There’s a moment in one of the episodes of The Vetala when a main character walks by a movie theatre.

Advertised is The Seven Voyages of Sinbad.

The 1958 film was one a young Damon Vignale used to watch, along with Jason and the Argonauts ­— any movie that involved mythology.

Flash forward to adulthood and the filmmaker Vignale continues exploring mythology, this time incorporating the Internet ­as the only place one can watch the seven episodes that make up the first season of The Vetala.

“The web series was really done out of a passion to get involved in this new medium,” Vignale said.

The fact it’s not making him any money is a reality Vignale said he’ll “figure out as we go along.”

He’s already planning the next two season, with the goal of shooting them in the spring.

And he plans to bump up the role played by Kamloops actor/singer Tina Moore, who appears in just one episode, playing Det. Diaz.

Moore said she loved the script the minute she read it and was delighted to get a chance to be part of the cast —­ particularly now, with the film industry in Vancouver not quite as buoyant as it used to be.

The plot harkens back to the mythology of India, in particular the Baital Pachisi stories that were translated from Sanskrit into English by Sir Richard Burton, the same man who translated The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra.

The book, actually a collection of 25 tales, centred around a vetala, or vampire spirit.

In Vignale’s series, the vetala is in Vancouver, a hostile, conflicted spirit that passes through people.

It becomes integral to the main character, a college student-reporter investigating the city’s gun trade.

In the opening episode, while meeting with a source, she is shot dead, only to come back to life in the second episode.

The production quality is high, something Vignale attributes to his years in the industry and the people he could turn to for help in creating the series.

Finding a cast, however, was a bit more difficult because the union representing many actors in Vancouver ­— the group that could have given him a reduced cost because it is a local production — was doubtful about the viability of a web series.

In the end, he put out a casting call and ended up with Candace Chase, who has been in Smallville, in the lead, along with Paul Mendel and Marina Pasqua.

Vignale said one of the most refreshing parts of creating a web series is the fact a distributor isn’t needed.

He can shoot, edit and upload — there’s no pavement pounding required.

“And nobody has to tell me if I can do it.”

The series can be seen on Youtube and at vetala.com.

Expanding on the web presence, The Vetala also has a Facebook page and a blogg.