If the makers of “Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog” got together with the “Twilight” team, their creative output might resemble “I Kissed a Vampire,” an original web series debuting Oct. 13 on iTunes.
But Chris and Laurie Nolan don't have the budget or the staff of those productions, and they pretty much created “Vampire” in their home office/edit suite in Santa Monica for about the cost of a day's catering on “Twilight.”
They do have the marketing muscle of iTunes, not to mention the stars of “High School Musical,” Lucas Grabeel (who played Ryan Evans) and Drew Seeley (whose voice emanates from Zac Efron's mouth), plus a slew of original songs by Emmy nominee Frankie Blue (“V.I.P.”).
“Vampire” is about a teen romantic triangle that's complicated by the fact that both of the boys in love with Sara (newcomer Adrian Slade) are vampires: Drew (Grabeel) has just become one, after a suspicious bat bite during a camping trip, while Trey (Seeley) revels in the life of the undead.
The Nolans had been working on another project entirely, a Jimi Hendrix biopic, with executive producer Mike Slade, a Microsoft veteran with a strong interest in music and musical theater.
They were ready to roll with German financing in September 2008, until the worldwide financial meltdown put that film on hold.
Instead, Chris Nolan said, he and his wife, who are “big music fans,” decided to “go make something fun that doesn't cost $3 million” and still featured music. They had a horror series in development and thought it would be a good idea to turn that into a musical. They took that idea to Slade, and he backed them up.
As Laurie Nolan put it, “We didn't have this preconceived notion that vampires are hot! 'Twilight' was “in the ether, and we were probably aware of it. But doing a musical was what was most important to us.”
Also, she said, “No question, we were aware of 'Dr. Horrible,'” and they were influenced by Joss Whedon's Internet hit, especially in the way its fame spread virally via social networking outlets.
In fact, like Whedon, the Nolans had made their own web series during the writers' strike, “Strike Life,” and enjoyed the creative freedom it offered. They used performers from Second City and “Mad TV” to put together web shorts supporting the writers.
It was during that production period that they met songwriter Blue, who set the Nolans' “Vampire” lyrics to music.
Using crew and creative contributors they knew from Chris Nolan's career as a commercials director, including d.p. Christopher Gosch, they shot the first episode in four days.
And that wasn't the only previous connection leveraged for the web series. Seeley had auditioned for the lead in the Nolans' movie “Floating Bridge,” so he was willing to audition for “Vampire.” Once the young actor heard five of the songs in demos, Laurie Nolan said, he suggested his friend Grabeel -- exactly the actor the Nolans had in mind.
