An entire show for you to watch!!
49 episodes and a stretch goal
Hey ya’ll! Zach here with the Dropout show announcement that critics (me) are calling, “Completely unexpected but a wonderful surprise!” A literal decade after it was filmed, FATAL DECISION dropped on Dropout.tv in its entirety last Friday!
For the uninitiated, which I assume is most of you, Fatal Decision is a show that answers the question “What if an office tech (me) was told to make instructional videos, and instead made a high octane spy thriller starring himself using only his co-workers and office equipment all while said office was still trying to get work done?” It is insane, and I love it dearly for many reasons:
There are 49 episodes. They edited down to 3-8 minutes each but we shot two episodes a day over the course of like 30 days. To date it is the longest acting gig I have ever had, and was one of the first times I really felt like a working actor.
It co-stars Mountport (and Mock Trial’s) own Zeke Nicholson, and features roughly 1 billion people from what at the time was College Humor. It also has some straight up famous people like Christina Hendricks and Chris Parnel. Truly wild.
It is the reason I met Sam Reich, and by extension probably(?) the reason Jess and I are connected to Dropout now. Also, one day he came to the set and said some very nice things to me that I still think about to this day.
“But Zach, this sounds so cool, where has it been for the past ten years?” Okay, so for legal reasons, I need to say that this is what happened AS I UNDERSTAND IT and It’s extremely possible I'm wrong/missing parts of the story.
Fatal Decision released exclusively on the mobile app Verizon Go90. It was Verizon’s attempt at having their own YouTube. Many corporations have done this, and it always goes really well. You should check out THIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE for no particular reason.
So Go90 dies after about three years. In that time the music library which provided the license to all of Fatal Decision’s background music ALSO died, meaning that to release it, you would have to negotiate the license for every single musical cue with its original composer. SEVEN YEARS AFTER THAT, enter a hero, Fatal Decision’s director, Greg Stees, has gone through every single episode and added new LEGALLY UNCOMPROMISED MUSIC!
I was truly shocked when I heard news of the re-release last Monday because honestly, this never happens. What usually happens, what I expected to happen, was that no one would ever see this show again. Projects in this industry die and disappear all the time for a million reasons, and it’s VERY rare that creators get to make exactly what they want, and then have any control over what happens to their work afterwards.
Speaking of, by funding our Mock Trial movie kickstarter YOU have given us the very very rare opportunity, and we are incredibly grateful. If you haven’t donated yet, please consider it! There are some very cool rewards and every dollar just makes the movie better and better.
In conclusion, check out Fatal Decision Friday on Dropout (Jess is in it near the thrilling conclusion)
Thank you!!
Zach (and Jess!)