Six shooting days remain on the first Volume/Season of The Third Age. The Volume will be thirteen episodes, with the target length for each around seven minutes. However, two of the first three are hitting closer to nine, so the running time will vary. I'm hoping that each episode is a satisfying piece on its own, and contributes to the story. Jordan and I are working to make sure that each episode has some kind of interesting visual element within it, and so far I think we've been succeeding.
Working on the project is a bit schizophrenic. We've still got one scene left to shoot for the first episode, which has met all kinds of trouble on its journey to production. Hopefully we'll knock that out next week. However, after that, we added a sequence that's essentially Episode 1.5. It's a news report, should be about two to three minutes, but we've also got to shoot that before the first episode goes live. What I'm telling you is we're likely to not put the first episode online until June. I'm hoping this is a good thing in the long run, since it means we definitely won't have to delay episodes later in the volume. I've realized that it's impossible to write/shoot/edit an episode in two weeks, it's too much, and having all this lead time is great. I've got about 35 edited minutes done, so it's just a matter of filling in the gaps in the various episodes.
And even as we're still working on the first couple of episodes, we're writing and mapping out the end of the Volume. We knocked out a bunch of script, centering on the introduction of two new characters, who are going to really shake things up. I'm hoping they'll be like Spike and Dru were on Buffy, just walk in and screw with everyone, even as they become the viewers' favorite character. I'm really feeling the voice of the show now, it's a pop, fun story with a lot of darkness at the core. This stuff is more over the top, the end of the Volume will return us to the more subdued, emotional focus of the early episodes.
I realized while writing that we're basically structuring the series like Evangelion. The first few episodes are broody and atmospheric, then things will go to a bit more fun, crazy place, after the introduction of a charismatic red head, before sailing off into surreal mental states in the second half of the show, episodes 14-26. But, that's a way off.
Next week is a big shoot. It's a ritual sequence, in which the characters symbolically ascend the Tree of Life from the Kaballah. It's pretty exciting stuff, and will function as episode 7, the midpoint of the Volume, resolving a lot of questions from the start, and setting up the back half of the Volume. From there, the story really propels itself, and the characters get twisted up in awful knots until the last episode of the Volume.
Of course, you'd probably care more about all this if you'd actually seen an episode. I can't do that for you yet, but I can show you some more behind the scenes photos, these are from the shoot for what will be the first episode's opening sequence:
(Alex Berger [Mark] looks over the script)
(Jordan and I prepare the set)
(Jordan frames a shot)
(Jon Cimmino [Scientist] takes his place)
