a more firm idea of the way forward then. We will keep everyone updated.
What if you don't make all the money you need?
It depends on how much we miss it by. We'll do our best to make the series with whatever we do raise, as long as it's an amount where everyone on the production can be paid fairly. If we fail by a significant amount we'll refund everyone, but let's make sure that doesn't happen!
Will you start with Episode 2, seeing as Episode 1's already made?
No. The pilot was the first episode at the time we shot it, but we'll be making the full series as a package (otherwise it wouldn't look as cohesive as we want it to look). There'll be some new bits in Episode 1 as well.
How can I watch the pilot?
Here you go.
Why should I support you?
For two reasons.
1) Because we really hope that when you see our pilot, you'll be intrigued by our characters and plot lines and want to see how our story pans out.
2) Because this is about a lot more than just a TV series - it's also about the elitism behind the entertainment world in the UK. There is very little TV drama about radical stories about ordinary people standing up to power, unless they're set in the past. There's a good reason for this - the establishment controls the media, and the sorts of people who get to make TV drama are not the kinds of people who realise the importance of these stories. There is, for example, very little on television that deals with anti-war activism, which in the wake of current events in the Gaza Strip, are more important than ever. The industry also relies on people accepting that they can't do something like this on their own, and we want to prove this isn't the case.
I've watched your pilot, but there doesn't seem to be much anti-war stuff besides the odd throwaway line. What gives?
You're right - for a show about anti-war activists, the pilot episode is unexpectedly light on it.
We did this for a good reason though, which is that our story is fundamentally about the activists, not just about the activism. In our script for Episode 2, the characters storm a weapons factory; one of the main characters is arrested and another is badly injured, and the consequences of that continue across the rest of the series. But if we did that in the first episode, the audience wouldn't know yet who these characters are, or have any reason to care what happens to them.
It's important to us that we don't fall into depicting activists as the stereotypes that they often are in the media. In news and documentaries, we've found that activists are often portrayed as quite extreme - hence why terms such as 'social justice warrior', 'woke' and 'snowflake' have all come to have very negative connotations. The most sympathetic portrayals in drama rely on what is known as a 'Soapbox Sadie' - a character who cares about all worthy causes, but typically in overly idealistic ways and often in the context of being very irritating with it (Lisa Simpson is quite a prominent example). They're almost never portrayed like the characters in Square - as ordinary people, with lives and job interviews and Uni courses and affairs, who also have a tendency to go out with a megaphone on a Saturday morning. But this is a more accurate depiction of who it is you see on the news blocking the M25 or pulling down a statue - they're ultimately just people like everyone else, and once you've seen the world's injustices it's quite difficult to unsee them.
Will the series have the same actors that appeared in the pilot?
Hopefully some of them. We won't be able to contract them until we've got the money and know the details about shoot dates and so on - but many of the actors have expressed interest in returning, and we were very impressed by their performances so we'll get as many of them back as we can.
How can I get updates on your progress?
We'll have an e-newsletter that you can sign up for in due course.
Have you written anything else besides this?
Loads of things! Have a look at our other projects here.
Can I ask anything else that you haven't included here?
Yes - click 'contact us' at the top of the page and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
I'm really rich - can I give you all the money you need at once?
Yes please - be our hero and we'll get started planning the shoot tomorrow.
To be fair, this is an 'Infrequently Asked Question', but if you're serious and would be kind enough to give us a really generous donation, please do get in touch. We'll credit you as an executive producer if you like!