This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

With a metallic clatter the shutter jerks into life and rolls upwards. When it shudders to a stop the loud quacks of Burleigh Hill Farm’s resident ducks can be heard approaching, come as usual in the hope that today the grain store will contain grain, and not the nascent set of a ruined town. Sorry Daffy, it’s the ruined town again. What are the chances?

They waddle noisily to the centre of the space, where Michael Hudson is constructing a well. It’s a ruined well, so some joker has modified the chalk marking on the floor from WELL to UNWELL. Health wise, it’s at least an improvement on last year’s DYING? which marked the corner of the Heretics’ Market where a bloody Hunter would collapse in Ren’s arms.

Still loudly discussing their disappointment, the ducks depart for their pond and the work of the Ren team continues.

As well as Michael I must give a huge shout out and thank you to Ross D’Souza, Dale Suttle and Ash Finn, who between them have done the lion’s share of the work so far. And not just the physical construction work but also the project management and materials acquisition (a fancy term for skip diving and heavy lifting in and out of vans).

At first we were worried about getting hold of enough wood, but after Dale found a sci-fi short getting rid of over 20 flats, plus a few freebies from Facebook Marketplace, the problem became one of the person-power needed to assemble it all. In the last few days we’ve made enough progress to alleviate that worry, only for it to be replaced by the not-so-trivial concern of how to surface all of this wood to look like stone. Methods including angle grinding, plastering, spraying expanding foam, polystyrene carving and moulding have all been tested and they are all likely to feature on the finished set to some degree.

Remember that you can drop by and help us out any Saturday or Sunday, 10:30am-6pm, at Burleigh Hill Farm, Somersham Road, St Ives, Cambridgeshire PE27 3LY. Please wear old clothes and bring your own tools if you can.

Away from the studio, preparation of other kinds ticks along. Hannah Young has finalised her designs and yesterday visited the garage where the Ren costumes are stored to select the existing pieces that will be reused or modified for the upcoming episodes. Crina Ciobanu, who steps up to head make-up artist following her brief stint on the pick-ups last September, has begun tests of the hair and make-up looks required. Locations are more or less locked, the last few crew positions have been advertised, and recently some of the returning cast were reunited with each other and with action designer Ronin Traynor to start choreographing a fight scene. Tavern Dwellers can look forward to an exclusive video blog about that last one very soon.

Finally, last Sunday saw the release of the latest episode of The Fantasy and Sci-fi Fanatic’s Podcast – an episode all about Ren. Chris Dane, Oriana Charles and Yours Truly discuss the challenges, triumphs and origins of the series with host Daniel Coolbaugh. My personal favourite bit of the interview is when Oriana reads out her list of what goes into making an episode. You can watch it on YouTube or find it wherever you get your podcasts.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

The nice thing about making an ongoing series, especially starting a new season so soon after the last, is that you accumulate both useful things – from medieval carts to pop-up tents – and enthusiastic people. There was almost no need to advertise for an art department this year, as so many lovely folks from Season Two and even Season One were keen to get involved again. Early this month they all assembled on a Zoom call to meet new production designer Kaja Jedrak (top left). I’m still overwhelmed by the team we’ve built up: sculptors, carpenters, designers, graphic artists and more.

A few days later Kaja, Ross and I went back to the farm with 304 director Ash Maharaj to decide exactly where we’re going to film that episode. After a lot of location research, we had decided that weren’t going to find a location that looked right for the episode’s setting – none other than the infamous Helgoth. Instead we’re going to build it, because that’s the kind of silly thing we do on Ren.

302, on the other hand, looks like it will mostly be shot on location away from the farm. Here again the benefits of an ongoing series are felt. Currently there’s a good chance that 302’s main location will be one we considered last year but didn’t use, saving on research and recce time.

One thing I wish we had from previous seasons is the set. We have some of the pieces from around the staircase in the Heretics’ Market but nothing else structural, and the village set from Season One is of course long gone. So the other day Dale, Jeremy and I took a trip to South London in a van and collected some secondhand set flats and wooden pillars from a streaming series that’s just wrapped. We don’t have access to the farm buildings yet, so on returning to Cambridgeshire at 10pm we played an interesting game of Tetris and jammed them all into Ross’s garage while trying (unsuccessfully) not to wake his newborn. The poor man won’t be cutting his lawn, barbecuing or 3D printing any time soon. We did leave him access to the fridge though. We’re not monsters.

IDFight once again kindly lent us the use of their studio in East London to hold auditions. Block One has seven new featured and speaking roles, and we auditioned almost 30 people from over 100 submissions. Dan Edgar, a.k.a. Screed from 204, came along to read opposite the candidates (and incidentally received several compliments on his excellent beard).

The following week a Ren contingent gathered at MCM Comic Con London to deliver a panel about how we make a fantasy show on a teeny tiny budget. The audience seemed genuinely interested and had some good questions for us at the end. We screened the trailer and a clip from 202, hopefully catching the eyes of the many people passing by the Live Stage. We also had our first Ren cosplayer — Eva Wörz — who had recreated in amazing detail Ren’s costume and the Mark makeup. So it was a really good con overall, but we should definitely stick to making web series; our team’s efforts in a Fall Guy tournament and in a “Dungeons & Dragons in real life” game were pretty abysmal. I spent all of the latter turning pointlessly invisible and getting dominated by a Beholder.

You’re up to date, but before I go – did you know there is a Ren Wikia? You can find it here.

This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

I’m pleased to have better news than last time. As I previously explained, low Patreon membership has scuppered my original plan to shoot the whole of Season Three this summer, but all is not lost.

The season has five episodes and two of those have entirely different locations and a mostly different cast from the other three. I’ve therefore decided to split the season into two production blocks: Block One, consisting of episodes 302 and 304, will shoot this July as planned; Block Two, comprised of episodes 301, 303 and 305, will film at a later date when funding permits.

Nothing will be released until the season is complete, but at least by filming Block One this summer, which we have just enough Patreon funding to do, we can get ahead on the post-production work for those two episodes.

I can now announce the directors for these episodes…

Award-winning writer-director Sherice Griffiths will helm 302. Sherice recently gained her first TV directing credit as 2nd Unit Director on the BBC series Miss Austen and has directed a number of successful short films which have been screened at BIFA-qualifying film festivals like The Sunderland Short Film Festival and Unrestricted View Film Festival. In 2023 she won The British Comedy Guide’s Production Award and the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Award.

304 will be directed by Ashram Maharaj, who worked in several capacities on Season One before joining our writing team in 2019. Ashram’s love of story and characters began at a young age after seeing Tim Burton’s Batman. He was involved in two high-profiled Lord of the Rings fan releases – The Hunt For Gollum and Born of Hope. He continued to work on features and on award-winning shorts in different roles and departments. In 2010, he directed his first short film, Diary, a drama about loneliness and rejection. He also co-wrote a feature, Red Mist, with Sabina Sattar, Producer of 2008 BAFTA Cymru-nominated feature Summer Scars.

Sherice, Ash and I visited Burleigh Hill Farm yesterday to assess which scenes can be filmed there. The next step is to find the actors who will play new roles, so look out for a casting notice soon.

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!