Experiencing Interruptions?

The Third Act Series

A comedic web series - midlife crisis, going single, and getting your groove back has never looked so good!

  • Michele Fillion
    Director
    No Work for a Woman
  • Frank Vitale
    Director
    Montreal Main
  • Jody Atkinson
    Writer
  • Susan Stava
    Producer
  • Jody Atkinson
    Producer
  • Joshua Litle
    Producer
  • Susan Stava
    Key Cast
  • Jody Atkinson
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short, Web / New Media
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Michele Fillion, Frank Vitale

Michele Midori Fillion (Executive Producer, Director/Producer and writer of “No Job For a Woman”: The Women Who Fought WWII, the award-winning documentary for PBS) is founder of and producer for Hurry Up Sister Productions. A journalist formerly with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), she has produced a variety of short documentaries for radio and television, with a special commitment to reports that focus on women. Fillion lived and worked in India on a journalism fellowship where she produced documentaries on rural development. She is currently working on a documentary series, Nowhere To Go, about sanitation issues world-wide, and a feature-film, BloodSport, about art and obscenity. She resides in New York city.

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Director Statement

Jody and Susan, the two central characters of the The Third Act Series, pose the central question: we took the road less travelled; now where the hell are we?

The stories combine the contradictions of contemporary independent womanhood with motherhood and stir in a large dose of humor to the mix. I guffawed, snorted and laughed as I read the scripts and nodded at the “yes, I have been there” moments, such as trying to explain Barbie Dolls to your daughters while simultaneously defending yourself as a feminist. And since I was living my own third act and asking “where the hell was I?” I knew I wanted to direct this series.

Since many of us are in our “third act” it felt important to maintain the subtext of exploring this new phase while pushing the humor and also allowing space for others’ in a different point of their lives to be able to connect and feel the humor also.

Staying true to the characters of Jody and Susan, capturing their camaraderie and the balancing act of their relationship, and making their moments together on-screen feel as real and relatable as possible was the focus of my direction in the filming. Likewise with the secondary characters: it was crucial to bring out the humor of a given situation – the inter-generational clash, the mistaken motivations, the underlying confusion – through the actors’ postures, facial expressions, and their movement through space. In this way, we could make the scenes humorous verging on zany but steer clear of being slapstick.