What is The Shelter?

It was March of 2020 when the world as we knew it changed forever. The COVID-19 pandemic brought life as we knew it to a standstill, and there is no sign things will ever go back to the way they were before.

“The Shelter” is a dark comedy web series created by longtime friends Joe Bravo and Steve Agnos. When San Francisco’s Shelter-In-Place order was first announced in March of 2020, the two friends began to imagine a story for these uncertain times. Since Joe is a SAG actor and Steve Agnos is a freelance filmmaker, the two had always wanted to work together on a big project, and the early days of the pandemic gave them the chance to do so. After a period of brainstorming, the two landed on a shelter-in-place story of Quaran Tenor — an isolated “tech bro” living in San Francisco who quickly starts to descend into madness living alone and begins talking to household items… and they talk back.

“The Shelter” is a socially distant — aka “SoSilly Distant” production — meaning Joe Bravo not only stars as Quaran, but he also is Director of Photography (DP) when filming inside his home. He then sends footage over to Steve Agnos to edit and animate. When Quaran steps outside into the world, Steve helps out with the filming duties and becomes the DP on those days. Steve also writes the scripts for the many voice actors on the show, and those voice actors in turn text their voice recordings to Steve. Once Steve has all the footage and recordings for a given episode, he edits and animates it all together. In many cases, Steve and Joe send completed scenes to their musician friend Pat Moley down in LA to score. Pat emails the music to them and Steve mixes it in. Then Joe and Steve watch the final cut and make any changes needed. Then once everyone is happy, the episode is done and they move on to the next.

This is how we safely produced a series in the days of COVID-19.