Calgary: The teenage boy, decorated in sacrificial face paint, is forced back onto a stone altar by two elaborately dressed guards. A hand bearing a knife comes down to his chest and he screams – ‘NO!’ ‘Go to glory,’ says the guard, bringing the knife down further still. ‘Enough,’ says a voice off to one side. The director yells ‘Cut’ and the scene ends.

This scene, one of the last shot on Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures’ series MythQuest, before production wrapped for the year and post commenced at Vancouver’s Northwest Imaging and FX, is typical of the show which takes two teenage children from the workaday world and drops them into a realm of fantasy.

The series is something of a travelogue of myths and legends from around the world, with the lead characters catapulted into the action by way of their archeologist father’s computer, which connects to the Alterworld, where the myths play out.

Budgeted at $22 million for 13 hours, the show is a combination of CGI and live action, ‘and that adds costs,’ says executive producer Kevin DeWalt. And that is just the beginning. ‘Other than four or five leads, [major components of each] episode have to be changed every week. That’s expensive. But it’s worth it because it’s unique. There’s mythology in most cultures, it’s the essence of the cultural belief. It’s an entertaining show and a way to subtly teach kids about mythology.’

By its nature, MythQuest makes for an elaborate shoot: although the subject matter of each episode fits into the loose category of ‘myths,’ coming as the stories do from all over the world, there is precious little in the way of costumery or even sets that can be readily reused when one week’s episode is set in ancient Japan and the next week’s concerns a battle between two tribes of plains Indians.

Series producer (with Knut Winkler and Lienhard Wawrzyn) Ray Sager says MythQuest is ‘almost like an anthology series; it’s a show that has a series [framework] but is also an anthology. You have to be extremely creative in how you use the sets.’

The show’s sets are a world in themselves: the kids always begin their adventures in the real world in a detailed house set composed of six rooms. The series cleverly reuses one other set for the majority of the adventures – an unadorned maze of corridors and rooms that looks like it could be constructed from stone – dressing it up to look like, by turns, a Mayan temple, a medieval castle or the labyrinth of the Minotaur.

‘We can change the lighting to give each show a different look. Because we’re using Styrofoam surfaces we can re-adapt so the blocks can be very wide or tight, so the wall finishings all look different. The designer was able to allow us to mix and match so you wouldn’t be able to see [that the set used in each show is the same one] unless you were looking for it.’

Says Sager: ‘I’m surprised at how fast the sets go up. To prep in seven days you really have to get the stuff up.’

For example, when the shoot, which began in Saskatchewan, was moved mid-season to the Calgary soundstage, the house set was reconstructed rapidly, including a staircase put up in a day by ‘at most 16 people.’

Casting is another area of massive challenge for producers. Says casting director Carmen Kotyk: ‘It’s like casting a movie once a week.’

With a lead time of seven days, Kotyk must round up a cast that typically numbers about 20, and has never been less than five.

‘When we started [and] I began contacting agents, the first thing they asked was, ‘What’s it like?’ It’s hard to compare [MythQuest] to anything because nothing like it is out there. From the first episode on it seemed to get easier. They [guest cast members] went back with great reports and word of mouth spread among actors and agents. It’s very challenging – these actors have to blend myth with the contemporary feel of the show. They have to find the right mix of the two, they can’t just be huge grand characters,’ says Kotyk.

‘The actors have really had a good time here. The vibe is huge about this show. They get to come out and play – who wouldn’t want to be Merlin?’

The series is aimed at an audience of tweens and teens. Sager sees that demographic as receptive to fantasy stories, ‘especially because of Harry Potter.’

Two factors that might act as an even greater draw for viewers are the two young leads. Meredith Henderson is known as the lead in the series The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, and her screen brother Christopher Jacot is soon to be marketed as a heartthrob to teenage girls. ‘We’ll start pointing him toward the teen magazines, we’ll start doing a lot of promotion of him,’ says Sager. ‘The two lead stars will both bring in audiences.’

Minds Eye International is serving as the international distributor on the series, a coprod between the Saskatchewan company (Minds Eye Pictures) and VIP/VIF in Germany, in association with Germany’s TiMe Film Produktion and David Braun Productions out of L.A. Broadcasters include Showcase and PBS. *

-www.mindseyepictures.com