Tubefilter News

The 2nd Annual Streamy Awards are April 11, 2010. That’s 180 days until the winners are announced live on stage, and we thought it’s never too early to start handicapping the field. So it’s nice to see that The Mercury Men posted a behind the scenes look at the pulp sci-fi web series’ production design.

Mercury Men creator Christopher Preksta released the documentary video (above) as part of his “Mercury Mondays” weekly production journals. “Design is really important to me,” said Preksta in the video, “It’s another tool that I as a filmmaker have to support my story and set the tone, the world and bring a unique vision to the story.”

In the video we learn that Mercury Men design pulls from three separate themes—the 30’s/40’s sci-fi pulp (Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon), 1950’s sci-fi movie’s noir, and the early 60’s US Space program. Costumer Ricky Lyle, who also worked on Preksta’s Streamy-nominated Captain Blasto, gets credit from Preksta for nailing that uber-researched style that he was looking for.

There’s something to be said about creating presentation materials, or in this case a video, that profiles elements of the production. Last year’s Streamy winner for Art Direction, Kim Bailey for Tiki Bar TV, put together an impressive “for your consideration” page on his site that detailed the before-during-after of his impressive SS Tiki set. No doubt that Academy voters had it fresh on their minds when casting votes last winter.

You walk into a government office, the dreary kind with white-walled cubicles and humming fluorescent lights. You need a form stamped, but the underpaid government employee is a jerk and won’t do it without you going through another chain of bureaucracy for the right signatures. It’s not enough you’ve been standing in line for hours while sweat drips down the back of your neck.

That government employee is Edward Borman (Mark Tierno), one of the heroes in Chris Preksta’s The Mercury Men, a sci-fi web series set in an alternative history in 1975 where aliens really do live on other planets in our solar system. When pure-light beings from the planet Mercury invade earth, it is up to him and action-hero Jack Yaeger (Curt Wootten) to stop them. Did we mention the baddies shoot lightning from their fingertips? The action-hero, adorned with a leather flight helmet while brandishing a laser pistol, is an aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as the “League.” Good luck Jack.