By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A longtime dream is now reality for a St. Joseph couple who produced a television show that is now on Amazon Prime Video.
Nathan and Sydney Pinion are the Co-creators, writers, directors, and even actors in their show Dead Legion.
Sydney says being from St. Joseph it was a no brainer to shoot the show here, because there is so much here that gets overlooked.
"We shot at places like Krug Park in the old offices and top of the castle, which I had personally never seen inside before," Sydney tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "Krug Pool in St. Joseph, Missouri, we actually did a scene where we filled the swimming pool with zombies while it was completely drained and empty, we had an overnight shoot there and we filled the pool with zombies."
Aside from being produced locally and filming around the region, the Pinions say much of the talent within the show is also local.
Nathan says living most of their lives here made it easier to have connections within the community that made making the show here easier than elsewhere
"Like we shot a scene for the show at the D&G, over in the concert hall, and stuff like that," Nathan explains. "It's a lot easier to recruit people and find places when your kind of already familiar with it."
Sydney adds onto that saying many of the local St. Joseph places are supportive of the arts
"Even the parks department was just a total blessing to us, they helped us with a lot of stuff that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to get into or to shoot at," Sydney says.
Sydney says for what they had to work with and the budget they were on, which she says wasn't a lot, St. Joseph business owners and the city were very supportive.
"A lot of people just get excited, like when they see that you're out there and you have a cast full of actors and a camera they want to (ask) what are you working on over there and they want to inquire and see what it's about," Sydney points out. "We had a really pretty positive experience with working with this town and the people in it."
In fact, Sydney says the largest hurdle faced during production as the series filmed in 2020 was local lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.
New episodes of the show air every other Friday on Amazon Prime Video; A fifth coming out this Friday, 15 episodes total.