By VANDA DOBRITOIU
Are you a Sherlock Holmes wannabe? Do you like thrillers and looking for clues? If so, Guidestones could be what you are looking for.
Started in May 2009 by Jay Ferguson, director and co-creator, Guidestones is an interactive online thriller that is unlike any other type of entertainment.
According to the blogging website 28dayslater
analysis.com, Guidestones is “On par with a summer blockbuster … a succulent mystery.”
The thriller is free and anyone can sign up online with their email address at www.guidestones.org.
The episodes, which are roughly three minutes in length, each end in a cliffhanger and have a clue hidden somewhere within.
If you locate and then search that clue online it will take you to a world of hidden videos, websites and other information that will allow you to move ahead of the protagonists. Alternately, you can just watch and enjoy the show. The short episodes make it easy for anyone to watch them, whether it’s in a coffee shop, at work or on a short break.
“The story was inspired by a woman, who chooses to remain anonymous,” said Ferguson in an email interview, “who was an exchange student from India and actually experienced many of the events that unfold in the story.”
The story follows two Ryerson journalism students who, while researching an unsolved murder, uncover a global conspiracy.
Jane Doh of Wired Magazine wrote a feature on Guidestones on Feb. 16, and explained that “the series blurs the line between fiction and reality by bringing in the very real mystery of the Georgia Guidestones, a megalith that suddenly appeared in 1979 in rural Elbert County, Georgia.”
Ferguson is also president of 3‘oclock.tv, which is an entertainment production company, and has contributed as a writer, director and producer for more than 15 feature films.
Ferguson’s first feature film, Suburban Legend, was selected for official competition in the 1996 Montreal International Film Festival and won the Best Director award at the RPM Film Festival in Toronto. His second feature, Posthumous, was short-listed for official competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. More recently, he helped shortlist TVOntario for a Webby and a SXSW Interactive Award by writing and directing segments of the prime-time TV series, Empire of the Word, according to his filmmaker biography.
For more information regarding the thriller or the storyline, visit www.guidestones.org.
