This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

All five episodes of Ren Season Three will be released here on Patreon, for everyone on the Villager level and above, on Monday 9th March. You can find the official synopses below to whet your appetite.

There is, of course, a chance to see it a day earlier than that–on the big screen–at our Tenth Anniversary Marathon Screening in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

In other news, Ren will be on the Live Stage at MCM London Comic Con once again, on Saturday 23rd May. Stay tuned for more details in the fullness of time.

Wish us well with the last weekend of sound mixing, and I’ll leave you with those episode synopses…

301. The Archive

Written by Neil Oseman

Directed by Alan Hay

Tomas Featherwell’rai, a.k.a. the Archivist, welcomes Ren to his grand but crumbling castle. Both host and guest are wary of each other, but when Tomas shows Ren the contraband contents of his secret Archive, she makes a shocking discovery and receives a tempting proposal.

302. The Thing Inside

Written by Ash Finn & Ashram Maharaj

Directed by Sherice Griffiths

Hunter continues his travels alone, carrying the burden of his deal with the Archivist and the terrible consequences it had for those around him. When a mysterious young woman steals the one good thing he got out of that deal, it sets a chain of events in motion that leads him back to old friends and old enemies too.

303. Eye of Nirith

Written by Ash Finn

Directed by Jo Lewis

Ren and Tomas learn more about each other as their plans for a mutually beneficial arrangement develop. But when a Kah’Nath search party led by Commander Tharkan arrives at Featherwell Castle, Ren learns who she can trust and who she can’t.

304. Remember Helgoth

Written & directed by Ashram Maharaj

Hunter and his fellow renegades arrive at Helgoth, the site of a notorious uprising against the Kah’Nath. Amongst the desolate ruins, he must face up to the past he has been running from.

305. Inspiration

Written by Ash Finn, Ashram Maharaj & Neil Oseman

Directed by Mark Hampton

As the full moon rises over Featherwell Castle, Ren and Tomas prepare for their plans to be realised at last.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Something you’ll never unhear: the spellbook in episode 301 is actually an instruction manual for a mitre saw. Sonically speaking, that is.

The colour grading and VFX for Season Three were completed a few weeks ago. Rob Westwood delivered the last tweak to the music this morning. All that remains is to complete the Herculean task of building and mixing the sound.

You’ll have seen pictures of boom microphones hovering closely over actors’ heads. On set, the sole concern of the sound department is recording the dialogue cleanly and clearly. All other sounds are extraneous and undesirable. Even footsteps are best added in post-production, so that they can be mixed at a suitable level – audible but not distracting – rather than being baked uncontrollably into the dialogue. This also allows for characterisation – heavy, booming footsteps for a Big Bad, perhaps – and easy changing of the surface – like a wooden set floor to stone.

In the post-production of any episode, Dale and Jesse’s first task (and no small one) is to clean up the dialogue and remove any other lingering noises from it. Then begins the long process of designing and track-laying everything else: wind whistling, birds cawing, fire crackling, doors opening, dresses rustling, belts clinking, swords clashing, food crunching, magic powers magic-powersing, and so on. We’ve never added up the hours that Dale and Jesse spend on it, but I have no doubt that the number would be utterly terrifying. And if they’ve done their job properly, you’ll never notice it.

Except perhaps the mitre saw spellbook. It was one of the last things recorded, during our regular Sunday review sessions. (Dale often leaves the most subtle sounds until last, because the music and louder effects might render them unnecessary and save him a little bit of work.) In the case of the spellbook, he borrowed his wife’s copy of The Making of the Harry Potter Films for the noise of it being placed on a lectern, but the pages turning didn’t sound right for an ancient tome. I hunted around Dale’s studio and found the mitre saw manual, which had been left out in the rain at some point and was decidedly crinkly. It was perfect.

With a month to go until the season’s cinema premiere, episodes 301 and 302 are now mastered and signed off, and episodes 303 and 304 are very close. Hopefully you’ve all got your tickets for the screening, but if not there is still time.

This coming week I’ll share a breakdown of a scene from episode 204, revealing the layers of sound that Dale and Jesse built up for the Heretics’ Market. Meanwhile, here’s a blast from the past: Kate’s update from the sound mixing studio a week before the premiere of Season One: https://youtu.be/q_654L3Bx5I?si=CKM6hXUHk0AwxpBR