This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.
Well, quite a lot’s happened since my last blog post, hasn’t it?
Dale, Jesse and I finished the sound mix of Season Two at 6am on a Monday. I went home and started to marry up the sound and picture and export the DCPs (digital cinema packages) which are the files that were actually screened at the premiere. Unfortunately a test screening on the Tuesday revealed that – for reasons still inexplicable – the sound was much louder on the right channel than the left. This is exactly why we needed to finish the season a few days before the premiere, to give contingency time to fix such last-minute problems. I tinkered with a few settings, exported the DCPs again and the projectionist kindly came in late on Wednesday to re-ingest them onto the server. To my great relief, this time all was well.
The premiere itself was a lovely evening with around 130 people in attendance. The Light’s bar was packed with familiar faces and I’m only sorry that I didn’t have time to properly catch up with every one of them. The screening was followed by a lively Q&A session, bits of which you can still catch in our Instagram highlights. The following morning, of course, saw the entire season drop here on Patreon.
You might think I relaxed the following week, and I did a bit… but only a bit. There was still, and is still, a lot of work to do to promote the series. Recently Kate, Chris Dane and I were interviewed for the podcast Making Movies is Hard, which you can listen to here. Some other coverage you can check out is this review on Temple of Geek, another one on the Eye on Sci-fi Podcast, and an interview with me about Ren’s cinematography on the Capturing Light Podcast.
Meanwhile preparation work continues on Season Three. This is slightly strange because we’re not sure if we’re just three months away from cameras rolling on the season, or if the whole thing is going to have to be delayed. We’re all super-keen to power ahead, keep the momentum going and not have another hiatus, but the fate of Ren rests in the hands of the fans. You Marked Ones are a wonderful bunch, but currently there just aren’t enough of you to fund Season Three. Unless a lot more people step up and join as paid members in the next couple of weeks, we won’t be able to shoot this year. Remember you can help by spreading the word and telling all your friends, family and followers why you want this series to continue and how they can get involved.
Either way, preparatory work for Season Three continues so that we’ll be ready if the Patreon membership does increase. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve interviewed and selected a new production designer for Season Three. Tomorrow we visit Burleigh Hill Farm so she can see the spaces for the first time and start thinking about what to build where.
Location research is ongoing. Two of the cast, Meg Birley (Tansy) and Rachel August (Captain Merluzzo) have kindly been taking the lead with this last task, hunting for castles, ruins and arenas.
After a series of mini writers’ meetings and some quite substantial changes to one or two of the episodes, Draft 9 of the script has just been completed. To borrow an idea from Russell T. Davies, here is a random word from each episode: whittled; frost; competence; swaddled; botany. In the comments you can make your predictions for the storyline based on these words!