This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Dear Marked Ones,

As you know, Kate Madison and Christopher Dane created Ren and made the first season. In 2022 they gave me permission to carry on the series as showrunner, and for the last couple of years their involvement in the series has been minimal.

Last summer Kate told me that she wanted to get more involved again, so since then she and I have been trying to lock down the story for Season Four together. Unfortunately, as we enter crunch time with the completion of Season Three and the upcoming crowdfunder for Season Four, it has become impossible to escape the conclusion that we disagree on too much.

As a result, I am very sad to say that Kate has now asked me to step down so that she can continue the series in her own way.

What does this mean for the future?

First, the YouTube release of Season Three will go ahead as planned, beginning on Saturday, 4th April. Look out on socials for info about livestreams which will follow some of the episode premieres. I’ll continue to promote Season Three during its release, and to enter it into festivals. Our MCM Comic Con panel on 23rd May will go ahead too – a screening of episodes 301 and 302 followed by a Q&A with the cast and directors, at 12 noon on the Live Stage.

Secondly, this Patreon account will shut down at the end of March. If your tier gives you access to downloads, please be sure to download them before then. Annual members will receive a refund for the outstanding months. Kate will decide whether she wishes to start another Patreon or fund the series in a different way. For now, the best way to keep up to date with any developments will be to follow Ren’s Facebook or Instagram accounts.

I want to say a huge thank you to each and every one of you for supporting the series. I have had a wonderful time making it over the last few years, and we couldn’t have done it without your generosity. I’m very sorry to leave the series in such a place of uncertainty, but I hope that you will continue to support it in whatever form it takes next.

Warm wishes,

Neil

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

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

I’m delighted to report that Season Two won two awards at last night’s Rio Webfest ceremony in Brazil! Wow! Although we couldn’t attend, the ceremony was livestreamed on YouTube and you can watch the moments we scooped…

• Best Series (Action/Horror/Sci-fi) https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxPYgkV915TaTm6t8e8s5gHYtAvZLh8JO8?si=FVr1ew5FZgErSRJZ
• Best Costume Design https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxdCtjvvdDN20dHi3p9m18jOFFTTtlU2l8?si=H3JldpH5wSfTKn-S

Huge congratulations to the whole cast and crew, and to costume designer Suzanne Emerson and her team in particular, and of course to Miriam Spring Davies for designing the Season One costumes that continue to make the show look great. (This is Season Two’s second sartorial success, having bagged Best Costume Design at Die Seriale this summer.) And thanks to all of you wonderful Marked Ones who enabled us to make the show in the first place.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Actively Dubbing Ren is not what ADR stands for. It stands for Additional Dialogue Recording or Automated Dialogue Replacement, depending on who you ask. This is one of the main tasks we’ve been accomplishing since my last update.

Essentially the cast come into Dale’s studio and record old or new lines while watching the footage to keep themselves in sync. This might be because, despite their best and always excellent efforts, Dale and his team couldn’t get clean audio on the day of filming – due to nesting birds in the studio, planes going overhead, crackling fires, or adjacent weddings. Occasionally it’s because a slightly different delivery from the actor would help tell the story a little better. And quite often it’s because we’ve written a whole new line to clarify a plot point or a character’s motivation.

All films go through this process, and I for one really enjoy figuring out ways to strengthen scenes this way. “20 years it’s been left like this,” is a fairly bald piece of exposition, added in response to test audiences asking how long Helgoth had been a ruin. On the other hand, a mocking call of “Run along home to your ma!” (in a different episode) adds to the emotional pressure building on a character and hopefully gives more impact to what happens next. Just a couple of examples of what Actively Dubbing Ren can do.

Elsewhere Mara is working her magic in the colour grading suite at Harbor Picture Company. I’ve just signed off 301 after a bit of back and forth over a flashback. Having graded seven episodes of Ren now, Mara knows the look of the series very well and needs almost no guidance, but occasionally something comes up that needs a little feeling out. The best way to convey ideas about colour grading is with reference images, and sometimes these can be pretty random.

Here are a couple of examples…

Above is the image I sent to Mara last season for the battlefield flashbacks, which ended up looking like this…

As for the 301 flashback, here’s how it looked before grading… (Professionally we always shoot in a flat colour profile so that we capture the maximum information to grade with.)

The reference image which I sent to Mara for this scene came from an interior design website…

And here is the final graded image…

You’ll have noticed the Mahri spirit in the shot, and visual effects are the other big thing that we’ve been working on. The spirit is an interesting one because the look was established in Season One by artists Casen Sperry and James Berridge. I’m not sure what software they were working in, but I’ve used the open-source 3D application Blender to recreate it, the same software I created the title sequence in.

The spirit uses all three kinds of animation that Blender supports: procedural, physics simulations and keyframing. The core of the spirit is a simple sphere which is made to throb and pulse procedurally, i.e. using maths, in this case by applying a noise pattern to its geometry. The particles it emits are a physics simulation. I have complete control over the particles’ mass and velocity when they spring into life, but then they behave according to the level of gravity I’ve set and any additional forces; I’ve attached a vortex force to the core so that the particles orbit it. Finally the gross movement is keyframed, meaning that I position it manually at certain points in the timeline and the software interpolates the positions inbetween. To get the right floaty movement I often look at the spirit’s positions in graph mode and add curves so that it doesn’t just stop and start like a robot. The fun part is that there are many parameters within all this which I can change to give a faceless floaty blob expression and personality.

Whether you guys are having fun reading about this is another question. What do you think of today’s post? What would you like to hear more about in the blog? And less about? Comments please!

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

When last I wrote, we had just test-screened Season Three. The next step was to work out whether any extra shots (“pick-ups”) were needed to make clearer the bits which had confused the test audience, and to organise filming those.

Understandably it was the later episodes in the season, where all the plot threads draw together, that required most work. 301 didn’t need any pick-ups, and a session of tweaking and tightening with editor Cat Ashenden was enough to arrive at a locked edit. This episode then went off to Dale Suttle for sound editing, to Rob Westwood for music, to Mara Ciorba for colour grading, and to me for VFX.

On the last day of August, Ash Finn, Michael Hudson and I convened at Burleigh Hill Farm to prepare the ground for the pick-ups shoot. The main task was to reconstruct one wall of the castle battlements set. Fortunately Mark the farmer had kept all our wooden pillars in the grain store and we could use those as structural support, hardly having to move them at all. Just as fortunately we were able to extract a panel clad in polystyrene stonework from the middle of the hayloft storage. A boat is currently stored underneath the hayloft and we didn’t relish the idea of pushing its trailer out, building a scaffolding tower in its place and unpacking half the loft to get to the right panel. But, with more pivoting than the Friends cast moving a sofa, we managed to slide the panel out and down through the hatch. We spent the afternoon repairing and dressing the wall, and rigging some small black drapes around it.

This Friday a skeleton cast and crew assembled for the actual filming. We began with a couple of shots of Emma Robson (Eumaya) in the medieval barn which involved throwing liquids at her face. Huge thanks to Emma for trekking up from London for that!

Then we moved to the grain store and, working around the tractors, building materials and of course a not-insubstantial pile of grain, captured some pick-ups for 305. These were all of Tomas, the Archivist, but since they involved a stunt and didn’t see his face, he was doubled by Kate Richey, one of Ronin Traynor’s team from IDFight. Thanks to Kate and Ronin for making the trek up too.

The afternoon was very laid back, as we were down to just shots of props and hands that needed only the art and lighting departments. One shot, for use in a VFX composite, involved spraying WD40 at a candle to get the flame to flare up. Do not try this at home. Although I did try it at home, or at least in my friend Chris’s garden, a lot in the nineties. My early amateur films were full of pyrotechnics!

By 5pm we were wrapped, and within a couple of hours we had cleared up and put everything back where we found it. The 27th and final shooting day on Ren Season Three was over.

This week we should be able to edit-lock 303, with 305 following soon after. The next task will be ADR (additional dialogue recording), though we recently got ahead on this when Helen (Sol) stopped off at Dale’s studio while she was passing through the area.

Don’t forget we’re appearing at the Renaissance Faire in Kent this Saturday. In a slight change to the planned line-up, I’ll be joined by Florian Hencher (Tomas), Christopher Dane (Karn/co-creator), Crina Ciobanu (make-up designer) and Hannah Young (costume designer).

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Fun fact: I spent yesterday evening adding a CG dagger into a character’s hand. Follow-up fun fact: it’s the same dagger model used in the opening titles. Frustrating fact: I’m not going to tell you where it is. Goodie bag for anyone who spots it in the finished season!

I see that I haven’t done a proper blog post since filming wrapped in early May, so let me try to round up everything that’s happened since:

• We did a cast panel and a crowdfunding workshop at MCM London Comic Con.
• We won Best Costume Design for Season Two at Die Seriale in Germany.
• Kate and I were interviewed on a YouTube channel called The Outcasts Creative.
• Season Two was selected for Hollywood Series, an online festival happening at the end of the year.

While all this was going on, Alan, Jo and Mark were hard at work editing their episodes with Cat Ashenden (301 and 305) and Sophie Black (303). These were test-screened last weekend to a select few, along with 302 and 304 from last year, making it the first time that the whole of Season Three had been seen by anyone. We couldn’t have done it without your generous backing, dear reader!

As usual, the test screening was to determine if people who hadn’t read the script and spent weeks on set could follow the story and understand character motivations, whether everything made sense and if the pacing was right. Here are some random comments from the many notes I made: “I wanted to see more awe after that moment of magic.”/”I was expecting a flashback.”/”Why do you need a big knife to cut a flower?”/”She could have planned that better!” (By having a dagger ready, perhaps…) /”Very good season finale, but who fell off the rooftop?”

It was also interesting to hear what people thought of 302 and 304, versus their thoughts at the test screening last autumn, now they’re seen as part of a larger narrative. I was glad to hear that the changes we’ve made have brought the best out of them. It’s amazing what you can do with a simple pick-up shot, a few dubbed lines of dialogue and some canny trims. The fact that the VFX, colour grading and most of the music are finished for these Block One episodes also helps a lot.

Editing on 301, 303 and 305 will now continue for a few more weeks with the test audience’s feedback in mind. The next step for me is to determine what pick-ups are necessary and to get those organised.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

I’m delighted to report that Ren Season Two was awarded Best Costume Design at Die Seriale yesterday. I’ve been attending the festival in Giessen, Germany for the past few days, and the love the series has received from the people I’ve met is really something special.

Ren was up against some tough competition from a wide range of series in all genres, of all lengths and from all over the world. Budgets varied tremendously too. When Season One was doing the festival circuit in 2016-17, most web series were creator-financed or crowdfunded; nowadays many of them have backing from streamers or broadcasters. But our series still stands up, and the award proves that. Congratulations to Suzanne Emerson, and to Miriam Spring Davies whose original costume designs are the foundation Suzanne built on, plus the whole team who helped to make the outfits and dress the cast each day.

Die Seriale had an enjoyable programme of screenings, panel discussions and networking events. I took part in the cinematography panel alongside the talented Jana Laemmerer from the German series Feelings, which deservedly went on to win Best Cinematography. This panel was recorded as a podcast that will be out next month, and I will of course share the link then. I also participated in a Q&A after the screening of Ren (episode 204, “The Heretics’ Market”, followed by the Season Three trailer) and had a table at the digital market where I chatted to a few people interested to learn about our business model (ha!) and get advice. The festival staff and fellow attendees were super friendly and made the whole event an absolute joy. I hope to see some of them again soon at other web festivals.

(By the way, we don’t spend your money on the costs of attending festivals, only on the occasional entry fee.)

The other big event for us recently was MCM Comic Con London. Ten of us from the series, plus friends and loved ones, invaded the con on 24th May to present a cast panel and a crowdfunding workshop. Both received genuine interest from the punters, and a good time was had by all. We filmed the cast panel and it will be released on Patreon this weekend.

And how is the making of the series itself going? Most of the music has now been composed for episode 302, filmed last year, and the colour grading of 304 is nearly done too, which will make Block One visually complete.

Since filming on Block Two wrapped in early May, the directors Alan, Jo and Mark have been busy shaping their episodes with editors Cat and Sophie. Soon it will be time for me to get involved, but for now I’m just another audience member excited for the moment I get to see the new episodes.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Not really a week, just a single day. A day of shooting solely flashbacks, with a different cast and a skeleton crew, but a sizeable number of extras and fight performers.

After a week of slowly starting to organise and disassemble things at the studio, we set off on Friday night for the Suffolk Coast. 27 of us were staying at a bunkhouse called Darsham Country Centre. (Only as I write this have I realised how appropriate that figure is, 27 being the number of Mahri spirits in universe.) The team included both of the original creators, Kate Madison and Christopher Dane–one helping with costumes and the other donning a familiar costume to reprise his role as Karn–and directors Alan Hay and Mark Hampton.

Early on Saturday morning many cooks were in the kitchen to fry up a hearty communal breakfast and fortify us for the long day ahead. Our location, a five-minute drive down the road, was the beautiful Thorington Theatre, an al fresco wooden structure surrounded by trees. Filled with birdsong and dappled light, it was a peaceful place to work… though the costume and makeup departments had a busy few hours getting our 11 fighters and another 11 background artists ready to go before the cameras. Not to mention the principal characters of Karn, Tallan (played again by Soorya Mahendran) and a newcomer played by Amber Doig-Thorne.

Aside from some scant drops of rain, and a minor accident when our camera assistant Nicolas Hepburn put his foot through a broken wooden stair, the day went well. By the last scene things were quite frantic, as the sun dipped low and the clock ticked past wrap time, but an extra half hour was enough to complete the material and snap a cast and crew photo! Then followed all the packing down, loading up and travelling back home.

The rest of the bank holiday weekend found the faithful few carrying on the work at the studio, stowing props and flats in the hayloft, and loading trailers full of steel pillars and more flats to go into storage elsewhere. As I write we still haven’t finished. The final push to clear the grain-store is still ahead of us this weekend.

And the first writers’ meeting for Season Four is in the diary for the weekend after that.