So, the audience days are done and it’s time to settle into our comfy chairs and see how the painfully long wait until broadcast unfolds. Time for us to take a big info dump right onto your astonished faces.
As we’re all aware by now, the production will be spending six days this week in the studio shooting the myriad missing scenes and pick-ups from the previous six episodes. If Robert’s account of the extra pick-up day for Series V is anything to go by, I can’t imagine this is going to be the most fun of weeks. The amount of missing scenes (especially in episode 5 which has about 10 minutes un-filmed) is a little startling especially since they include what sounds like a complex action scene in episode 2 and the ENTIRE ENDING of episode 4 along with the aforementioned chunk of episode 5. To give us a better idea of how they’re going to tackle this, there’s been some interesting comments from Richard Naylor on Twitter:
the end of Ep 4, missing sections of 5&6 take priority. Then it’s trying to make other eps as gd as poss. That Inc. Some new scenes.
The mention of new scenes separate from the stuff needed for 4, 5 and 6 is interesting as it suggests Doug will be taking the opportunity to re-write bits as he sees fit. We know from the past that this is not unheard of (the ending of Only The Good… being a notorious example) so it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, is replaced from the audience recordings.
One of the main concerns about the missing scenes is what they’re going to do about audience laughter. There’s a fine line between augmented and canned laughter, and if they ended up having to paste laughs from other scenes to ones with none, then it’s going to be difficult to defend. Unless…
We will most likely have a screening but nothing is confirmed.
The fact that audience screenings are being considered is very good. It’ll certainly solve the problem of the missing scenes having no audience reaction, but we could get into choppy waters if the laughter from the screenings is used to augment or even replace the live reaction. You can hear the conversation with Dave – “if we’re getting laughs from screenings, then why are we bothering with a live audience?”. Anyway, regardless, audience screenings would be excellent, so fingers crossed this happens and more people get the a chance to have an early look at the new series.
Now, some INTRIGUE, once again pilfered from Naylor Jnr’s Twitter feed:
Would’ve been great to have another aud. day showing scenes but seating removed tomorrow to make room for something else…
WHAT COULD IT BE? It seems very late in the day to be building a new set, and documentary interviews don’t need that much space, so it’s possible they need space to re-erect a second guest set for the re-shoots. OR… it’s for the model shoots, but that’s taking the massive assumption they’re a) actually shooting models and b) doing it on the main production’s stage and not a proper dedicated stage. Even so, it’ll definitely be nice to hear some details about what’s going on with the models, because all we have at the moment is a single Tweet from Doug and no hints as to whether Mike Tucker’s Model Unit will be involved at all. Fingers crossed we’ll get that sooner rather than later.
EDIT: As spotted by bountyhunter in the comment, Ed Moore has confirmed that it is the “model unit” that’s moving into the space vacated by the audience seating. More SPECULATION in the comments.
Finally, a little bit of catchup. On Thursday UKTV released another behind the scenes video, but this time with excellently tantalising glimpses of the set and costumes. So, better late than never, let’s have a look at the highlights.
Lister and Rimmer
Lister and Rimmer in costume! Interestingly it shows Rimmer without his H, but that could be because it was during camera rehearsals and not for plot reasons… OR IS IT? No, it isn’t… OR IS IT?
Drive Room
Here we have a blurry but fairly decent look at the drive room in full. As you can see, it features monitors, seats and the colour red. Please stop me if I’m getting too spoilery.
Quad Split with a blurred frame
Now, this is interesting. Apart from another look at Lister and Rimmer in their very BTE-like costumes, you’ll see that the top left split is deliberately blurred out to remove what is presumably a spoiler. Unfortunately my ability to speculate is fucked by the fact I know what this frame is showing, and I’m a little bit perplexed that it’s been hidden as it isn’t exactly hugely spoilery, but there you go.
So, yeah, it seems the quality of these teaser videos have gone up since the trickle of uninspiring set photos early in the production. It’s nice to see that they’re starting to be comfortable with showing costumes, so hopefully we’ll get to see a good shot of Kryten soon so the great mask debate can properly begin. For the record, my opinion is that it starts off looking bad, and gets much better.
That’s it for now, then. Our active witnessing of the production is now over and we’re back to rooting through the bins of Shepperton, hoping to find a juicy leaving or two. It’s going to be a long few months, guys, but we’ll be here for you.
Hold me.