As part of our series of articles turning the spotlight on publishers in the independent sector (our sequel to last year’s Books! The Best Weapons in the World! – A Guide to Independent Doctor Who Publishing feature), this week we’re taking a look at What Noise? Productions.

“Four or five years ago,” says David Darlington, “the notion of running my own production-cum-publishing company would barely have crossed my mind; I’d have said I had quite enough to do as it was. Essentially the genesis of What Noise lay in my being directly offered, out of the blue through contacts in the audiobook industry, the chance to produce an audiobook of the autobiography of actress Sheila Steafel, the print edition of which had just been published by a company called Apex. After a lot of detailed thought, I realized the only way to do this properly – unabridged and all – was to do it completely on my own; trying to pitch it to another company, even one of the other companies for which I already worked, would have been an agonizingly slow process, with a lot of guaranteed effort but no guarantee of success. But always at the forefront of my mind with Sheila’s book was that, commercial considerations aside, I really wanted to make that project happen – I believe that it’s an excellent piece of work that thoroughly deserves to be read and heard. So I did it myself – and thus was a production company born…

“Connections between What Noise and the world of Doctor Who/SF/telefantasy are a bit semi-detached. My involvement with Doctor Who actor Matthew Waterhouse came about because, as freelancers are wont to do, I hustled a few ideas, one of which was pitching to Hirst Books the idea of doing audiobooks of some of their titles. Matthew and I recorded a couple – abridgements of his Doctor Who memoir Blue Box Boy and his first novel Fates, Flowers – before Hirst seemed to cool on the idea rather. Instead of abandoning the project mid-stream, I – as I had with When Harry Met Sheila – just took on the responsibility myself. I decided around then to make a proper recording and production of Tony Keetch’s brilliant Dennis Wheatley horror spoof The Devil Take Your Stereo – this was an idea he’d first had for a one-man stage show which we’d tried out in audio form, and various half-baked demo versions of which we’d been playing around with for years without ever really committing to anything useful. Add to that my long-standing wish to adapt my friend Francis O’Dowd’s kids’ fantasy novel Wishhobbler into audio form, and suddenly I had not just a company but a catalogue…

“Because I already have a day-job producing talking books for the RNIB plus a lot of freelance audio and writing commitments – to Big Finish, AudioGO and DWM among many others – What Noise was, for the first couple of years, basically a hobby commitment. It’s only in the last year or so that the company has stepped up output and branched out into new arenas. The most high-profile venture – slightly out of Starburst’s remit, I suspect – has been the audiobook adaptation of Scottish crime novelist Chris Brookmyre’s collected short stories, Jaggy Splinters. I’ve adored Brookmyre’s work since his very first novel Quite Ugly One Morning – I’d hugely recommend his current Jasmine Sharp series, plus his 2006 novel A Tale Etched In Blood And Hard Black Pencil, which I’ve read five or six times – and I’m delighted with the result, not least because Chris himself contributed to the finished product as a narrator. Matthew Waterhouse and I discussed options open to him once his original print publisher went under; we both wanted to keep his various books, his Doctor Who memoirs most obviously, in print. I’d also been in conversation with Doctor Who scriptwriter Chris Boucher about possibly producing an audiobook version of his fan-published novelisation of his troubled but brilliant 1987 TV series Star Cops; that was put on the back-burner during a period of enforced inactivity for me, and eventually I decided to put out the print edition in the first instance; thus the ‘Head Music’ imprint came into being.

“(For those interested, the two names are inspired by the names of favourite albums by Kissing The Pink and Suede respectively. When I set up the company, it was a toss-up between ‘What Noise’ and ‘Head Music’; the former won out as the latter sounded too much like a music record label rather than an audiobook/drama publisher – however, it was later to present itself as a great name for a print publishing imprint.)

“In terms of print titles, we have all Matthew Waterhouse’s books and the remarkable Star Cops novel plus e-books of Wishhobbler and Tony Keetch’s brilliant Desmond Stirling memoir The Devil Talks The Hindmost available at the moment – all of which I’m very pleased with – plus a few plans simmering away…

“Having become a co-producer of Big Finish’s Dark Shadows range in late 2012 on top of all my sound and production commitments to both them and AudioGO, I’m quite prepared for any growth for What Noise to be slow, gradual and sustained; the ‘ethos’ of the company, if it can rather grandiosely be said to have such a thing, is only to commit to projects that really interest me enough to devote time to them, rather than throwing shit at the wall. I’m hoping in the near future to commission another independent producer to take charge of a couple of projects, including a full-cast drama and an anthology e-book, plus I have Matthew Waterhouse’s third novel, Precious Liars, currently in production for release in a few months.

“I’ve been appreciating the energy of many of the small-press publishers surrounding Doctor Who and TV-related publishing at the moment – a lot of work is clearly being produced as much for love as for money, which is healthy. As a reader, you don’t have to want to read everything to appreciate their existence, but it’s nice to be able to pick up a couple of things here and there – like, say, Keith Miller’s Doctor Who fan club memories, Richard Marson’s JNT book, or the Justyce Served book about the Audio Visuals fan audio drama series – which simply could not have existed in previous generations. I’d like to think What Noise and Head Music will stay in touch with that…”

***

Precious Liars by Matthew Waterhouse

(Excerpt from the forthcoming novel)

A deep rose red butterfly smears the dawn sky over the city. It descends earthward towards Washington Square and then up, over the roofs of Jones Street, where it drops again, passing a large billboard advertising a Broadway thriller, on which a black shadowy figure wielding a knife stands against a background of red so exactly the butterfly’s red that for a moment the tiny wing-beating creature is lost. Then it is a blood-red teardrop on the cheek of the hunched black shadow. It moves downward. The shadow weeps blood.

Now it has left the printed image and is backgrounded by brownstone: a red petal against the bark of oak.

It is late September now, but Leo Berger Levin is dressed in a summery white suit, and a white brimmed hat shadows his eyes. He is aged perhaps sixty, slim, standing on the sidewalk of empty, noiseless Bleecker Street breathing in the early morning coolness of the unwoken West Village. An early drifter crosses the far end of the street. It is not yet six fifteen. Leo is leaning against a pink Rolls Royce, its interior lined with teak. He has never learnt to drive, but this morning he has driven this car with wild exhilaration.

The butterfly swirls over him and touches down ever so lightly on the roof of the car where it rests for just a moment, a tiny cherry dolloped onto a huge strawberry sundae.

The butterfly rises to Leo’s white-suited arm. Leo beams, and he says, “Damn you, Lucius!” and lets out an enormous laugh which bowls down the street. The butterfly hops onto his first finger and then it is off again, in a silent swoop across Bleecker, streaking the air with its colour until it is lost to Leo’s sight though for a second after it has gone a ghost of red remains to his eye, a splash of paint against a whitening sky.

The butterfly comes onto Minetta Lane, approaching the windows of the 33 Minetta Lane building, where Tony and Peter are standing in their kitchen. Tony fills two squat glasses with orange juice. He hands one fat drum of sunlight to Peter and holds his own up for a moment, to see the revolving flecks of pulp. Just as he holds the glass to the light, the butterfly passes, its redness seen through the heart of the orange, a ball of hot fire.

The butterfly’s wings trigger a memory for both Tony and Peter: a memory of red. Because they have been lovers for longer than they were not, each can see the memory come to the other, as if it’s etched on an eyeball.

“Ah yes,” says Tony to Peter while Peter sips his fresh-squeezed orange juice, “the Shakespeare Lady. There’s a kind of wild red, always makes me think of her.” Peter is in his dressing gown, Tony in nothing but a black t-shirt emblazoned with the face of Billie Holiday. Peter is the taller, with light, sandy hair and a blandly appealing face, Tony shorter, darker, slightly but not overly camp.

“Maybe that butterfly’s her.”

“I can damn well believe it. Flying like Ariel.”

“Or going to the fairy kingdom, like Titania?”

The light outside has begun to change. The sun is rising over the West Village, promising a bright day, lighting the area they call their kitchen though it is really just a stove and a counter and a couple of cupboards in a corner of their neat little home on the first floor of 33 Minetta Lane. It smells of new ground coffee, the pot on the counter is warbling, like exotic birdsong. Soon the coffee is ready. They drain their juice glasses and Tony pours a mugful of the steaming brew for Peter and a mugful for himself. They laugh in remembrance of the Shakespeare Lady, then fall into silent reflection.

Once, another night, in a bed in a white-walled apartment, a naked man of astounding beauty turns in his sleep. He looks maybe twenty-five but he cannot be so young. His lover, awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, watches him. It is hot, the blankets have been thrown off, and he sees the tattooed butterfly etched on the man’s right hip ripple as he turns. Many times he has kissed that hip, kissed that butterfly, felt it beat against his lips. He moves to kiss it now, so softly that the sleeping man sleeps on. The butterfly’s wings, deep, deep red, beat weightless as moonlight. Around the butterfly, the skin of the hip in this summer heat in the white room is whiter than moonlight on the Hudson, weird, fantastical.

The Shakespeare Lady could be found, most every evening, early, for many years, on the sidewalk in front of the music bar called The Bitter End on Bleecker Street in the West Village, not far from where Peter and Tony are now drinking breakfast drinks. On occasion she failed to show up, but mostly she was there, offering the pleasure of her talent for a modest sum, calling out to anyone who passed by, “Hi, honey,” or “Got a minute?”, her voice smokily, soulfully deep but firm, not raspy.

Through the sheer force of her presence she drew eyes. She had beautifully rich skin the color of 70% dark chocolate. Her compact, narrow frame was no higher than five foot three, but she carried herself with a proud, upright dignity that made her seem tall. In this she was like David Garrick, who had dominated the English stage in the early part of the nineteenth century, though he was tiny. Like Garrick, the Shakespeare Lady, by her strange charisma, seemed taller than nearly anyone, though she was shorter than most.

Many of the West Village locals were fond of her. Tourists were enchanted by her. She was exactly the kind of incredible eccentric they had hoped to see in New York, and, once seen, her performances were fly-papered to the memory. It was fun for visitors to show their friends back home their photographs and to say how crazy she was and how everyone in New York was ripe for the nut house. If the Shakespeare Lady had had a stronger business sense, she would have done well to have printed up some photographic postcards, which she could have autographed and sold.

Not everyone looked on the Shakespeare Lady with favour. Some people gave her the cold shoulder, some paced faster as they passed by her. They thought she was a beggar. She wasn’t. She was an artist.

Day in, day out, she wore the same set of shiny red clothes. A long red cloak hung around her neck, useful for dramatic effects: it could be swooshed at moments of anger or tension or comedy, and as it floated on the air it hovered for a second like an enlarged butterfly. She wore also a shirt of a deeper red and, deeper still, a scarlet skirt which fell to her knees. Her stockingless knees were exposed, rough, scratched, as if she had spent a lot of time kneeling on concrete. There were big brown builder’s boots on her feet.

Once she began to intone Shakespeare, this clothing became suggestive of histories and magicks, of soliloquies near arrases and declamations on horseback, of comedies of girls who passed as boys. It was all costumes in one. It could be clownish, jester-like, or, if its silky sheen was lit by a passing headlight at dusk, fairyish maybe, goblinish, puckish. With an adjustment of the cloak on the shoulder it could be courtly, or, with a bracing of a fist, warrior-like. If the cloak fluttered, it underscored a bitter, brilliant, islanded conjurer, or, raised up to the face, that island’s bitter, true owner, or twisted high over the head the ghost of Sycorax his mother.

“Good… evening…” she said to, in this instance, a young, attractive straight couple who were looking at the ‘Playing Tonight’ list in the Bitter End’s window. The Shakespeare Lady spoke slowly, allowing each word its own space, in which to breathe and drip meaning. Her speech had that hypnotic quality which makes people listen, even in the bustle of the street. “I… am… the… Shakespeare… Lady.”

“Huh?” said the boy. “You are?” said the girl.

“Oh yeeesss.” She maintained a pause for dramatic effect. Then she continued, with intense, sonorous force, like a tidal wave of molasses. “I received… great… critical acclaim… for my work with the Public… Theatre here in New… York… and with the Royal…Shakespeare Company in London… England.” She sighed and looked humble, as if accepting an award. She pulled her cloak around her throat and though her fist clutched only a furl of silky cotton, it might have been a statuette. She glanced down at her boots. “I am a graduate… of the… Actors… Studio.” Her voice was a whisper now.

“You are?” said the girl.

Another measured pause. Did her lips move for a moment in the counting of the beats?

“And… of the Juilliard… School… of Musick.” She hit the ‘c’ of music with a firm cluck.

“Wow,” said the girl.

“And from the Royal… Academy… of the Shakespearean… Arts… in… London, England.”

“Great!” said the girl. “Terrific!” said the boy.

“For a small… donation… I will now… recite… a piece of the Bard.” While her right hand held onto the statuette, close to her heart and throat, the left moved up the air with monarchical grandeur, knuckles outward, first finger inclined to the sky, like Lady Macbeth giving an instruction to a courtier. Then the hand moved back downward until it stopped, at breast level, palm upward and open.

No, she was not a beggar, she was an artist. But even artists have to eat.

The boy looked at the girl, who looked back at him; her lips pressed together, her eyes hard. He could always read the messages in those eyes, and right now they said, don’t you dare walk away, Ryan. If he wanted to get laid tonight he had to pretend he was charmed by the chance to see Shakespeare on Bleecker Street. He pushed his fingers into his pocket and rattled some coins around and drew out three quarters and a nickel and, to quickly masked annoyance, a crushed five dollar bill, wrapped around one of the quarters. The Shakespeare Lady looked with laser eyes at the little heap of cash.

With dazzling unexpectedness – a much-rehearsed gesture, no doubt – she pulled her open hand towards herself, away from the little heap of money, and balled it into a dramatic fist, one that might rage at hurricanoes. A moment later, the other hand shot out – and dropped the statuette; the boy saw it fall heavily and hit the sidewalk, and shatter into thirty-nine pieces – and now, before you could say Titus Andronicus, this palm lay open. The boy placed his cash on it. He noticed a long lifeline. The Shakespeare Lady took her reward with a gracious smile identical to that with which she would in an alternate universe have accepted a statuette, another one.

“Would you… like… Hamlet…or… would you like… Titania?”

“Hamlet,” said the boy, who did not know who Titania was. “Titania,” said the girl, who had studied the Dream in high school.

A long silent moment crawled by.

“Something is… descending upon me. The angel of inspiration.” She made a strange fizzing sound, as if inspiration was a soda fountain. “I am… I am… I am… feeling…yes… yes… is it?… It is! Yes!” Her features darkened and lengthened and saddened and she became a troubled intellectual as she channelled the tragic Dane. She was in the dark flickery shadows of torch-lit Elsinore Castle; the Bitter End was cool grey battlemented stone.

On the other side of Bleecker a mother pushed a baby carriage. The wheels squeaked: wind through the battlements?

The Shakespeare Lady stood back and closed her eyes in the final gathering of the character in her soul and then… she opened them wide and embarked on the most famous soliloquy in all literature, her interpretation illuminating in the pattern of its emphases and rhythms:

To be or not to be, That is the quest-eeeyon…

Her first finger shot upward, as if to point the quest-eeeyon.

Whether…? It is nobler in the mind to suffer the sliiings and arrows of OUT-RAGEEOUS fortyoon…

It was not a drearily naturalistic reading. It was the kind of thundering rendition it might be imagined could emerge solely from rigorous study at the Royal Academy of the Shakespearean Arts in London, England.

“Wow,” said the boy. The girl kicked him in the ankle.

“It was really great,” she said to the Shakespeare lady. She gave her another five and her boyfriend watched the bill cross from her hand to the other, thinking that even in overpriced En Wy that was the price of a Budweiser.

An old man wandered past, swinging a butchered pheasant in one hand and a butchered rabbit in the other. He looked angry at the world. And down Bleecker Street there came a huge pink Rolls Royce with darkened windows, which paused briefly outside the Bitter End and then purred onward. The boy and girl looked at the car and the boy forgot The Shakespeare Lady. He could only keep one thing in mind at a time. Usually it was sex but now it was this cool car.

“One day,” whispered the boy to his girl in mystical awe, “I’m gonna have a car like that and we’re gonna have a chauffeur gonna drive us around in it, honey, and we’ll drink champagne all the time. Only my car, our car, baby… it won’t be pink.”

“What color will it be?” she whispered dreamily. She liked pink, but would settle for another

He thought for a moment. Green? Red? Black? Gold?

“Blue. Midnight blue.”

Midnight blue. That sounded dark and romantic. It made her think of trips to sophisticated night clubs. It made her think of cocktail lounges and chic designer evening dresses. She put her head against his shoulder as they walked away.

“Midnight bloop,” she echoed.

He was audible now only to her.

“And we’re gonna be driven around the city and drink champagne all the time and I’m gonna make love to you on the blue leather seats. We’re gonna have blue leather seats. And we’re gonna have a little TV screen and we’ll watch old romantic movies and we’ll look at the people going by and we’re gonna have tinted windows so they can’t see us but we’ll see them. And I’m gonna make love to you all the time, baby, all the damn time.”

They passed up MacDougal and headed for Washington Square.

So, on many a dusk-drenched New York evening, pedestrians on Bleecker Street thrilled to the mastery of The Shakespeare Lady. In the beams from street lights she looked weird and fantastical.

There is an old saying about artists who never get a big break: don’t give up the day job. The Shakespeare Lady had a day job. Portions of the daylight hours, sometimes mornings, sometimes afternoons, on rare occasions both, were spent outside a coffee shop near Waverly Place, Arabica@West Café on Gay Street. Here she was the Poetry Lady. She offered to recite for small change a poem: it could be one by Byron, To His Fair Mistress, or one by, she said, Tennyson, La Belle Dame sans Merci, but in reality it was always Byron and never Tennyson, just as in her Shakespearean guise it was always Hamlet and never Titania.

“Thank God for the Shakespeare Lady!” says Tony to Peter, who has now finished his first cup of coffee and is stirring cream into his second. “Let’s drink to her!”

Tony clinks his own new-filled mug which is illustrated with the poster from that Technicolor masterpiece Meet Me at the Guillotine, against Peter’s warm full mug, which has Cornelius from Planet of the Apes on it.

“To her! Let’s drink to her for keeping art alive in the Village.”

By the twenty-first century, so much money had flowed into Greenwich Village that most of the creative people who had been the alternative message to the city’s grinding whisper of ‘Make money! Make money!’ those poets and actors and folkies and jazz musicians, had been forced out by the high rents.

A few people were relieved to see the back of them. A crotchety old man, buying a pheasant and a rabbit in Ottomanelli’s meat market, looked through the window onto the street and saw an NYU student with long hair wander slowly past, fingers wrapped around Leaves of Grass, title outward.

“That boy is affecting dreaminess,” said the old man disgustedly, taking his pheasant. “There is nothing duller than a would-be poet who feigns dreaminess.” The butcher handed him the rabbit.

“Damn pansies.”

Yet many boys getting rich on Wall Street moved to the Village because they wanted to rub shoulders with poets who affected dreaminess. They wanted to be there at the sophomore performances of the next Bob Dylan, only to find when they arrived that the next Bob Dylan had moved over the river. “The rents are too damn high,” everyone said.

Even the bankers could not wholly kill the spirit of the old, weird Manhattan. Somehow a few geniuses and oddities clung on to the faded romance of the Village, making the journey down from Harlem, where there could still be found, in corners of poverty, a cheap cockroach-infested room, if your heart was set on being a poet or a madman, or from the other boroughs, sharing the subway with pastry chefs and tailors and accountants and furniture salesmen.

No-one knew where the Shakespeare Lady went to after midnight.

It had always been a pleasure for Tony Partridge and Peter Easton to walk along Bleecker and find her. They gave her money and listened to her recitation. Sometimes they found themselves part of a little group, sometimes they listened alone. She never showed the slightest sign that she recognized them…

***

Find Part 1 of our SPOTLIGHT series here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

We here at Starburst HQ love a good underdog, which is why we’re championing independent projects and trying to give deserving cases a bigger audience. In today’s media savvy world, the internet has provided a voice to anyone who wants to let their opinion be heard. The only question is, who is worthy of your time?

Fortunately for you, our wonderful readers, we are painstakingly looking into every nook and cranny of the internet to bring you the best in independent genre entertainment, and we’ve got a doozy for you.

Everyone knows the story of Van Helsing, the fearless vampire killer who not only took on the Prince of Darkness, Dracula himself, he defeated him. Now, a decade into the twenty first century, his last known surviving ancestor, Tim Helsing, is the subject of an internet documentary that follows his adventures in York. Yup, York. Who’d have thought that York would be the new Hellmouth now that Sunnydale went subterranean? Well, it is.

Tagging along with Tim is his faithful (in more ways than one) companion, Poncho and his long suffering girlfriend, Anna. Documentary filmmaker Richard wants blood, gore and violence to boost his ratings and vampire with a conscience King (hang on, that sounds familiar) is along for the ride to both help and hinder in equal measure. Add into the melting pot a bunch of disposable production assistants, all knowingly called Redshirts after the dismal fates suffered by so many claret wearing away team members from Star Trek, and you’ve got yourself a fun recipe for a web-series.

I Am Tim is now well into its second season and keeps the twists and turns coming whilst keeping its tongue firmly lodged inside its cheek. We sat down with Jamie McKeller, producer at Redshirt Films, to chat about all things I Am Tim as well as their upcoming projects.

R

Starburst: Where did you get the inspiration for I Am Tim?

Jamie McKeller: I grew up on a healthy diet of sci fi and fantasy. Quantum Leap, Buffy, Battlestar… and although I love these shows I always wondered why the characters rarely acknowledged the ridiculous nature of their surroundings. True, Xander Harris would raise an eyebrow or Sam Beckett would cry “oh boy” at his new moustache, but I wanted to see someone stop and yell “this is insane! That dude can teleport and she can time travel and he’s eight hundred years old and this IS MADNESS.” British TV is flooded with documentary shows following some of the dullest people you’ve ever encountered. We’re obsessed with watching these “normal” people run restaurants or airports, making cakes or selling second hand toys… shuffling around from boring task to boring task for sixty minutes to a plodding soundtrack. I guess the idea was to take the two genres and smash them together. To see a perfectly normal guy have to deal with these remarkable events, to be forced to battle vampires and monsters… and just want to go home and have a bowl of corn flakes. If something like this actually happened in real life you know that somebody would find a way to televise it. For Tim Helsing, it’s just a real shame that Richard Timmons got there first.

How have you funded the series?

Variously! Season one was entirely self funded, whereas the latter half of seasons two and three were funded through IndieGoGo. We raised around £1000 pounds which went a long way as we’ve become very good at spending nothing! I’m a great believer in crowdfunding but I also believe that you need to have something there first. I see people asking for £50,000 to shoot a six part series, without a pilot in sight to inspire donations and it makes me wince because as good as the idea might be, they won’t reach the goal. We’ve spent around £4000 on three seasons consisting of 16-18 episodes each. True, the style of I Am Tim allows for some heavy corner cutting as it’s allowed to look a bit rough round the edges, but a great story doesn’t cost a penny to tell. We also sell merchandise that we tie directly into the show. We have badges, DVDS, RedShirt t-shirts, fridge magnets, and we hold screenings and events as often as possible.

Is there any desire to turn this into a bigger project?

I’m currently developing a feature length script which will be set after the season three finale and before the finale epilogue. There’s a bit of a time skip there, which will be clear once those episodes roll out later next year. Whereas the web series is very frantic and energetic the film will be a much calmer, considered affair that resembles a “real documentary”. Tim is a violent mash up of found footage and interviews, with each episode happening over a matter of minutes. Little pockets of time snatched from the characters lives, whereas the feature would be set over a twelve month period. We’ll meet the Helsing family, deal with some holiday blues, talk to local business owners… but the filming for that isn’t going to happen until 2015 at least. But a plan is there!

How was the episode length decided upon?

The internet is a ruddy massive place which breeds super short attention spans. Some say that our episodes are too long, some say too short. There’s no winning recipe. As long as the story and pace move along energetically then time shouldn’t be a factor. We have some episodes that are around five minutes long and some that breach the feared ten minute mark, although those are typically action and effects filled affairs so the time flies by! Our RedShorts (see what we did there?) aren’t allowed to be longer than four minutes, two if possible as they’re designed to be short and snappy internet fodder, the sort of thing that people share on Facebook and Twitter driving more people to our channel. Tom Ridgewell recently retweeted our dating advice video “Girl Tips” and we picked up a hundred subscribers in an afternoon. Basically, if it’s flabby in the edit it goes in the bin. I recently cut three whole episodes worth of stuff from season three as it just wasn’t making the grade for me.

How are the episodes scripted? Do you sit around and discuss ideas or is it given to someone to try and stick to the bigger story arc and try and get as many sight gags and in-jokes in as possible?

Season one was written by myself, but also heavily improvised on set. We were shooting one episode at a time in 2010 so would work through the scenes in order. It was much easier, but also fairly time consuming. For part of season two and all of season three we expanded the team to three writers which was an interesting experience for me. We also started shooting in longer blocks of time, jumping around the episodes and shooting out of order like a “real” TV show would. I had a very strong vision for where the series was heading, and suddenly I had other creative minds pouring all these other ideas in. Very odd to read dialogue written by someone else for a character you created a few years ago. We hashed out the season story arc over many cups of coffee, before sharing out the episodes between us. Then we went away to our caves and produced a few drafts which would then be kicked to bits by the other writers, put back together with gaffer tape and polished up into a final script which would then evolve further on set to suit locations, actors that we had available and what effects we could manage on our budget.

How hard is it to find enough shooting locations in and around York?

Not a problem at all! The city is very accommodating to film crews and fairly forgiving to those who splatter blood all over the place as long as we clean most of it up after. We’ve shot in abandoned hospitals, the city centre, bars and restaurants, houses, back alleys and my favourite… an old tannery. The place was falling to bits, the floor covered in moss and rust water and it looked AMAZING. The light was pouring in through the smashed out windows and it was just perfect. The only time we’ve ever had any trouble finding a location was when we wanted to shoot a few scenes in a supermarket. We spoke to at least eight different companies but they just couldn’t understand who we were, what we wanted, and why £5000 for a day was a little out of our reach. In the end we managed to shoot in a massive tile and bathroom store. Keep an eye open during season three episode two and you’ll see an actor walk in a supermarket which magically becomes a tile store moments later.

Have you had any issues with filming (guerrilla style?) in the city? Any police involvement or funny stories?

We get some odd looks as we sprint through the city with a steadicam and boom pole, chasing Tim Helsing and a vampire through the busy streets of York. The worst experience was a recent one. We were filming a season two special called ‘Dawn of the Reds’ which sees over a dozen production assistants forced to fight to the death Battle Royale style. Filming took place in a nature reserve near my house which looked amazing, but within an hour we were surrounded by teenagers and young children. Despite all reasoning they just wouldn’t behave and ruined several takes by shouting out various things and throwing stuff at us. I endured them for over six hours before one of the more vocal ones started pulling on an actors tie and shouting “you can’t do anything, I’m fourteen.” What followed was not my most civilised use of the English language, and a sensible cast member ushered them off set and far away fairly quickly… But not before they stopped to raid a dog waste bin for some airborne projectiles. During the very first day of filming we were near a team of people on community service, dressed in orange overalls and weeding a cycle path with nothing more than a tiny but pleasant old lady guarding them. York is one of the nicest places I’ve ever lived, but I seem to be doomed to find the worst filming situations.

What has been your favourite part of making the show to date?

The bacon. We have really good bacon sandwiches. The effects are great fun to shoot. I remember filming the big death in ‘Tim vs The Sheeple’. It was 2am and our effects guy was digging a trench for the actor to hide his legs in. You could see his headlamp shining through the trees, we were stood around drinking tea and priming how the intestines moved and pulsated. That was a brilliant but tough night. But the absolute highlight so far for me has to be the London Comic Con. I spoke on a panel with two of the actors from the show and got the first chance to really feel the reaction from an audience first hand. For me, most of the experience involves writing and creating, followed by months in the edit suite to then pop it online. To see people react to an episode, to laugh at the silly jokes and be disgusted by the effects was one of the best feelings ever. I can’t wait until October, to get back to the ExCel centre. This time we’ve bought a table and will have a pretty epic display of weapons and props, as well as a few marketing tricks up our sleeves.

Homages to genre television and movies are everywhere in the show. What’s been your favourite so far?

It’s made by geeks for geeks. The characters are quite geeky. Tim goes home and watches TV just like most normal people. He’s aware of pop culture and just can’t help a cheeky reference. He’s a gamer as well, addicted to Twitter and Facebook so all the memes are relevant. The first reference to happen was probably the half quoted line from Serenity in episode 1.2 when Tim says “like a leaf on the wi…” before an Empusa body slams him. My favourite would have to be the repeated stress explosions of Timmons whenever anyone compares the season one finale events to a certain well loved BBC time travel show.

You are currently mid-way through season two. How many seasons are you planning on making?

We’ve shot all of season two and around 70% of season three, and that’s the lot. When it wraps up we’ll have around 50 episodes online that average 8 minutes in length. That’s 400 minutes! Tim is a rarely discovered jewel, or at least so we believe… those that discover the show seem to genuinely fall in love with it, and we’ve never heard a bad word against it. All the reviews are hugely positive, and some people have called it “one of the best web series out there” but for some reason it just doesn’t seem to break out. Episodes score around 200 views in the first 24 hours and then very slowly creep up. So people often ask me “why? Why keep making it?” The answer is “because it’s too much fun!” I know it sounds massively cheesy but we’re like a weird little family. We started shooting this back in 2010 and will be wrapping it up almost 4 years later. I originally intended to make four seasons of six episodes, but in 2011 I removed the first season from the internet and recut it all into shorter, snappier episodes. Storylines combined, ideas merged and it became clear I could tell a great story in three seasons. There is a story arc for season four, but we won’t make it unless the show suddenly exploded and became popular enough that we could fund it via another campaign. Also, it’s a huge learning tool for us as filmmakers. We try to achieve the impossible with the resources that we have, and learn a million new things every time we hit the streets.

The end of season one had a great nod towards Doctor Who. What was the reason for replacing Tim with Tim 2.0?

People often think it was just to ease my workload a bit, but if you watch the most recent episodes of season two all becomes clear. It’s all part of a bigger story, taking the one man against the world idea and throwing some more chaos and problems into his face. Tim 1 as he’s known (not “OLD TIM”, thanks very much…) spends a long time in a Hell dimension, and when he finally escapes he finds out a different, somewhat better version of himself has stepped into his shoes. But again, this is British sci-fi so it’s not going to end well for anyone. We love our tea and misery.

Have you tried to secure any cameo appearances?

Van Helsing will pop up in season three, and we’re currently trying to get someone famous to shoot with us for two hours in September. We’ve contacted Mark Addy who lives in York, as well as bother Tom Ridgewell (thetomska) with numerous tweets. The show has already attracted some higher profile than us people, such as Amelia Tyler who was the voice of SyFy TV for years and Canadian rock singer Kieran Strange  who pops up in the season two finale. Should anyone read this and be interested in taking the role of the epic monster hunter…

You’ve also started a new web-series called Nights at the Round Table. What can you tell us about that and how does it differ to I Am Tim?

It couldn’t be more different. Tim is a chaotic, gore filled nightmare. We often shoot overnight in the cold, in the rain and in the mud. I’ve hurt myself in numerous ways over the years. Nights is set around a tabletop gaming night, 100% indoors and is a romantic comedy. Wil Wheaton saw the pilot last year and really loved it, and the response that got prompted us to create a whole series. It’s filmed in my house, we drink loads of tea and laugh until it becomes sore. We’ll only do the one season though, as the story is told by episode 10.

That’s not to mention your other upcoming series – Henchgirl 4 Hire, The Away Mission, Zombie Force and Dude Quest. Are you not worried about spreading yourselves too thin?

Not at all. I have a cloning device! Unlike I Am Tim and Nights at the Round Table we’re only shooting the pilots for most of these and they’re much shorter. Henchgirl 4 Hire is a blog style show, with characters communicating via Skype, The Away Mission scripts are 1 page each, and Zombie Force will be shot over two fairly easy days. Dude Quest is pretty ambitious, but again we’ll just shoot the first one and see how it’s received. For RedShirt Films it’s all about making a channel that people love, with rich stories and interesting characters. YouTube is an amazing platform for releasing our work and connecting with viewers, and we don’t plan to slow down any time soon!

***

You can see the adventures of Tim Helsing here (which has lots of goodies, including a glossary of all the Redshirts who have been lost in the filming of the documentary) or here, where you can also catch up on all the Redshirt Films projects. For updates follow @IAmTimHelsing and @RedShirtJamie on Twitter.

It seems I may have been too hasty in declaring the summer a relatively quiet time in the streaming wars. Out of nowhere, Lovefilm has started adding at least one title every day – and not just big win titles like Looper, but niche stuff like the latest Universal Soldier sequel and French animation The Illusionist.

Netflix isn’t exactly lying down either, having brought on board yet another Marvel title and an underrated horror film from last year. Before August is out, they will also bring subscribers Avengers Assemble and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the two biggest titles from 2012. What Lovefilm will counter that with is undoubtedly going to be amazing, but the smart money would be on Bond.

Regardless of what’s to come, the best titles online this week are as follows:

Looper (2012) – Lovefilm

Rian Johnson’s time travel triumph from last year is now available on Lovefilm. I think most people’s first viewings of this seem to be dominated by the Willis/Gordon-Levitt make-up giving them the creeps, so Looper deserves a second look; there are also a lot of clever time travel easter eggs thrown in that you wouldn’t catch first time around. Truthfully, the less you know about this film, the better it works – it has one of those Twilight Zone moral questions at its core that sneaks up on you. Looper was one of the best films of last year. Consider it ‘highly recommended’.

V/H/S (2012) – Netflix

Hands down the best thing that the found footage fad has brought us outside of Cloverfield is this collaboration between six indie horror up-and-comers – the first found footage anthology film. Ti West’s segment is the weakest; his slow burn sensibility doesn’t really work here, feeling out of place in the same way it did in The ABCs of Death. The strongest follows three college dicks who get a girl back to a motel, only to find out she’s more than they bargained for. Thanks to the POV camerawork, it’s scary and immediately thrilling. There’s also the surreal and gross Skype segment and the final hilarious, kinetic haunted house segment. It’s just a shame that the wraparound stuff binding these together isn’t as strong. Still, VHS 2 is due out later this year and early word is it’s even better.

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) – Lovefilm

Someone needs to hand director John Hyams the Terminator franchise very quickly. One of the few genuine surprises of 2013 so far is this fourth sequel in the now straight-to-DVD Universal Soldier franchise. After the events of the third movie, this finds Luc Devereaux (Jean Claude Van Damme) having gone native, Colonel Kurtz style, up a river, manipulating Scott Adkins’ bereaved amnesiac. This is so far from what your typical straight-to-DVD action sequel is supposed to be, it seems impossible it exists. Like a weird acid trip whilst watching The Bourne Identity, this has visual flair and thrilling action sequences better than films with ten times the budget. If there is any justice, Scott Adkins should become a major star. Keep an eye on John Hyams, too; he is going places.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – Netflix

Marvel Studios made the right choice in picking The Rocketeer helmer Joe Johnston to bring their star spangled poster boy to the screen. For most of its running time, Captain America is a nostalgic blast of retro thrills, which sees Chris Evans absolutely nail the character and Hugo Weaving give yet another excellent villain as the Red Skull. It collapses in the second half as it forgets to be a film with plot points and becomes a series of action montages to get Cap to that point at the end so we could get that film the following year. This is still a far better film than comic fans could have hoped for, considering what came before, and a great lead-in to The Avengers.

The Possession (2012) – Netflix

This went by last year with hardly any attention here at all. I can see why; the subject matter is all too familiar, while the name change from Dibbuk Box to the generic The Possession makes it sound like just more mediocre horror product. Honestly, though, this might be the finest film about possession since that seventies William Friedkin movie. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but original Nightwatch director Ole Bornedal directs this with a certain weight and takes the material seriously – which is missing from most studio horror fare. You also get a series of terrific performances at the heart of the film, with each actor giving the material the credence it deserves. The method of possession draws from relatively unexplored Jewish folklore, so it’s actually fairly original despite the title, and involves moths… lots of moths… which is terrifying.

Doom (2005) – Netflix

Yes, it’s a video game movie, and yes, it stars The Rock and pre-Dredd Karl Urban, but, in terms of unpretentious, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin entertainment, you could do worse. Doom is, essentially, the film version of the game-changing first person shooter – a squad of hard cases with silly nicknames get trapped in an alien-infested complex in space. Cue shouting, shooting, gore, and a pretty great first person sequence from the POV of the final survivor. It’s not high art, but it’s enjoyable trash – and sometimes that’s what you need to end a day.

The Day (2011) – Lovefilm

Clearly made for almost nothing is this straight-to-DVD title from late last year. Douglas Aarniokoski’s film, set after an unnamed apocalypse, follows a group of survivors, holed up in a house, who come under assault from a tribe of savages. Shot in a de-saturated palette, with an unrelentingly bleak feel, this has good performances across the board from Shawn Ashmore, Dominic Monaghan, Ashley Bell, and Shannyn Sossamon. It’s a shame that it takes too long for the siege to get going; various elements are very strong, but it spends too long considering the ‘humanity in the face of annihilation’ theme to ever really be a contender for post-apocalyptic classic status.

eXistenZ (1999) – Lovefilm

Lesser Cronenberg is still worth the price of admission. As each year goes by and we live in a world where the top game designers are making tons of money, eXistenZ becomes more and more relevant. This is kind of a companion piece to Videodrome, but with virtual reality and video games replacing unchecked cable pornography. This being a Cronenberg film, it’s filled with truly gross imagery. The Chinese buffet/assembling the tooth gun scene has haunted my dreams since I first saw it in ‘99…

Unbreakable (2000) – Netflix

Hard to believe now, but M.Night Shyamalan was the JJ Abrams of the early part of this century. After The Sixth Sense was a huge and popular hit, his follow up was shrouded in secrecy, then blew every nerd away when it turned out to be a super-hero story. Possibly the most dour film to ever be a box office hit, Unbreakable is so well thought out, so well-constructed, and so greatly led by Bruce Willis and Samuel L.Jackson. A long talked up sequel has never come to fruition and I hope it never does – this film is pretty much perfect all on its own. What happened M.Night? What happened, man?

The people in charge of putting together the DVDs have become essentially the curators of vintage Doctor Who, responsible in large part for how we watch the classic series. Starburst Magazine spoke to Mark Ayres, Peter Crocker, Steve Roberts and Dan Hall, to ask them about the range

What was your first experience of Doctor Who, and what was it that made an impression upon you?

Steve Roberts: I was born in 1965 and grew up with Pertwee. I’m not sure when I first started watching, but the first story I can remember with any great clarity is Terror of the Autons. My most vivid memories are of daytime repeats of The Sea Devils, which I saw in the staff room of what would much later become my secondary school, and of The Green Death, which scared me so much I had to turn it off and go outside to play in the sun.

Dan Hall: I have a vague memory of having seen Pertwee’s, which I’m far too young for – I was born in 1973 – and I’ve since found out that was probably watching The Five Faces of Doctor Who repeat season. My mother saw An Unearthly Child go out and loved it, so she always spoke about it, and I’ve got a brother who’s five years older than me who watched it as well. So it was sort of always there, but it was wallpaper for me until, I’d say, probably about JNT taking over actually, because I remember coming home to watch that final season of Tom Baker, so it was sort of around that time. If I had to go for a story? It might actually be Carnival of Monsters in fact. And then I consumed the books like crazy, the Target books, because I was suddenly aware of this legacy which wasn’t accessible to me at the time. So I was reading and reading and reading and it was fantastic.

Mark Ayres: As a child of the 1960s, Doctor Who was part of the landscape. I was not a regular viewer immediately, but I remember Daleks, the Yeti in the Underground, Autons… it wasn’t until 1972 that I became totally hooked, and what made the biggest impression on me was the way the programme sounded – like nothing else on television.

Steve Roberts: I do remember very clearly that I was scared of Jon Pertwee’s smile in the titles and would turn away until I knew he had gone! So my earliest memories of the show are mostly of a mesmerising terror to which I would willingly return week after week…

Peter Crocker: I was born around the same time the programme started, so I have no clear memory of the first experience. However, there are lots of memories of the 1960s: William Hartnell colouring books, Sky Ray ice lollies, the Emperor Dalek, foam, Yeti, Cybermen, and dad’s slide projector casting a shadow through the ventilator grilles onto the ceiling that looked like the Troughton title sequence.

Dan Hall: I really like those Doctor Who stories that are like plays. I loved The Robots of Death for that, you know; the ‘siege’ stories I do feel work well, because they allow efficient use of the limited budget, for a start, and they allow you to spend your money on good actors and scripts. It’s why I’m really excited about The Moonbase, and I was watching the test discs of The Ice Warriors yesterday – and they’re just so good… I don’t know, I love those ‘siege’ stories! I kind of miss that a bit – and I know obviously some of the stories in the new series have got lower budgets than others – but I sometimes just wish they would have half the budget some of them, and they’d just say, “Right, what would you do with that?” I thought some of the cheap stories, especially in Russell’s tenure, were some of the strongest. They allow performances to shine, and they allow concepts to come out. And the TARDIS, what a fantastic concept, the fact that it was born purely out of commerce, as a narrative concept, it’s just brilliant. I love that. And so yes, I’m a real believer in cheap stories.

We love that you can be a fan of many genres and get them all from Doctor Who.

Dan Hall: It’s a style of programming that I think really embraces that difference between stories, and I do miss that actually a little bit. I very much appreciate the new audiences, the American-inspired contemporary audiences love story arcs and like a single cohesive feel. Personally, because I’m an old fart, I miss that idea of the series rebooting every four weeks, new people doing the music, new directors. Because to me, if I had all of time and space, the more different each story can feel, the more it accentuates that atmosphere.

How do you feel the programme influenced you into making later career decisions?

Mark Ayres: The way it sounded. I wanted to make those noises!

Dan Hall: I think television is a very powerful medium, both for entertainment and for education, so Doctor Who was one of several TV shows that I watched as a child that made me think, this is an industry that I really respect. It certainly wasn’t the only one; there were shows like Tenko which I thought were incredibly strong, and I’ve always really admired the storytelling abilities in soap operas, for example – the fact that those shows eat up storylines and yet still keep going. I’ve always really admired people who can storyline and write for those things. It was certainly one of a number of shows that inspired me, but I’d have to say it wasn’t necessarily the one that made me go, “Wow!”

Steve Roberts: Certainly Doctor Who and Space: 1999 were big influences on me as a child, and helped formulate an interest in science and science fiction, until Star Wars came along and moved everything up a gear. My school friends had mostly the same tastes and I followed very much a science-based education at school, progressing by way of an electronic engineering degree to a job as an engineer for the BBC at Television Centre. Within the BBC I manoeuvred myself into the area of engineering for film and television restoration, which put me in exactly the right place to be able to be involved in successfully bidding to take on the work of restoring Doctor Who for video and later DVD release.

Peter Crocker: For me, it probably opened up the possibility of working in television as a career option, but otherwise probably very little.

Dan Hall: In a way, what I meant about Doctor Who, was that I think the concepts in the show – the concept of time travel, the concept of the TARDIS – these things if you think about them actually have nothing to do with television, they don’t rely on television as a medium, and that’s a compliment to those concepts; those concepts actually exist in whatever format they’re in, really, in books or whatever, they’re such simple, powerful concepts that they kind of exist outside of that, so I think if I was to say something inspired me to work in television specifically, it was just a general thing, watching Tiananmen Square going out on air and realising how amazing the medium was. As for Doctor Who I think that just inspired me into realising that good ideas are simple. And Doctor Who has been at fault at getting that wrong; sometimes when we watch stories we think, ‘Well that wasn’t a very good one,’ when they get too complicated, get too wrapped up in history and stuff. But when Doctor Who works brilliantly is when it has the faith in the simplicity of its own strong ideas. And I think in a way that’s the legacy that was shown to me – if you ever come up with an idea of any sort, be it a business idea or a script idea or anything, if it’s not simple, it’s not working. Simple as that.

Generally speaking, what are the day-to-day tasks you are involved with in making your contribution to the DVDs?

Steve Roberts: Initially, I was very much hands-on, commissioning DVD extras and even doing restoration work myself. This was mostly because the BBC Worldwide people didn’t really understand the show and were more than happy to leave it in the hands of those who did. Eventually, Dan Hall took over as commissioning editor with 2|entertain and for the first time we had somebody who knew the show and wanted to stamp their own mark on the releases. So these days I’ve pretty much taken a back seat, with my responsibilities being more on the delivery side – overseeing restoration where required, packaging the DVD extras, policing technical compliance and ensuring that everything is delivered on time and with all the paperwork that the DVD producers need in order to do their job. I do occasionally get a chance to edit the odd little featurette here or there as well, just to satisfy my artistic side.

Dan Hall: My job title is Commissioning Editor for the classic Doctor Who range, and what that basically means is I’m responsible to BBC Worldwide, so I run a media consultancy company and Worldwide are one of my clients. They come to me and say, “Dan, can you come up with a year’s worth of classic Doctor Who releases?” And then I go away and say, “Right guys, I think this is what we should release in this year, this is why I think we should release it in this year, and this is what I think we should box up and this is my reasoning.” I have to present cases to marketing people and then, when they’ve agreed the schedule that I’ve put together I commission the Restoration Team to restore it, and we’ll work with producers and other team members to put together all the rest of the content. I’ll help develop that and I’ll executive produce it. Executive producing effectively means that the buck stops with me, I’m responsible for the quality of it, I’m responsible for the material adhering to BBC editorial policy, I’m responsible for trying to make sure it appeals to hardcore fans and more casual fans.

When I came into the Doctor Who world eight years ago on the DVDs, I did find a lot of cliques, a lot of sort of groups all seeking information from each other, all competing with one another, all saying, you know, “I’m close personal friends with this actor and this one, and I’m better than you.” And I found that incredibly distasteful and it’s something I’ve fought against. For me the range and the programme and everything I commission is about facing outwards; it’s not about saying, “How much do I know? How much information can I keep to myself?” It’s about saying, “This programme should be about saying to you, ‘What is out in the real world for me to embrace and to learn about and then to enjoy?’” And if I can share that knowledge with real people out there then that is wonderful. And I’ve always tried – because I think that we’ve all paid for Doctor Who, nobody ‘owns’ it; just because you happen to know who the three floor managers were in a Troughton story doesn’t mean you have any more right to enjoy it than an eight-year-old coming into the show for the first time. I totally dispel that belief and don’t think that’s a good way of being at all. The beauty of Doctor Who, and the beauty of the character, is that it doesn’t have that attitude at all, it should be about inclusivity, not about exclusivity.

Peter Crocker: I’m responsible for all aspects of picture restoration, except for initial transfer (from film or archive master tape) and grading (which is a specialised area in itself and done expertly by Jonathan Wood at BBC Studios and Post Production). This involves removing – where possible – all artefacts of the recording process and damage due to ageing or wear and tear, as well as some artefacts from limitations of the technology at the time the programmes were made. This will involve using current state-of-the-art restoration tools, as well as some custom and bespoke tools unavailable elsewhere. The aim is to make the pictures look as good as possible on modern displays.  During the 1960s, people would be watching on a TV with a maximum screen size of 20” diagonal, and even in 1989 when the classic series ended most people would be watching on a 26” screen – and none bigger than 32”. Now, many people will be watching on 42” or 50” screens or bigger, and flat panels are very unforgiving of bad or unrestored archive TV pictures.

Dan Hall: My dad always said to me it’s very important as a manager that you take the blame for stuff and you pass the credit on, and I believe in that very much. I’m always very careful – and I genuinely try to do this – not to ever say, “Oh that was my idea.” The only thing I do put my hand up and say, “This is my stamp, this is me and everything that we do across this is from this point,” is what I said about inclusivity and not exclusivity. That was a very, very clear line, and the first couple of years working on the DVDs were tough in a way, changing that culture, and releasing products that said to the fan groups, you know to thousands of buyers, “Look, it isn’t nice shutting people out, it isn’t nice collating data and having an exclusive ‘boys’ club’,” and I’ve said, “I want to stop having only white middle-aged men on this, and I don’t care how we do it, but I want to get more women on the screen, I want to get more racial diversity on the screen,” and this is all stuff which is about respecting our audience. It’s that kind of stuff I get really passionate about. Thankfully the people I work with are really passionate about the programme, which leaves me to be passionate about the more top-line stuff, that sort of sits almost above the programme and says, “No, we need to treat this whole range with an overarching ethos.” And it’s that really, it’s about inclusivity, and I’m really proud of that actually, because it can get overly cliquey, and I am very proud to fight against that.

But equally it’s because Worldwide and 2|entertain have supported it. None of what we do could be done without their money, basically, and their support. They go against all the rules, those guys, in terms of every DVD should be treated as its own separate business model. The financial side of it is, they completely trust me to basically pot all the money and then dividend it out among the titles to create a consistency of quality across everything. And of course you do that and you can then commission in bulk as well, which saves a huge amount of money and raises the standard of the product on-screen. They are so supportive, BBC Worldwide, they really are. They’ve been absolutely faultless in the eight years that I’ve been doing it, they’ve been so trusting and I hope that it’s paid off for them that they feel their market, their buyers get a product and also that they earn the profits that they feel they need to, because they have been so fantastic and trusting and supportive. So in that way I’m really lucky, with both sides of my job: I’ve got the customers who keep me on my toes, I’ve got producers who produce outstanding content, and I’ve got paymasters who support and believe in my ambitions and what I’m trying to do. So I’m incredibly lucky actually, because I’m not fighting any wars on any fronts, which is quite unusual.

Mark Ayres: I do the audio restoration and remastering, of course, and I mix the commentary tracks. As archivist for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop I also look after all the music and sound effects, and act as audio consultant generally on the range. This might include helping out VAM producers with audio issues and so on. And as part of the “core” team of Steve Roberts, Peter Crocker and me, I am involved with general advice and editorial oversight including what we call “peer review” for Dan Hall.

Peter Crocker: Once episodes are finished, I produce the final master DigiBeta tape with restored audio from Mark on tracks 1 & 2, with commentaries on tracks 3 & 4, to go for DVD authoring. I also provide suitable clips or episodes to VAM producers as required, and timecoded copies for production text writers – the boring side of the job.  Finally, I provide advice on options for VAM and I’m also part of the technical peer review panel.

Dan Hall: Yesterday was a good, fairly typical working day in that I got delivery of The Ice Warriors test discs, and one of the nicer parts of my job will be, I’ve got to sit and go through those discs and be one of three or four ‘eyes’ on them, to make sure everything’s there, to make sure everything’s working, to make sure the menus work, to make sure the animation looks good, and just to physically check the discs before somebody presses the button and they all go out to print. You’re also doing things like putting together business cases or watching a rough cut of a documentary and feeding back notes about it.

It’s a fantastic job because some days it can be very creative-based, or some days it can be very business-based where you’re putting together business models for the releases, thinking ‘Shall we do this? And then if not, what is the business case behind it?’ The job is incredibly varied, but thankfully it’s a very enjoyable one. Worldwide make it very easy because they are very good paymasters in that they allow the classic Doctor Who range to be treated like a channel. I think I’ve said this before, that I don’t treat each release on its own, I’ll look at the whole range almost like it’s a television channel and when we commission stuff, we commission it with an idea that a certain series is featured across multiple releases, and in a way that’s the most enjoyable part of this job. You’re looking at the whole thing, looking across a whole range and saying, “People will be buying all of this; how can we make it entertaining, how can we make it really good quality?” I suppose in a way that’s what my job for Worldwide is, to come up with products and make them money, and for the customers, my job is to come up with a product that they feel is worthwhile spending money on. If I’ve done my job correctly, both of those people are happy.

I was very lucky in that I inherited a format from the Restoration Team, who of course ran the DVD range before me and who created the brilliant template that I inherited. The documentaries that we have, all the production subtitles, the commentaries, are put together by an incredibly loyal and fantastic team, who don’t have a huge amount of money, and who work incredibly hard, and all I really do is coordinate them. I’m very lucky to have a programme alongside me that talented, intelligent people feel very passionate about, so it makes my life incredibly easy, it really does. Having intelligent, passionate people work for you is just brilliant – because they do all the work! So much of managing projects is about having to keep people’s morale up, or keep people delivering on schedule, or inspiring people to come up with good ideas, and the programme does all that for me, it really does. And so I feel like a bit of a fraud, because I’m surrounded by really talented people who do all the magic, so all I do is boss them around! So big, big applause must go to them.

Does your “professional self” feel a greater responsibility to do a good job on account of your “fan self”?

Peter Crocker: Not really, as that would imply a lesser responsibility on other material.

Mark Ayres: We do a professional job, but push it further because as fans we want it to be just right. This can be a blessing and a curse, of course!

Steve Roberts: Some of that is because I’m interested in presenting material in the best technical quality anyway, but mostly it’s because we have created arguably the most comprehensive archive release catalogue that any television programme has ever seen. That’s an enduring legacy but also an on-going mission. I’m not prepared to let those standards slip!

Dan Hall: The market is a tough one and a demanding one, and you know what? Ask me on the wrong day and I’ll say, “They drive me crazy!” But 99% of the time, I love it, because it stops me becoming complacent, and I think complacency isn’t about laziness; complacency naturally wraps around your shoulders with too much ease – and when you have a market who do not let you get complacent, that’s actually a really good state to be in. Because it means that you get to the end of the working week and you’re proud and you’re pleased with what you’ve done. You know, when I do go to conventions, I won’t just go up and do a panel, I’ll be there for the whole time, I’ll sit in the bar, I’ll sit in the coffee shop and I’ll talk to people, and people will say to me, “I liked this, I like that.” And I’ll say, “Well be honest, what didn’t you like? What isn’t working? What do you feel I’ve done that feels too exclusive?” And I change what I do as a result of it – because all you guys pay my salary.

Peter Crocker: Also, I’m not sure I fulfil the attributes of a “fan” – I was at one time, but I don’t think I’ve watched an episode for pleasure since the 1980s and, to be honest, there are lots of other programmes I’d love to restore above Doctor Who. The mantra is “we do the best of our ability, with the resources available to us”. I’m always aware that we could do better with more time and unlimited technology, but in the end, we have commercial and economic deadlines to meet, and we do need to sleep occasionally. Work is always abandoned, never finished. Hopefully the quality of the work speaks for itself. We don’t always get everything right, but we have done our best.

Tell us a bit about the Revisitations…

Dan Hall: I know it took a year for fandom to stop saying, “Oh they’re trying to encourage us to double-dip for the sake of it,” and that was never ever the intention. The intention of the Revisitations was to bring basically the first five years of releases up to the standard of everything else.

Those early releases didn’t have access to the special features and restoration technology we have latterly had.

Dan Hall: Exactly, because when the range was launched it had to have the stronger stories, which meant that some of the strongest stories had some of the weakest DVDs, which just wasn’t right. The Talons of Weng-Chiang was one of the ones that inspired me to do the whole thing to start with, because I used to live in Lime House, and I moved to Lime House, because I loved that story and I love East London. When you watch that DVD, I think you really feel my passion in the commissioning of content, the stuff on the music halls – and again, that’s the whole thing about looking outwards, using Doctor Who stories to teach us about other things. It’s been really nice seeing the market realise what we do with the Revisitations, because they’re not made any cheaper, they have the same budget as if it was a brand new story. So it’s not as if Worldwide are saying, “Here’s half the money, let’s stick it out again.” They treat it like it’s a brand new release. They’re restored from the ground up… It’s great. I love them!

Do you ever pinch yourself that you’re contributing to the way Doctor Who will be remembered by generations to come, as well as those who grew up with the show?

Mark Ayres: You can’t think about that. It’s a job, albeit one that is a great privilege. I just get on with it, do it the way I wish to see it done, and hope that it is appreciated in the long term.

Steve Roberts: It has been a part of my life since 1993, so it’s just what I do now. I am hugely proud of the work we have done and of the technical barriers we have pushed back – for example Colour Restoration, Colour Recovery, Reverse Standards Conversion and VidFIRE.

Peter Crocker: I am very grateful that I have been able to earn part of my living working on a programme that was a happy and important part of my childhood. But I don’t think my contribution should be remembered or even noticed by people. It’s a bit like a visual effect: if it stands out, you’ve failed to a degree. I liken my work to that of a window cleaner. If I do a good job, I make the work of the people who made the episodes more enjoyable. But people should be saying “What a lovely view,” and not “What clean windows these are.”

Steve Roberts: Twenty years ago, archive Doctor Who was in a lamentably poor state really, but sitting here in the fiftieth anniversary year it’s looking pretty damn good thanks to the work of our team and the other talented people who have used or created technology to help us to restore the show over the last two decades.

Peter Crocker: I also hope that it’s a work in progress and in fifty years people will be watching episodes restored by someone else, to a better standard using tools not yet invented, and saying “How did we put up with that old rubbish?” in much the same way that people compare the DVDs to the laissez-faire VHS releases of the 1980s.

Dan Hall: It’s an absolute pleasure, it really is, because while it’s a very vocal market, it’s also a market that says thank you, which is fantastic.

Steve Roberts: Through a shared love for the show I have met some amazing – and amazingly talented – people, many of who are my very closest friends and whose friendships will endure to my dying days. I think that’s something the Doctor would very much understand and approve of.

Dan Hall: And Doctor Who fans turn up in the strangest places! I remember I did a series with NASA a few years ago, when I was working on the Doctor Who range, so I was across at Cape Canaveral, and I was speaking to an astronaut who loves Doctor Who, and who liked classic Doctor Who and liked Tom Baker! And he was one of these sort of casual fans, he’d bought a few DVDs, and I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe this guy who was training to be an astronaut was buying the DVDs and watching Doctor Who extras! It’s really funny – I was like, “Oh my God, a real spaceman!”

We’ve seen Genesis of the Daleks turning up in the least expected places…

Dan Hall: There’s something about Genesis, isn’t there? But of course really they should all have Time and the Rani! And you know, I don’t understand why everyone has such a problem with the casting of Beryl Reid. Everyone says, “Oh, it’s Light Entertainment casting,” but has anyone seen The Killing of Sister George or Smiley’s People? This is not a Light Entertainment actor, this is a BAFTA Award-winning serious actress! There might be other reasons for having issues with her being cast – which also by the way I don’t agree with, I think she’s fantastic casting – but the idea that just because they’ve seen her on Blankety Blank a couple of times… I think, “Come on guys! This is a really quality actor!”

What are your favourites among the features you’ve worked on, and which things are you most proud of?

Steve Roberts: There are honestly just too many, but on the restoration side I think the thing I might be most proud of is returning Planet of the Daleks Episode Three back to colour. It brought together so many of the restoration techniques that we had pioneered over the years and concentrated them into one twenty-five minute episode. One evening at TV Centre, I played the episode down the line to the ops supervisor in the VT area and asked him for a quick opinion of what he was seeing. He genuinely thought he was watching a pretty normal early 1970s videotaped show. His reaction on being told it was actually a black and white 16mm film recording is sadly unprintable!

Peter Crocker: And finding a way to return The Mind of Evil to full colour within the DVD budget is a recent example. Otherwise, it’s usually when I’ve done a difficult repair and people aren’t even aware that a fix has been done.

Mark Ayres: As a technician who is also a “creative”, my favourite features – and those I have most fun with – are the 5.1 surround mixes and the extended “directors’ cuts” I produced of The Curse of Fenric and Battlefield. I am also very pleased with the upcoming Terror of the Zygons release, for all sorts of reasons!

Peter Crocker: It’s usually where something has been achieved that seemed initially impossible.

Mark Ayres: I am proud that we have set a standard, and then improved upon it.

Dan Hall: There was a feature we did a while ago, which felt like I was going full circle as a child, and I thought fitted in with everything that I wanted to achieve with the DVDs, and that was one of our smaller documentaries, about the Magna Carta, that Stella Broster made, on The King’s Demons. What I loved about that is I remember as a child saying to my mother, “What’s the Magna Carta?” and having her explain it to me, and that obviously added power to the narrative.

I thought, that is exactly what the show should be; it is providing sugar to take the pill down of education and history and that kind of stuff. When I commissioned that documentary and when Stella delivered it – and she delivered it fantastically, she really compiled a beautiful piece about the Magna Carta and about democracy that went all the way up to 9/11 – I just thought, this is what we should be doing, this is what the programme was commissioned for, this is exactly what the BBC stands for, in entertaining and educating and informing. And it was crystallised in that one documentary, because it’s something I’ve always been very vocal and very passionate about.

To me that’s kind of the heart of what public service broadcasting is, and also what the character of the Doctor and also what the whole point of Doctor Who is about, and that is it’s using a fantasy and a beautiful, simple, fantastic premise to educate you about the real world. Which is why I love some of those Pertwees, that are basically about Israel and Palestine – you know, to have a Dalek story that is about suicide bombers; are they criminals, are they terrorists? These are really quite difficult, and pretty serious narratives done in a brilliant way. So, the Magna Carta documentary crystallised my commissioning drive behind the whole direction I’ve taken the range in, and the whole attitude I have towards it. When Doctor Who is at its best, it doesn’t encourage you to stay in the fantasy world, it illustrates the real world, if that makes sense.

The Germans love science fiction, probably because it challenges our ideas about the world, nature, and people in general. Both in films and television shows, sci-fi themes always have a huge following (their Austrian neighbour Frtiz Lang got the ball rolling with Metropolis) because there’s always bound to be something new within their plots. These are either celestial, or usually something more (bio)mechanical involving robotics, and audiences are always awed by the extraordinary. And don’t let it be said that they can’t laugh at themselves during the process, for instance, in the Berlinale this year, the second most popular film was the Finnish sci-fi nazi space invasion comedy Iron Sky. The German viewing public exalted it; it sold more tickets than any film by Werner Herzog or starring Angelina Jolie. Basically if it’s sci-fi, there’s a good chance it’ll strike box office gold.

Aside from being fond of genre TV and cinema, Germans are also partial to a hand or two of the universal card game. In fact, statistics published by Academia.edu show that Germany has the biggest poker market in Europe, and PokerPlayersResearch.com says that 1.2% of adults in Germany play online poker. Through whatever platform, be it live in Casino Baden Baden or online at PartyPoker, participating in poker matches has become part of the German lifestyle, much like science fiction – so it stands to reason that the presence of poker in popular sci-fi franchises would appeal immensely.

Games of chance feature heavily in sci-fi; Sabaac in Star Wars, Pyramid/Triad in BattleStar Galactica (original series/RDM repectively), Dabo in DS9 – but poker itself also makes an appearance from time to time…

Star Trek: The Next Generation
This is not completely unexpected since, in one episode, Captain Picard was caught saying that Commander Riker gives master lectures in poker. How fun will it be if the officers of the Enterprise gather around a holographic poker table? Just imagine: the great bluffer Commander Riker, going against Geordie’s X-ray vision (which would enable him see his opponent’s cards). Or better yet, Data’s photographic memory and skills in statistics which will naturally give him the upper hand, pitted against Troi’s power of empathy which will enable her to detect if someone is bluffing. It would be a match for the ages and would be fascinating – how will each player outwit the others? This epic battle of Sci-fi skill and chance would be heard in Germany, all over Europe, and even across galaxies…

Stargate SG-1
Playing poker is the favorite pastime of the characters in this franchise. In the episode ‘The Uninvited’ the team (consisting of Mitchell, Vala, Teal’c and Sam Carter) retired to Jack O’Neill’s cabin to get their poker fix in. It was a hard fought game that involved Teal’c paraphrasing Kenny Rogers “A true warrior… knows when to fold them.” as well as Sam trying to convince everyone that she’s not much of a gambler, whilst ending up as the night’s big winner. This writer is sure she would’ve made German poker champ Pius Heinz proud.

Manchester’s largest comic book convention happened to coincide with one of the hottest days the city has experienced so far this year. This brought out genre-addicts from all around the city in huge numbers to not only see the various guest spots, signings, comic book creators and tables and tables of merchandise and assorted paraphernalia, but also to see each other and hang out with other members of the rapidly growing geek community.

The real draw of the event this year was the people. A significant proportion of attendees were in costume, and we had everything from a pantomime horse-like ATAT, to demonic monsters, a legion of ladies in TARDIS inspired dresses and of course the ubiquitous Storm Troopers. Given the heat, the variety of costumes and inventive ideas was nothing short of amazing; though there were plenty of people in simple robes and masks (mostly inspired by the popular anime series Bleach), we also had people in the tight leather costume stylings of Batman and one brave chap dressed as a particularly warm Cookie Monster.

The event was not without some problems; a combination of sunshine and social media meant that a lot of people turned up, and this caused very long queues indeed. Talking to various attendees the wait was as long as three hours for some, which given the temperatures can’t be that pleasant. Spirits were kept high throughout by various convention goers larking about, but more could have been done to keep people entertained on this very warm summer’s day. However, once you got through the doors there was clearly a lot of fun to be had.

It is, after all, called a Comic-Con, and the great and the good of the local and national sequential art scene was in attendance. The ComicVillage was filled with many creators, and it was a fantastic opportunity for those looking to get into the UK independent scene to explore and learn more about it. Highlights included Widdershins creator Kate Ashwin, Twisted Dark’s Neil Gibson, Dumpy Little Robot’s Abby Ryder and Crossed inker, Lee Townsend. The more mainstream sort of graphic novel was also readily available, and boxes and boxes of back issues were all around. Those looking to complete collections or after a specific bit of tat had an excellent chance of getting what they wanted, and those on a budget would have been better off leaving their wallets at home.

As you may expect, the guest spots and various talks were very crowded. Guests included Warwick Davies, Torchwood’s Kai Owens and a collection of Knights from TV’s Merlin. Videogame junkies were well served with an appearance of the very charming Michael Mando, who talked about his character in FarCry 3. Videogame fans also got the chance to play various games at the numerous stalls, though those with a preference for old school table-top gaming were stuck with the choice of Yu Gi-Oh or nothing at all. Overall, this year’s MCM Manchester Comic Con belonged to the cosplayers, and the lovely sunshine outside.

Words: Ed Fortune / Photos: Anne Davies

In 2011 the Guerrier Brothers’ short film Cleaning Up (starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson) won best thriller at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival; it was subsequently awarded the Shortcutz London Film of the Year 2012. Realising that there was potential to do much more with the story the brothers, Simon and Tom, are about to take the next step and explore the world of crowd-funding. In this feature we explain who the Guerrier Brothers are, introduce Cleaning Up and explain how the brothers are taking the next step.

Who are the Guerrier Brothers?

Simon Guerrier (recently interviewed in Starburst #390) created and wrote all 6×1 hour episodes of original series Graceless, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in July 2012. He’s written numerous books, audio plays and comics for Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Being Human, Primeval, Robin Hood, Dark Shadows and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Thomas Guerrier has produced and directed more than a dozen documentaries for BBC Worldwide / 2|entertain as well as a slate of corporate and charity films that include the National Trust, Orchid and University College London. Prior to being a director he worked in special effects on the Batman and Harry Potter films (see his IMDb entry for more details)

As a team the brothers have been making award-winning short films and documentaries together since 2009. Apart from Cleaning Up they have also produced The Plotters which was short-listed in the Virgin Media Shorts awards and played in more than 200 Picturehouse cinemas throughout the world. They released Wizard starring David Warner in March 2013 in which Lisa Greenwood (The Hour) also appears.

What is Cleaning Up?

Cleaning Up is the story of Mr Jackson, a hit-man played by Mark Gatiss (Sherlock, League of Gentlemen, Doctor Who writer) and his landlady Mrs Pellman played by Louise Jameson (Tenko, Doctor Who, EastEnders, Doc Martin). Starburst caught up with Louise Jameson who had this to say about the film:

“When I saw the script I was taken by how exciting it was and the strong story arc for both the characters. My costume was probably the funniest I’ve ever had. Filming had to be rushed because it was such a shoestring budget. When I saw the film after the post-production work it took my breath away. Short films are so hard to do; they’re like the haiku of the film industry. I hope Cleaning Up has the success it deserves.”

The film pairs Louise’s landlady against Mark Gatiss’s sophisticated and debonair hit-man. Despite its brevity the film manages to be in two acts and it is in the second that we get to see Louise’s outrageously flirtatious performance against Mark’s increasingly clipped and proper business-like exterior.

Louise had this to say on working with Mark:

“We’d always wanted to work together. I remember Mark coming up to once, many years ago, at a Doctor Who convention in LA. Ever since then we’ve always intended to work together and finally it happened.”

There is a Doctor Who connection running through Cleaning Up – the cast also includes Tracy Ann Oberman who appeared in two episodes of Doctor Who and, in a brief cameo role, Nick Briggs who is the voice of the Daleks and also the executive producer of Big Finish.

The Big Finish Connection and funding the next stage.

There is a strong link with Big Finish as Simon Guerrier explained:

“Tom and I have based a lot of our working methods on the way things are done at Big Finish. We try to make things fun when we’re recording, and make sure there’s a good lunch, while being professional and trying to produce something good. Cleaning Up is a Big Finish film and both films used actors and crew I knew (or pinched) from there. In fact, a couple of actors we got into our films then got jobs in Big Finish plays as a result. We should charge a commission!”

The connection goes even further: the film is now available to buy and download from the Big Finish website in two versions (one with extras). Any money made will go towards funding the development costs for the next step. Simon gave more details:

“We’re obviously not expecting to pay for a whole film from selling the short, but we hope to raise the development funds that will get Cleaning Up into production. That would cover research costs, developing the screenplay, budgeting, scheduling, and all the other things involved in raising finance and agreeing sales and distribution. Just having lots of people buy the short will help us build a convincing case for the movie.”

Big Finish are well known for their audio work and also produce some books. Starburst asked Nick Briggs for his view on whether or not this was just an experiment or a possible new avenue for Big Finish in the future:

“Big Finish was originally set up as a film production company in 1996. Jason Haigh-Ellery first of all was able to co-finance, or rather rescue, a Doctor Who themed spin-off about Sontarans, called Shakedown, starring a clutch of Doctor Who actors, including Sophie Aldred. His next plan was to make a straight-to-video release called Phoenix Ryan, written by Paul Cornell, also starring Sophie. See our book, by Simon himself, Bernice Summerfield – the Inside Story for details!”

As Nick went on the explain Big Finish have been involved almost since the beginning, offering some initial seed-funding for the original shooting. In the end money was needed for post-production work which was provided on the strength of the first cut of the film. To quote Nick once more:

“Jason basically took a risk on the Guerrier boys, based on his previous experience of Simon’s work for Big Finish. We knew they’d do a good job and we were very pleased with how it turned out. Really nicely polished work!”

Apart from the creative aspects of making Cleaning Up Simon and Tom have also had to become business men in a hurry – something that particularly impressed Louise.

Tom arrived at the final approach to crowd-funding after extensive research. The success of other projects such as The Plotters opened the door to various industry events and the opportunity to meet people also involved in novel funding approaches. As Nick Briggs observes:

“If this works for Cleaning Up, there’s a lot of potential for other projects.”

Tom also had this to say:

“Going via Big Finish does make it different from most crowd-funding schemes in that we’re not asking for donations; we’re selling a short film. What we’ve done is take the campaign model crowd-funding uses to raise funds as it’s a brilliant way of engaging with an audience.

So we get to promote the short film, the feature and Big Finish dipping its toe into film production. Each of those three things should hopefully generate the interest and development money we need. If it works then there is a lot of potential for Big Finish to pursue other projects in the future. That said Simon and myself are aware that crowd-funding is something that only really works a couple of times. With that in mind we need to ensure this one is a big success.

And finally.

Having seen Cleaning Up we’re keen to follow it on every step of what we hope will be a successful evolution into something bigger and will keep you informed about opportunities to become involved.

In this case it is simple – visit the Big Finish web site for more information, have a look at the trailer and then why not buy a copy of the film for yourself and be part of the process. Don’t spoil the ending though!