From Nightwing to Nightmare

In 2015, Red Fist, a company you’ve probably never heard of, was born in St. Louis, a city you don’t know exists. Fresh out of Webster University (an obscure film school you’ve never been to), Matt Kohler, Ian Blaylock, and I (Richie Watkins), all people you don’t know, wanted to buck the trend of finding grunt work on other people’s sets and working our way up to becoming people you do know. By creating a company and content, we could naturally provide our own work. Not only that, but we also set out to shake up the web series industry, by introducing our eye for action; specifically, well-choreographed fight scenes.

                       Our current logo, courtesy of Michael Scarry.

      As with anything, we started small, by making minute-long fight scenes with friends who are fellow martial artists.  Matt, the martial artist of our group, was the choreographer, Ian was assistant director and editor, and I was the cameraman.  We spent the second half of 2015 making several of these videos, which we’d upload on YouTube and promote on social media, all for the sake of building an audience.  By the end of 2015, though, we came up with a new strategy for attracting more viewers–a Nightwing show.

Left: Matt, Right: Ian, Bottom: Me.

Strangely, after all this time working together, we don’t have a picture of just us three; but with Google Drawings, who can tell?

      Based on the popularity of Ismahawk’s fan-made Nightwing show, along with Dragonball Z: Light of Hope, and Mortal Kombat: Legacy, we knew there was a market for fan-made content.  Legacy is what introduced us to the professional web series format and, along with the other two shows, proved to us with their millions of views that there is sky-high demand for not only the format, but also fan-made productions.  (Since Legacy is officially licensed by WB, it’s not technically a fan-made series, but it was made by a fan who landed the gig from making a Mortal Kombat fan film).  While Master of Fear is not creatively inspired by these shows, their success on YouTube proved to us that we could feasibly make a legit-looking web series (with the aid of crowdfunding, of course).  And with our own style of fight scenes (where you actually see the work the fighters put in), we knew that we could stand out in the sea of online videos.  The idea was to tackle a familiar property that would get people to check out our unique style.

           These shows were signs that our dreams were very possible.

      With that goal in mind, we wrote an 8-page script about Nightwing’s fight against Deathstroke, Black Mask, and Scarecrow. The story introduced our own character–Nightmare–in his most basic form.  In our universe, Nightmare was a man that Scarecrow transformed into his successor.  After Nightwing defeats Deathstroke and Black Mask in an extensive fight scene, Scarecrow gains the upper hand. Before dying at the hands of Nightwing, Scarecrow gasses him with something new, something far worse than fear toxin. The gas triggers Nightwing’s instant transformation into Scarecrow’s new creation—Nightmare. That was supposed to be the surprise ending to what was supposed to be the pilot.

      From there, the show was supposed to be about Batman bringing Nightwing back to the good side. We wanted to make a show that cast Nightwing in his own light, and out of the Dark Knight’s shadow. To do so, we intended to make him a villain who holds his own against the Caped Crusader.  But, the more we developed our take on Batman and Bruce Wayne, we decided it would be more fun to just focus on him.  So, after about a month, we scrapped the Nightwing idea.  We kept two key elements, however: Nightmare, and Batman’s three-year absence from Gotham City.

Nightmare concept art by Dominic Velando

      At first, we avoided doing a Batman story because there were already so many in all forms of media, fan films included. We were set on being edgy as possible, hence our villainous take on Nightwing, and usage of said villains. The thing is, the show would have been about Batman anyway. (Let’s be honest, anytime Batman joins a story, he dominates; just ask Superman). And, we decided that Nightmare was such a cool character that he should have a less “sensational” origin than sprouting from a long-established character.