Skepticblog

The Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists aboard the Queen Mary

As we continue our journey through the production of the Pilot for The Skeptologists, we venture into the RMS Queen Mary. The majestic ocean liner now relegated to be a hotel and conference facility in Long Beach, CA, but more importantly, according to claims, one of the most haunted places on the West Coast.

The grandeur of the ship helped set the stage for what we hoped would be a fantastic paranormal treasure hunt.

Three of our Skeptologists, Yau-Man Chan, Phil Plait and Mark Edward were joined by an astrophysicist from NASA, Michelle Thaller and three Paranormal Investigators, who claimed that their experience and professional use of their scientific instruments would produce measurable evidence of the paranormal. (continue reading…)

The latest & ultimate in slimming & health technology. SPA Capsule.

So I’m going to veer off the subject of The Skeptologists Pilot Production this week in favor of throwing a nice juicy steak into the yard of ravenous dogs.

In my piles of junk email and notifications of millions of dollars and Euros, (still waiting for those checks) and right before I hit the junk/delete button without a thought, I paused and scanned a particular email.  I immediately dismissed it as ridiculous trash, but, sad as it is, I thought to myself that someone’s actually buying these things! I read through it a bit more, and the whole thing got more and more funny and sad at the same time. So I thought that I would share: (continue reading…)

 As promised, our guest blogger, Shawna Young filling in for me this week to give you her perspective on her part of the The Skeptologists pilot shoot. Enjoy!

—Ryan

Hello everyone! First, I should apologize for my lack of blog last week, the Chicken Pox as an adult are not fun, and my sense of humor was a little thrown by all the itching and whining. Also, this is the first blog I have written so I guess I should start with a bit of an introduction.  My name is Shawna Young, I have worked for New Rule Productions for about 9 years and worked as a Coordinating Producer for “The Skeptologists”.  I very much enjoyed this group of people, talent and crew alike. I learned a lot, and am looking forward to working with them all again when the show gets picked up.

So, to start, I am usually the silly one of the bunch…I’m the girl who doesn’t get the joke right away and can’t remember the real names of things so I call items “dealy bobs” and “thingy ma stuff’s”. I am organized and focused on set, but off set I can get distracted pretty easily. I am also the one that Murphy’s Law doesn’t just follow around…it stalks me.  So, I guess I’ll start off the Wheatgrass segment now that you have all that in mind.  (continue reading…)

So it’s me, not Shawna as promised this week. Sorry.

Turns out, She’s got the Chicken Pox!  So I’m going to write a very brief entry in her place.  

We’ll call this Queen Mary Part One.

Friday, April 4th, 2008.  This was a very adventurous day.  The crew and cast of the Skeptologists were split into two.  Half of the team headed to a small health food store to shoot the wheatgrass segment under the direction of Shawna, and the rest accompanied me to the RMS Queen Mary Ship. I wrote about the ship in a past blog when we scouted locations. 

The Queen Mary Ship, Location for The Skeptologists

The Queen Mary, permanently berthed in Long Beach, CA was to serve as the location where our Skeptologists would meet with “Professional Paranormal Investigators” to review their techniques and equipment to determine if there really were scientific tools that could detect the presence of ghosts. 

The Queen Mary has a rich and colorful history with many popular claims of paranormal activity. It’s a grand old ship with plenty of wonderful and spooky places to investigate and set the stage for what we hoped would be a very eventful day.

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Mt. Wilson Observatory, as you will recall from the previous posts, is the location where we open and close the TV pilot. We used the 100” Hooker Telescope facility as the backdrop. We were looking for something awesome in scale that conveyed a sense of wonder, discovery and science. We originally were looking at planetariums, but after finding out about Mt. Wilson, we all agreed that this was a much better location. (continue reading…)

Back in December I blogged about my recollections during the scout of one of our locations: Mt. Wilson Observatory. today, and next week, I will share what it was like actually shooting at the location for the TV pilot of The Skeptologists.

Mt. Wilson Observatory is an amazing place. I liken it to going to a museum, where everything is still being used. Founded in 1904, this astronomical observatory has served as both a scientific research facility used to peer into the darkness of space, and as the years go by a site for historical preservation of some of our nations most important scientific tools.

The site sits atop the aptly-named Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena, CA. At over 5700 feet above sea level, even during a warm Southern California day, the summit can be a cold and dangerous place.

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I’m going to depart from our regularly scheduled behind the scenes story of the making of The Skeptologists to tell you about a recent job that I took.

I received a call from my office manager, Chad when I was downtown running errands last Monday. He told me that a producer from New York called and they were looking for an audio tech to help them on a shoot in nearby Lompoc on Wednesday and Thursday. “It sounded pretty urgent” he said.

Our company, New Rule Productions provides all types of production support for other productions companies when they come to the area shooting movies, commercials, photo-shoots and TV shows.

Once I got her on the phone, the New York producer told me that their audio technician could not make the trip and that they needed someone last-minute to fill-in for the show “Ghost Hunters”.

“Wow, the Irony” I thought to myself! More out of curiosity than money, I took the job and Carl (one of my crew) and I decided to split the two days on location.

(continue reading…)

In carrying on with the description of the production of The Skeptologists pilot, I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences of the first day working with the cast and crew of The Skeptologists. In my previous blog, I discussed the meeting of the cast and some of the preparation for the pilot production.

I’ve talked a quite a bit about the cast, and of course they are all a part of this wonderful blog. A whole group of people that are not well represented here are the crew that made the production possible. I’ll skip myself and Brian for a bit, You know a bit about us.

April 2nd, 2007, The first day of production, or principal photography as it’s called in the movie biz, was purposely built as a light day. We had a large cast, most of whom had only moderate on-camera experience, a very adventurous shooting schedule, and a very small budget. I felt it was important to ease everyone into the production a bit. Although that’s sort of like saying we’re going to ease an elephant into a golf cart, it was going to be a big task, no matter what. And wow, that’s got to be the worst metaphor ever. Anyway, we started with an early 8am breakfast pre-production meeting. If I recall correctly the full cast and crew were there, save a few crew members like hair and makeup, etc.

Cast and Crew during Pre-Production meeting.

The morning’s meeting consisted of distributing and going over the schedule for the next few days. We held our meeting at the breakfast area of the hotel. We assembled there because all of the meeting rooms were booked. So we made due — Something that one does often in this line of work. (continue reading…)

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about the production of The Skeptologists.

I wanted to talk a bit about what it was like working with what I’ve come to call “The Skeptical Dream Team.” I’m going to give you a (from memory) blow-by blow of the production days.

After we got all of the players together, made all the arrangements for the locations and set the production schedule, the ball was rolling, and the planes were in the air with cast and crew from all over all descending on Pasadena CA, our home base for the location production for the show. The Date, April 1, 2008, April Fool’s day, thankfully most everyone knew better than to try and pull any pranks on me this year. 

Pasadena was the nearest major city to most of the main locations that would serve as the backdrops for our show; They were; The Skeptic Magazine offices where the on-camera interviews would be shot, Mt. Wilson Observatory where the cast would open and close the show, The RMS Queen Mary where the ghost hunt would take place, O’ Happy Day, a quaint little health food store where some of the team would discuss and try wheatgrass juice and finally the Center for Inquiry where the team would assemble to discuss their findings and conduct experiments.

The first day was a flurry of driving, airport pickups, phone calls and directions. We had three production assistants criss-crossing LA to pickup up cast, and purchase last minute props and food for the shoot. There was insurance paperwork to get ironed out, schedule changes to accommodate, and vehicle capacity issues to get sorted. Most of our cell phones were rarely hung up. The next morning was to begin our production. (continue reading…)

It’s a very weird time of year for the non-religious skeptic.  Everyone is going to church, talk of Jesus and God abound and the holiday discussion is centered around whether we should say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas.

I didn’t grow up in a very religious home.  My parents allowed me to make my own decision about religion.  I went to bible school a few times when I was a child during summer.  I even attended a Christian private school from pre-school to 1st grade.  My only recollection of that experience is that the staff was scary and that I had to memorize verses every week.  How that relates to a good education, I still have no idea.  My parents, thankfully, figured this out quickly and put me into public school, where I really learned a lot and could grow up to be a well-rounded, healthy person.

Religion is such a sensitive subject, I even thought twice about whether I wanted to write anything on the net that talks about religion, and my views of it. I know there are friends that I have that are very religious, that may read this.  Generally, I just avoid that subject with them, because most of the time, I have no desire to discuss or quarrel with them on my religious views. My friendship is more important that one aspect of their lives not aligning with mine.

(continue reading…)