This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

If you happened to be at the Season One wrap party, you’ll know that I’m a fan of Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. That is very much where Ren Season Two is right now.

Rob Westwood has been hard at work finishing the music, the last of which has now been delivered. The action scenes I’ve been watching for so long finally have the proper scale with his score driving them along. The emotional moments now soar where they’re supposed to. My favourite bits are the travelling montage in 202 and the last scene of 204 where… Spoilers.

By the end of this coming weekend at latest, the sound mix will need to be finished, to give me time to make the DCP (Digital Cinema Package, a special file format which all cinema projectors use), get it to The Light, have them ingest it onto their system and check it, with a little contingency time left in case anything hasn’t come out correctly. This means that I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few days in Dale’s back garden murder shed, which is where I’m writing from now.

Dale is adjusting the dynamics of the hoofbeats in the horse chase, while Jesse adds a last few sound effects elsewhere in 201. Dale’s set a timer and we have to be off this episode and onto 202 within half an hour. The countdown clock’s ticking.

11:35pm. Now well into 203, the three have us have got irrationally excited about a horrible scraping chair sound effect. Is it as great as we think or is it delirium? (Pretty sure it’s great.)

“I can feel the blood pooling in my knees from where I literally haven’t moved for so long,” says Dale.

We go outside to stretch our legs and regain some sanity. Back inside, we plough through to the end of 203. It’s getting better and better.

Excitement is building amongst the cast and crew for the premiere and release. Yesterday I sent out almost 100 press releases. The day before I was interviewed about Ren by Les Gaddis for his Capturing Light podcast (out on Monday). Today I have interest in another interview, this time for a geek culture website.

Today… well, yesterday, because it’s now gone midnight… was the eighth anniversary of the Season One premiere. As you can see from the video above, it was a fantastic evening, buzzing with excitement and pride at what we had all created.

It’s been a long time coming, but the premiere of Season Two is now just a week away, March 7th at The Light in Cambridge. Remember you can get your tickets with a special 50% Patreon discount here, or you can enter our giveaway to have the chance of winning a free pair of tickets. Do not miss this opportunity to see Season Two on the big screen!

Will things ever be the same again? It’s the final countdown.

The reason this blog is so rarely updated nowadays is that I’m the showrunner of Ren: The Girl with the Mark, an award-winning fantasy web series. I first joined the project in 2014 as DP for director and co-creator Kate Madison, then helped with post and various attempts to get the second season made, before taking over as showrunner in late 2022.

Season Two was filmed last May and comes to YouTube weekly starting March 16th. Or you can binge all episodes from May 8th, get loads of bonus content and support the show going forward by joining our Patreon community. The Patreon page is also where I do all my blogging these days!

There is also a unique opportunity to see all of Ren Season Two on the big screen in Cambridge, UK on March 7th, as tickets are on sale here for the cast and crew premiere.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

A single table lamp glows in the corner, reflecting off the padded walls. The padding is to deaden the sound, but it could equally be to deal with the insanity which is never far away when you’re watching short clips of a show over and over again, making the tiniest changes to the audio.

Dale works his way through every hit and block in 203’s fight scene, searching through libraries for the three or four sounds (maybe something metallic, the cloth, a squelch and a swish) that work perfectly with each one. Jesse sits on the sofa with another laptop and his headphones on, slowly but surely adding the footsteps to every scene in the episode. Just another Friday night mixing Ren.

A few days ago we summoned Ivan over from Norfolk just to re-record his ‘effort’ sounds for the fight. He even provided his own knuckle-cracking sound effect (though not using his knuckles).

The visual side of Season Two was completed a couple of weeks ago, when Mara Ciorba sent over the final version of the colour grade. The previous version was perfect… until I spotted a faint red reflection from the back of a parked car in one of Ren’s close-ups. On Team Ren, attention to detail is everything.

I’ll be honest; I had hoped to have the season out by now, but on the Cheap/Fast/Good triangle you can never have all three corners.

As well as the ongoing sound and music, work continues in other areas. I’ve been compiling a list of press outlets to spam about the series when it’s released, I’ve been testing the software that will make the Digital Cinema Package for the cast and crew screening, and I’ve been editing the BTS videos that will come out after each episode is released. I’ve also sat down with Ross and planned out the broad schedule for the year; given that I want to shoot Season Three this summer, certain aspects of prep have to start happening pretty soon. In fact, I’ve already started picking the directors for the five episodes, and confirmed the returning cast members.

The peripheral work continues too. Last weekend Steph Swan kindly recorded two more audiobooks, Water to the Well and The Trader from Helgoth, which Tavern Dwellers will get to hear over the coming months. Several people are now assisting Steph with our social media efforts, including Duncan Hallett who is developing our brand new TikTok account.

As I write the last part of this blog I am on a train to Norwich. There’s a networking event happening there tonight which might yield some useful contacts for the future, but I also plan to visit several of the city’s historic buildings to see if any might be suitable for Season Three or indeed beyond.

On Saturday I’ll be back in the padded room, debating how squelchy a hit should be or whether you need to hear the swooshing of a blade. Plenty more details to attend to yet.