The 1st Season of GRANITE FLATS is already half way done! It’s gotten some terrific responses, both critically and fan wise. Here are some pictures of my character through the first 5 episodes. Playing super mom ‘June Sanders’ has been a trip! A big thanks for the hair and makeup team who helped with my transformation!

[[Show as slideshow]]

Check out the Facebook page for updates, and catch up on all episodes streaming at BYUtv or on your ROKU. Thanks for all your support!

Tubefilter also just published a great review of the new season and we had a chance to do a Google Hangout with the owner of JTS.

Watch this video on YouTube.

It’s a great show — please check it out!

Watch this video on YouTube.

GRANITE FLATS is BYUtv’s first foray into scripted content. It’s a family drama set in the early 60′s in a small town in Colorado…with a Cold War twist (one reviewer called it X-Files meets Wonder Years). I play June Sanders, the wife of the town Sheriff (played by Richard Gunn — who some of you may remember from DARK ANGEL) and the mother of one of the main children in the story (played by Charlie Plummer of BOARDWALK EMPIRE).  It’s not a religious show, even if BYU is; the network and the producers at Vineyard Productions and EP/ Director Scott Swofford just wanted to fill the void of family friendly programming and create a series that would appeal both to adults and to children (the three main children in the story team together to play detectives). I think they and the writing team (out of NYC) have done an amazing job!

Please check it out starting this Sunday at 5pm PST / 8pm EST (pilot and 2nd episode playing back to back)- on Direct TV 374, Dish network 9403, local channel 7 in Utah or at BYUtv. We shot 8 episodes for Season 1 and the cast, crew and producers could not have been more fantastic. (And a big thanks to Dori Zuckerman for casting me).

Would love if you checked it out! xo taryn

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Greetings fellow journeymen. It’s Saturday and I’m at one of my favorite places, in front of my computer. I’m knee deep in a spec pilot script and research for a feature script that I’m about to start outlining, but luckily my research has taken me to many a wondrous site where I have stumbled upon a post or a video that has inspired me, jump started a new idea, or simply filled me with joy. As my life is all about ‘story’, whether writing it or acting in it, I’ve picked four articles and videos that I’ve found this week to touch upon the general theme of THE CREATIVE NARRATIVE… who are we as storytellers in this year 2013, how did we get here, and why is a shared narrative important. With it being Oscar weekend, it is an especially relevant topic. I hope you enjoy. 

1.  TED Salon: The Shared Wonder of Film by Beeban Kidron.

Watch this video on YouTube.

It was a tweet to a post to another post that lead me to this amazing TED Salon Talk filmed in London. I’ve watch fit three times already. Beeban Kidron is a director known for the 2nd BRIDGET JONES movie but also co-founded FILMCLUB, a now very popular film program for school children in the UK.  The genesis of this program was the topic of this video: what is the narrative that we are imparting to our youth? Why are we not using great films to educate and inspire them when parables and stories have been the unifying element of community throughout history? (“we honor reading, why not honor watching”). She argues (with the most sublime of words) that championing the films where story, not sensation, is king, can influence and help this fragmented generation of children… and she has the proof from her program. What this video really did, for me at least, was articulate my deep seeded belief that filmmaking is Important (and yes I mean with a capital I). A great film has the power to rewire your brain, challenge your beliefs, enrich your soul and tie us to our fellow man through a shared experience, both relating to the characters on screen and as an audience member watching it.  Every element of this video made me proud to be involved in storytelling and reminded me of those seminal moments when I fell in love with film.

2.  The Art of Screenwriting: An Interview with Billy Wilder. The Paris Review, Spring, 1996.

I could get lost for days in the archives of The Paris Review. In pursuing work as a writer but never having had ‘formal training’ (thus a fiery passion to self educate), I consume as much content about writing and writers as my brain will allow. Billy Wilder is an American cinematic icon but I confess to not knowing his background and work as well as I might. His insights as a writer within the studio system, and his frank discussion on the occasions that lead him to directing are fascinating. And I absolutely loved his thoughts on actors and was inspired by his anecdotes of Jack Lemmon; someone who was both naturally gifted and who worked hard… Someone who was a lot like Billy Wilder.

3. VIDEO: ‘Our Brain in the Cloud’ by Ray Kurzweil. BigThink.com

I consider myself an amateur futurist. I am constantly living in the future, at least my imagination is. And for us futurists, Ray Kurzweil is our bold leader. This video articulated my passion for our ability to better ourselves through the information and connections available to us on the web (I’ve discussed this topic before). Mr. Kurzweil takes this a step further and points to the power of our collective brain in the cloud. He points to our smart device not as a handheld phone and internet, but as a gateway. Once that connectivity is fused into our body and access to this cloud of information is immediate, what growth will we see creatively? For many people, it is a scary thought, but for me, I marvel at what a connected future could bring. (Click above for video – wouldn’t embed).

4. ‘The Evolution of Creativity’ by Heather Pringle. Scientific American, March 2013.

Which leads us to a fascinating article which just came out on the evolution of the creative mind. Current research has now pushed back the date of ‘creative’ Homo Sapiens to around 75000 BC (meaning they constructed weapons, tools and even insect repellant bedding) This date is nearly 35000 years earlier than had been previously reported, where research pointed to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period 40000 years ago when there was an apparent ‘creative ‘big bang’ due to an evolutionary mutation. But new digs have suggested otherwise.  This article dives into the use of symbols and language, the size of our ancestors brains and how the increased size of the H.S. brain and the development of the pre frontal cortex allowed for free association. Once our ancestors didn’t have to worry so much about survival and staying in an analytical state, they were more free to reside in this nebula of creative ideas called the associative state. A point of research that blew my mind, and tied back to the video above, was how the larger the hunter gather group was, the greater the chance that one member would dream up an idea to advance their technology. Talk about relevance to our explosion of new ideas and technology today, where our hunter/ gather group is the entire connected world.

5. Last but not least, I wanted to give a shoutout to Phil Plait for his new science and technology webseries TWIST, a great recap of the week’s scitech news. And if you haven’t already heard, the new Google Glass is up for beta testing to some lucky people who Tweet or Google+ why they should get this game changing tech (with a $1500 price tag) . The future is here, just jump on board.

Have an inspired weekend and feel free to tweet me questions or thoughts at @tarynoneill! 

xo T

I’m currently (and have been for months) knee deep in a large scifi script that I am hoping to finish by years end. That, coupled with a busy October and November of auditions and acting gigs, I haven’t been able to blog or post much.

In the meantime, please check out the T & Her Brain posts over on Tumblr — I really want to do these on weekly in 2013. I am inspired by so many articles online and in print that I love to collate and share them with you, giving you a few of my opinions on why they speak to me.

I look forward to a very exciting 2013, with lots of projects in the works, and hopefully a new TV series to tell you about. In the meantime, I will be doing my best to take a moment to reflect on my life and loved ones, and especially in light of the horrific events in CT. I know we all work 24/7 in pursuit of our dreams, but the here and now with people dear to us is often what matters most. Take care of each other.

Grateful to you… and all those in my life.

Have a Wonderful Holiday!

Love  Taryn

While stuck on the rain soaked 405 an hour ago, a breaking news storypopped into my iPhone inbox: ‘Avatar’ is now the ‘king of the worldwide box office’. It took just over a month to ‘sink’ that other mammoth box office champ ‘Titanic’; both films, of course, conceived of and realized by James Cameron. Wow, good day for him. Yes, that is an understatement (and no, I don’t want to think what stratosphere his ego now resides in). It got me thinking though, as I navigated around inexperienced rain drivers, what really propelled these two films to the pinnacle of mass consumption. Was it simply the awe-inspiring 3-D of Avatar and CGI of Titanic. The obvious answer would be yes, those elements were certainly instrumental to the initial draw of the films. But what if those pioneering hi-tech elements were intrinsic to a more primal reaction shared by the masses? What if those technically advanced films just made people feel more?

The stories, as we all know, are recycled: derivatives of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘David and Goliath’, man against nature, man against machine; we’ve all seen the mash-up of the Avatar voiceover on the Pocahontas trailer. Avatar and Titanic couldn’t be more basic in their character archetypes and narratives. But what moved so many millions of people to go to the theatre and then go again, was that those tried and true love stories were presented in an immersive, yet awe inspiring fashion that compelled our complex neuro web to make us feel something new. In both cases we had NEVER seen that type of spectacle before in our lives.  Each movie may have told only a simple, universal love story, but it was nestled within a very un-simple, foreign yet believably tangible landscape. Hmmm. As human beings, are we becoming so desensitized to filmed entertainment that we need huge advances in technology to have the story affect our primal center for emotion? Do we need tech to feel more human?

I read a fascinating article in Wired the other day (what else is new) about a new company in San Diego called MindSign Neuromarketing. It uses brain scans to pin point when the amydala (the center for primal emotions and emotionally based memories) and other key regions of the brain activate in response to viewings of movies and trailers (apparently Jerry Bruckheimer used this fMRI technique to fine tune his last Pirates of the Caribbean trailer).  As I do quite a bit of neuro-research for different projects that I’m working on, I found this fascinating, yet very expected.  If a studio can craft a trailer that creates peak experiences in your emotional center, whether you want it to or not, they have you hooked. With regards to the draw of Avatar, mapping neuro responses to theatrical stimuli is the other side of the coin. What patterns will be discovered? What level of stimuli will we need to get our next ‘hit’?

This topic is obviously a huge one and has far reaching ramifications, definitely beyond simple consumption of movies. The advent of Twitter and Facebook made us feel more connected; when someone adds you as a friend or replies to a tweet, the pleasure center of the brain activates (the folks at Twitter know this or why would they have put an exclamation mark after their email alert that someone new is following you!). But now these social media platforms are part of the more traditional landscape and in becoming part of the norm, what is them the future technology that will, for lack of a better phrase, give us our new hit of happy? It also brings forth something that I struggle with as a fledgling sci fi writer. The science and the fiction is important and the delicately constructed web that I weave to create my unique world is paramount to the genre, but the story has to be elevated by the it, not detracted (which is why I think most scifi films do poorly at the box office, District 9 being an exception for the obvious reason in that it connected on an emotional level).

I have so many more thoughts on these nebulous issues as I delve into what the future means to me and the technology I think that will define it, but I have to end this post for now.  I would love to hear your thoughts. In the mean time, I’m going to try to remember that a simple story, one that connects on a human level with the masses, is not something to discount…it just has to find it’s way through our overloaded neural pathways and into our well-protected hearts.

Have you given any thought to how much you have broadened your knowledge base because of the web?  Things, places, people, ideas, theories, even emotions, that you would have NEVER been exposed to if your existence were limited to the books on your desk and the conversations with your same family and friends. And not just the macro knowledge, but the micro experiences, connecting with people and being exposed to their day to day in a place that you might never set foot in physically. Think how that has added perspective to your life, enriched it.

And then there’s the information, the articles, the fountains of knowledge and discovery available to us at the click of a mouse. Isaac Asimov dreamed of a future where the world’s great libraries could be accessed through a networked computer. That was only 20 years ago. Today, it is real, it’s at our finger tips. How can we not enrich our lives? I hope no one is looking this digital gift horse in the mouth.

If you were to tell me four years ago that I would be being hired to write a scifi comedy action series, that I would teaching myself physics for another project – dreaming of the stars (the actual ones, not the hollywood type) and trying to talk cosmology with anyone who will listen – I would have laughed. But here I am. I opened myself up to topics that I knew nothing about, and discovered a side of myself that loved science, space, the big questions in life, our future as a species (sadly it didn’t take away my insatiable need to shop). My brain, and thus my life changed for the better because of a digital rabbit hole that I tripped and fell into.

So this post – long winded as always – is an introduction to a new type of All Things T blog post that I want to make on a weekly basis: T & HER BRAIN. Every Wednesday I will link to a handful of articles that I have stumbled across in my various research endeavors through out the past years that has made my brain better and left me thinking, questioning, inspired.  I will try to keep them varied, though a lot of times they will more often than not have some sort of ‘futurist’  bent to them as the next few decades are going to bring exponential change to our society and the planet…and it’s important to be educating ourselves so we are not caught with our head buried in the sand.

So enjoy the links! Be inspired! It’s my way of sharing and giving back to the space. And feel free to link to articles in the comments (once it’s set up)- I’d love to create the most awesome library of awesome…something Sir Asimov might even be proud of.  xo T

T & Her Brain: #1

1. THE X Man: by Ted Greenwald in WIRED July 2012

Do you want to read about a brilliant, accomplished man with three revolutionary projects underway and walk away feeling inspired, not bitter? This is an article about Peter Diamandis. He is a revolutionary futurist, dreaming of space exploration, who founded the X Prize Foundation (cash incentive competitions for innovations in technology), is co-founder of Planetary Resources (the company co financed by Sergey Brin, Larry Page, James Cameron etc, which plans to mine asteroids), and Singularity University.  It is a question and answer style interview thus highlights Peter’s insight and brilliance, but I was especially struck by his down to earth optimism.

2. THE BLACK BOX: by James Bamford WIRED April 2012

I know, I know, it’s another article from Wired, but I can’t believe this article didn’t get more exposure in the main stream media. It reads like a spy novel! Wait, it’s about the NSA and the massive new complex that is being built in the Utah desert under a cloack of secrecy…so maybe that’s why it got shut down. Maybe this post will get mysteriously deleted. NSA = Never Say Anything. This article is a must read. You will never type an email the same way again.

3. THE SCARLET A: By Leslie Bennets ELLE Dec 2010

This is an oldie but a goodie article. It’s all about the ‘A’ word. Ambition. Why is it good to have it if you are a man, but bad if you are a woman? The female place in society, in the work force, in the family sphere is a hotbed issue right now, especially with the election coming up. Our place in society is evolving yet challenged. I constantly wonder how women can both pursue their desired careers while being effective and nurturing parents. This is an engaging and thought provoking read.

4. The Next Species of Humans by Juan Enriquez:  TED TALK Feb 2009

It blows my mind that this video was recorded in 2009. Juan Enriquez is one of my favorite TED speakers and this video vibrates with poignancy as we approach the election, still entrenched in economic woes.  Don’t let the beginning of this video, with his doomsday undertones disway you. He presents awe inspiring examples of how our future economy can be shaped by innovation and how we will probably evolve. If you want a good read, check out his book “As The Future Catches You.”

5. The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck: Video by Jason Silva

If you haven’t heard of Jason Silva yet, you will. This filmmaker, futurist, radical thinker, self proclaimed epiphany addict (who once worked at Current TV as a host), is delivering his addictive, mind blowing thoughts on life, science and the future in 2-3 minute stunning video bites. He is a walking encyclopedia of thought provoking quotes and passion.  The first time I stumbled across one of his videos, I almost lost my breath, it was like he had tapped my brain and created a fervent, vivid yet coherent image of all the ‘big thoughts’ with which I was wrestling.

**This blog post will primarily be published on my Tumblr page. Please follow so that you’ll know when a new one is up!**

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Watch this video on YouTube.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Back in March, I pulled an all-nighter on an outline for Super.Model. I almost cancelled out of an audition that I had in the valley, but because I was shooting the promo pictures for Woody Tondorf’s Star Squad Hunger Games fan film in the area, I decided to go…sleep deprived and a little batty.  I am so glad I did.

Shooting this Kelloggs commercial was a dream- the director Ivan Bird, the production team, agency and client were all fantastic and kind; I think everyone knew that this would be a special spot. I am so proud to be a part of it, and dedicate it to my mom, who was at every one of my skating practices when I was a young.

Hope everyone enjoys the Olympics! Please check out my quick thoughts on the hero’s journey over at my Tumblr blog.

xo Taryn

Watch this video on YouTube.

I am so excited to finally be able to talk about the show that I’ve been writing!  It’s called SUPER.MODEL for none other than comic legend STAN LEE!  The show in a nutshell?  Supermodels with Super Powers. That’s right, you don’t get more fun than that.

Stan’s team met with me last year to see if I could bring my own take to his original idea, and I jumped at the chance. As you all know, I LOVE superhero mythologies, scifi and action. But I also love fashion and fun female characters (I wrote a comedy script called The Very True Adventures of the Madoff Girls–about two trust fund fashion obsessed sisters who lose their money in a financial scandal), so the project could not have been a better fit for me as a writer/ producer.

The show will be a series on Stan’s You Tube channel called STAN LEE’S WORLD OF HEROES. Please check it out and subscribe- there are so many fantastic, fun shows already playing. The channel is being produced by Michael Eisner’s digital company VUGURU (who have produced fantastic original series like ‘Booth at the End’ and ‘Prom Queen’) and is being executive produced by Heath Corson, the talented writer/ producer behind Warner Digital’s AIM HIGH.

We are all really excited to bring this scifi action comedy to you – it’s chock full of crazy fun, gorgeous and sexy (but humanly flawed) models, a whip smart geek girl blogger, a brilliant villain and some awesome scifi superpowers. Please check out our teaser trailer above that premiered last Thursday at Comic Con (yes, COMIC CON, how friggin’ excited was I?!). Please ‘like’ it and share along your social media platforms if you can. The teaser is just to give you an idea of what the show is about- no cast is attached yet. But soon!

Really excited to finally be sharing my writing with an audience, it’s been a wild trip getting here. A big thanks to Stan’s team and Vuguru for believing in me!

xo Taryn