By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday we posted about a forthcoming web series called Red Storm that looks exciting. Today we wanted to introduce LFM readers to another forthcoming web series that’s gotten a fair bit of pre-release hype, called The Mercury Men.
The Mercury Men is a 1940s-style adventure serial about a lowly government office drone who finds himself trapped, when deadly alien visitors from the planet Mercury seize his office building and use it as a staging ground for a nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” the office drone must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.
The Mercury Men was recently featured in Sci Fi Magazine (right next to another feature about Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves), and just today the Mercury Man blog announced that director Chris Preksta and star Curt Wootton will be at the forthcoming San Diego Comic Con speaking on a sci-fi panel on Saturday, July 24th at 4:15 PM. They’ll also be screening a few minutes of footage from the series.
Jack Yaeger, a daring aerospace engineer from "The Mercury Men."
I love the creativity of what these guys are doing in terms of how they evoke the atmosphere of the old adventure serials, so many of which were based around a charismatic American hero (Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, The Shadow, The Rocketeer, etc.) fighting some sort of fascist invader. This retro-nostalgic approach also reminds me of what director Kerry Conran did recently with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (which was originally just a short film), and it’s similar to some other interesting stuff I’ve been seeing on-line lately that we’ll be showing you here at LFM.
As I mentioned in this previous post, it’s really quite remarkable how far low-budget FX have come in terms of their ability to fill out the otherwise constricted universe of independent filmmaking; it’s a classic case of technology freeing up storytellers’ imaginations. Beyond that, though, I like the pizzaz that the filmmakers are bringing to this project … and it’s interesting, once again, to see the ‘invasion of America’ theme recurring (see here and here). I’m seeing this theme appearing in a variety of projects right now. I wonder why?
In any case, we wish the filmmakers the best with their ambitious new web series. The series will apparently consist of 10 online episodes, each approximately 7 minutes in length – and we’ll be looking forward to its debut later this summer.
Posted on July 6th, 2010 at 8:12pm.
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I like the mercury men effect and the black and white photography. It’s retro and yet cool at the same time. I’m surprised by how much people are putting into these web serials, but probably these are great calling cards for the filmmakers who do them.
Me likey. Will check them out at Comic Con.
Thanks for the GREAT post about the series Jason!
Hey, Chris, you guys are doing a great job. We’ll keep people updated as the series unfolds.
This is most impressive — I can’t wait to see the rest of it.
Along with the trailer for “Red Storm,” this footage leads me to think projects like these are the most interesting things going on right now in filmmaking. I love seeing these personal projects from artists that are hungry to show what they can do.
It also reminds me I have to get off my behind and buy “Kalifornistan” here. The trailer is magnificent.
Hey, thanks, Vince! We appreciate it.