Zerks Log 03

Here is another episode of 'Zerks Log,' the premier project from StoryForge Labs.

You can see 'Zerks Log,' in its entirely, at www.Zerkslog.com, where you can watch in high quality, subscribe to it on iTunes and see some behind the scenes material. Feel free if you want to skip ahead and watch all episodes.

Eventually, I think these will end up on a DVD with director, cast and crew commentaries. The notes I write (under the Read More break) concern the writing/creating process than anything that happened on the shoot. I’ll keep you updated if and when StoryForge puts something together.



Notes: As Episode 02 was mostly written by Patty Pino, Episode 03 is the first episode that was mostly written by me. You can spot the Patty Pino influence. The word ‘emotoprocessing’ is hers, I think. She was good in capturing the bombastic pomp that gave Zerks his over-the-top personality. With initially twenty episodes planned, the workload was split up. After our ten scripts were written, we exchanged, made notes and did some revision during face-to-face meetings.

The idea behind “Morale” was to demonstrate how Zerks interacted with the people and the ship. Similar to getting uplifting emails from your boss, we came up with the idea of ‘ship announcements,’ and the intentionally bad ‘tree-made-up-of-tachyon condensers’ joke. With the first episode showing that he’s happy and ready to take the job and the second showing that he’s irritated by the duties with being the captain, this third episode would demonstrate a sequence of time and that Zerks was growing as a character.

Additionally, two main secondary plot points to the series were introduced here: Zerks’ odd interactions with his second of command, Gurel; and the start of the ‘secret admirer’ sub-plot.  Both come into stronger focus later in the series.