Throwing Stones Ep.2 “Can you Hear Me Now?”

Throwing Stones is a horror story about a group of high schoolers who have to attend Saturday School and find they must work together to overcome their differences in over to survive when students end up missing. As if, high school wasn’t scary enough! The series stars Lindsay Seidel (Lionsgate hit The Final), Cherami Leigh (The Mist, Fast Food Nation, HBO’s Temple Grandin), Rebekah Kennedy (upcoming horror features Blood is Blood, House Hunting, and Season of the Witch w/ Nic Cage), Chad Cox (Powder, ER, Spin City, The Good Guys), and Kayla Carlyle (From the Dark), Lynn Andrews III (MTV’s: High School Stories). Writers Bart D. Van Bemmel and Jason A. Wheeler have five feature-length screenplays in production including their dark comedies BUTTERSCOTCH, SWISHER, ANGELS AND DUST, their teen comedy RUSHED, and their teen horror THROWING STONES (which this web series if based on).

Win SWAG while Watching the “Throwing Stones” LIVE beginning Wednesday January 5, 2011 8 PM EST from CCS.com, Eastbay.com, Creative Labs and ComfyGirl.com at http://www.minglemediatv.com/Throwing… The eight episodes that make up the series will be released on a regular schedule and available on-demand.

To find out more about “Throwing Stones” visit: http://www.throwingstoneswebseries.com.
Follow on Twitter @StonesWebSeries or LIKE us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/throwingstone…

4 Swirlies

“They totally know we’re in here.”

After the “drop you in the middle of things” intensity of the first episode, this one gives us a breather and gives us some set up.

We’re treated to a monologue by the teacher or principal in charge of “Saturday School.” Meanwhile, something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

I’m glad this wasn’t the first episode, because even with the flash forward that ends the episode, there’s little in the way of story of character here. It’s always tough balancing the needs of a serialized story and crafting a strong, individual episode. Here they are creating a set up to explain why the student are in class, but it all essentially exposition.

However, I think this series is actually going somewhere, and the tense moments are well done, so I’ll give them 4 Swirlies and see what comes next.

As an added bonus, I exchanged some emails with Brad, one of the creators of Throwing Stones. He gave me a little bit more info about how the series was made, and was kind enough to give me permission to share it with all of you…

From Brad Van Bemmel:

[Throwing Stones] was originally a feature that was optioned a while back. Then the writer’s strike hit, it fell through the cracks, and welcome to Hollywood. So we took matters into our hands with zero money and made Stones which is LOOSELY based on the feature. There hadn’t been many teen horror web series out there so we decided to give it a shot. This is just season one – which is getting to know the characters, why they are at Saturday School, and them overcoming their differences in order to survive. We set up video yearbook diaries on our site to help get to know the characters a bit before the season began or even if you are catching on late. Not sure if there will be a season two or not, but it has been a great ride so far.

You can also read an interview with Brad and Co-creator Jason on Elize Morgan’s blog.

There’s one thing I’d like to point out from their interview with Elize as something we totally agree with, and is one of the guiding principals behind The Watch List:

We think the web series format is such a new medium, people often think it is similar to television where there is a set time to watch and if you miss that then you are out of luck. It just takes some time to educate the audience on how things work.

We couldn’t agree more. That’s why, on The Watch List, we don’t concentrate on only bringing you the newest, most current series or episodes. We just bring you stuff that’s new to us, and that we hope you’ll like.

(Thanks Brad and Elize!)