Ind-E-Focus

Back in 1996, one of most underrated and influenced American TV shows had its three season run. Shortly after 'The X-Files' changed the paranormal elements of intelligent TV drama, FOX networks approached creator Chris Carter about the prospects of developing another hit series. By emphasising on the, back then, rising interest of the new millennium, Carter created ‘Millennium’, a rather sinful and mysterious approach of the coming thousand-year mark combined with what he explained as “an exploration of evil”.

The series followed the freelance forensic profiler and former FBI agent, Frank Black, who had the supernatural ability to view the world through the eyes of serial killers and murderers.

What Millennium did, that many other cancelled TV shows failed on, was to attract intelligent, ambitious and enthusiastic viewers who appreciated the creativeness of the show instead of the general mainstream elements that we see daily (hint: Fringe). More importantly, its originality influenced fans from around the world to expand their creativity. We can see the traces of the show in many independent features of today, such as the psychological thriller The Artifice.
Some devoted artists created their own continuing to the series named Millennium Apocalypse.  Recently, the most striving, organised and promising fan campaign to bring the Millennium back for a feature (Back To Frank Black), interviewed the creators of Millennium Apocalypse;

“BTFB: How true did you try to stay to the original series. We spoke to Robert MacLachlan recently who commented that the cinematography on Millennium was instrumental in creating its character if you will. How much did you attempt to reproduce the look of the series or did you strive for a unique character of your own?

JASON: Well we wanted to keep the same feeling but we did try to make this more of Jordan's world. We saw Franks world and the darkness, with Jordan I wanted hope and more of a curious environment than the forboding doom and darkness of the original show.

BTFB: Was changing the ouroboros logo part of creating that new identity for the show and Jordan's story or born out of a desire not to infringe copyright?

JASON: It was kind of both. I knew I wanted a different design but going back to the original story the show did not fully explore both factions of the group so we decided to create kind of a full circle and add more lore to the story by creating two more factions, one being the Ravens, also the native American story line of the Anasazi logo.

SHONI: Well we had originally wanted Jordan to have an ouroboros tattoo but it did not work out without me actually getting one.

JASON: Yeah the tattoo thing was tough, first I discovered that another show I loved at the time, The Invisible Man, Vincent Vantrasca's character Darian Fawks has an ourborous tattoo on his writst, which is where we placed it for Jordan, we also discovered that the fake tattoos we used were very shinny on camera and fell of very easily so it was a pain to work with, after shooting with them for a day we scrapped the idea.

BTFB: I did revisit the 'Apocalypse' forums today and a quick re-read highlighted a number of problems you experienced during filming with location, budget, disagreements regarding the finalised scripts and so on. Did you anticipate the experience would be challenging and at any point did you loose faith in what you were doing?

SHONI: Time, location issues, weather, making scenes match whilst they were shot days maybe weeks apart. It was fun.

JASON: Budget...there was none. Disagreements, many, and not far enough apart, but hey that's what happens when you get creative people in the same room. The script writing was always tough, I found myself wanting to stick to a TV style schedule which was way too ambitious and way too complicated for what we where doing, this caused issues among us and I am completely to blame for that.

JEREMIA: The hardest thing about getting a bunch of people together that are so passionate about something is trying not to hurt feelings and staying commited when people don't agree on things.

JASON: I pushed hard and changed things without speaking to the writers and that was not the right thing to do. In my defense, however, sometimes you see things that are impossible to do and you have these commitments and schedules to keep and things happen fast sometimes and you get caught up in the flow...it is very hard to think about the individuals involved and not the project as a whole but you live and learn.

JEREMIA: As for changing things without talking to the other writers, that was hard because without a budget there wasn't much that could be done. Not being able to pay for locations, getting better set dressing and paying the cast so they still had to work their day jobs and then help out on the project made it hard to schedule things in a timely manner.

JASON: But we did not anticipate things to be difficult at all, I had never shot something long form before so this was a complete immersion in mistakes and learning, experiance is such a key to this biz that there are sometimes mistakes made that could have been prevented had you known what the hell you were REALLY doing and not just thinking you know.

JEREMIA: Learing some of those mistakes is a hard lesson because you could go to film school and still you wouldn't have learned them. They only come with experience.
Shortly after 'The X-Files' exploded into a television phenomenon in its second season, FOX approached then-wunderkind creator Chris Carter about the prospect of creating another series, a companion for his original sci-fi/horror outing. Playing on the increasing fascination of the public with the upcoming new millennium, Carter devised 'Millennium', a dark vision of the impending thousand-year mark combined with what he called "an exploration of evil." While society had developed an increasingly scientific approach to the understanding of evil, its root psychological causes and their manifestations, Carter wanted to rekindle the unscientific perspective—the more superstitious concepts of evil. “

To read the complete version of this interview and the second part, please visit here.

We at Ind-E-Focus fully support the return of one of the (if not the) most intellectual TV dramas. It has already happened to Firefly (Serenity feature film) and Jericho (second season and comic under development) so why not Millennium. Please visit the frequently updated Back to Frank Black campaign website and read more about what you can do!