Friday, January 09, 2009

Speed Demons - Rust In Peace

Last Saturday the Vampire Cowboy's held their final installment of this season's Grand Saloon, including Nosedive's episodic Faustian Road Trip serial, Speed Demons. As always, we had a blast working with the Cowboys on this project. I wanted to take a moment to thank the cast and crew of Speed Demons for making this such an exciting project to work on. Our fantastic cast of actors included Christopher Yustin, Daryl Lathon, Leah Carrell, James Comtois, Jon Hoche, Nick Micozzi, Scott Williams, Christian Toth, Stephanie Cox-Williams and Qui Nguyen.

Additionally, Speed Demons was an interesting new experiment for me as a director. Because of conflicts with Master of Horror, I only directly the first and final episodes of the series. The three episodes in between were directing by Matt Johnston, Abe Goldfarb and Patrick Shearer, each of whom brought their own unique style to the series. It was fantastic to see what each of them made of their episode, and a really unique challenge to try to bring all of the elements they established together for the final episode.

I also wanted to single out several Nosedivians who really went to bat for us on this project. Speed Demons relied heavily on music and sound effects throughout it's run, and Patrick Shearer provided an amazing sound design for each episode (as he always does). Marc Landers, Ben VandenBoom and Qui Nguyen made sure we got a video record of each performance, which we were able to post on our website in more or less real time, so that audience members could catch up on any episodes they had missed. Stephanie Cox-Williams performed triple duty as an actor, stage manager/showrunner and prop and car designer.

And most of all, I want to thank Abby Marcus, Qui Nguyen, Robert Ross-Parker and the rest of the Vampire Cowboys for including Nosedive in this exciting project. We look forward to working with them again in the near future! In the mean time, go check out the Cowboys new full length play, Soul Samurai, which is opening February 14th.

(I've included videos of the Speed Demons episodes below, for your viewing pleasure...)


Speed Demons — Episode 1

Video by Ben VandenBoom

Speed Demons — Episode 2

Video by Marc Landers

Speed Demons — Episode 3

Video by Qui Nguyen

Speed Demons — Episode 4

Video by Marc Landers

Speed Demons — Episode 5

Video by Marc Landers