Vancouver: On the set of Skullduggery – a wacky six-part series that debuts in January on The Comedy Network and follows in the steps of Dr. Who and other earlier low-cost, big-hearted fantasy programs – it was best to be in denial about the micro, $478,000 budget.

Yep, the sets and wardrobe cost a whopping $3,500. Nope, two takes were enough. Special effects? Now here we’re talking about necessity, mothers and inventions.

As a fast-paced, surreal comedy series about two estranged brothers and the vamp they both love, Skullduggery is full of unexpected twists and turns. It would blow the secrets of the show to reveal too much here, but in some scenes the creators have stretched the limits of low-tech special effects.

‘It was a real lesson in rethinking from the ground up, to find the comedy in the scene and preserve it,’ says executive producer Suzanne Berger, who was continually challenged by the lack of funding.

‘Everything seemed reasonable going in,’ she adds, referring to the plans for stunts and effects. ‘We sort of closed our eyes and jumped in the cold water. Only after we started to break down the scenes and got quotes did we have to start simplifying. We had to cut a lot of stunts. But you can’t simplify everything off the page. You lose the comedy.’

Berger says splitting the effects work between the show’s art department and Vancouver-based Thomas Special Effects kept costs down. As a result, the show’s creators were able to do scenes involving inflatable gloves, floating corpses and flying tear-gas containers and stay on budget.

The Skullduggery script, for an episode near the end of the series, called for the heroes and their dead friend to wander into the lair of the evil overlord. The characters are discovered and are apprehended by descending helmets that clamp on to their heads and then fill with disgusting goo. It’s a cliffhanger.

But the real excitement and suspense is on set where the codirectors, Kellie Benz and Ken Hegan, have to figure out ways to pull off the effects in few takes and without ballooning the precious post-production budget.

‘What we tried to do can be compared to shopping for a diamond ring with 72 bucks in our pocket,’ says Berger. ‘Luckily, the directors found the comedy in our situation and then made it an asset instead of a fault.’

The set is an eight-by-eight-foot slice in a grotty east Vancouver warehouse. Inside this lair are cheesy technical gizmos – the overlord’s evil-doing equipment, one guesses – that blink. Gaffers hang precariously from the scaffolding overtop and cling to pot lights with colored gels.

Old-fashioned dry ice adds to the sinister ambience.

The three actors, Brendan Beiser, Paul McGillion and Randy Schooley, are detected and the overlord’s security forces jump into overtime.

Viewers will see helmets fall from the sky and clamp on to the actors’ heads. In realtime, the effect is done in-camera, with the scene shot in reverse. The gaffers above pull the helmets off the actors, who finish by looking up at the helmets.

Once the helmets are on, of course, the heroes are trapped. In close-ups, the actors face the horror of beige goo filling their helmets.

The headgear, basically painted motorcycle helmets, are fitted with thin, enclosed visors that fill up with the goo, which is actually watered-down mushroom soup. From above, a crew member pours a jarful of goo into a black tube connected to the top of the helmet. The sleeve fills up, making it look like the helmet is filling up inside. The actors react accordingly with a combination of fear and hunger and end up improvising the scene completely blind.

‘We had fantasized about astonishing escapes from the mushroom helmets,’ says Berger. ‘After all, Ken had storyboarded this thing like he was doing The Matrix. But we were reduced to one good splash and good editing to keep the comedy.

‘The effects are always more expensive than you hope,’ she adds. ‘And even when you get great deals, getting the most out the effects is difficult on a low budget. You really need time to let the effects shine.’