This week we’re releasing the conclusion of “The Mort Chronicles.” The show will take a small hiatus for a month before we release the Season 3 Finale.

This summer the show will take a small break for the first part of the sunny months. Then, in mid-summer, somewhere around the show’s two year anniversary of being online – we’ll launch Season 4 –  our biggest season yet – and also – the Final Season of “Meet the Mayfarers.”

Originally I had intended to release one episode a year for the whole year. However, somewhere near the end of the editing process, I decided to merge episodes together, which worked creatively, but lessened the overall amount of episodes, thus causing the need for a break.

But it won’t be a totally Mayfarerless start to the summer. We’ll also have a few remaining sketches from our vault, ready to unleash onto the world.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the zaniness of Season 3. This season has been a big, broad, fun, sugery, candy like season, small bite sized stories pushing the “Reality” of the story about as far as we could go. The next season ties everything together – with one full, feature length story that will answer all the questions of the family.

Thanks so much for your support and viewership throughout the years. I hope you enjoy this week’s episode – and look forward to the new season to come!

Making Media and telling stories – in any format – is difficult. Every step is a struggle. From writing, to casting, filming, selling. It’s all tough. And the amount of ways that it doesn’t work is enormous. To even to make a good project is difficult. And then marketing is a totally different animal. More difficult than ever in this cluttered space – and changing every day.

And that’s why we need to collaborate.

Over the past few days I’ve been in the company of some truly talented people. Between LA Web Fest and the Celebrate the Web event – I’m constantly inspired by the creators in the Web Series space. These are people who take their creativity and run with it – creating excellent results.

And yet – despite their inspiring shows, there’s a part of me standing at these events, drink in hand, thinking that all these people are climbing their own individual mountain. Every single one is working hard and struggling to climb their own mountain in this biz. And that’s just too tough.

There has to be a way to collaborate. There has to be a way where we can all take this collective talent and creativity and use it to help us all do what we do on a bigger scale. If we don’t collaborate, we die.

This is the genesis behind the “Mayfarers Go Hollywood” episodes.

Years ago – when I was looking at the media space and started to see that the web was the answer, I stumbled across “Life From the Inside.” I’d spent years in the indie film world. And while there were many talented people in that world, the successful ones were doing projects that were so far from the type of material I wanted to do. (Slow paced arty movie about homeless heroin war vets all discussing the “Serious issue of the day.”)

When I discovered “Life From the Inside” and other similar shows, such as “Goodnight Burbank” “Break a Leg” “the ‘Burg” and “We Need Girlfriends” it opened my eyes. Yes! Finally! Here are people sharing their creativity and stories, and finding an audience. And doing it in a witty way. I made a decision at that moment to stop going into a world I didn’t fit and embrace a world that I felt comfortable in.

Look at LFTI – a witty show, with smart writing, and fast paced dialogue. This is what I like to watch – not because I “have to” to study the market, but because I want to.

When the Life from the Inside Youtube account subscribed to my Mayfarers Youtube account, months before I launched, I thought it was cool. When I went out for coffee with the creators of the show in LA and I saw how incredibly nice they are, I thought – what a fascinating interconnected world we live in – when I found myself six months later filming a sitcom story with them I thought – I absolutely love this space.

That’s what Mayfarers Go Hollywood is. It’s reaching out to collaborate. It’s working with people I admire to do something that can hopefully help us all. (It’s also about goofy situations involving orgies, animal mascots and Papua New Guinea, but that’s another story.)

And that’s what we – as a Web New Media community –  need to do more of. We need to get together to figure this out. To do something greater than the sum of our own parts.

Who’s with me?

The Mayfarers are back  - finally back. Not just sketches, or bloopers, or small one offs – but the whole show. Starting today – and every Wednesday for the rest of the year they’ll be a new episode released.

Some of them will be small stories, some of them will be an entire season story arc, some will be epic adventures in Hollywood,  - some will be goofy, some will be…well, they’ll all be pretty goofy.

The early part of Season 3 will be smaller stories about individual characters, while the final part of the season will be one 16 episode story arc, involving the return of almost all the characters – and leading to a surprising conclusion to the series – revealing who will finally get Porter Mayfarer’s money.

I want to thank everyone who has watched over the years. Being involved in this show has been so fun, and fulfilling.

I hope you join us this year as we embark on our final year of Mayfarers fun.

This week we are rereleasing “Meet the Mayfarers” in a longer, sitcom length fashion.

I did this for a lot of reasons. The number one reason is that the Internet has changed considerably since I was first conceiving and shooting the show in 2007. The rule was “short form ruled.” I decided to do something told entirely in short form bite sized pieces. But in recent years, as people have grown accustomed to watching shows online, it seems as if some audiences actually prefer the longer content. With Apple TV, Google TV, and the Roku box – it seems like everyone wants a “lean back” online experience.  Also, I’ve heard complaints from some people who want to watch the entire run of the show – that they have to wade through dozens of pre-roll ads to actually watch the show.

So I thought – why create this barrier to entry? Why not serve up the show in a totally new way than it was before, and hopefully gain some viewers while we’re at it.

In looking at the old episodes I thought – “well, really, they weren’t designed as long form, but I could easily put them into sitcom length format. I mean, that’s what the show is, really.” I knew it has been so long, in Internet time, since we had our last new episode, that really people need to start from the beginning to latch onto the show.

So starting today and for the next few weeks, we’ll have the “Mayfarers Mega Show” released. They’ll be six episodes total, comprising of the longer story arcs of the show. It doesn’t include the stand alone episodes, the “Chronicles” about solo characters, nor does it include our very bizarre holiday episodes. These are simply the show episodes – redone in way that hopefully makes you want to watch more.

So, now, sit back…lean back, grab a bottle of your favorite beverage and see how it all started. Thanks for watching! And please stick around for the launch of our brand new season on Feb. 23rd!

…it’s that keeping up a blog on a constant basis is tough!

I’ve been focusing a lot of time recently on Twitter. Its a little easier updating 140 characters instead of 1500.

However, I’ll try to be a little more diligent and upload here more often.

As an update on the show- things have been going well. We’re in the middle of Season 2. We’re editing Season 3 right now. We’ve got a lot of surprises in store for that season, including a mini-series set in LA. We’re also gearing up to shoot our last Mayfarers shoot next month.

Lots of exciting things going on.

More info to come!

1. Be honest and open: If actors have to take their clothes off – do it on the first day!

2. Just like in a restaurant, atmosphere trumps all:  If you’re not able to pay top dollar, then pay in set atmosphere – good food, good people, lots of fun. Its like hosting a party. If you make sure everyone is happy and having fun – good results will happen. (however, unlike a party, imbibing a great deal of alcohol does not help)

3. Don’t sweat it. You can’t control if someone likes your work, just if you enjoy it.  Everyone has an opinion. Form your own. One man’s “Best Picture” is another man’s “Pretentious Picture.” Likewise, one man’s “Quotable comedy” is an other’s “Snooze Fest.” Make the project you want to make. You can only please yourself.

4. Get rest. If you have to choose between an extra hour planning shots late at night or extra sleep – choose the sleep – the more sleep you can get the better you can make those decisions, even if they are at the last minute.

5. Focus on what matters. If people are paying attention to the color of the wall in the background, or that the background light doesn’t match, they’re not paying attention to the story or characters, and you’re screwed anyway.

6. Be in the Moment. If you’re thinking about Stanislavsky, Method, or Motivation while you’re acting, then you’re not “being” the character.  The same with writing – if you’re thinking of structure while writing dialogue it won’t feel real. Just get the characters to talk.  When you’re rehearsing, or outlining the story, then use all your learning, but when you’re actually doing it – go with your gut.

7. Embrace failure. The more tripping, stumbling, and outright fall off the cliff crashes you have, the more you’ll learn, and the better you’ll be.

8.Be open.  Editing the film is actually the final draft of your script. Be open to changing everything.

9. Be prolific. The more you write and film, the more times you have to fail, to learn – the more you don’t fall in love with anything, the easier it will be to ruthlessly look at and edit your work.

10. Be a kid. Remember the moment you wanted to be a filmmaker? An actor? A writer? The first time you picked up the camera? Got up on stage? Whatever it is, remember that moment, and always think of it. It’ll get you through the hard parts.

11. Don’t be an asshole. There is no such thing as competition with other filmmakers. Help everyone.  The only person you can be in competition with is yourself. As long as you win that competitive battle, you’ll always get better.

12. Be yourself. If you don’t know who that is – find out. Without knowing that, you’ll never be able to make anything.

So I’ve got some great news. I’m excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Koldcast.tv in a deal to distribute “Meet the Mayfarers.” Koldcast.tv is an innovative company that is dedicated to releasing and supporting online episodic content on the web. They realize that the future of entertainment is online. After many discussions with David Samuels, who owns and runs the company, I am convinced that they have the passion to push our show onto the next level. In the next few months “Meet the Mayfarers” will be available on Tivo, and the Microsoft Zune player, as well as other outlets. That’s right – Mayfarers can be watched right on your TV screen.

Koldcast.tv is re-launching the show today with the first three episodes. Next Wednesday, they will release episodes 4 & 5, and will continue the pattern of releasing one episode every Wednesday for a year.

The show can be found on http://www.koldcast.tv/

Thank you everyone for your help and support over the years. And even if you’ve watched the episodes already, I invite you over to Koldcast.tv to check them out again. They’ve got some great things in store.

Time Travel and World Domination.

These are the subjects of the two new web shows we shot this last weekend. We had a great two day shoot, mostly in an office complex with a heavy use of greenscreen. It was a blast to try out a style totally different than “Mayfarers.” The shows are both comedies, one about time travel, one about Super-villains. One will be in a somewhat traditional sitcom format, one will be interactive. However, both have a pretty bizarre tone of humor.

My intention was to try smaller story arcs, not the year long arc of the current show. However, shooting these sparked many new story ideas, which we may shoot in the coming months…so that plan may go by the wayside. As for a release schedule, I’m hoping to release one of the new shows later this year, but we’ll see how that goes, as editing always does take forever, especially with green screen.

In any case, thanks for making our launch so successful last week. Please subscribe here for new episodes of “Meet the Mayfarers!”

I uploaded the official trailer for “Meet the Mayfarers” today.

I think that cutting trailers is one of the most difficult things a filmmaker can do. (well, other that actually selling a film that is)

How does one convey everything needed and necessary for the story, without giving too much away? How to show off some of the jokes without killing them when they watch it? How to keep it concise and interesting. And most of all, since trailers have been done to death, how do you make it unique and not a self-parody?

If you look at film trailers most of them are pretty bad. They either give too much away (the cardinal sin in my book) or are so disjointed you can’t understand it. I think the correct one should be “less is more.”

I remember I was interning at a production company once, and I had the opportunity of watching a film trailer being cut for a big budget film. I was amazed that every single moment and frame was fawned over, analysed, and debated.  – it was an incredible learning experience. They went through new cut by new cut. However, no matter how many times the trailer changed and the scenes were rearranged, the producer always wanted the trailer to end with one image. One golden comic image:  a screaming half-naked fat man in a shower.

True story.

And when I finally saw the trailer in a darkened theater it was completely different than in the editing room. Every shot was different. But that screaming half-naked fat man? Yeah, he was still there.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the new trailer. I hope it gave you a taste of everything, without giving too much away. And I hope you appreciate that I resisted resorting to slipping in any scenes of screaming overweight nudity.

I’ve never been interested in documentary film-making. I enjoy watching them, certainly. And there are many docs out there that are better than narrative features. But it never interested me as a creative endeavor.

I would listen to doc filmmaker friends tell their experiences and I thought I would never want to do anything like that. I couldn’t imagine walking to the set, with no clue if you’re going to get any good material that day. Let alone the editing process where there is no clear direction.

A few weeks ago I saw something that made me “get it.” We were shooting a corporate gig, interviewing “testimonials” and in the interview process found so many random, fun quotes. Each person we interviewed was in essence, a “character.” It was fun seeing these magic moments come to life. I turned to my friend, who is a doc filmmaker and said, “I get it.”

In that moment I get the allure. I get the thrill of going out and discovering new people, new stories, new worlds, of using reality to paint a a picture on film, rather than trying to create reality out of nothing. He even said it was easier, because it’s “already real.”

It doesn’t change my love for narrative, for the “ah-ha” moment of getting story ideas, having actors become characters, or the thrill of turning fiction into film. I don’t want to make a documentary anytime soon.

But now, finally, I get the appeal.