Animus Cross, “Hell for the Company” Update

“Hell for the Company” is the official title of the new series of Animus Cross. We are now in pre-production for several more episodes to finish off this year. Thanks to everyone who watched the previous series. Your continued support is much appreciated. Animus Cross Series 2 promises to ramp up the action, give you more character development and bring the audience ever closer to finding out the mysteries of Animus Cross.

As of right now, the first two scenes have been loosely storyboarded and a second draft of the script has gone over big with the readers.

I’m also looking forward to letting the local community know when we are ready to cast two new characters for the series.

Until then, thanks again for your continued interest in Animus Cross and it’s inhabitants! Stay tuned!

-A.L. Steen

May Day! There's a New Interview!

Happy May Day everyone!

It's a beautiful morning here in Scappoose, OR and the second of three cast\crew interviews are up and ready for viewing at animuscross.com. Thanks so much to Trish Egan and Dave Steen. It was good fun, but could have done without my silly face! :P Haha, I'm not a big fan of seeing myself on camera, but Trish and dad looked wonderful. I love hearing Trish tell stories. She has such elegance and a glorious voice. Both she and dad have great presence. I'm so looking forward to really digging into the lives of Judith and Pastor Carver.

Once again, thanks to Mercedes Rose for the great questions (LOVE the site update). Thanks to mom, Jerry and Kathryne for being our crew for the interview. Dad, once again, a nice edit. Thank you.

Have a bright day everyone and enjoy!

Cast Interviews with Mercedes Rose.

It is a bright and sunny day here in PDX. As I sit here at my computer, I look out at the river and it reminds me of the GREAT cast interviews we did a few weeks ago with the lovely Mercedes Rose using this same river as our backdrop! The first of three interviews is now live on the Animus Cross Website. Look for the new button on the main page.

Thank you again for the wonderful interviewing, Mercedes! It was a lot of fun and we hope to involve you more in future Animus Cross endeavors. Check out Mercedes' online radio program, The Quasi-Glamorous Life, the ups and downs living as a working voice-over talent and actor.

Also, please check out the Animus page on the StoryGas blog. StoryGas is, "a place on the web for people who work in, and fans who watch, online drama... " Here you'll find lots of online shows, some you've probably not been watching, but might want to check out!

A big thanks to Harold Phillips and Dave Steen for all their hard work in recent days. We'll get there, I'm sure of it!

Take care and I hope it's sunny where you're at!

-A.L.

The Animoose is Loose!

Hey all,

Head on over to the Animus Cross website to check out our Animoose in the episodes section. The moose was named Oscar after he stopped production for about fifteen minutes to head down to the lake to have himself a drink. We tried to take advantage of his appearance by putting him into a scene with Jerry Buxbaum and Jeff Hime, but he proved to be more of a distraction to the shot than anything, so sadly, we had to cut him out. Now here he is in his own little clip, with a few extra bloopers thrown in for good measure. Have fun and keep checking the site for updates! Thanks and happy spring!

-A.L. Steen

Thank you all!

Sorry for the delay in blog posts everyone. I have about a million stories milling around in my jumbled little brain and wind up being a horrible journal keeper! Excuses aside, I wanted to thank each and every person who viewed Animus Cross, passed on the link or wrote about us! The hits to the site this month have blown away all previous months. We have several new opportunties for the show and the new site has been well received. Thanks dad! Please be sure to keep checking back for new additions to the site.

I am quite confident that the story will continue with some even more exciting twist and turns... maybe even a glimps at our nighttime attackers... :P I've spoken a bit about that subject to RAD special effects make-up artist Christina Kortum, so keep your fingers crossed for us folks.

We really had a bunch of fun with this show and I'm looking forward to putting the characters through some new tortures... uh, I mean experiences.

Have a wonderful weekend,

A.L. Steen

p.s. In previous posts I have neglected to give my lovely sister Laura Steen credit for some of our behind the scenes photos! Thanks sister Lou, you rock!

-A

A Family Affair

Part 4 of Animus Cross, "Hell Runs This Way" is now in the hands of Troy Gunter, our sound designer. Dad (Dave Steen) is hard at work on the new site. Speaking of dad, episode four will be the premiere of his character.

It's never easy having crew members double as main characters in a story, especially when one of those crew members is the only other guy in your grip\electric\camera department! One of my only regrets during the shooting of Animus was that we didn't have a designated still photographer or behind-the-scenes camera. I would have loved to capture Dad and Jason running stingers, setting lights, building dolly track, moving generators, swapping P2 cards and choreographing the many camera moves, all by themselves for the most part. We were very lucky to have Joe Aimonetti visiting with his camera!

It's a good thing we didn't have an on-set wardrobe person. They would have been pulling their hair out watching dad do all those things in costume, just before stepping in front of the camera! Of course, Jerry was doing the same thing; coodinating stunts and special fx while in full costume. At least his wardrobe was a lot more rugged and held up to all the abuse.

When I speak of wardrobe, I have to give so much credit to my mom, Cindy Steen. She was amazing! She helped me keep track of all the costumes and even found time to sew a shirt, a vest and Sarcous' leather tunic! When it comes to leather clothing, the high prices are definately reflecting all the labor put into each peice. All said and done, I think we spent less than $200 on the materials to make the tunic. The time mom put into it would have jacked that price up considerably!

I don't think you can tell from this post that this production was a family affair, can you? :P Not all the family was blood however. I've been very fortunate in my career to meet folks who have become family through the trials of production. I think we added some more on this show too.

Thanks everyone for a great time. I can't wait to get back on set!

-A.L. Steen

It’s all in the edit.

Animus Cross “Hell Runs This Way” Part 3 went live on the 5th of January and is being very well received. We have a little surprise for those viewers wanting more; during the latest edit, we realized that we could get a 4th episode out of the deal! Essentially, this buys us another month to gather funds for future episodes of Animus Cross.

So fans, please help us spread the word!

With a bit of hard work, the new website will coincide with the uploading of the 4th part of Animus. The new site will bring you great information, access to this blog and some fun freebies!

There’s some new music in the latest episode, done by our own Troy Gunter. Please take a peek at the Quickskits page for more of Troy’s fun work!

I’ve had a few comments about the structure of Animus Cross that I’d like to address. I’ve been told it looks like a television pilot (Thank you! :) ), that it doesn’t look like other web series. Again, I thank you. We wanted to be different, not only with the content of the story, but with the quality of the video. Animus Cross is a serial in the old style (think old Doctor Who's :P ) NOT an episodic like the majority of tv and web shows you see today. What does that mean exactly? Simply put, episodes are stand alone stories where as serials have a story arc that spans several episodes and\or an entire season or series.

Why did I go with the serial format? Well, to be completely honest, I write better that way. That’s not totally an excuse, as a growing writer I will someday try my hand at an episodic story. Not Animus, not this time. The serial format really seems to fit the old timey feel of our show and so far has rewarded us with many ‘I wanna see more!’ comments.

So that is that. Thanks again for all the kind words about the show and please stay tuned!

Hope you have great successes in 2009,

A.L. Steen