Paul had no clue...

... the coolest girl in the room was totally checking him out.

New images already???

So many great faces to choose from. I may put up more in a day or so. In the meantime, enjoy!

I had a total blast at the town meeting shoot. I never want these shoots to end when they're happening. My good friend Mark Lennon, who originally just wanted a chance to see some of the show being filmed, and who was already completely psyched to get a chance to be an extra, was absolutely THRILLED to get a speaking part today. On the way home he was so excited, saying "I'm IN Ragged Isle! I'm Gordon!" Mark's son Sam also thoroughly enjoyed himself.

I've got four (count em, four) scenes coming up this Wednesday the 1st. To that I say "Yay!" I can't wait. Barry's joy, enthusiasm, and professionalism is only matched by how he brings out the same in everyone who works with him. He makes directing look effortless, and gives his actors enormous freedom and support. The sets have been the reflection of the director, and everyone is compelled to give it their absolute best. Barry hates to have attention drawn to himself, so in a way, I'm his nightmare.

This VERY SPECIAL webisode has been such a thrill since the very beginning of it's creation process. In my imagination, I'm already seeing myself at the Season One advance viewing and wrap party this Winter in Barry's home theater. We will all be the happiest people, I don't know, EVER!?

Sheriff Rick Dalton

Yes, but what's my motivation?

My mom took my two boys (5 and 7) to the Chocolate Church today for the town meeting scene. When I told my older son what we had planned for today, he said, "Tell me something: Why would my character be at a town meeting?"

Unfortunately, the excitement of show business proved too much for the boys, and Mom had to usher them out for being too rambunctious moments after the shoot began.

They felt bad afterwards for their misbehavior, but I told them that's exactly how a 5- and 7-year-old would act at a town meeting, so really they were method acting.

Yeah, method acting. That's it.

The Shoggoth Assembly - Thank you!

I did want to throw out a huge thank you to the people from The Shoggoth Assembly. What a cool group of people. They got to the house at 6am, did makeup for 3 hours, went to the location, held the boom and helped out on set, drove an hour to another location to be there for touch ups, played islanders at our Town Meeting, and were so great to be around the entire time.

I, of course, must also thank Todd for going through this process.

Is everyone having fun? Say yes.

Well. This was quite a day and we amazingly finished both morning and afternoon shoots early. There were so many wonderful moments and people involved that I find it difficult to give highlights without leaving out so many others. Today was really teamwork at its best. Everyone came prepared, energized, ready for anything, pitching in wherever needed, and acting their asses off.

An enormous thank you to everyone who showed up!! To the left is the place you all showed up to - a side portion of the Chocolate Church in Bath. Thank you Amie and Greg for this location. It created a great atmosphere for the Town Meeting and adds another layer to Ragged Isle.

Big Day on the Island

Tomorrow is a big day. Big day! Not only do we shoot a key scene here in Gorham at a really cool spot but we are also shooting the first big, tons of people together scene in Bath. Yey! I cannot wait to see a lot of the actors / characters that we have done separate scenes with all in one room / scene together mixed in with some new faces. Wow. Will that ever be neat. Okay. My excitement is keeping me up.

Images from the darkness

It's getting harder and harder to grab shots to share that don't give away too much of our story but here are some snaps from our wonderful shoot last night. Enjoy the mysterious spookiness of it all.

A Full Boat

As we walked away from the dock last night after more than four hours of shooting on the lobster boat, Barry turned to me, his face lit up in a huge grin, and said: "Hey, Greg. We just shot the lobster boat scene."

Yeah.

When the five of us (Barry, Karen, Rick, Jacob, and I) first sat down back in January to talk about this thing we came to call "Ragged Isle," we didn't have any idea how we were going to pull off the ideas generated across the table that day.

The lobster boat sequence, crucial to the story we wanted to tell, was always going to be a challenge. To see it be pulled off with such style and panache, well, that was pretty incredible.

Congratulations to all involved. I can't wait to see the finished product!

Oh, What a Night

What a night. It was amazing. This shoot was one of the most difficult and everyone did so well. We also welcomed a new cast member, Mike Thomas , who is playing Eric. What a great job he did! Woo! Other people did really amazing things that I can, unfortunately, not discuss here. Dominic, you rock. A big thank you to everyone who worked on this thing tonight. You all have such a great attitude and are exceptional at what you do. What a group of people we have assembled. Tonight could have gone so wrong but instead it was so right. I am just so blown away by tonight.

We're on a boat!

Tomorrow night we're shooting the most dangerous scene of the season. I will give nothing away other than to say people are gonna get WET! Many thanks to Captain John Ready for allowing our cast and crew to use his beautiful craft for our series. Please do us a favor and check out his company Catch a Piece of Maine.

A Break From The Whirlwind of Hope and Despair

Barry says I should blog, and I do what Barry says. Acting in Ragged Isle is the ultimate thing to look forward to. Waiting to see the finished product is the ultimate torture. Knowing what happens in Season Two, and keeping it a secret, is excruciating. Seeing the stills from the latest shoot get posted is like coming home to a basket full of money and prizes. Seeing Barry film it, and seeing Barry and Karen make it, is a delicious mixture of pride and envy, because they're so damn good at it. Want a piece of advice? If you're not involved with Ragged Isle, GET involved with Ragged Isle. Ask to be an extra, donate some bottled water for the actors, make a small $ donation and get some cool stuff! Believe me this one thing: If you let this opportunity slip by, when this comes out, you're gonna think back to this moment and say "Oh man, I should have shot them an email, I could have been IN this thing, or INVOLVED with this thing; why don't I have a cool DVD of this?"

New stills!

Hold Back The Rain

Please welcome Doug Porter to the cast!! He is playing Dirty Bill. Thank you for helping out with no notice. You did a great job today.

We did some lobster boat rehearsals with most of the guys (hope you feel better, Nate). It was a luxury to go over that scene as it is a complex deal with stunts. Thursday should be interesting.

Today the rain held out long enough for us to shoot one of the two scenes. That was way more then I was hoping for. Excellent footage out of that one. Thank you again, weather.

The next shoot we have is Thursday. Is Thursday on my mind? Just a bit.

Another night, another great shoot

We just finished the final shoot at Madame Clelia's. Thank you so much Kathryn for the use and abuse of your home and a special thanks to her kitty named Mans for not bolting out the door on us. That would have been a disaster.

Thank you to Alysa and Eric from the Shoggoth Assembly for doing some really cool aging makeup.

Great shoot. Really. Fantastic. One of the scenes tonight was a biggie. Madame Clelia got to really do her thing. Digging deep into the well so to speak. Lots of emotion on display, mixed with all of these little moves and spots to hit so great job to everyone. Woo!

Now we hope the weather holds and we can shoot the scenes tomorrow...

Early Buzz

I was wearing my "Ragged Isle" t-shirt today (order yours now!), and the guy working at the rest stop said to me: "Ragged Isle. What's that?"

"It's a mystery-suspense web series," I told him, "set on an island off the coast of Maine."

"Oh yeah," he said, nodding knowingly. "I think I've seen it." Then he turned to deal with a customer, and I thought I'd just let it go. But when he was done, he turned back to me: "It's all one story, right? And each episode tells you a little bit more about the mystery."

"Well, yeah," I conceded, "but it hasn't aired yet. It's still filming."

He frowned. "When does it come out?"

"This winter. Maybe January."

I think at this point he might have been feeling embarrassed that he'd claimed to have seen it. A little sullen, he said, "And the anticipation is so great, people are already wearing t-shirts for it?"

"Absolutely," I assured him. "People can't wait."

Thanks to the big Gaffer in the sky

We couldn't have asked for more beautiful light to work with this evening.

The Making of Madame Clelia's

The Madame Clelia house set will be recreated on Saturday. Wish us luck with that. It was very intricate and beautiful. Kathryn, pictured here aka Madame Clelia, did a great job with the mood of the place and all of the nifty touches. I look forward to going back.

Anything can be a weapon on Ragged Isle...

Images from Days 3 and 4

I Love My Lined Script

The lined script is strangely fun and enlightening. I really enjoy drawing my lines with shot numbers and sometimes takes through everything we shoot. The technical reason this is done is to ensure that every bit of the script is covered and covered well. The reason I like it is less of why we do this but of the story held within each line. It is amazing. The lined pages tell of satisfaction in a job well done but the unlined pages are the uncharted waters that keep you up at night. Right now our script has more of these unlined pages then the lined ones but by the end of September all the lines will be drawn and the next phase of Ragged Isle begins.

Holy Crap!

Holy crap! What a shoot! It was long, fabulous, and we got a lot done. The shot list was rather expansive. Thank you everyone for hanging in there with the long shoot. We may send out a revised schedule with some different times now that we have some experience with this project in the field. I am having so much fun meeting all kinds of new people on this project, which makes me wonder why I am such a hermit most of the time... The cast - great. The crew - great. I couldn't really ask for more. The only thing I would change is the 2 million cars that decided to drive down our road during the shoot tonight.

The house took 2 days to transform into Rose's house and it will stay this way until September when we shoot here again. The TV will need to find a home in here, though. I miss it.

That's all for now. I am very tired and really have no idea what I am writing. Next shoot - Monday.

Transformation Through Destruction

We have torn our house apart today and transformed the main area into Rose's house. We had to borrow some this and that from the rest of the house so things are everywhere. Messy. Messy. Messy. Sebastian was cool enough to lend us his father's fireplace, again, so this has provided an immediate change to the room and it was very popular in Criehaven. Sebastian will also tell you that the house was messy before we changed things around but I think Ragged Isle and the Canada trip are to blame. It is looking pretty good right now but there is still a lot to do like decorate 10 acres of shelves. Barry is also doing some shot listing and digitizing and I am doing a lot of cleaning and printing and always planning. With any luck we'll be all ready and looking cool and casual when the actors arrive at 5:30 tomorrow night.

P.S. No tie tac for Deputy Dan unless I find one tomorrow. No luck today.

Shooting Day Three

On this, our third day of shooting, we visited Madame Clelia's home and shot scenes containing words and information that I will not divulge here. I can tell you that Kathryn did an amazing job setting her place up with all kinds of interesting stuff. The actors were on. Big cheer for Adam on his acting debut! This was the first time that we saw the law in their full gear so that was exciting. I think we have a good look going there.

Images from our first two days of shooting

Headed to the Holy Grail

From the very beginnings of writing Ragged Isle I had envisioned the first season ending at a Lobster Festival on our island. Through many questions of how the heck we'd pull that off by our wonderful writers team, I think (i hope) I convinced them that we'd figure it out when the time came.

Karen and I had been to the Rockland Lobster Fest before and had high hopes of landing the location for our season finale. With the help of the multi talented Krystal Kenville & John E. Seymore from the Maine Film Studios we landed the big prize!

I'll be heading up tomorrow afternoon to shoot footage that will be included in the episode. Later we will be staging a "fake" festival where some strange happenings will ensue! Bringing a few actors with me to have Lobster Rolls and party down. Not a bad way to spend the day. One of the many perks of working on this project!

An evening at Madame Clelia's

Spent the later part of the evening helping design Madame Clelia's house. It's going to be perfect! Kathryn Morrison, who we wrote the part of Clelia for is allowing us to shoot in her wonderful home and it could not be more perfect. So full of wonder and style! I didn't need to bring any props along. Her home is chock full of fabulous eccentricities that we will be incorporating into the environments. Jacob Lear, co-writer and prop designer for the series also dropped off the Madame Clelia sandwich board prop he built that will point the way for Vicki in an early episode. It's quite a piece of work and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

Things

Shopping, revising, planning, scheduling, designing, calling, e-mailing, and temple rubbing. That is what is happening with Ragged Isle today.

Inspiration in Motion

Inspiration for the look of Ragged Isle comes to me now when I am driving. Photos, rugs, curtains, food to cook for the wake, colors, patterns, textures. It's usually my sister who thinks of these but for some reason they have taken over my brain. It makes me glad for once for my long commute to work and all of the stimulating colors and images I see on the way. It's a nice change from dates and times but curious nonetheless. I am enjoying this shift and hope it continues. Only time will tell. For now, I will act on these inspirations and trust in them.

What will the drive tomorrow bring?

Barry's Birthday

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! (as was sung to Adam Clayton at our first concert together back in 1992). On this day ____ years ago at 10:15 am, my wonderful husband and the genius behind Ragged Isle was born. Wooo and thank you! Oh, guests have just arrived so I will leave it at that.