Hello Gopher Army!

This is Scott Albert, co-owner of GopherX.net, writer, story editor and producer of Tights and Fights: Ashes. I played Captain Euchre in Tights and Fights: Captain Euchre (watch it again!) and I’ll be the face of Evil Trojan Borscht in Ashes. Yeah… I work cheap.

Besides the performing, which I muddle through with lots of help, I’m mostly responsible for the writing. I do work with talented collaborators, like the writer/performers who… er…  write and perform the other comic book heroes that populate Ashes, so I can’t claim credit for the actual good stuff in the scripts, but the scripts themselves are only the tip of the iceberg of all the writing involved in such a sprawling story in the digital space. There’s synopses, character descriptions, web page text, Transmedia updates (Twitter posts, Facebook updates, Youtube comments, blah blah blah), don’t forget the production blog, press releases, copy writing for ad text. . . oh and the endless applications that is a fact of life in the entertainment industry of Soviet Canuckistan.

While I try to stay on top of all that, in practice Christopher ends up writing a lot of the online stuff too. I’ll try to be better, Christopher!

Up until now, our work on GopherX.net productions has been a passionate side project. Witness the state of “Job Review with a Vampire,” a 6 part single camera comedy of which we are very proud and can’t wait to show to you. It’s been in postproduction for the better part of a year because there’s only so many hours in a day. Now, with Tights and Fights: Ashes receiving funding, that’s gonna change. We’re still a small company, so don’t expect a slate of 12 feature films anytime soon, but our expectation is that our little dream (and a cute cyborg gopher mascot!) will continue to grow.

There’s a good reason this post is called “Starting in the Middle.” We’ve been working on Tights and Fights in various ways for 3 years. I’ll try to bring you up to date in subsequent posts, but for now there’s a few things I would be remiss if I didn’t say upfront;

Number one, thank you to the Independent Production Fund for believing in a (quite frankly) ridiculous series about people in silly costumes. There were so many times in the past couple of years where we were convinced we just needed to give up that when we got the results I might have cried a little. Thank you to Andrea Sheffer, Executive Director, for being a shining beacon of hope for all of us toiling in the web series (or multiplatform) space.  This program is the first of its kind, and hopefully is an example of what is to follow. Thank you to Carly McGowan and Lisa Baylin for all of your help and support in these hectic early days.

Thank you to my fellow gophers, Christopher and Courtney, for enduing endless hours locked away with me. Thank you to all the talent people who have gotten this project to where it is; you will each get your due in this blog, I promise!

Thanks to Jill Golick for being our guru of Transmedia. Long may she reign!

And thank you to the gorgeous and brilliant Stephanie Dickison, who after 8 years of living with me is not only patient and understand but a delight and a constant source of inspiration.

I know this post has grown rather long and very speechifying. I promise more exciting posts to come!  Stay tuned!  In the meantime… have you seen Team Leader?