Can you solve the Guidestones mystery?

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Captivating, thrilling and mysterious.

Guidestones is a free, web-based interactive thriller series based on the Georgia Guidestones. The story follows two journalism students as they try to uncover the conspiracy of the Guidestones while investigating an unsolved murder.

Jay Ferguson is the creator of the series. He said the film was shot in a very unique way to give the audience a sense of actually being on site with the actors.

"(Cinéma) vérité is the style in which we shot. One of the things is that it's a thriller and as a thriller we want it to have that sense of voyeurism," said Ferguson. "The main characters are essentially always being watched, so we wanted to give that feeling to the audience and that comes from a vérité documentary format."

Ferguson got the idea for the series from an exchange student from India who he met at Ryerson. She had told him a story about herself back in India. "Originally, I was going to make a documentary on her, but she wasn't interested, so I decided to make this a fiction story and the story led back to India," said Ferguson.

The show is shot in such as way that "you get episodes as they are released in real time so you get the shows as it happens to the characters. The whole thing takes about three weeks to go through," said Ferguson. "The idea is that if you're watching the show, then you get an episode emailed to you. Then the characters may have to go somewhere that takes the characters two hours to get there, so you follow them. Two hours later, you get another episode. So it's this real-time experience."

The episodes are typically three to five minutes long, to enhance this experience that you are chasing down clues to solve the mystery.

Supinder Wraich, the lead actress in the film, said, "We would shoot longer scenes and they were just cut where there was a cliffhanger and would make you want to watch the next episode."

"They were meant to be something you could consume quickly throughout the course of your day," added Feguson. "But we found a lot of people were disappointed and wanted more."

To add to the uniqueness of the series, in addition to its Hollywood-calibre videography and real-time experience, it is also interactive.

Within the show, there are clues that are made obvious enough for the audience to see. "When you find a clue, you google it and it will take you somewhere. They get more complicated sometimes like numbers may be hidden on certain sites, or it could be a license plate number or a serial number. Things are usually google-able but sometimes it's a phone number which can take a little more searching," said Ferguson.

He was quick to add that, "if you don't want to do the interactive experience, it won't affect your viewing of the show," since every episode reveals the clue from the show before.

The show is shot in Canada, the USA and in India. Wraich said, "We actually shot all on location for everything we talk about in the story, so if people want to go do their research, all those things in Guidestone actually exist."

A show that wasn't initially supposed to be an Alternative Reality Game turned out to be very successful and has garnered a lot of dedicated fans.

"On our Facebook page, we are continually getting pictures of people who are going to the locations," said Ferguson. "Someone else even set up a Facebook page asking people to take a trip to the Guidestones."

"The project was never meant to be considered an ARG," he continued, "but I knew that audiences worked differently in front of a computer screen, so I knew there was a certain desire for interested audiences to have some sort of interactivity. So I thought I'd add these elements that would allow you to jump ahead."

The show was created by between 100 and 150 people in total from the initial production to post-production. Many of the people involved were recent grads from Ryerson, York, Toronto Film School, Sheridan and a few others, sprinkled with some professionals in the business. "We had a lot of experience on the one side and a lot of dedication and people learning on the other," said Ferguson.

It was shot for under $500,000, which meant "we had to shoot smart," said Ferguson. "A lot of people who worked on it donated their time. Because it was such a unique concept, people became very passionate about it, but the value is a lot higher than that from what appears on the screen."

It took three years to build Guidestones and Ferguson wanted to make sure he got it right. He said, "We do consume a huge amount of rich media online and I was getting frustrated with the fact that much of it was not good quality so I wanted to produce something really good."

The quality did not just appear in the videography or the content; the actors also did a lot of preparing.

Wraich has been acting for a few years but she said she has never had a role like this one.

"It was definitely something new to sit down and figure out how my character grows and what those character shifts are and how to build this character. I've never built a character in such a way that I built Sandy because I got to play her for a few months. So I actually ended up moving into a hostel in Toronto just to experience the city in a new and different way," said Wraich.

Wriach also got to work with a friend of hers; Dan Fox, who is the other lead character. Wraich described their relationship to be similar on the show as off the show.

"Dan and I and Sandy and Trevor have the same dichotomy; we work differently and deal with situations differently, so it was a challenge at times and a gift at times, in fact, every day was a gift and a challenge," says Wraich.

With all the positive feedback Guidestones has been receiving, Ferguson said, "We have plans to make a trilogy. We find we are getting really amazing reviews and it has had a really amazing impact. If we get good audience numbers, we will definitely be able to finance a second or third one."

Check out Guidestones at guidestones.org and enter your email address. Right away you will start experiencing the three-week adventure for free in high quality. "Now that it's online, anybody can go and watch it, it exists forever," said Ferguson.