First teaser for Doctor Who 2009 "Guardian of the Solar System," which I (mostly) wrote. Doesn't show much, but I'm excited...

The debut episode of Doctor Who 2009 (not really the 'official' title, but the easiest reference for the moment) finally makes its way onto the net. You can download a torrent file here, or go here to watch the YouTube version (in a nifty bit of programming, once you start the first section, it plays all 8 chunks continuously, with almost no interruption).

The second episode, "Guardian of the Solar System," which I (mostly) wrote, is currently in production.

Looks like my comrades at Cheeky Monkey Pictures! in the UK are going to produce a short script I wrote for them called "Reunion." ( The long and short of it. )

Lizzie McWilliams and Adam Manning in Bloode Magick.

Our very own Dennis Kuhn is *cough*cough* years young today. Enjoy the day, chum!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, things have been both quiet and extremely hectic. Anyway, I recently rendered a downloadable copy of me & Roland Raavis's old Doctor Who fan film spoof The Two Doctors and the Anti-Matter Menace, which can be grabbed HERE. (Just do the right-click "Save Target As" thingy.)  This is a full-res mpeg, so it's a big file (about 825megs), but not quite full-strength, since it's not an AVI file. However, given that the movie itself is a product of mid-'80s analog camcorder technology, there's not a whole lof of difference you're going to notice.

I did, however, slap my new animated WP logo onto the beginning. (And I also made one other small addition, though I doubt anybody'd notice).

Nifty animation in this collision of old & new Who. (I had nothing to do with this, just bringing it to your attention.)

Just handed in the first draft of my first script for Doctor Who 2009, much earlier than anticipated. Can't say much else because of secrecy and all that. More when I can.

If you thought the first trailer for Doctor Who 2009 was cool... check out the new one. ICE WARRIORS!! (Be sure to watch it in HQ)

In keeping with my ongoing tradition of putting the cart before the horse, I've been fiddling around with a new logo. Comments on this new version?

Pursuant to my post of 12/8/08, I have heard from the wonderful actress Kate Costello, who appeared in several of the FATW films, and she pointed me to the new website of director Ryan Denmark, where the amusing Date 1.0 can be viewed. Can't see a way to embed it here, so just follow this link  and enjoy. Denmark's new (feature-length) film Romeo and Juliet vs. the Living Dead looks like a hoot as well.

Despite my post of March 12th, I never did get around to deleting the elements of Order Out of Chaos, and good thing too -- Ryan and I discovered at the 11th hour that we'd both been mispelling the name of actor Jackson Kisling (we'd both been using KiSSling), so I made that adjustment, and while I was at it, corrected a couple of other tiny things that had been bugging me (too niggling to even detail here) and made a couple of tee-tiny cuts. This is absolutely the last editing I'm going to do on OOOC, and really do intend to flame the raw elements this weekend. Meanwhile, the shortened version will debut hopefully in about a month on the Time and Again SE DVD.  Watch this space.

In other news, I did finally finish and polish up my commentary track for Ryan,and I'm pretty happy with it overall; Ryan may tweak it for the ultimate release, but I won't know until I get my copy.

Unfortunately, the debut episode of Doctor Who 2009 (Ice Warriors!) has been delayed. I don't really know what's up, but hopefully will be briefed sooner rather than later.

Ryan Thorson asked me to do an audio commentary track for the upcoming Time and Again DVD release -- he had done one with co-writer Jeremiah Lynch, but it turned out to be of the "laugh a lot and have a good time" variety, and he wondered if I would put together something a little more technical and provide some info on the production. Naturally, I immediately went into "if a job's worth doing..." mode.

I've been working on it for almost a week now. Boy, I have a new appreciation for people who do really good commentary tracks. Basically, even though I took copious notes and felt reasonably prepared, it amazed me how many times I was just struck with terror: holy crap what do I say here? Is it insane to talk about that picture frame in the background? Have I mentioned the TARDIS prop yet? Wait, did I say that already, like an hour ago?  I tried to do it straight through, but only about 40% of that ended up being useable, so I've been in a process of recording different chunks and then stitching them all together, occasionally doing little patches when what I said on the initial recording was just unbearably lame. It doesn't help that I don't know all that much about audio editing, so I'm doing it kinda "ghetto," and the synch is occasionally a bit off (hopefully that's something Ryan can fix when laying it all into the finished program).

Anyway, I think what I'm ending up with will be fairly listenable, and -- bizarrely -- I'm not even all that bothered by the sound of my own voice, which I usually hate with a passion. Now, whether anybody will actually take the time to listen to a commentary track by a guy who didn't even work on the movie -- I have my doubts. But I've had some fun (and sweated some blood) putting it together.

I'm currently committed to writing four scripts -- all Doctor Who and none for pay, of course. First there's "Valley of the Wargods" for Doctor Who 2009 (a project for which I'm also serving as Assistant Script Editor, a post which I hope will be very interesting/challenging, but has so far proved to be fairly amorphous) which, if all comes to fruition as expected, should be very exciting. Next is "Vanguard" for David Nagel's forthcoming Doctor Who audio series, and I'm also co-writing "Key of the Ancients" with Ryan Thorson, also for audio (Ryan has already made up a nifty teaser trailer, which I'll link as soon as he puts it up); actually, I'm making Ryan do most of the heavy lifting on this one. I am involved at the plotting level, and hope to kick in plenty of dialouge, which tends to be my strong suit anyway; the story involves the Doctor meeting H.P. Lovecraft, and should have lots of gooey monster action.  Lastly I've been toiling over a Doctor Who fan film that I hope to direct myself later this year, tentatively titled "Time Out of Joint," and yes, (very) loosely based on the PK Dick novel.

Is it a bad sign that I'm totally writer-blocked on all four of these? Of course, they're all just 'for fun' -- there's no profitability in co-opting a licensed property, but it's a cool playground in which to run around.

In general, I don't really like to talk about things too much until they're well in progress, so you won't hear much more about any of these until I've got something concrete to show for it. But I thought I'd mention them all the same. Watch this space. ;-p

After more than two years of work, I'm about to delete all the raw video & data files for the edit of Order Out of Chaos -- they're taking up more than 100 gigs of space on my computer, and I could really use the room. That means that -- for better or worse -- the rendered AVI files of the doc will be all that's left, and I won't be able to re-work the original edit files any longer (since the source materials will be gone; of course, I can always re-edit the existing AVI files, but it won't have the flexibility of drawing off the original video files). Should be no big deal, as I had no real plans to go back and monkey with the edit any further (except as noted below), but it's always a bit of gut-clench to wipe out your source materials.

I actually went back to my original plan, and made a slightly shorter edit of the film for inclusion in Ryan's Time and Again special edition DVD -- I cut about four minutes of rehearsal footage and made a couple of other very minor trims, which means the SE DVD version runs about 75 minutes. Nobody will miss the stuff I cut, and at this point, all the actual participants in the video have received the 'extended' DVDs that I sent them, so shortening the film for a more 'general' release doesn't bother me at all. I'm retaining the full AVIs of both versions, so the 'long' edition isn't lost, just back-burnered. Also, Ryan has bleeped all the naughty words out of his version, and possibly made another couple of small tweaks -- I basically told him he could do whatever he wanted with it, so that's fine.

All of which means that Order Out of Chaos is finally, utterly finished. Now what to do next?

Sorry for not much posting here lately, been busy with a lot of things and haven't been at the editing bay until this week -- for more Cheeky Monkey madness! At Adam's request, I have put together a trailer for the CMP vid Tyranny of the Daleks, the concluding chapter of which Adam swears he will finish this year -- and possibly even as early as Easter if things go well. Anyway, I did this over the course of about two days, and originally I had it somewhat longer with more footage, but wanted to keep it really tight and fast-moving, so I cut it down considerably. I'm pretty happy with the finished trailer. See what you think. (BTW, at bottom right you can mouseover and it will give you the option to watch it in High Quality, which I highly recommend.) To see the first 3 episodes of Tyranny go here.

My good pals over at Cheeky Monkey Pictures! in the UK have finally launched their much-awaited video project Henry V: Champion of Saturn, a mockumentary in the Hidden Silver vein about a newly-discovered 1930s science fiction serial.

And yes, that is yours truly as the deadpan narrator (in full Ed Wood mode) trying my best to be amusing. I was quite flattered to be asked by Adam and company to participate, and had a lot of fun with it. This is part 1 (of 3), with the next two installments due in the next couple of weeks. I'm cross-posting this in my JE Smith blog as well, so apologies to those of you that have both on your FList.


PART TWO is now HERE.
and PART THREE is now HERE.

I can't say much about it just yet, but I'm involved in what looks to be a very exciting fan-based project: new WHO for '09.

This is going to count as an extremely odd and winsome post. A few years back I stumbled across the website of a group of young filmmakers that called themselves First Against the Wall Productions. They had a couple of their films and a lot of trailers streaming on their site, but, despite about six months of swapping e-mails with one of the directors, I never could get actual DVD copies of their films. Now, FATW seems to have disbanded completely, and the website is long gone. I'd still love to get copies of Most Likely To Succeed, Date 1.0, and Yellowville -- the trailer for which, imbedded below, is the only sign of FATW I could find on UbiquitousTube. I don't really expect anybody reading this to have any info on these films, but on the off chance, give me a holler. I found this stuff intriguing, and would like to see more.

Many of my good chums contributed to the making of this enjoyable fan film created to support the annual Children in Need charity pledge driver. And yes, that's our own Dennis Kuhn -- making his first appearance as the Doctor in almost ten years -- in the lower right corner of the "trapped in the viewscreen" Doctors. This is great fun!