User:Wikisneelix/Charles River Media Group

Charles River Media Group, LLC (Commonly known as Charles River Media Group or simply CRMG) is a full service film, television, corporate, and political communications studio located outside of Boston in Newton Center, Massachusetts.

Charles River Media Group was created in 2003 by Don Schechter as both a production company serving corporate clients and educational institutions as well as an umbrella organization for a collaborative of filmmakers. In it's history CRMG has produced many television and political commercials, as well as assisted in the production of feature films and documentaries. CRMG provided the 2nd Unit Crew and poster photography for Transcendent Man, produced the period piece Marranos, editors of the documentary "Freya," and is most known for it's work as the filmmakers behind Harvard's "Hasty Pudding Awards" as well as it's ongoing film series Ascendants. CRMG has filmed for Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, ESPN, New Balance, The New York Times, Harvard and Tufts universities, Pearson Education, Houghton Mifflin, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States Congress. In January 2014, CRMG produced a series of videos for The New England Journal of Medicine's new adaptive software platform Knowledge+ Internal Medicine Board Review.

Ascendants is an ongoing film series produced by Charles River Media Group. Ascendants equally refers to a undeveloped pilot script and an ongoing short film series started in 2013 by CRMG owner Don Schechter and filmed by Director of Photography Tom Fitzgerald. The pilot script and film series are science fiction thrillers imagined in a dystopia where science has proven the existence of an afterlife for a small percentage of the population. Society is divided between those who are "Ascendants" and those labelled as "Biomasses." The tagline is "It's not the life you lead. It's in your blood." The pilot, and subsequent short films, seeks to encase commentary and debate on the extreme ideologies and religious fervor that often dominate society and politics.

The first short set against this backdrop was titled "Ascendants: Family", and stars Erin Brehm and Laura Menzie. The plot involves an Ascendant woman on the brink of madness when she discovers her wife and young child are not Ascendants. Johnny Lee Davenport, the focus of the second short, makes a brief appearance in this film. This short premiered at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood as part of the Hollyshorts Film Festival before screenings at the Independent Television Film Festival (ITVFEST), The Philip K Dick Film Festival, and The Tri-Cities Film Festival.

The second short - titled "Ascendants: The Raven" - began production in February 2014 and was scheduled for completion in the summer of 2013. This second installment stars Johnny Lee Davenport, Craig Houk, Nick Goroff, Kate Jurdi, and Cassandra Meyer. The plot revolves around Director of Ascension Sebastian Price's abduction by the Resistance to the Jacobs Institute in order to save a woman brutally experimented on by a cult known as "Breeders."