Austin, Texas – 16/6/2010 – Beth Chamberlin joins the season 2 cast of Austin-based series CELL:  The Web Series. Beth is well known for her role on Guiding Light, the longest running broadcast show in television history, and she comes to CELL fresh off a 2010 Daytime Emmy nomination for her work in the final year of the show. She played Beth Raines on the long running soap opera from 1989 to 2010. However, Beth is not new to web series as she is also co-star and story consultant on the hilarious show Steamboat. She is also a certified kettle bell trainer and has two workout DVDs, The Kettle Bell Way Vol. 1 and Kettle Bell Way Vol. 2 Empire State, available from Beacon Fitness.

CELL: The Web Series is nearing the explosive conclusion to its freshman season with its finale going live on July 21, 2010. The series stars Jourdan Gibson, Kevin McCarthy and Danny Cameron. It is written and directed by Mark Gardner with a score by composer/conductor Brian Satterwhite.

When asked about the new addition to his already stellar cast Mark Gardner had this to say, “We’re very excited to have Beth join the cast of CELL: The Web Series. CELL has worked hard to deliver excellent character based drama and an actor of Beth’s caliber will help us push to the next level in creating high-quality independent drama. We hope with the inclusion of Beth Chamberlin in CELL that we can not only increase interest in what we’re doing but also increase exposure and interest in independent drama all over the web to a new group of fans.”

CELL has accumulated much critical acclaim in its first season and has recently surpassed 260,000 views on Koldcast TV. Lovable Varmint Productions is currently seeking additional funding and sponsors for season two.

CELL: The Web Series is proud to welcome Beth Chamberlin to the cast. Welcome to the Family, Beth and Stay Tuned!

Lovable Varmint Productions is a small band of independent writers, actors and producers taking their futures into their own hands. Our mission is to tell high-quality, engaging, original stories, with a focus on serialization, for distribution on the Internet and other new media streams. We intend to push the boundaries of new media production by advancing evolutionary models for monetization, production, and distribution of original web content.

For sponsorship, funding and press inquiries please contact Mark Gardner.

One of the first projects we’ll be working on is obviously a second season of CELL. The feedback we’ve already gotten has been great, and you guys haven’t even gotten to the meat of the show yet. So we’re starting the process of fleshing out what our second season will be. Then we just have to figure out how to pay for it. I’m hopeful we can make that happen and then keep the story rolling for all of you.

Breaking the story with Carpool Productions

Another project is called Carpool Productions. We’ve been working on it for a few months now and it’s starting to pick up speed. It’s a mix of a documentary and episodic series with a bunch of brilliant kids. Some of our documentary footage is already in the can and we’re working hard to get the story going. We’ll have a website up soon with more information and we’ll keep you posted on where we are as we get more information together. I can’t wait for this one to come out. It should be a LOT of fun for everyone.

We’re also really early in a show called Ashes of Adair. This one has me really excited. It will be heavy on the action and we’re aiming for something visually stunning. What’s really fun for me is we’re looking for this one to go through a cross-media storyline. That means it won’t just exist in the web-series format. The sky’s the limit but think comics and ARGs just to name a couple of options. This is new and exciting territory and the potential for it is huge. We’ve got a rough story for the first season already and I think it could be spectacular.

Early titles for Ashes of Adair website

So we’re working hard to keep the content churning out while maintaining a high quality for everything. Of course a big part of this will be finding money for them all, but we’re hoping we can get there as well. The great thing about new media streams is there are a lot of options for monetization, and we’ll be exploring as many as humanly possible to make these shows happen.

It’s an exciting time and I’m hoping you’ll all stick with us as we start up these projects. None of it can happen without the support of all the fans out there that care about what we’re doing here.

We’re also going to start a little more with the conversation about what we want to do with LVP and the shows that we’re producing. Stick with us because we really think you’ll like what we’ve got going on. Until then, take a look at episode 3.

CELL: The Web Series, Episode One is live! Check it out here: http://cellthewebseries.com/

Let us know what you think! Please create topics in the forum for Episode One if you’d like to share your thoughts or ask questions.

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That’s right, you heard me. Twitter contest for a Lovable Varmint t-shirt.

All you have to do is tweet this out to the whole world and you’ll be entered to win one of our loverly Lovable Varmint t-shirts.

#CELL premieres tonight! 9 pm CST! Tell your friends! One lucky twitterer will win a t-shirt. RT this to enter! http://bit.ly/au3iTr

Simple, right? So get on the ball and start spreading the love. We need you guys for us to be successful!

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

One lucky t-shirt winner, Kendra!

You know those nifty Lovable Varmint Productions t-shirts everyone had been talking about? Of course you do! Now’s your chance to get your very own LVP crew shirt. To help celebrate our distribution of CELL with Koldcast.TV, we’re going to be giving away Lovable Varmint Productions t-shirts. (Well, a few at least.) All you have to do is make your own poster for CELL. Find out more after the jump, or just go to…

http://cellthewebseries.com/contest/CELL%20Poster%20Contest.zip

to get your pics and start work.

We know the show’s not out yet so you’re not entirely clear on what’s going on. And that’s a good thing. It’d spoil all the surprises if we told you all the secrets right now. But we can still help you out. Here’s the logline for the show…

A man wakes up in a cell after a night on the town. When he realizes he’s not in jail and he’s not alone, he fights to stay who he is while helping someone else remember who they were.

So that’s all you get. Now be creative and make some great posters.

Oh but wait, where do I get the pictures I need to make these things?

It’s simple. Just go to  http://cellthewebseries.com/contest/CELL%20Poster%20Contest.zip and download the ZIP file. Inside that lovely ZIP file you’ll find instructions and images that you can use to make your own promotional poster for CELL. There will be instructions on how to submit as well as a few rules. (Lawyers make us do these things you know.) The deadline for submission is January 31st, 2010. E-mail your entries to the e-mail listed in your packet. (contest at lovablevarmint.com) We’ll announce the winners February 2nd, just in time for our premiere.

Digital submissons only please

I can’t wait to see what you guys put together. Good luck!!

Oh yeah… legal stuff…

By submitting material through this contest, you are allowing Lovable Varmint Productions, LLC (LVP) to use the material for the purposes deemed appropriate by LVP. All submissions become and will remain the property of LVP. No compensation is due to the submitter. Submitted material will not be returned. The selection process and whether or not a winner is chosen, is solely within the discretion of LVP.  Any submissions may be edited by LVP at the sole discretion of LVP.  Participation in this contest does not guarantee that you will win. (Wouldn’t it be nice if contests did that? But they don’t.) LVP reserves the right to cancel the contest at any time without prior notice.

Until now…

We’re moving our release date back 2 weeks to February 3rd. We’re working really hard to get our post-production done in time and we were faced with a choice: keep the earlier release date and have questionable effects or push back a couple of weeks to make sure the effects are in good shape. We decided on taking the extra time to make sure that our releases are quality.

So change your calendars. CELL will premiere on February 3rd, 2010. We think you’ll like what you see.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Right now there are a lot of people working really hard on post-production for “CELL.” The score’s being written as sound design works like mad to make a final mix that will blow everyone away. Visual effects are being rendered and rough cuts of episodes being put together as fast as humanly possible. We do launch the show in just over a month you know.

Since we wrapped, I’ve found myself handing things off to other people to work on things until I can get back in the loop and approve of them. Clearly I can’t do everything myself. That’s just the way things work. Having said that, I find myself missing the daily interaction with the story that I had for so long. So I decided to do something about it.

It may not sound like much, but we never locked down our opening titles. Again it may not sound like much, but this will be the first thing anyone ever sees of “CELL.” That’s kind of a big deal.

I never wanted the titles to be anything over-the-top but they have to be a little interesting. Then recently we started developing our ARG for “CELL.” Kelley Donoghue came up with a great idea for a part of the ARG. It gave me an idea about someway that we could bring in parts of the ARG into the titles and help bring it all full-circle. It was then and there that I decided that I was going to do the opening titles.

This would be me

The idea was really about creating a 3D space but the only problem is that I have no experience in 3D rendering outside of some work I did in 1996. Did I mention that we’re premiering the first episode in 3 days!!!

This is where I really started to quote the mantras in my head that got me on this road to begin with.

“We’re not tied to who we were.”

“Times have changed and we all have the ability to work hard and make things happen.”

“Anything that needs to be done CAN be done with determination and hard work.”

“Holy crap I have to learn how to use a 3D engine to make a title and I have very little time to do it oh my deity I’m gonna die.”

(That last one wasn’t so much of a mantra as it was something I distinctly remember telling myself at 4 a.m. as I stared at the monitor of my computer.)

I preceded to forget that last one and focused on the others. This is where I really learned to love the internet. I did some research and found Blender.

Blender saved my titles!

Blender is an open source 3D content creation suite. One great thing about Blender… it’s free.  So I downloaded it and stared at the screen dumbfounded.

That got me by for a minute and then I decided I had to get to work. I worked through the tutorials I found online and got the basics on how to work in Blender and 3D engines in general. With deadlines looming, I decided that I needed to skip the rest of the tutorials and start working on the titles or else they’d never get done.

It was slow going at first and with a lot of frustration. Whenever I got stuck I would Google the question and usually found a good answer. I ended up creating a scene and began the animation part of the scene. Then frustration hit again.

“I can’t animate a lamp distance??? But how am I supposed to make this work without changing the lamp distance? There has to be some way!” I said that at least 10 times in one night as I was struggling through the final animation of the titles. I searched for hours trying to find the answer and no one had it. In fact I finally concluded that it couldn’t be done. The entire basis of the titles was down the drain so I had to rethink everything. Or did I?

In my searching I found a new beta version of Blender that said it would animate everything. I downloaded it with fingers crossed. 20 minutes later I was done and rendering the scene. Whew.

I did it! I conquered the 3D scene and made my own titles! “Conquer” may be a strong word. “Pelted into into boredom with a throw pillow” might be a little more accurate.

But would he have been a conqueror if he used a pillow? I think not.

I won’t be winning any Streamy’s for my titles. That doesn’t matter though.

What matters is that I saw something that needed to be done and I made it happen. It took time and effort and not a lot of sleep, but in the end it was done.

That’s what new media can be for independent producers. If you care enough about the project then you can make it happen with hard work and effort. If you don’t know how to do something, learn. The tools are out there for all of us to use. We just have to find them.

And many thanks to Blender 2.5. The new interface is great and a big improvement from the earlier version. 2.5 is still a little buggy at times but it made my life a LOT easier and helped get our episode on the screen this Friday. And no, Blender isn’t sponsoring this blog post or “CELL.” Although if they’re interested then I’m sure we can make some arrangements.

Today, I think I’ll be talking about Transmedia productions… specifically ARGs. If you go all the way to the end then I might just blow your mind with just how crazy the new “Dollhouse” ARG really is.Recently I think the majority of geekdom was distraught when FOX once again cancelled a Joss Whedon series. “Dollhouse” got the axe this week. Whether it got it too soon or not I think has yet to be figured out. While I personally enjoyed it, I know a lot of people we disappointed. But this discussion is probably best held off for another day. Because “Dollhouse” isn’t quite dead yet. In fact, it seems more lively than ever.

Right about the time the announcement was made about “Dollhouse” being cancelled, there was a website launched for the Rossum Corporation. In case you haven’t watched the show, they’re the ones running the Dollhouses.

A few people noticed that there were actually contact numbers on the website for people to call and e-mail. When you call it, you’ll get the usual voicemail that you’d expect from a company, especially one set up by a TV show. The fun happened later when some people got a call back from Rossum.

Those phone calls had a hidden meaning. With a little research, people were led to a site at www.ditchthetech.com. The site had a video urging people to stop Rossum and ditch the tech.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are way too many places to take you through everything now, but this led people to www.wipethefuture.com (you need to figure out the password), www.spectrin.com (another hidden area with passwords), @AlexfromPR and several other places scattered around the web. Each piece leads to another part of the bigger puzzle and I have to say it’s been really well done. Completely engaging and expanding on the “Dollhouse” universe in ways I don’t think anyone really imgained. Some people are even saying that it feels like a new show. Maybe Whedon’s next project?

This is all part of transmedia storytelling, where producers take several different types of media in order to further engage their audience and tell a richer story. That’s one of the great things about the internet; You can reach out to you fans and have them take part in the story, not just watch it. The Twitter account for @AlexfromPR is treated just like a real person who has a real blog.

She reacts just like a real person would if hundreds of people start asking her crazy questions about Rossum and Iceland and tattoos. You might freak out. So does Alex. And this kind of interactivity is what makes this an ARG.

An ARG is an “Alternate Reality Game” and I have to say I LOVE the concept. So much so that I think I just might steal it. We’ve already been developing some viral locations for the “CELL” mythology but I think we may even want to develop it even farther so that when we launch, people will have a chance to interact and learn more about the world.

I also think that for us Indie producers, this kind of media effort could really pay off.

There are a lot of ways that indie producers can take advantage of the unique position web distribution gives us. I’ve always been a huge proponent of building a community around your brand. These ARGs are just another level of engagement we can take with our viewers. If we can get the support of a community talking about our show, imagine how strong we could be with a community that’s a PART of the show and interacting with it. That level of engagement is where we have an advantage over traditional media. If we can use that to show that our viewers care about our content, then they’ll be more likely to help us finance more in the future.It may be too late for “Dollhouse,” but it’s not too late for us.

And now how can I blow your mind about the “Dollhouse” ARG? Here we go…

The website www.spectrin.com isn’t a new site. It’s been around since 2004. You can find archived versions of the site at www.archive.org, which works just to create archives of web pages over time.  So when they talk in the ARG about getting into our “timeline,” it starts to take on a new sense of depth. Did they plan this story out 5 years ago? Way before “Dollhouse” was even a twinkle in Eliza’s eye? Have they been secretly planning this for years? How deep does this go? Where is this rabbithole taking us? I for one can’t wait to find out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can’t wait to see what Brian does with “CELL” and the story behind it. We listened to tons of music during production and its always been a big part of the inspiration for the story. This part of the process should be great fun and working with such a talented composer is really going to add to what we’re trying to achieve with “CELL.”