Lately, there have been excesses. Some of the good kind, and some of the not so good kind. This got me thinking, how much is too much?

I just had a much needed vacation. I spent ten days in a tropical locale not doing much other than sitting around with a book and a drink, with a little bit of snorkeling, biking and kayaking thrown in. It was quite relaxing, but my mind didn’t shut off. Rather, as the days went on, I found my thoughts clearer, and I was able to process some things that have been happening in the Causality world and come up with pretty good solutions to some issues. By the end of the trip, I was ready to get back to it-to try to implement my newly conceived solutions, and be better at what I do around here. My “excess” of vacationing was ultimately a good thing, though it was hard to actually get back in the groove upon my return. But I did lose some momentum, and it set me to wondering if the relaxation was too much, in light of all that needs to be done. And I felt pretty guilty for checking out and enjoying myself while some not-so-good things were going on back in the real world.

While I was gone, Glynis had some excesses too. Only hers were decidedly not positive. She’s been pretty open about her mental issues on twitter, and on a Podcast to the Past that we have recorded (but as of the publishing of this post, not yet released), so I know she won’t mind me mentioning them here. I’ll leave the bulk of the details to her, but I will say that her excess was an overdose of prescription medication. Through the whole process of creating this show, she has had to deal with death, health issues, the messed up medical care system, and family angst. Through it all, she has maintained a strong level of professionalism on the business side, and ALWAYS the highest level of artistic effort as an actor/writer/producer/production designer. And she has become a close friend. She amazes me with her ability to pull it together when she has to, but once again, the question of “how much is too much?” comes to mind. How much can we as her partners in this project ask of her, knowing all the other things that she is dealing with? The answer to that came from her: it helps when there is work to do. She is happy when we are meeting, planning, making progress toward bringing the show she created with Montoure to life. Being on-set is best, but those other tasks keep her positively occupied and create an outlet that helps her deal with some of the shit that can spiral out of control when there isn’t much to do. So, the best thing we can do as partners and friends is to keep the momentum going. Not so easy when we’re still dealing with all of the things we’ve discussed before (challenging schedules of cast & crew, not much money to finance the things we need, etc.) But this week we did record a Podcast to the Past, lock three much-needed locations for upcoming shoots, and she did some fundraising research. That kept us busy.

Glynis is now off on a trip of her own-it’s a much shorter and busier trip than I had, but hopefully will provide her with some positive excess, so that she’s in good spirits when she returns. One can hope.

Another area that raises the question of how much is too much is that of free-or-drastically-reduced labor. As we’ve mentioned, we don’t have much to spend on this project, but we are striving for mainstream broadcast production quality. That means we’ve asked some very talented and experienced (and expensive) people to work for little or nothing. We’ve also compromised in some areas, settling for less experienced people where it seemed to be ok…but it wasn’t. We’ve had attitudes flare up on set due to both of these things. How much is too much to ask of our free/cheap labor? And how much compromise is too much, risking the quality of the end product? I can safely say, we have already more than exceeded the amount of free/cheap labor that we’re entitled to. Luckily, our rockstar team is still energized enough by what we’re achieving to keep going-which is good, because we still have 100 pages of script to shoot! (AAACK!!! Little Freakout there. I’m ok now.) I once said that I was sure that we’d make a lot of mistakes and learn from them during the process, and that was one of the truest things I’ve ever said. You may lose sleep when you screw up, but when you’re forced to try to fix the mistake and move forward, you gain not only experience, but pride in your ability to learn and adapt. As long as neither the mistakes or the pride are too excessive, you can come out ahead. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I did learn that it’s NEVER ok to compromise quality, not when playing with the big boys is your goal.

And how much of this sharing of the intimate details of the problems and challenges of our personal and professional lives is too much? At one point, I resisted Glynis and Montoure’s assertion that people WANT to know the dirty truth. I thought that we should always spin things to make it look easy. But then I realized they are right. Anyone who knows anything knows that doing what we’re doing is NOT easy, so it would be ridiculous to pretend that it is. So we don’t. We tell you when we struggle. We let you know when personal issues are affecting the work. We say shit and fuck, and share details of our alcohol-fueled parties.

Is it all too much? I don’t know. But…we agreed to be honest and open with the community that we’re building about the process of making this show, so hopefully it isn’t.

The point of the sharing is to show that the team making this show is a bunch of messy humans who dream big and make their dreams come true. Messy humans being the key words there, though the time will come when we can admire what we’ve done, have a big party, and celebrate-to excess, of course. Until then, we’ll keep struggling along, enjoying as much of the process as we can. Then, we’ll do something new. That is the way of things.

Ok, This is cool. Shoot me, but I love Symphony of Science.

When I was sixteen years old, I started a Star Trek fan club. (And right now, you’re either laughing or you think I’m awesome. Or possibly both.) Wanting to attract new members, I got myself a lobby table at Norwescon. I put out my newsletters, some buttons, and a sign-up sheet, talked to people and answered questions, and sold memberships. Went pretty well.

Now, this past weekend — about a quarter-century later — I found myself back behind a Norwescon lobby table again. Talk about time travel.

In some ways, it felt like my life was taking a giant step backward. (“What, I’m stuck doing this again?“) But really, it was a huge step forward instead. Instead of spending all this time and effort and love on someone else’s dreams, I was there promoting my own. Because this time, the table was for CAUSALITY.

If you were at Norwescon, I hope you had a chance to stop by and see us. We had a lot of fun talking to people, telling them about the ideas we had for the show and debating the possibilities of time travel.

We had T-shirts to sell, buttons and stickers to give away, props from the show on display, and a monitor showing our teaser trailers, our mini-episode, and our Season One trailer.

People really seemed interested, engaged, and even excited. We had a sign-up sheet for our mailing list, and I thought we’d get maybe a few people to sign up, but we had about forty people sign up, which was way more than I expected.

One reaction we kept getting that just delighted me was people saying, “I haven’t even heard of this!” Apparently, we looked so well-put-together and professionally presented that people just assumed they should have heard of us by now!

Huge thanks to my co-producers, Glynis Mitchell and Ralph Fontaine, and to our caterer/production assistant, Christopher Sprague, for manning the table with me. Thanks also to Gabe Sedgmore for stopping by on Sunday — sorry I missed you!

So much of working on a film project like this feels like you’re working in a vacuum — isolated and insulated from your future audience. It was greatly inspiring to get out there and meet some of that future audience, and to see the kind of enthusiasm people are bringing to this. Thanks for the feedback and the encouragement — we’re back to work on it harder than ever.

Everyone comes to the past for their own reasons. They do it for curiosity, for escape, to avoid wars and disasters. They all know one thing — they’ll be starting a new life, in a strange new century. Because once you’ve come to the past, you can never return to your own time.

When Holly Wells accidentally arrives in the present day from just five years in the future, Seattle’s hidden community of time travelers is nearly torn apart as she tries to rebuild her life, change her destiny, and ultimately, find something she can call home.

But she didn’t come back alone . . . .

We’ll be releasing our new Season 1 Trailer online this Thursday, but before we do, we wanted make sure you’ve seen our last release: “Dr. Genesee: Year 2531″. We worked hard on this prequel minisode and are REALLY proud of it, but what’s blowing us away are the comments that some people we respect have made.

The women of @indie_intertube were really complementary about the production value and about @carowilcox’s acting. We’re going to try to get a link to their show-we’ll update this post when we have it so you can have a listen.

The movie review site @DoomCheez said:

“…the production values displayed not only beat a lot of the direct-to-video/direct-to-web market, but also put the hacks at Syfy (what idiot renamed that network, anyway?) to shame. Indeed, had I been shown this “mini-sode” blind, I would have assumed that it was the lead-in to a fully funded, studio produced commercial sci-fi series.” 

Wow. They said more, but that’s enough back-patting for now. Have a look for yourself. We hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as many others have, and don’t forget to check back on Thursday 4/12/12 for our Season 1 trailer.

The multi-talented @glynismitchell who co-wrote the script, is co-producing the show, portraying Holly AND doing Art Direction for Causality is getting inked. Today. Perhaps as I write this, I’m not sure.

The point is, she is getting a tattoo inspired by Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series. Being a strong woman with somewhat bewitching qualities, she is understandably drawn to the Bene Gesserit. In the universe of Dune, they are highly intelligent, focused, trained women who have the ability to control their minds and bodies in a way that others cannot. This makes them an object of respect and fear by those who don’t understand them.

One of their most important tools is the Litany Against Fear. It is a mantra that allows the sisterhood, and anyone who can bring their mind and body under control through it’s meditative properties, to resist the sub-human urges contained in the most primitive parts of our brains. Through complete acceptance of the power of the Litany, one can become Human, a step removed from the animal that resides within.

Glynis is having the litany tattooed on her, as a permanent reminder of it’s power. It may be a long and painful process, like the pricks of 100,000 gom jabbar. Wish her well as she undertakes this process, and if we’re all very good, perhaps at some point she will post a picture…

Someone’s made a working prototype.

Peter Jansen, the engineer responsible for the tricorder has even given you helpful instructions on how to make your own! He’s like it to be as accessible as possible to lay people and children:

“I’m also actively designing the next model, and keeping it inexpensive in the hopes that children and ‘big kids’ like me will have easy access to them sometime in the near future,” he says.

His tricorders are “portable sensor systems that can measure atmospheric measurements (ambient temperature, pressure and humidity), electromagnetic measurements (light or magnetic fields), and spatial measurements (distance and location). ”

I totally would have made this (maybe with Dad or Sister’s help…) as a kid. Awesome way to learn about a bunch of different branches of science!

Hey Time Travelers!

As I said in a previous post, it’s convention season! With the Women in Webseries panel at Emerald City Comic Con* now over, we’re moving on to our lobby table at Norwescon 35. We’re pretty excited: we’ll have some free swag as well as tshirts for sale if you want to proudly display yourself as the first kid on the block to support Causality.

Let’s look at that magnificent Genesee prequel again, shall we? The reason that our work is taking so long to come out is that this is what we want the show to look like; this or better. We want you to fall in love with the characters and art the way we have. We’ll be showing our two promos, the Season One trailer that we premiered at ECCC, and the prequel at our table, too. If you weren’t at the panel at ECCC, this will be your very first chance to see the trailer!

We’ll be taking cash for retail items as well as Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover, we’ll be there all four days! We’re excited to meet you all, so please drop by to see myself, Montoure (whose genius set this all up), Ralph, and the Chef. We’re trading off shifts, so I can say that the one day I won’t be there (Friday!) is the day I get (most of) my awesome new tattoo from George at True Love Tattoo! Yes, I’ll show you if you ask. It’s Dune-related.

*Video for that is on it’s way…stay tuned!

Big news today! First off, we want to thank everyone for your great comments on our Dr. Genesee mini-episode. We’re really excited it’s been so well-received, and we’re looking forward to bringing you more!

We’re making a big change in how we’re going to be creating this series for you. If you’ve been following our progress, then you know that we’ve had a lot of issues with filming schedules. Getting everyone together in front of a camera at the same time has been a real struggle.

We’ve finally decided that the best and fastest way to make the show was to avoid that problem altogether, by shifting gears in our production and making this an animated series!

We’ve outsourced the production of the animation itself to 4월의 바보, a Korean animation studio, who are doing a great job for us at a fantastic price.

All of the performers who were originally going to be in CAUSALITY will be doing the voice work for the animated series, including Glynis Mitchell as Holly, Gabriel Sedgmore as Mason, Ralph Fontaine as Jude, Carolynne Wilcox as Dr. Genesee, and of course, Wil Wheaton as Ezekiel Kane.

Here’s a shot of Glynis Mitchell recording her lines, and a couple of sample images from the work the studio has done so far:

We’re really looking forward to this new direction, and we hope you’ll enjoy CAUSALITY: The Animated Series!

It’s the year 2531 and Dr. Genesee is about to start a new life.

This is the prequel mini-episode we’ve been talking about for a year now. We’re VERY proud of it, and hope you’ll watch and let us know what you think. Much more to come!

Oh, and if you haven’t seen our “behind the scenes” video of the Dr. Genesee shoot, it’s worth a look (Lucky Charms, green boots, Psychedelic 70′s music, and RUSSIANS? Yes.)

To make sure you hear about all of our news and adventures, please “Like” our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/watchcausality, and follow us on Twitter:

@watchcausality (main show account)

@glynismitchell (writer/producer/actor)

@montoure (writer/producer/actor)

@rfontaine71 (director/producer/actor)