The Third Age Begins

New Blog

2009-10-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

To go with our new redesigned site, we unfortunately have to move the blog from this site to one located on the new site. Update your RSS feed accordingly! This blog is going to be updated at least three times a week, as we get closer and closer to the launch. Stay tuned there for all the latest info! Sorry about the inconvenience!

T3A Launch: November 17th

2009-09-21T14:18:00.001-07:00

At long last, we've got a release date for The Third Age. It's going to be out on November 17th, on Blip TV. Visit The Third Age channel on Blip and bookmark it to get more info on the release. New video content will be posted soon, as well as a relaunch of The Third Age site. Look for that soon!

More Images

2009-08-20T18:42:00.001-07:00

The Show will be going live online in the not too distant future. I've said that before, but hopefully it will be true soon. Six episodes are locked, there's seven shooting days left on the show. Here's some more images from the show.

The Third Age Premiere!

2009-05-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

At long last, The Third Age is going public. Not to the internet yet, that will be happening shortly. But, if you're in New York City, head on down to the Industry Power Play "Out of this World" screening event, and get an exclusive look at the first three episodes of the series.

7pm @ People Lounge - 163 Allen Street, NYC

Check Industry Power Play or Facebook for more details.

I will be there, as will some of the cast and crew. Get ready to experience the psychedelic mythology remix that is The Third Age. And if you can't make it, stand by, the show will be online in the not too distant future.

New Web Presence

2009-02-04T10:07:00.001-08:00

Progress on The Third Age continues slowly, but surely. We're starting up the process of pitching and securing distribution more seriously, even as we continue to shoot and shoot. The goal is to finish shooting on the whole project by the end of June, which could possibly be before an episode is even released. Crazy stuff, but you'll see it soon enough.

But, as part of that pitching process, I'm gradually expanding the web presence. The official site is now built and up and www.thethirdagebegins.com. It's mostly just links to content on the blog now, but I'll be building it up and fleshing it out over the next few weeks.

In addition, and more relevant for readers here, we've now got a Facebook page for T3A. Go here, and friend us to get the latest updates on the progress of The Third Age.

Also, I'll be at the New York Comicon this weekend, hanging out at the Sequart booth. I'm there to promote my forthcoming book on Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, called Our Sentence is Up. But, I'll have some T3A postcards there, they look great, so come by and grab one. Hopefully I'll see you there.

Poster Concept

2009-01-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Episode by Episode: 6-10

2008-11-17T09:58:00.001-08:00

Episode By Episode: 1-5

2008-10-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Alicia in Red

2008-10-24T10:36:00.001-07:00

Alicia, played by Charlie Miller, basks in the red light.

October 5th Shoot

2008-10-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a series of images from our shoot last Sunday. We had some excellent makeup work here, which is shown off in the photos. Currently, we've got three days of shooting left on Volume I, with any luck, principal photography will wrap by Thanksgiving.

The October Update

2008-09-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I was discussing a February 2008 launch date for the series. Obviously that has come and gone long ago, but progress on the series continues. Rather than do a bi-weekly format as was originally planned, we're going to be putting out episodes weekly. The first season/volume has four shooting days remaining, one of which will happen on Sunday, hopefully we will be wrapped with the whole volume by November, one year after shooting commenced. Considering we'll have shot the equivalent of a feature in a year, working around full time jobs for nearly everyone involved, I think that's not too bad.

So, when will the show actually be released? Well, right now we're in talks with a distributor who's got some really interesting things going on. We're hoping to come to a deal soon, and will announce it here once things are official. And, after that we're looking at a launch date in the January 2009 range. Obviously all of this is theoretical since no one has actually seen the show, but things are happening, and soon you'll have an episode to look forward to every week for 13 weeks.

More Images

2008-08-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

Respect to Bergman

2008-08-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

A New Look Site

2008-08-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to consolidate all my web presence on to a blog format, hence the redesign here to make it more of an all in one resource, and not just a blog. There's not that much new content, but I'll be expanding the cast section and adding a crew section shortly.

As for a general update on the project, episode 1 is picture locked, and just needs some score to finish it. We're shooting more stuff, and will hopefully finish shooting Volume I by November, a year after we started this whole thing.

When will material be released? That's the big question now, we're looking into distribution options, so I don't want to just put anything out there. But, keep an eye out, once we know what's up, I'll post it here.

On Web Content

2008-08-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

I read this lengthy Wired article on web video content, and the possible evolutionary path for the format. There’s some interesting stuff in there, particularly the association of current day web conditions with film in the 1900s, when the accepted formats weren’t really set. Why are movie 90-120 minutes? How did that format come about, and how has it become so omnipresent?

Back in the 1900s, there were no features, there were only shorts, 5-15 minutes. That’s kind of like where the web’s at now, only most content is even shorter, just a few minutes per episode. With The Third Age, we’re hitting about 8 minutes an episode, which feels like a good amount of content. There’s plenty of material in each episode, but it won’t really tax the attention span.

I think there’s two essential philosophies when it comes to web content. One, the one present in the article, is the notion of corporate controlled shorts that exist primarily as commercials for something else, a TV show, movie or product. The Heroes or Battlestar webisodes exist to promote another show, and though they may have content in and of themselves, those two minute projects are inevitably going to pale next to the longer parent show.

I’m not sure if it’s just what the article chooses to focus on, but there seem to be almost no emphasis on the art of making web videos. There’s a lot of discussion of product placement and the business end, but very little discussion of the sort of artistic possibilities offered by web content. For me, the web offers an opportunity to do the kind of serialized narrative that just wasn’t possible for indie filmmakers in the past. Our first motivation behind doing this series was to tell a story, and that story happened to fit well into little eight minute chunks.

I find it kind of depressing that there’s so much focus on the economics of web video, and on classifying it with words like ‘content’ that obscure the art and make it into just another market to be exploited. There’s always going to be an emphasis on money, but why can’t we also focus on art? I think that’s going to be the next big jump. If people will watch Lost on their computer, who’s to say the right original show wouldn’t hook them as well?

Milton Passes to Shadow

2008-06-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we're meeting with a producer about distribution for the series. Things are happening.

Holly as Phoenix

2008-06-06T10:17:00.001-07:00

Another Update

2008-06-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

After completing casting, we started shooting back in November, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. There's two approaches to shooting an indie film, where you don't pay the cast much and you're not being paid much to shoot it. One is to shoot everything at once, just take two weeks, crank out the scenes and finish it then. The other is to shoot sporadically, considering we haven't even posted episode one yet, you can probably guess the approach we took. For the past six months, we've been shooting roughly once every two weeks, always on the weekends.

This is good creatively because it makes it easier to see how things are developing. After seeing what the actors could do on the first day, we were able to tailor the script to their strengths on our next days of shooting. And, it helps make it easier to conceptualize the overall development of the story. Watching the footage we've got cut together now, you can see where another scene is needed to clarify something, or where there's too many scenes of one type in a row. I like working like that a lot better than writing a whole script in advance and slavishly clinging to it. Writing a script for a movie and not adjusting it when you shoot is like writing a piece of music on paper and not hearing it played until you're already performing it live. It's a lot better to work in film itself, to adjust and change as you go. This story still has the same core concepts as it had at the beginning, but it's evolved in many different ways as we've been shooting.

Last Sunday, we shot some more stuff, filling in gaps in the first couple of episodes. Basically, we've got one scene left to shoot in episode 1, and a couple of pickups for episode 1.5, a news report about one of the main characters. After that stuff is shot, we'll finally be ready to release episodes. We've got a big backlog of material now, five episode's worth, but just need to fill in those last few gaps.

In addition, we've been in talks with a couple of producers about getting the series some kind of distribution. So, stay tuned for that, hopefully it will work out and we'll get a bigger platform for the work. Either way, you'll see it in the not too distant future.

Yesterday's Shoot

2008-05-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we shot almost the entirety of Episode 7 of The Third Age, the hinge of the story, in which a lot is revealed through a metaphoric journey up the Kaballah's Tree of Life. I haven't seen the footage yet, but it felt great shooting it, and hopefully will edit together into something good. In the mean time, check out these behind the scenes photos from the shoot, shot by our lighting designer Raul Coto Batres.

Hallie prepares to ascend.

Brian, Misti and Hallie wait for us to be ready.

Jordan and I set up a shot.

Misti in the circle.

I set up to film the opening incantation.

Hallie is a star, ascending from Binah to Keter.

We once again put Sel through a strange plastic ordeal.

The face of God, at home in Keter.

David Haug, and I set up a close on Hallie.

Filming with a wind tunnel effect.

Kristen finishes the sun that will illuminate Tifferet.

Shoot Schedule

2008-05-10T21:56:00.001-07:00

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)

Behind the Scenes Photos

2008-04-25T22:57:00.001-07:00

Here's some pictures from our shoot last Sunday.

The Latest on T3A

2008-04-23T23:47:00.001-07:00

The release date for The Third Age looms ahead next month. In the mean time, we’ve been shooting some cool stuff. Last Sunday, we shot out at Larchmont Reservoir, where they’ve got a giant wall, which looks like something out of an old Kung Fu movie. So, our shooting style was The Seventh Seal meets a Touch of Zen. A couple of weeks ago, we shot some crazy car footage. A night car scene is the menace of low budget cinema, but I think we pulled it off in a dynamic and exciting way. Judge for yourself when episode two is released.

In other news, we lost an actress from the project. Rather than recast, we decided to ditch that whole plot line. It’s weird because we were kind of feeling that there wasn’t that much of a place for her in the project, she was a relic of old storylines, old ideas, and after inventing new characters and situations, she proved herself inessential. So, perhaps she did us a favor. There were pieces I’d have liked to use with her arc, but we’ll do okay without her.

The Latest on T3A

2008-04-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Trailer is Live

2008-04-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

Quicktime

Here it is, the first real trailer for The Third Age. This will give you at least some idea of the plot, or at least the feel of the work. As it says in the trailer, episodes will start going live in May. Shooting is happening regularly, and most of 'Volume I' has been written, so we should run smoothly to the end of the first Volume. Please post any comments you've got on the trailer, it's obviously still early, but I always love to hear feedback.

When the Hell Does it Begin?

2008-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

The initial release date of February 2008 has come and gone, and we're rapidly moving past April. When will you actually get The Third Age? Well, the primary reason for the delay is that we don't have episode one done. We've been shooting the first seven episodes or so out of sequence, so despite having over a half hour of edited material in the can, we're still missing one scene from the first episode. That's the problem with working on a low budget, it's hard to schedule people when you're not paying them.

But, we should be shooting that scene on April 20th. If that happens, the first episode will be done shortly after, and online by May. In the long run, it's good. We can store up six or seven complete episodes, and have a lead on producing new ones. It's going to be tough to keep episodes coming out at a reasonable pace, but this way, we should be able to put out ten, and complete 'Volume I' before having to take a hiatus.

I'm working on a more plot-oriented trailer now, that will likely be online by the weekend, and give you a better idea of the project. I think it's coming out great, visually we're doing a lot with essentially no budget, and the acting is stellar all around. Hopefully you'll like it, once it does finally begin.

Zinone on the Street

2008-04-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

Morning

2008-04-04T23:38:00.001-07:00

Creating the Third Age: Casting

2008-03-10T23:11:00.001-07:00

Last time, I discussed the process that led me to begin The Third Age project. By October, we had a couple of episodes scripted, the whole story mapped out, but no one to play the roles. It was time to cast.

Casting in the pre-Internet days for a project like this would have been a major issue; you could either take out an ad in a trade magazine, or just use your friends. A word of advice — don’t use your friends for major roles unless they’re actually actors. Even if they’re “just like” the character, it’s hard to bring that energy on camera.

Luckily, the whole casting process has changed with the Internet. I was working on a shoot a few years ago and one of the actors told me about the site New York Castings. It’s a free site, where you can post ads for actors. I posted an ad for my film, The Perfect Dose, and was shocked when I got a deluge of responses. Considering this was a no-pay thing, I was hoping just to get enough people to fill out the cast, but I got over one hundred responses.

I did the same for this project, and got a similarly huge number of responses. From here, my co-director Jordan and I combed through the listings to figure out who we wanted to have audition. I’m not proud to say that this selection is based primarily on looks. As an actor, your head shot is gold; that’s changing a bit with online reels, but a good headshot gets you in the door. I’ve had a bunch of cases where someone comes in and looks nothing like the headshot. Maybe that’s disingenuous, but the goal is to get in the door; your talent will get you cast, your headshot will get you to the people you need to see.

We sent out e-mails to about fifty people, and saw about thirty people on a Saturday afternoon. My friend Alex, an actor, came in to read opposite the actors. Previously, either Jordan or I had read opposite the actor, and that doesn’t work so well. You become more focused on your own performance than observing the actor. But, having the same consistent read for everyone gives you an idea of what they can do. Alex is in the film as well, playing Mark, so it was a nice chance to see what he could do.

It was pretty crazy to have all these people show up to read for our film, to hear the words I’d written spoken by so many people. I love to talk with the actors after, get an idea about the person as well as the performance. We’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people, so it’s good to be compatible with them. But, just because you like the person doesn’t mean they should get the role. There was one guy, he had an amazing head shot and was practically cast before he came in the door. We talked for five minutes before the audition, about Deadwood, about his headshot, all kinds of stuff. I loved the guy, but then he read and just didn’t do it at all. So, we couldn’t cast him.

Most of the people were good, not great. It’s definitely tough to read for an audition, I’m sure there’s some great actors who don’t do cold reads well, but seeing so many people reading the parts make you notice more when someone jumps out. All the people we cast, with one exception, were easy, no-question choices. And, they’ve all been working out really well so far, which is lucky. On the aforementioned Perfect Dose, there was the combination of actors who weren’t quite on the wavelength we needed and some poor direction/writing from myself hurting the film. It was pretty intimidating to work with pro actors for the first time, but now I’m much more on top of it and did a better job of picking the right people.

Here’s who we chose for the various roles.

Chris Zinone is the closest thing the story has to a main character, a ‘white collar’ drug dealer who’s none too happy with the direction of his life. In the writing, we called him the ‘Han Solo’ character, and in casting, we wanted someone who could match that sort of energy. e ended up casting Brian Townes, who nailed the audition and had a lot of smooth charm that matched the character. As shooting has gone on, the character’s changed a bit. Originally, he was going to be a low level chaos magician, but we dropped that part of the character.

Morning is a damaged woman with great power. She’s an otherworldly character, and that proved a challenge for many of the people auditioning. We got a lot of robotic delivery, and a few William Shatners when people read for her. Admittedly, it was really tough to make right, and I was starting to get a bit down on the script. Then, Misti Garritano walked in and totally killed it; she made me believe the character, and that’s essential for a sci-fi piece like this. If we hadn’t found her, I don’t know if the piece would hang together like it’s been doing.

Jerrod is the head of Wolf Pharmecutical, the research organization that’s also involved in some decidedly otherworldly things. For this role, we got a wide variety of reads. There were some really intense people, some very laid back. The scene he was reading was an interview, and one guy - who we dubbed “crazy guy” - was barely reading the lines, he was just grilling the interviewee like a mad man. I’m hoping to get him in there at some point, but he was not cast. Another guy read the role in what was pretty much a Jack Nicholson impression; he didn’t get it either. We went with Ted Spencer, who brought a mix of sinister and fatherly charm to the character.

The final character we cast that day was Sophie, the interviewee in the aforementioned scene. We came up with a monologue for this audition, and it seemed to be the piece that the actors most took to. I think it’s tough sometimes to relate to genre material, particularly when you’re sitting in an office, far away from the context of the film. So, we had a lot of great reads on this, in a variety of styles. A lot of the people felt a bit too actor-y; it was more a performance of the lines than in an immersion in the character. But Dina Cataldi did a great job and scored the role.

One of the things I really like about doing the webseries, as opposed to a single film, is the ability to tailor the character to the actor in the writing. I know what these people bring to their characters, and a lot of the time on set, they’ll talk about motivations that fit perfectly, but I wasn’t even considering. It’s more of a split custody thing than a simple ownership by the writer. I like that, I like letting actors do their own thing with a role because it makes them feel more like individuals, not products of the same mind.

The tough thing about auditions is we saw a lot of great people who didn’t do anything wrong, who would be good at the role, but wouldn’t be the best. I’m more used to being on the other side of the desk, interviewing for something and not getting it. And, I probably didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just when there’s thirty people reading for four roles, you’ve got to be better than good, you have to be the best.

It always makes me feel like a real director when I do the casting. It’s tough in the indie world to keep going, uncertain of whether anyone will ever see this film that you’re sinking so much time into. But, the fact that so many people came out to audition for the project is vindication.

Next time, I’ll discuss the first few days of filming, some lessons learned and some strange things that happened.

Milton

2008-03-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

An Update on The Third Age

2008-03-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

The blog may be called "The Third Age Begins," but we're sure taking our time getting to that beginning part. There's a number of reasons for that. The primary one is my desire to have a bunch of material in the can before we start releasing it. Both Jordan and I work full time, so it's going to be tough to do even five minutes of content every other week, and, now each episode is coming in longer than five minutes, so there's a lot to process.

So, I'm hoping to have four episodes completely done before we go live with one, that way we'll be able to keep up the biweekly release pace until the first Volume of the series is complete. The series is structured in three volumes, of about ten episodes each. There'll be a month or two break between each volume to let us get ahead of the release schedule again.

The good news is, almost all the first four episodes are shot. We're shooting the last of those episode next Sunday. Almost everything that's been shot has been edited, there are twenty-one edited minutes, and another five or so that have been shot, but not edited yet. We may end up restructuring the episodes a bit since they're coming out closer to ten minutes than five, but we'll see. Ten minutes would certainly be a more substantial viewing experience, but keeping up that release pace would be near impossible.

We shot some great stuff last weekend, three scenes. One featured Jerrod Wolf, the head of a pharmaceutical company which features heavily in one side of the plot. The other two scenes focused on Christopher Zinone. As the film begins, he is a 'white collar' drug dealer, disappointed and bored with his life. So, there's a couple of scenes depicting his daily routine. We shot one of the scenes outside a laundromat in Park Slope and it was a fantastic location. The glowing lights against the dark of the night reminded me of a Wong Kar-Wai film, and he's pretty much the standard as far as visuals go. I can only hope to even approach what he can do.

When will the series actually premiere? I'm thinking April will give us enough lead time, perhaps tied into the New York Comicon. I won't have a booth or anything there, but it could be a good spot to pass out some fliers and hopefully get some chatter going about the series.

Morning

2008-02-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Creating The Third Age: Part I: The Spark of An Idea

2008-02-19T22:58:00.000-08:00

Our history begins now, with the current status of The Third Age. Right now, we are two days away from having all the material for the first four episodes of The Third Age. That is what is currently scripted. Everything that’s shot has been edited, so once these final pieces are shot, I’ll edit the rest together, cut everything into episode form and send it off to be scored. What that means is we can expect the premiere of the series in late March. I want to wait until there’s four episodes in the can, so we won’t have any delays once the series starts coming out.

It would probably be more interesting to hear all this after you’ve seen the first couple of episodes and have an idea of what the series is. However, I’m going to do my best to tell the behind the scenes story of The Third Age to date, without spoiling major plot points.

People say that every story begins with an idea, a spark of inspiration. I don’t know if that’s how it works for me, there’s usually not a spark, there’s a coalescence of images and moments in my brain. The first thing I saw on this project was a closeup on a woman’s face emerging in a series of brilliant flashbulbs. She was an operative from another dimension fighting for freedom, bringing change to our world. But, what world did she live in, and what brought her here? These are questions that floated around in my brain for a while, until I presented the idea to my friends Jordan Rennert and Steve Deluca.

We’ve known each other for years, and have worked on a number of films together. Hit up www.respectfilms.com for a full history of our past work. We went to high school together, and there, we always wanted to do film projects, but rarely wound up doing anything. However, Jordan and I have done a whole bunch of projects over the past five years or so, and now that we had both graduated, we had the opportunity to take on something bigger and more expansive than was possible before.

During the summer, we’d sit out on Steve’s porch and talk about ideas. It was a non-linear conceptual discussion that frequently strayed from the story into various aspects of our own lives, our memories and also the then airing TV series, John From Cincinnati. Though it’s less overt now than it was then, the DNA of John is ingrained on this project, it feels like a work that takes place in the same universe as Milch’s series.

What I loved about Milch’s series was the fact that he has all manner of crazy sci-fi concepts in the work, but doesn’t treat it as sci-fi, it’s just something that happens to people. Even as a huge fan of the genre, I can understand why people have issue with sci-fi. There’s frequently a distance from real emotion, an emphasis on cool concepts and action over characters. John is a very character centered show, and I’m hoping that The Third Age will feel the same way. Our structuring point in terms of the narrative isn’t so much a plot as it is the various character arcs, following these peoples’ lives and finding interesting ways for them to interact with each other.

The way we work, there’s not a clear line between real life and the movie. Discussion flows all around, and out of various tangents and digressions, a story slowly emerged, raw ideas evolved into specific charcters who got names and backstories as we went on. ‘Girl God’ became Morning, ‘The Han Solo character’ become Zinone, ‘Scientist leader guy’ became Jerrod, this was the process.

As we talked about the story, it became clear that it was a pretty big tale, at least feature film length. Looking at a project so large, I began to think about ways to make the project work. I didn’t want to labor for a year with no finished product. I also realized that most of the people who see my movies watch them on the web, so why not run with that? I came up with the concept of the webseries, serializing the work online in a series of five minute episodes and then putting out a collected feature version at the end.

With this structure in place, the project became a bit more manageable. It’s still a huge thing, but it’s easier to conceive when it’s broken up into episodes. The webseries concept gave a jumping off point, and by the end of the summer, we had a pretty solid conception of the whole story, as well as the various characters involved. But, there was still more work to do.

Next time, I’ll discuss our casting process, the character who fell out of the story and the process of creating the first scripts.

The Morning Teaser

2008-02-16T23:07:00.000-08:00

Here's another teaser, this one focusing on Morning. She is a woman removed from reality. Inside her mind there is a world of secrets.

Download

What is The Third Age?

2008-02-10T18:57:00.001-08:00

"The old age believed in magic, this age believes in science, but we are on the precipice of a third age, a fusion of everything that's come before." - Jerrod

The Third Age is a webseries about an ensemble of characters caught up in this fusion of magic and science, of people on the frontlines of the war to shape humanity's future. It begins with a ritual, the calling down of a spirit into a man, and from there goes on to chronicle an ever expanding web of lives caught up in a battle between gods.

The series is masterminded by me, Patrick Meaney, and Jordan Rennert. Our goal is to tell a story that uses science fiction as a way to explore the world we live in, and the conflicts that everyone faces. The gods in the story represent eternal forces that change humanity, progress, stasis, imprisonment and freedom. The story isn't so much about the larger conflict as it is about the individual lives affected in its wake.

Throw the RSS feed for this blog in your feed reader to stay updated on the progress of the project. Each episode of the series will be about five minutes, and a new one will be posted every two weeks. They'll be available as direct downloads, and on Youtube. It will run about a year before wrapping up the story.

We've shot about four episodes of material, but it's still being processed. For now, enjoy this teaser, focusing on Milton, the entrapped spirit. The Youtube is available for easy viewing, but download it if you want higher quality.

Higher Quality Download

The Official Third Age Site

The Third Age Begins

2008-01-28T10:29:00.001-08:00

This is the new blog for news about the Respect! Films webseries, The Third Age. Put it in your RSS feed.