Well, shit.

Bad news for fans of Birth of an American Town – I got halfway through editing the second episode and completely ran out of the footage that I shot up in Massachusetts in July. I sort of knew this would happen, and hoped to get more shots while I was up there for the Sudbury Devil premiere, but it was such a crazy whirlwind trip that I didn't really have time.

So now I've got to either delay the whole project for two months until when I'm back up there for Christmas, or hop on a plane in the next couple of weeks, which might be cost prohibitive due to all the traveling I've already done this summer (and my wedding next month).

But you know, it wouldn't be an Atun-Shei production if it wasn't wildly, irresponsibly overambitious, right?

I can't get too behind schedule because I MUST start pre-production on the Checkmate finale in January, and in the meantime I need to put out some broad-appeal, monetizable stuff to get some money in the bank to finance its doubtlessly pretty considerable budget. Battle scenes with undead armies are worth their weight in gold these days.

In the very short term, I'm definitely going to put aside Birth of an American Town and switch tack to another new series called The Abolitionists, which should – SHOULD – just be me talking to the camera and so pretty easy to make. That one is going to basically profile radical reformers throughout history, from the anti-slavery movements to early feminism and women's suffrage to more modern activisty stuff like the Green Scare of the Bush administration. The first episode is going to be about Martin Delany's response to the Fugitive Slave Act, which is a fascinating little snippet of civil rights history.

Anyway, here's a funny raw clip of Episode 2. Anybody recognize this episode's guest narrator?