After somehow finding himself the recipient of a major scientific prize, a so-called ‘genius’ finds himself in way over his head as he tries to not only maintain a successful research firm, but also to keep the offbeat personalities of his co-workers in check in the new comedy web series RESEARCH, produced by Mildly Fearsome Films (who created the award-winning short film SUDDEN DEATH!), created by Adam Hall and series co-star Kahle McCann. The show debuted on June 3rd on Youtube (see link below), and recently completed its first season of eight episodes (and six mini-episodes).

RESEARCH stars McCann as Grant, an ‘idiot scientist’ who, after winning the prestigious MacArthur Genius grant for scientific research, becomes the owner of a lab run amok with some eccentric characters: Dr. Rust, a somewhat brilliant mad scientist (played by stage and screen legend Barry Bostwick, best known for his roles in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and on the late ‘90s Michael J. Fox sitcom SPIN CITY), frequent test subject Denny (played by Doug Jones of the popular TNT sci-fi drama FALLING SKIES, along with roles in SUDDEN DEATH!, PAN’S LABYRINTH and HELLBOY), Taylor, the lab’s social scientist (Autumn Hurlbert, who also appeared in SUDDEN DEATH! and was a contestant on the 2008 reality competition series LEGALLY BLONDE: THE SEARCH FOR ELLE WOODS), plus her main squeeze – and the only sane person who works there – lab manager Dave (Gabriel Diani). The show also features Kelly Huddleston (MAD MEN, DEXTER, 90210) as Taylor’s old nemesis Kate (the new secretary), and Sean Naughton as Tim, the lab’s mute receptionist (and Dr. Rust’s right-hand man).

After spending so much time promoting SUDDEN DEATH!, not to mention seeing it play and win awards at various festivals, Hall wanted to take on a new challenge as a director. “Kahle and I had worked together in a lot of capacities at that point, but hadn’t really ever officially written something together, so we all talked about it and decided to do a web series. It was initially going to be just a small thing to knock the rust off and see how a straight collaboration between Kahle and I would go, but as it got going and the scripts turned out well and we attached people like Barry Bostwick and Doug Jones, it became clear that this wasn’t going to be a small thing we just sort of did for fun (though it was a blast to make), and as we delved more into the world of web series… well, it’s a really new and exciting world. We got pretty excited about the possibilities. We kept going, and it became this huge, crazy thing that we’re really proud of (and hopefully people will watch!)”

In addition to McCann, Naughton, Huddleston and Hurlbert, Hall approached Jones and Diani (Diani wrote and starred in the popular indie comedy/horror film THE SELLING) to appear in the series, but when it came to casting the role of the lab’s resident mad scientist, a bigger challenge lay ahead. “From there, we were looking for a ‘name’ actor to play Dr. Rust and Gabe (Diani) mentioned that he knew Barry Bostwick (he was also in THE SELLING), and did we want to ask him? Of course we did, so Gabe sent over the scripts, letting us know that there wasn’t a real great chance of Barry agreeing to do it, but it was worth a shot. Luckily, Barry really seemed to like the scripts, I met with him the next day and the rest is history. He turned out to be a really great guy (I was already a fan long before that), who, like Doug, I intend to keep working with as long as he’ll work with us.”

Casting was the easy part, but producing each episode was another story, says Hall. “It was a blast, but it was really insane. We shot something like 48 pages in 6 days, which is way more than I’ve ever done before at a professional level. Instead of shooting one scene at a time and moving the camera around the room, we shot one room a day for those six days. We’d shoot one area of the room completely out before we’d move on, which means we’d do a shot with Gabe behind his desk for episode one, and instead of moving and re-lighting, he’d go change, come back and we’d do a scene from episode 2, and then episode 5 and so on. It was a crazy process that no doubt was very difficult for the actors. They never complained though, and we had such a fun time making it that hopefully no one noticed. Still, I never want to do it that way again, but it was the only way to get so much shot in so little time.”

While Hall hopes to not only achieve financial success with the show, he also hopes to build an audience through quality, sophisticated humor that doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator. “I’d like to think anyone could/would enjoy this. I think it’s really funny, yet it’s not inappropriate or anything like that (I’ve never been a fan of toilet humor, sex jokes or throwing F-bombs in just to get a reaction, it’s always seemed like lazy writing to me). Check it out, you might like it! And if you don’t, well…sorry about that.”

ON THE WEB: www.researchseries.com

YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/mildlyfearsomefilms

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/researchseries

TWITTER: www.twitter.com/research_series