The Hardest Part: Piper Kessler on Frequency

The Hardest Part: Piper Kessler on Frequency

Posted on 2015-04-17 at 15:3 by montsamu

On Thursday, April 23, 2015, Motorco will screen three seasons of the immensely popular lesbian sci-fi original series Frequency, which features cast, crew, and settings from the Triangle area. Fans will be treated to scenes and storylines from the first three seasons, including unreleased episodes from the current season (three) and exclusive content from the upcoming fourth season. The event will be emceed by Tracey and Matthew Coppedge of The Lowdown Show. Produced by KV Works, Frequency boasts over four and a half million views on YouTube worldwide and was an Official Selection at the Los Angeles Web Series Festival and Miami Web Fest. The series is written by Durham’s Piper Kessler, produced by Monique Velasquez, and stars Meredith Sause (“Foodie”) and Lisa Gagnon (“Disengaged”), along with Tony Hughes, Kat Froelich, and Jenn Evans.

The (free, $5 suggested donation) screening begins at 6:42, although doors open at 6. Q&A, series trivia, and general good times are expected. Cast and crew will be on hand to meet and greet, including Kessler, who here writes about “The Hardest Part” of putting this all together.

By Piper Kessler:

When folks tell you the hardest thing they’ve ever done rarely does it fall under what is truly difficult. I’m sure people would think producing an original sci-fi series with lesbian main characters in a state not known for it’s love of “the gays” is a hard undertaking. Nah. I’ve lived in North Carolina all my life. I’ve heard, well, they’re the good kind of Lesbian, Gay, Black, Mexican… Yep, fill in the blank with an other of your choosing. Hard times are given to strangers, not the odd uncle, sister and beer drinking buddy. Cause my buddy? Well, he’s different.

People might think producing a series about people with extra sensory abilities and a messed up sense of time and space while your creative/life partner is fighting cancer would have been the most difficult part of creating the series Frequency. It wasn’t. Though far from simple, living day to day, paying medical bills, moving forward is what we did with little thought. We needed the diversions of Claire seeing the future, Dr. Deanna’s mind reading, and their time traveling, mind manipulating friends. Writing out fantasies while waiting through the reality of doctor’s visits? That was easy.

Timing production days to coordinate with the DP’s chemo recovery days was a matter of knowing every other weekend would always be the best. Production rarely runs smoothly when you have limited time and budget. That’s something our production business is use to. Not the hardest part. Finding food, props, a quiet locale — a challenge but not any where near impossible. We got use to explaining to business owners what the heck we were doing. “Frequency, it’s Lost Girl meets Heroes. A mix of Orphan Black and Continuum.” You either get a stunned look at a quote like that or an “aha”. Either way, it starts a conversation about the thing that’s been taking up three years of your life.

So what is the hardest part? Taking Frequency to the finish line. Three seasons of Frequency are now almost behind us. Production is over but post-production of Season Four still looms. Funds are short and time is short. Now is when focus is difficult to gain. After all, I want to move on with new characters, new worlds and new ideas that are loudly bouncing around my head. Trying to keep moving when the world’s mundane tasks are vying for competition is challenging. That’s my opinion anyway. The hardest part? It’s completing the things you’ve done in your head but never actually completed. It’s the mundane. The easy crap. We have looped back to the beginning. We were responsible for bringing the odd world of Frequency to life and now it’s time to send it out into the Internet, hopefully to be discovered, criticized and examined on it’s own merit. Yeah, that’s the hardest part.

Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged frequency, piper kessler