“The wHOLE” begins with rage simmering, as a screaming inmate then pounds on the door for his tiny cell in isolation, after two prison guards confiscate a photo of his child.

His hopelessness turns into rage as the actor, who’s actually served in solitary confinement, dramatizes his desperation for the viewer.

A Val Verde husband and wife are putting the nation’s criminal justice system under a microscope with a web series titled “The wHOLE,” seeking a bird’s eye view of the system with solitary confinement, but also looking at prison, and beyond.

Click here for a link to the first episode.

Jennifer Fischer, co-creator of The wHOLE

“The pilot episode gets us in to this world,” said Ramon Hamilton, who’s making the web series with his wife, Jennifer Fischer, and their production company, Think Ten Media Group. “The character’s name is Marcus Williams and we basically enter the world through him at first.”

A big part of the pilot is understanding Marcus’ world, the world of isolation and solitary confinement, Hamilton said.

Hamilton has been traveling around the country since the pilot video was produced, gaining support for his project, as well as feedback from professional groups associated with the criminal justice system, he said.

Click here for a link to support the project.

The project is working its way toward the goal, and is already gaining national media attention after a Vice story looked at how the project used an abandoned Oregon jail for its location.

“We’re going to look at an isolation unit and every aspect of it,” he said. “Then we’re going to jump out and look at the overall  prison structure… then we’re going to explore the criminal justice system, and why do we have this system of mass incarceration.”

Ramon Hamilton, co-creator of “The wHOLE”

The film was inspired by a series of stories Hamilton and Fischer heard on NPR back in 2013, related to a hunger strike over prisoners’ conditions in Pelican Bay, a “supermax” high-security state prison in Northern California.

The series is going to look at the effect and conditions around spending 23-24 hours a day in a cell, Hamilton said, including from the perspective of the guards and prison administration, as well as those on the outside, and post-release.

The actor, William Brown, has served in prison before, including in isolation, Hamilton said, and several of the crew have, as well, which leads to powerful, realistic performances.

So far, the response has been encouraging, as the project has a little less than 30 days left on its crowdfunding campaign on the “Seed & Spark” website.

“The response has been greater than I could have imagined,” Hamilton said, discussing his showing of the film to both prison guards and those who have served time in isolation, alike.

The idea is to use the negative as a positive to spread awareness, he added.

“There’s a lot to ‘The wHOLE,’ and we just want to do our best to show how complicated (the situation is), and that things don’t necessarily make sense. We are aware there is a problem.”