The Copycat Club Series

Posted by Danell Horan in Film

Senior Mikel D Ledesma hopes to release his web series The Copycat Club within the next year. Photo by Jason Stilgebouer.

Santa Fe University of Art and Design senior Mikel Ledesma began work on his passion project, The Copycat Club, last April. The horror web series follows a group of frat boys, led by character Chad Everett and his best friend Garrett Spears, who start the Copycat Club on their campus and begin to recreate famous horror kill scenes in order to sell them as snuff films.

Ledesma originally came up with the idea his freshman year, but with SFUAD’s closure announcement last spring, Ledesma was not willing to wait any longer to begin the web series. “I was in my advanced directing class and we had to…write a scene that we had to shoot with actors, and I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going for it. There’s nothing to lose,'” he says.

The series begins when character Chad Everett, a film student, fails a college course and loses his scholarship. He looks into possible paths to make money without telling people his true circumstances and discovers he can make $30,000 on his first snuff film, and so the Copycat Club is born.

Ledesma plans to launch an Indiegogo campaign at the beginning of the new year, but whether or not the funds are fully raised, the crew will film 10 chapters in February 2018 with hopes that Awesomeness TV will pick up the series soon after. Ledesma intends to push on to make a second and third season upon season one’s completion. “The cast was sold on it, the crew was sold on it. Everyone that watched it was like, ‘Where’s the next chapter?’…So it’s a really cool concept and I hope we can portray everything we’re trying to get across,” Ledesma says.

A promotional photo for the future web series The Copycat Club, produced by Mikel D Ledesma.

The series’ co-star actors Kaleb Slack (Chad Everett) and Victor Armijo (Garrett Spears) both expect The Copycat Club to build a decent fan base within the next year. Although almost a year will have passed between the pilot and the first season, Slack is not deterred. The gap year allows the cast and crew to take “the necessary time and actions to get things set up,” he says.

Armijo is already prepared to begin filming again. “I expect a good amount of people to want to follow it,” Armijo says. “It’s a really creative way to go into any kind of horror project in general.”

With the scheduled shoots for The Copycat Club approaching in February, Ledesma intends to start casting the next four roles in the series, including some female characters. With the expanded cast, he hopes to create an ideal experience of horror mixed with comedy and sexuality. “There’s something sexy about seeing crazy girls. So I’m excited about that and being able to feed off that sex appeal,” he says.

Although it took Ledesma several years to find the courage to begin The Copycat Club, he intends to make the best series possible, continuing to pursue its creation up to and through his graduation May 2018. “I want to entertain. I want people to watch it,” he says. “And I want an audience that’s going to be as dedicated as we are because I want this to go on for at least three seasons, and then I want to take it international.”

The pilot and following 10 chapters will take place over 12 episodes, all of which are 15 to 20 minutes. “But they’re going to take you through a thrill ride,” Ledesma says.

To follow the progress of The Copycat Club web series, visit their Facebook page.