When I last updated you, we were en route to Colchester to have fun storming the castle. Aside from some traffic headaches, our two days there went very smoothly. We had a filming window of about 5pm-11:30pm each day, working after the castle had closed to the public. Across the two days we had key scenes from all three episodes to shoot, so they were always going to be fast-paced evenings. As usual the cast and crew did us proud, including 2nd AD Jamie Weston and a few other locals who joined us to lend a hand. The most fun was probably the scene with Kah’Nath soldiers approaching the castle with flaming torches! The day marked an end to filming on 303, Jo Lewis’s episode.
Thursday 24th was originally a day off to rest after the night shoots and travel back to Cambridgeshire, but a last minute rejig was required after Oriana Charles (Ren) landed a guest role in a well-known BBC drama. So we were back filming at Burleigh Hill Farm by Thursday afternoon, racing to complete the season’s very last scenes with director Mark Hampton before the light faded. Writer Ash Maharaj came along to see one of his favourites scenes brought to life.
On Friday we embarked on three solid days shooting a complex sequence on the castle battlements. Rather than trying to film this nighttime scene on location, or building the set outdoors, we elected to film it indoors with a huge black drape surrounding the set. This way we were immune to weather and could work reasonable daytime hours. The set build had progressed slowly while the Archive was still a priority, but the Easter weekend, plus some extra work by the Family Finn while we were in Colchester, had seen it finished and looking beautiful in time for filming. A big shout-out is due to Dan Edgar, who made the battlements his personal project for weeks and does not appear to have stopped for sleep!
The sequence involved multiple characters, big speeches, magic, special effects, sword fighting and a major decision for Ren. We filmed most of it through in a wide master shot before focusing on individual pieces for the rest of the three days. Our priority on Saturday was to wrap Oriana, which we did with many hugs and a few tears, and then Sunday focused on Alexander Hackett (Hunter) and Florian Hencher (Tomas). Some of our last shots were an energetic sword fight between the two men, which was a real high to end on.
After wrapping we held the now-traditional bonfire with a barbecue and plentiful beverages, which was a lovely event. But the work is not yet done. Not only do we have all of post-production ahead of us, and a barn full of sets and props to clear, but we still have one day of filming, this Saturday in Suffolk. Updates on that soon!
Three days of filming on the latest block of Ren have been completed, and very successfully so.
On Wednesday we set off from Cambridgeshire in several vehicles for our location trip to Sandon Hall, Staffordshire, where two years ago we captured the cliffhanger ending of Season Two. We picked up the story right where we left off, with the Archivist (Florian Hencher) coming down the grand staircase towards Ren (Oriana Charles). The hall’s staff were just as friendly and helpful as ever, and it was great to start off the block in such a beautiful setting.
Thursday found us back at the farm in St Ives, where Ash Finn’s art department had transformed one end of the medieval barn – the same barn that housed Sol’s tavern in 2023 – into a castle bedroom. We made use of the arrow-slit windows, presumably used to defend against people who really wanted hay, and added a four-poster bed and fireplace which were entirely fake. It was Emma Robson’s first day as Eumaya, a new character, and Oriana’s first day in a new Ren costume!
The bedroom scenes were finished by lunchtime, and then it was onto a few simple pick-up shots for the episodes filmed last year. (It’s quite usual for extra bits to be needed once an episode is edited and we can see how it’s all working together.) Finally Alan Hay, director of 301, spent some time in the Archive set with Oriana rehearsing for the next day.
And what a monster of a day Friday was. Four and a half pages of script were scheduled (by me, I admit) to be filmed, quite normal for a low-budget production but not one as complex as Ren. Although it was all dialogue, which is much quicker to shoot than action, it comprised several mini-scenes staged at different points around the large Archive set. After shooting it all through in a wide shot, we broke it down into smaller chunks and worked on getting the close-ups and other angles needed to make the scene come alive on screen. Oriana and Florian had a huge amount of dialogue to get right and layers of performance to deliver, which they did brilliantly. It was such a long day, starting at 7am and not wrapping until 7:30pm, but we all felt an incredible sense of achievement when we finished with everything in the can and a delighted director.
We’re currently six-and-a-half weeks from the camera rolling on Ren Season Three Block Two. Always scary when you write that down, but prep is going very well.
We’re in the middle of casting the new speaking roles for this block. Big thanks to everyone who’s come in or submitted a self-tape.
Here are five more photos to update you on the other areas of progress.
The final draft of the script has been issued, with minor tweaks throughout and some slightly bigger changes in episode 303 to fix a plot hole. I took the opportunity to move an action sequence from location to set, which is better creatively but also saves quite a bit of money! That in turn meant that the schedule could be arranged much closer to story order with less jumping back and forth between episodes, always a bonus.
Crina Ciobanu, our head hair and make-up artist, has been hard at work on the wigs for both Oriana Charles (Ren) and Florian Hencher (Tomas). Oriana’s is the same one she wore in Season Two (and that Kate Madison wore in Born of Hope, fact fans) but it needed some improvements to the hairline so it sits better. Florian’s hair at the end of Season Two was real, but he’s since cut it short, so Crina has dyed and modified a wig to match his previous look.
The props requirements for this block are huge, and this is a glimpse of a key one by production designer Ash Finn. Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted the typeface, an ancient Alathian script, on the bookstall in 204. It was designed by series co-creator Christopher Dane, who has also been working on some new and very important visuals for the show’s lore.
In a fortnight we begin the set build, so Ash and Dale have been hunting for materials. Acquired so far are some triangular frames which will become windows, some scaffolding that will help with a structural part of the set, and probably many other things stuffed into Ash’s spare room and Dale’s garden. Not to mention that the hayloft at the farm is still jammed full of last year’s set. An incredibly generous company called Firecracker Works are planning to deliver us even more materials when we get started.
If any of you would like to help us making and decorating the set or making props then public Making Weekends will run 22nd March-6th April. Every Saturday and Sunday during that period anyone is welcome to come along to Burleigh Hill Farm and lend a hand. More details closer to the time.
Meanwhile post-production continues on 302 and 304. I’ve received the first pass of the grade for 302 from our colourist Mara Ciorba. For those who don’t know, grading is the process of adjusting colours and contrast, both to match shots filmed hours or days apart and to impart an overall creative look to the show. The VFX for 304 are now finished, extending the Helgoth set. Seb Roberts has been hard at work on 302’s VFX shots, which are mainly adding flying arrows. As I write only a single shot remains, a tricky one where an actor mimes a quick reload of the bow and the arrow has to be added into her hand.
Finally, I’ve been planning the trailer for Season Three. This may seem premature, but I’m hoping there will be an opportunity to screen it in May so there will be limited time to complete it after we wrap our April shooting block. I’m very excited that a couple of very talented YouTube musicians have given permission to use one of their tracks on the trailer. More on that in due course!
Happy new year! Christmas is already a distant memory and the preparations for Ren Season Three Block Two are very much in motion.
Finding suitable locations that won’t break our budget is usually a long process. As you know from previous updates, we visited Colchester Castle last year and we’re confident that it’s going to work well as our main location of the block, but it’s not the only place to find. Woods are often strangely challenging, since many of them in Cambridgeshire are owned by wildlife trusts who are understandably cautious about letting film crews tramp about in the undergrowth. This week I’ve checked out some options in the villages south and west of Cambridge, though at this time of year it takes a lot of imagination to envisage how they will look in the spring.
Here’s Jo Lewis (director of 303) at our costume and makeup meeting the other day, with a glimpse of one of Hannah’s beautiful designs for Ren’s new dresses. We weren’t joking in the Indiegogo pitch video when we said that Ren needs a new costume; after two seasons we finally have a chance to give her some fresh looks. Every costume has to be practical for the action she has to perform, fit in with the overall colour palette, and reflect the character of Ren and her relationship to others around her. Those relationships develop as the season continues, giving us the chance to change up the looks across the episodes.
Three of the key spaces in the castle won’t be filmed at Colchester at all, but on set. (Even Traitors does it. Look closely at the brick walls in the Traitor’s Turret and you’ll see they’re fake. To be fair though, after Helgoth last year I’m unnaturally attuned to fake walls. I spent most The Wheel of Time’s second season wondering how they do their stone blocks.) First among the sets is the Archive. We’ll be spending more time filming on this set than any other since Season One’s village. This means it needs to be flexible and layered with varied options of lighting, framing and blocking (positioning of actors). It started off simpler than the above designs, but then Ash watched some old Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes and got inspired by their library set. If you can’t learn it from Buffy, it ain’t worth knowing.
The edits of episodes 302 and 304, filmed last summer, are now locked, which means they’ve gone off in a few separate directions: to Rob, the composer; to Dale, the sound designer; to Mara, the colourist; and to various VFX artists. Having learnt Blender – open-source 3D modelling and animation software – to create the title sequence last season, I was keen to work on the Helgoth set extensions myself. All the camera moves have to be tracked, something I’d been practicing on random shots from Season Two, and in most cases the 3D elements have to be composited behind real set-pieces and actors. It all goes back to fake walls though, because one of the trickiest parts has been finding textures for the 3D walls that look real but also sit well with the painted polystyrene and plaster casts of the physical set.
We’re still making tweaks to the script for Season Three Block Two, but it’s necessary to think ahead as well. In the background I’m working on the outline for Season Four. But I’m not going to tell you anything more about that!
Great news! Our Indiegogo campaign ended this morning, having raised over £16,000. That’s enough, in combination with what you Marked Ones kindly provide, for the second block of Season Three to shoot in the spring.
If you took advantage of the Patreon discount on the Traveller’s Kit perk, your shipping address probably wasn’t collected at checkout, so look out for an email requesting that. Thanks for supporting us again!
During the campaign we found time to do the first location recce for the new episodes. Episode 1 director Alan “Torberry” Hay and I battled Storm Bert and fallen trees on the railway line to visit Colchester Castle in Essex. This 11th Century castle was built on the foundations of a Roman temple and you can spot some of the recycled Roman brickwork in the walls.
The very friendly staff showed us around various interesting spaces inside the building, including the vaults and the beautiful spiral staircases. At this stage it’s far from definite that we’ll be shooting there, but we now have a lot of ideas to discuss amongst the team so that we can go back to the castle staff with a proposal.
In other news, we had a fun trip to MCM Comic Con Birmingham yesterday. Season Two’s production designer Rose Collis, props master and co-writer Ash Finn and sound designer Dale Suttle joined me on the Live Stage to discuss the making of “The Heretics’ Market”, screening clips and breaking down the creative decisions and practicalities behind the visual and aural design. Thanks to everyone who attended or just paused in passing to watch a bit of the episode on the big screen! It was our first time at the Birmingham con but I’m sure we’ll be back again soon.
We’re delighted to announce that Kate Madison won the Artemisa Woman Creators Award at Bilbao Seriesland last night. Kate of course co-created Ren along with Christopher Dane, and she has directed six episodes to date as well as co-writing them all. In a festival with such a high standard of entries, we’re over the moon to be recognised with this award.
Bilbao Seriesland, formerly Bilbao Webfest, is a festival of digital content in northern Spain. Kate has been attending for the last few days with Oriana Charles (Ren), Helen Fullerton (Sol) and showrunner Yours Truly. (Just to be clear, we don’t use your money for this; we all pay our own way!) We’ve seen a wonderful range of series from hilarious comedies like House of Switzerland to moving dramas like Becoming Charlie, both of which justly won awards too.
In other news, there’s a chance coming up to see both seasons of Ren on the big screen. Screen St Ives, a community cinema group based in the Cambridgeshire town where much of the series is filmed, will screen the series on Thursday, 28th November at St Ives Corn Exchange. Tickets are £7, doors open at 6:30pm and the show begins at 7:30pm. It’s the first time we’ve shown Seasons One and Two together, so we’re excited that the audience will get the full binge-watch experience! Members of the cast and crew will be in attendance to introduce the series and answer questions.
Sorry it’s a been a while since my last update. The period immediately after filming is the part of the production cycle when I’m least engaged as showrunner. The directors are busy working on their episodes with the editor, and apart from chasing them up occasionally, I don’t have a lot to do. I tend to use the time to focus on promoting the series, and in this case planning and preparing the Indiegogo campaign has consumed a lot of my attention over the last month or two.
The campaign will run from Saturday, 2nd November to Sunday, 1st December (ending to coincide with our panel at MCM Birmingham Comic Con). It will be a keep-what-you-earn campaign with a goal of £18,000. This will be just enough, in combination with the funds you loyal Marked Ones will provide over the coming months, to finance the second block of Season Three.
I’m pleased to say that 20% of that goal has already been committed by several fans and team members to be contributed within the first 24 hours. I’m delighted to add that Indiegogo themselves have taken an interest in the series; their creative projects director enjoyed our Story So Far video and reached out to me personally. As a result, our campaign has been featured twice now in Indiegogo’s newsletter, with a third shout-out scheduled for early November.
I’ve been meeting regularly with Ash F and Ross to fine-tune the campaign page and figure out producing the perks. Much of our focus has gone on the £100 perk which is a package of physical items called the Alathian Traveller’s Kit, including a map of South Felaxia, a hardcopy of Ash’s traveller’s guide and a handmade Dohl’Leg set – that’s the board game seen more than once in the show. Ash has done a lot of legwork costing it all up, Ross has experimented with 3D printing some parts, and I spent a pleasant morning in Liverpool Central Library designing the guide’s cover, inspired by the books in the beautiful Picton Reading Room. We’ll even be holding a mini Making Weekend next month to construct the games! Paid Patreon members will receive a secret link when the campaign goes live offering you 25% off the Traveller’s Kit.
To mark the campaign launch, The Mouth of Truth will return on 2nd November with guests including Ash F and Ash M discussing their roles designing, directing and writing Season Three Block One. We’re also lining up some local press appearances with the help of our 2nd AD, Amelia Jabry.
Before that, don’t forget that our stunt coordinator Ronin Traynor is running a Ren-themed combat workshop at MCM London Comic Con this Saturday, 26th October. You can find him in the Platinum Suite, room 2 at 4:45pm.
Other events coming up include a cast and crew reunion to mark the tenth anniversary of wrapping Season One, and of course Bilbao Seriesland. I’m heading out to Spain with Oriana Charles (Ren) and Helen Fullerton (Sol) – and possibly a couple of others, if they get around to booking! – to enjoy the festival for a few days. I’m sorry to report that Season Two didn’t win anything at Melbourne WebFest last weekend, so all fingers will be firmly crossed for better results in Bilbao.
I said at the start that there isn’t currently much for me to do on the actual production of the series, but there isn’t nothing either. I’m very slowly building a CGI model of Helgoth to supplement the set we built in the field this summer. I’m also making enquiries with potential locations for the next block.
You probably saw that the three directors for Block Two were recently announced on our socials: Alan Hay (a.k.a. Torberry from Season One), Jo Lewis (an exciting newcomer to the series with some exceptional work under her belt), and Chris Bouchard (director of the hit LOTR fan film The Hunt for Gollum). We have just begun to discuss how these three can best collaborate to tell the serialised story of Block Two across their individual episodes.
Ash F has provided us with a first-draft design for the block’s main set, the Archive, and that is what I will leave you with today. Until next time…
It was an early start on Saturday, 27th July for the first day of filming on Ren 3. The cast and crew – a mix of newcomers and Ren veterans – convened at Burleigh Hill Farm at 7am, intending to capture the day’s dialogue scenes before a wedding kicked off in the next field at midday. Unfortunately many of the guests had arrived the night before and camped out, and there was noise from the get-go. That’s a future trip to Dale’s dubbing studio booked in already. The Helgoth set looked great though. Ash Finn and their art department (including many other Finns) had worked almost every hour of daylight for the preceding week to get it finished in time, and the insanely hard work certainly paid off.
The costume and makeup teams got their own big challenge the next day as we were joined by nine or ten supporting artists in addition to the six speaking characters, many of them with facial markings of some kind. Everyone was great, particularly given that the sun beat down mercilessly and several people had fur on their costumes! As the cinematographer, bright sunlight was not the weather I would necessarily have chosen for the mood of the scenes, but it actually lent an appropriate harshness. In combination with the lifeless ground, which farmer Mark had ploughed and compacted for us a week or two beforehand, the sun gave the images a Western feeling.
Day three found us working on the tunnel set inside the grain-store “studio”, which if anything was even hotter. In fact we ended up wrapping early because our brains were all so fogged by the heat! Fortunately it was one of the lighter days in terms of material to cover, and we still got everything we needed. Although much smaller than the Helgoth set, the tunnel had still required a huge amount of work to build, papier-mâché and paint, and it was very satisfying to see it look so good on camera. The final touch was a little shower of dirt and dust as Hunter opened the hatch and dropped in.
The next day we were joined by two new cast members: Katie Sheridan, whose own web series Match Not Found was on the festival circuit at the same time as Ren Season One, and six-year-old Jon-Paul Laidler. Hannah and Crina’s costume and makeup teams gave them fantastic looks. Jon-Paul did a stellar job and was completely unfazed by the madness around him, and Katie never complained once about all the climbing up and down ladders to reach the top of the tunnel set, despite being several months pregnant. After wrapping for the day, several of us stayed on to rearrange the Helgoth set into a new configuration, much as Season One’s village square was transformed into an alleyway partway through shooting.
On Wednesday, 31st July we started at 1pm so as to give us some hours of darkness to work with later on. We completed the scenes on the reconfigured Helgoth set, featuring Hunter and Helen Fullerton’s Sol, once again working in baking heat. After a meal break we shifted to a set positioned in the doorway of the studio, with additional set pieces rapidly assembled outside to be seen in the background. Sophie and Ian Frankham-Wells joined the crew to take charge of fire safety, because we were dealing with multiple flaming torches, one of which had to be thrown straight towards the camera! Needless to say, many precautions were taken. Shortly after midnight a wrap was called on episode 304, and director Ash Maharaj thanked everyone personally.
After a day off we hired a van and hit the road to Thorney Toll, a hamlet between Peterborough and Wisbech in northwest Cambridgeshire, where a farmyard of faceless warehouses hides the Grade II listed gem that is Canary Cottage. This delightful thatched shepherd’s house dating from the mid-18th century needed a fair bit of weed-cutting from Ash and Hans to make it look lived in, but provides a charming first image for episode 302. Next we drove down to Over, not far from St Ives and our studio base. There we had a delightful picnic by the river before setting up at the Manderson Trust, a local fishing club. Once it was dark we filmed a campfire scene, the fire reflecting beautifully in the water of the fishing lake. We even found time to toast a few marshmallows which 2nd AD Amelia Jabry had thoughtfully brought along.
Saturday, 3rd August found us back at Burleigh Hill Farm for several scenes in and amongst the trees, including another nighttime campfire scene. This was a pretty easy day, and we found time to add a couple of extra little scenes such as Hunter walking through a field with the low evening sun behind him. Another new character joined the cast: Noy, played by 15-year-old Lisa Garnagina. She and Alex had to sit in the path of woodsmoke for the whole evening, but the scene looked great and the lads camping nearby even kept the noise down for us, so Dale was happy too. The night marked the end of Cambridgeshire filming for Ren 3 Block 1, and we said goodbye to several of our crew, with many hugs all around and even a few tears.
Ross, Ash and I met up on Sunday afternoon to reload the van and set off to Hampshire for the last leg of the shoot. On the way we had to stop into IDFight in East London to collect weapons and crash mats, and poor Ross had to drive the van right through central London afterwards. We arrived at our Travelodge around 8pm and promptly went out in search of curry, over the eating of which we had the barest semblance of a production meeting.
We spent the next three days working at EyeLarp, a site for paintballing, airsoft and live-action roleplay games, in a beautiful forest near Fleet. Kate and I recce’d the site last year when we were looking for somewhere to do the horse chase, and although we didn’t use it in that instance, I remembered it when a palisaded camp of wooden buildings showed up on the mood-board of director Sherice Griffiths. (The scene had been written as a few soldiers camping out in the woods rather than anything involving permanent structures, but Sherice rightly felt that we needed to up the scale and visual interest.) These were to be our three busiest days, with around 40 people on set including ten or so stunt performers as Kah’Nath soldiers. The first challenge was to turn one of EyeLarp’s huts into a prison cell, a feat impressively achieved in a couple of hours by Ash and others, using a door, bars and other elements brought from St Ives.
Helen, Meg Birley and Steph Swan returned again as the erstwhile landlady of the Smoke and Ember, her daughter Tansy and fellow prisoner Devi. This time they all got to do fight scenes, which they were very excited about, and a brilliant job they made of them too. Ronin Traynor’s stunt team were troopers in more ways than one, putting up with the restrictive and uncomfortable costumes, and cheerfully throwing themselves to the ground at regular intervals.
Kitty and Jonnie who run EyeLarp were very kind and helpful to us, and also provided the catering which was absolutely delicious. Although we got behind on the Monday and had to wait out some rain on the Tuesday, we rattled through our packed shot-list on Wednesday and finished on time at 8pm, marking the end of 302 and block 1. Working in the shady forest had made a nice change to the unrelenting sun at Burleigh Hill Farm, and it was great to be able to shoot in any direction without the art department having to build every single thing in sight!
Despite not getting back to Cambridgeshire until 2:30am, Ross, Ash and I were back at Burleigh Hill Farm the next morning to unload the van and get it back to the hire company on time. After a well-deserved brunch we embarked on a solid two-and-a-half days of disassembling, packing, cleaning and tidying. This is the least glamorous part of the whole process and I must give huge thanks to Dan Edgar, Emma Fox, Kate Madison, Michael Hudson and Mike and Tina Finn, who all came back to help us take the set apart, strip polystyrene off boards, run stuff to the dump, drag things off the field, organise props, carry set pieces to the storage container and sweep the floor. Enormous thanks also to Mark Schwier who took time out of his busy days to transfer heavy wood to the bonfire with his telehandler, and who let us store not just props this time but also a huge number of set flats, which he crammed into his hayloft.
So another block of Ren filming is over, and the work shifts to editing and post-production, while advance pre-production for block 2 will soon begin, not to mention preparation for a new crowdfunding campaign. I must admit that after we failed to reach our Patreon target in April I considered allowing the series to die, but I’m very glad that I didn’t. The positive and friendly atmosphere making Ren is absolutely unmatched by any other project I’ve ever known. So many members of the cast and crew told me they had a wonderful time and learnt lots. Some even presented me with thank-you gifts, which seems completely the wrong way around! Thanks to all of you; you make Ren what it is.
