The El Rey Network, known for its action packed movies aimed at Latino audiences, began showing TV director Eric Dean Seaton’s (NBC, TVOne, Nickelodeon) short film, Legend of the Mantamaji: Live Action Short, this month as part of its Black Filmmaker Showcase that will run through the month of February. The award-winning short is based on the critically-acclaimed graphic novel series of the same name and is one of only two short films selected, by El Rey founder Robert Rodriguez, for the honor. The film airs immediately following popular high octane movies Reservoir Dogs, Shaolin Abbot, The Trail of the Broken Blade and Five Shaolin Masters.
“This is another exciting opportunity for the short and the series,” creator and director Eric Dean Seaton said. “What started as a love letter to readers of the graphic novels continues to build new fans and opportunities for the graphic novel series and beyond. It’s a great honor to be chosen.”
Air Times:
Thursday, February 11th: 8:00PM & 12:30PM following: Five Shaolin Masters
Thursday, February 18th: 10:15PM, 2:45AM following: The Trail of the Broken Blade
Thursday, February 25th: 8:00PM, 11:45PM following: Shaolin Abbot
Monday, February 8th 8:00PM, 12:30AM, Wednesday, February 17th 12:00AM, Saturday February 20th 10:00AM, 6:00PM. Saturday February 27th 4:00PM, 10:30PM following: Reservoir Dogs
The Los Angeles Movie Awards(LAMA) recently released its 2015 list of winners and prolific TV director Eric Dean Seaton’s short film, Legend of the Mantamaji: Live Action Short, is among the honorees. The superhero short film received a Best Editing Award and Honorable Mention from the group.
“I am so humbled and honored to be recognized by the Los Angeles Movie Awards,” Seaton said. “It was a dream come true to bring the graphic novel series to life on the big screen. The fan support has been tremendous and now to be recognized by peers is outstanding.”
The Los Angeles Movie Awards screening of 2015 winners takes place Saturday, September 19, 2015. At the screening, Legend of the Mantamaji has a chance to win another award – the Audience Choice Award- which is based on votes of those in attendance. Past LAMA winners include Sandra Oh, Ron Howard and Samuel Jackson.
Tuesday saw the launch of the Legend of the Mantamaji: Live Action Short and boy was it exciting! There has been so much love shown our way. Fans and media alike have enjoyed the short and that means a lot.
Rough analytics show the #LegendoftheMantamaji hashtag has been used more than 800 times, our Facebook engagement has climbed more than 400 percent and we are so glad we upgraded our servers here on the site because a 200 percent increase in traffic would have crashed our servers last month.
Let’s keep it going! The movement for diverse voices in stories is more than one week of excitement. Share with friends, comics lovers.
With a thrilling plot and a diverse cast of characters, Seaton strives to change the attitude toward and perception of African Americans. “You’re looking at somebody as the hero with a different skin color, and subliminally if you like it, you might actually see people in those positions and it won’t be so shocking,” Seaton continued.
Many thanks to Alex Widen of Examiner.com for his coverage:
With a mixture of great costume designs, stunt work, highly cinematic pacing and excellent special effects (when needed), it has everything which fans have come to expect from comic book based pilots as produced by “The CW” or even “CBS.”
Seaton hopes the short compels more people to pick up the graphic novel series to see what happens next. The trilogy was featured on MTV’s “Beach Reads for Social Justice Warriors” list, was nominated for a 2015 Glyph “Rising Star” comics award and named a “Top Graphic Novel” by Atlanta Black Star and Examiner.com. We’ve previously have profiled Legend of the Mantamaj several times on our site and we’ve become big fans and encourage our readers to check it out for themselves. You won’t regret it!
Remember when you were a kid you would do things in slow motion? Okay, okay, it was last Tuesday, but still, in your mind it was super cool just like the movies. Well, that’s what’s happening in this week’s episode of Legend of the Mantamaji: Behind the Scenes.
We find the team rehearsing more stunts that take place in slow motion with lead actor Phillip Michael, learning on the fly. Watch the video below and please SHARE & TWEET it out to friends!
The past couple of weeks have been great for the Legend of the Mantamaji team. The Legend of the Mantamaji: Behind the Scenes web series began and we’ve been hearing from readers and new fans about how much they enjoy the series so far and that they are looking forward to the Live Action Short (so are we). In cased you missed an episode or two, here is the entire series so far. Be sure to like the videos and share with friends, we need your support!
What does it take to bring a graphic novel to life? That’s the question being answered in the new web miniseries – Legend of the Mantamaji: Behind the Scenes.
The series follows Legend of the Mantamaji creator and TV director Eric Dean Seaton and his production crew over three days as they bring a key scene from Legend of the Mantamaji Book One to life for the Legend of the Mantamaji Live Short.
“It’s fun look inside life on set and a great way to introduce new readers to the series,” Seaton said. “There is everything people love about behind the scenes footage – interviews with the people working on the film, insight on how stunts and scenes are created and the inspiration behind the story.”
Most people have already seen Seaton’s work without realizing it. Seaton has directed more than 200 episodes of 38 hit TV shows including NBC’s Undateable,BET’s Reed Between the Lines, Disney’sThat’s So Raven,andNickelodeon’s Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a show on Nickelodeon and Disney from the last 10 years that Seaton hasn’t been involved in, a formidable experience that viewers get to see on display throughout the Behind the Scenes miniseries. Seaton however, isn’t looking to show off for the cameras, instead he wants to give back.
“The live action short is a couple of things…first, it’s big thank you card to fans of the series,” Seaton said. “We’re an indie company with a new superhero and people have taken a chance on us. In fact the response has been amazing. We sold out recently at a con (C2E2) and we’ve sold out our initial runs on Amazon twice. The short is our way of saying thank you to the fans for using their power – both on social media and their dollars.”
“Secondly, the short and the behind the scenes series is a chance to gain a bigger audience for the books,” Seaton said. “It’s not easy being the new company on the block. Not only do you have to introduce yourself and your characters to would be fans, you have to do the same to media and the information gatekeepers. It’s an uphill battle for an indie company, we’re definitely the underdog here, but then again, everyone loves the underdog.”
The 12 episode series publishes weekly with the first episode clocking in at four minutes and the other episodes coming in at an internet ready viewing time of two minutes each. The series leads up to the launch of the eight minute film Legend of the Mantamaji: Live Action Short.
“This is an exciting and important step for the series and for the company [“And… Action!” Entertainment],” he said. “We’re able to show that we here for the long term, positioned for growth and we get to show off what the Mantamaji can do which is really fun. I’m living my two big dreams directing and creating comics.”
They say it’s not nice to tease, but what about when you have a new superhero digital short?
Shooting has wrapped up on the set of the Legend of the Mantamaji digital short which brought scenes from the graphic novel series to life. The short is 7 minutes and 6 of them are pure action. You will see all the things you see in the book: morphing, weapons, fighting, drama, danger and fun. The only thing we didn’t do is add a lot of jokes because we wanted to show something totally different and new. The edits are almost complete and then the special effects crew gets their chance to add the next level of movie magic. While we wait though…check out some of what is in store!
We went with live action or animation because I am a live action director and the thrill of taking something that was 2D and making it 3D seemed much more challenging which was part of the fun. So far the best part of the process has been making a dream come to life. It was so fun to do that it never felt like work and was not hard at all. The biggest challenge was the suit. In Batman vs. Superman they had 11 Batman suits that were very expensive. We had one suit and one guy to do everything and it had to last for 3 days! It all came together though and the whole team is really excited and proud of our work. Subscribe to our YouTube channel “And…Action! Entertainment” for more updates and sneak peeks.