Another Release Day

Hello there

Gonna leave any health chat out today, it's boring and suffice to say there’s no change.  Still passed nothing.  Well, except wee, but I’m forever doing that.

Gonna chat a little bit about the North American release of the movie, on account of that happening today.  I’ve spent Saturday night through Sunday trying to get patreon posts sorted, and got some bits done.  I did the Rocky Robot video (diveo) on Saturday night, and then was trying to think of things that would be a treat for you after my enforced hiatus(es).  I thought about The ParaPod Live from earlier in the year, because I’ve a master audio of it that was recorded from the venue, and so I edited some of that.  That’s on its way to you tomorrow.

It might be the only bit released on here (I’ve also sent the edit over to Barry so he can put it on his too), because loads of it is visual stuff and quite a frustrating listen.  I’ll go through the whole thing and see what I can salvage for you, but the stuff tomorrow is the introduction and us spiralling back down the lottery numbers wormhole (where Dodds attempts to apply emotional rules to random chance).  It’s about 25 mins long, so that’s something in the treat/make amends department for a start. Although the lottery numbers thing is probably more of a punishment.

But anyway, back to the American stuff.  The reason I was telling you that is because I had to pause patreon working for real-life working, and do a couple of ads for the North America release.  I’d had these scheduled to do last week but …you know… obviously…

I managed to eventually put together a couple of relatively basic images for Insta and Twitter, which will be going out today if and when the timezones align.  Here’s what I did;

(Twitter)

(Instagram)

Think they’re simple and effective enough, although I’m not sure how much use that sort of thing is in actuality.  From sitting down to do them, to actually exporting them, took me five hours, on account of me learning my scratch drive was full.

I don’t even know what a scratch drive is, but luckily Editor Simon does, and over the course of the afternoon we spent a painful analysis of what was going on with my computer and what I needed to delete and how.  I shan’t bore you with the details, and I’m guessing that most of you are computer savvy enough to know exactly what to do, but suffice to say, I deplore iMovie as a concept now, and am a bit fed up with some of Adobe’s daft features too.  I’ve clawed back 400GB of space from those two things doing pointless saves alone.

I did also find out that the original Adobe Audition audio project for The Rocky Robot Show Episode 1 doesn’t work any more, but I’m trying not to think about it.  It’s far too overwhelming a thought to think that I’ll have to rebuild it from scratch and sync it to the animation.  That’s the problem when you leave stuff alone for too long because you have to go off and do other things eh? I’ve got all the audio for it, I just don’t have it edited any more.  Sometimes I really miss cassettes.

So, the reason for the little social media images is of course the North American release of The ParaPod – A Very British Ghost Hunt today.  The emerging panic about it has been quite the thing.  I spoke to Gravitas, the distribution company,  a couple of weeks ago and they said there had been about 35 pre-orders.  You read that right.  I double checked that they didn’t mean 35-hundred, because you know how they talk, but no – three five.  Thirty-five.

Let’s just pop ourselves over to the podcast download stats…

Ah.  So a slight discrepancy there…

Now, Gravitas, seemed perfectly happy about that for some reason, and referred to it as a “good start” which it definitely isn’t. It’s certainly not chart-bothering numbers, and certainly not justifying the expense of getting it released over there. They were maybe putting on a brave face. I find it a bit worrying really.

We don’t have any PR for North America (as it would have been the same cost as the UK PR but with two cheeky little zeroes on the end of it), so I’ve a feeling this is going to be a slow build to be honest.  Actually, I think the whole film is a slow build thing.

Simon and I were discussing it today during the hard drive repair shemozzle, and I said I had been nicely surprised by the UK release response as I’d thought of it as a thing that would grow very slowly in terms of people finding it.  I knew long ago that the majority of people who were big fans of The ParaPod have wandered off to be big fans of whatever new thing they have discovered, which is all perfectly ok as it’s the general nature of being a big fan of anything. Contrary to the opinion of those of us who have indulged long-term fan loyalty to things, it’s actually rather a rare thing.  The time it took to make this film, and the subsequent additional delay, was naturally long enough for folk to go off the boil, but it would have been impossible to maintain the brand as a thing and also to be making a film in the background.  It’s one of the reasons this Patreon has been so invaluable for myself and The ParaPod.  It’s maintained the narrative for those who are along for the ride and kept it “relevant”.  That’s not happened outside these walls though.  Why would it?

In what may seem like a side point, but is actually relevant, Simon told me he had subscribed to the latest Build Your Own R2-D2 magazine thing, which will see him get bits of a model every month to end up with a 1:2 scale droid.

Obviously I gloated about my 1:1 scale effort first…

Then I expressed how I wouldn’t be able to deal with it.  To get a couple of pieces and do a few minutes building before having to wait a month for the next lot.  It would drive me up the wall.  I then realised that this is exactly what we had both experienced with the film though.  We didn’t just get all the footage in one go.  We got little bits of it, tried to piece it together, shot some more, added to the pile, fiddled with it again, shot some more, and so on.  I guess, for me, there was the fact that I was also occupied by the shooting and performing time-fillers, but for Simon, he is well used to “waiting for the next bit”, and hopefully by the end having all the pieces to put together in conclusion.

This doesn’t happen with most films by the way.  Normally you do the prep, do the shoot, edit it together, the end.  Obviously films sometimes do reshoots, but they tend to be financed and budgeted for that eventuality.  I’ve always assumed this same mood would follow through to release, and whatever journey it takes from there forward.

So, as I say, the UK was a pleasant surprise, in that it wasn’t a release without any fanfare at all.  It charted well, and there was chat around it and reviews and bits of press and correspondence.  It wasn’t a case that hardly anyone glanced over.  That’s the story in North America at the moment though, so I am having to reconfigure my thinking to what I thought would be the case everywhere.  Maybe it’s disappointing because of the UK release.  In comparison I mean.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but North America is massive.  It is though.  It’s far easier to disappear without a trace there. It’s just a case of doing what I can this end with small gestures, and then hoping for the best in terms of it just finding its way through somehow.  It doesn’t actually take that many folk shouting about something before people notice.

Of course, this could all end up being paranoia.  Gravitas may have shown no concern because pre-orders aren’t really a tangible thing with digital releases anyway.  It isn’t a limited pressing of a vinyl record. It’s not like they are gonna run out of stock or anything. This may genuinely be worry about nothing.  Every distributor we are working with has done nothing but be very confident about its chances from the offset, and we should presume they know better than us.

Bascially, we shall see.  

I’ve included downloads of those two social media images just below there, if you care to share them, and it goes without saying that any of my patrons who are in those territories should certainly get themselves downloading it today.  

Or maybe you are mainly here for the drawing.

Hope you are doing brilliantly over there, and I shall see you tomorrow for the podcast.

Much very love

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