8.13 Ep.3 “Dinner for One”

FBI agent, Greg Frost, is introduced in the spiderweb along with his fiance, reporter, Sonia Pierce. The young couple attempt to have dinner in their new condo as the clock ticks.

(More info below…)

1 Swirlie

“Hello Agent Frost.  Hello Mrs. Frost.”

Woah.  Since when were we watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith?  Or True Lies for that matter?  Minus the funny.

After a real thriller interrogation of a first episode, in which, we were promised Zombie destruction la 28 Days Later— and then a second episode packed full of conspiracy theory—we’re stopping for a flirty domestic picnic?

I’m all for character.  But a five minute scene between two characters that we haven’t seen up to this point, discussing their marital difficulties, seems a bit like… stalling.

I felt like shouting at the screen: GET TO THE ZOMBIE ACTION!

Also, aren’t law enforcement/government agents the first to get it in these kind of horror stories?  If so, the filmmakers had better not be building these characters up just to kill them off at the first sign of zombie infection.

Filmmakers: Never betray your audience’s expectations.  We won’t like it.  Really.  (Hello, Lost, anyone?)

Though, I have to hand it to the actors.  A marital scene loaded with subtext and subtlety is hard to pull off, but they do.  (Although, I had a hard time believing the male lead was a government agent—but then again, Matt Damon has spoiled me).

The director has some nice nuanced moments, and the score helped to emphasize when we should care—which, if overdone a bit more, would have felt overly sentimental.  But the biggest issue here is the writing.  Not that it’s all bad, but it just goes on for too long.  Get in and get out.  That’s how an effective scene works.

This was not an effective episode for building upon the greater zombie conspiracy arc.  If anything, it feels like a strange tangent—a subplot that we’d have time for in a feature film or television show—but not so much a web series in which you only have so much time to hook your audience.

All I have to say is that there had better be some action in the next episode!

More Info:

CAST:

Sonia Pierce… Marisha Ray
Agent Greg Frost… Richard Lara
Erika (VO)… Traycee King

CREW:

Created by… Traycee King
Producers… Traycee King, Beau Ryan
Director… Mando Franco
Director of Photography… Beau Ryan
Writer… Marisha Ray
Lighting… Beau Ryan
Editors… Traycee King, Joshua Evan Ovenshire
Makeup… Chrissy Lynn
Visual Effects… Ryan Anderson
Music by… Drew Krassowski

8.13 EPISODES:

Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UhuMLU4k78
Episode 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXqUC3QUQT0&feature=re…
Episode 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko4ehzVKHzs&feature=re…
Episode 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw-gD3HJ_uk&feature=re…
Episode 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln5xX8a27c8&feature=re…
Episode 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y78u4Njlj5I
Episode 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7a4Mon0o-0
Episode 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRb40bm2aTo

8.13 SITES:

Website: http://813series.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/813series
Twitter: http://twitter.com/zom813s
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/eightthirteen
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/813series

You Suck at Photoshop – Ep.2 “Covering Your Mistakes”

MORE: http://www.MyDamnChannel.com/BigFatBrain

4 Swirlies

This is an old one, but this episode made me laugh each time I’ve seen it.  I came across it like most people, looking for tutorials on how to use Photoshop.  What I like about it most is the smoothness of the screen performance.  Anyone who’s tried to used those screen capture tools like Camtasia, will tell you that it isn’t easy to do a lot of cuts.

The story about his marriage falling apart continues throughout the other episodes, descending into a police standoff and a train ride to nowhere.  But I’ll let you watch those on MyDamChannel.