Chronicles of Syntax/Primary Faction: The full saga explained
So the quarterstaff video I uploaded yesterday had a purpose to it. Well the practise does, anyway. It’s part of my training for Chronicles of Syntax.
There’s been a loooot of questions and confusion about what this is/when it’s happening/what this is/why it’s changed names/if it’s changed names/what this is, so since this is about to become my next Big Project following Still Got Legs, I’m gonna take a minute to clear everything up.
In early 2009 I was invited by Susan E. Clarke, a writer who’d been watching my videos for a while, to audition for a role in a sci-fi TV series she had been working on for some time, called Chronicles Of Syntax. Set a millenium into the future, Chronicles is a steampunk fantasy, following the struggle between two factions as they try to salvage as much technology they can from the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic Earth, using it either as a tool to save the world or as a weapon to destroy it. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
Anyway, unable to travel down to audition due to uni, I sent a video audition to Sue (part of which can be watched here: it’s pretty embarrassing ohgod), and then following the callback auditions, was cast in the role of ‘Kai’.
Pretty great, right? Kai’s a complete nerd: computer genius, cocky, but clumsy as hell and a little socially inept - think Topher from Dollhouse but with a Scottish accent :P
So things were well underway, promo shots were taken, dates were set, we were getting some buzz going with big production companies, we had lots of fight training - then our new producer happened. After she decided the best approach was to hire more useless producers, made us promote the hell out of the series to you guys before it even existed and generally made things more difficult, she was dropped from the project- but not before taking the rights to the series with her. Basically we couldn’t legally do anything more with the stories, characters, the lot. So Chronicles was put on hold until Sue could reclaim the rights (and this is why, if you heard about it at the beginning, it seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth for a bit).
Sue wasn’t willing to waste time waiting, though, and decided we ought to set to work on something related to Chronicles, but different enough that we could get away with it without violating the rights. From this, Primary Faction, a prequel series designed to establish the origin stories of all the Chronicles characters, was born in January 2010.
Primary shifted in its concept and form quite a lot before anything came of it, starting at webseries and ending in audio drama. Episode 1 was recorded and completed, and can be listened to here!
While plans for the audio series were well underway, the rights to Chronicles miraculously landed back on Sue’s lap. From there, our newly-established company iDare Productions have been working on the next step for both Chronicles and Primary. The result is that I’m back down in England, learning my fight choreography for an epic battle scene that we’re filming this weekend, which will be used as a trailer to pitch Chronicles to major broadcasting companies who have taken interest.
So it’s well underway again! I can’t tell you when you’ll see it, or what channel it’ll be on, or whether it will air in the US, because I don’t know. None of us do. It has to be picked up first, and we’ll figure out the rest from there. But hopefully in the meantime, this (*checks length* oh god) REALLY LONG POST will have resolved any confusion you might have had about what was going on between the two series :D
