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my apologies in advance for the length of this piece. i should also note that it is in no way meant to represent an attack on (or any sort of criticism of) the audio which has been reviewed in this thread. it is simply an extension of various discussion topics which have since been raised, and is diverting into more general discussion of various production matters.

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Sorry, might be me, can you explain to me how the ending was handled 'terribly'?

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given that matt said "it took me several minutes to actually work out what had happened - it was way too sudden", i would assume that's how he felt the ending was "handled terribly" -- by being too sudden and too confusing.

which i'm only assuming on the basis of matt's words. i'm not concurring with his assessment as i've not yet listened to the production.

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How could I have done that (clearer signposting of what's going on)?

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erm... signpost events more clearly... sorry, it's the sort of thing that's so self-explanatory that it's hard to explain. i can't imagine matt actively wants you to include points of exposition which presage or anticipate coming events, as that would presumably spoil plot surprises if handled ineptly, so perhaps he's just after clearer exposition throughout, and a plot progression (i.e. development of scenes) which is in keeping with the narrative progression (i.e. deveopment of story) and which coheres as a seamlessly complete whole.

again, i'm just guessing as i've not heard the audio myself (nor can i read matt's mind), but this is what i'd take his comment to mean at face value.

although i've just noted that the next chunk of matt's review that you quoted, which i'll repeat for the sake of anyone else reading this, seems to explain what he means, even going so far as to begin with the words "i mean"!

matt's bit:

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I mean, was part of the quest to keep the script short meant the Doctor is able to conjure up answers to questions without any evidence to support them?

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back to david's bits:

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Isn't that what the Doctor always does though? I mean, what happened in your short story "A Quiet Beach Somewhere" that made the Doctor think they were in a time loop of somekind?

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that wasn't conjuring up answers: that was conjuring up possibilities. there was no guarantee, nor is there still, that any of the doctor's guesses were correct in "quiet beach".

whereas presumably matt is taking issue with the notion of the doctor conjuring up ideas out of absolutely nowhere (whereas in "quiet beach" he made an educated guess based on the evidence at hand and his extensive past experience, and in fact eliminated several before reaching one he was satisfied with), happening to be 100% right first time, and managing to save the day precisely in such a way that he is able to wrap up every single hanging narrative thread to the point of a completely closed narrative resolution. (again, note that "quiet beach" ended with no such resolution: the doctor made an educated guess, it got him worried, and he ran for the hills.) which is not so much a lucky guess as the doctor being used as an intellectual deus ex machina to resolve the entire narrative. so yes, there's a big difference.

i tell you what: i really must listen to this audio of yours now, to see precisely what matt's on about. because what i'm doing at the moment is making educated guesses from limited evidence, which may or may not be wrong. in other words, i'm being the "quiet beach" doctor. whereas matt will doubtless come along and provide a complete resolution to this discussion by offering complete and direct answers to these questions. which isn't so much being the "twas the night" doctor, by my guess, as being a doctor who can investigate the situation and use his knowledge to infer a solution from a thorough study. i suspect that to be a "twas the night" doctor according to matt's description, one would have to come along, say "flibble", and be utterly astonished that it is in fact the correct answer.

or am i no longer making sense?

that said, "quite beach" is not a "short story", and my answer here is being grammatically charitable in assuming that you're not actually (and irrelevantly) asking what happened to lead to the time loop you describe as occurring in that "short story". in which case, the very succinct answer would be "nothing whatsoever". because, if you interpreted the doctor's conjecture in that film as hypothesising a time loop, then you'd best go back and watch it again because a time loop (in the traditional dw sense) in fact has absolutely zero to do with the doctor's explanation.

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He is? Didn't notice myself. lol.

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looks like you didn't notice much of the question, either. "he"? matt was referring to an alien race. which suggests a bunch more than one male member of the species!

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Whoops!

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evidently you're trying to be flippant, but this remark makes no sense in the context of the quote which preceded it. what's so "whoops" about matt not wanting every plot thread resolved 100%? (no, seriously, i'm dying to know: this has the potential to be fascinating.)

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Average audience being? Other WHO fans? I don't think there is an average WHO audience out there who listen to any of the fan-audios here at DAM or even there at BTR

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which, in the context of matt's original statement, presumably means that you feel you are given license to abandon coherent plotting? how odd...

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I personally think the fanbase for the audios is the producers themselves who listen to each others

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an interesting personal belief, but one (at least in the case of those of us "over there at btr" -- have you noticed at all where this forum is? -- since you've mentioned us) which is disproven by solid statistical evidence which we've gathered over the years, the findings of which we occasionally share on this forum. things like our getting download figures of 200-300 (which is separate ip addresses, btw). if there really were that many fan audio producers around, you'd think we'd have noticed.

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hence the small amount of people who comment on these very boards - all either other producers or people who have worked on the audios/videos - same goes for Floorten.

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quoting the representation of an audience who bother to make comment on the product is an absurd way of measuring your entire audience. granted, i haven't been privy to your own download stats, but those of btr are cited above.

at the very least, to suggest that anyone who votes in a poll or leaves a review is your entire audience is absurd: it's like suggesting that the final of "australian idol" was the highest rated programme in that network's history because more tv critics reviewed it!

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You're welcome to do so if you wish Matt. I already intend redoing the soundtrack to this audio when I find the time.

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just like our christmas audio (as announced yesterday). what an astonishing coincidence!

it's interesting, though, that you're assuming matt wants to be the one to tidy up your script -- and, by implication, that nobody at dam audios feels like doing it. matt's being a critic here, not someone offering his cv to get a job as your script editor.

which, again, don't you still have one?

but if you're looking into finessing the script, then you're essentially starting to talk about an entire remount. which kind of begs the question of why you even bothered the first time, and didn't just save the project for next year.

i guess the thinking behind that would be similar to the thinking behind issuing a fragment of "last of the timelords (sic)" without having finished more than 12 minutes of the thing at the time. then again, that was presumably to have something to offer for the 40th anniversary, so at least there's a kind of vague excuse. but why so with a christmas audio? it's not like 2003 was a round number anniversary of the birth of christ. (then again, maybe it was, but the date would've been historically wrong.) plus, it would've meant that aron wouldn't be so jealous because you managed to take a little initiative, actually get something of yours produced, and beat him to it when it came to a character he recast (and thus presumably made his own to some warped degree -- warped only insofar as it's in no way his character). so it would've been a win-win situation.

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Yes. Shame about Mike's acting. He really isn't an actor, nor does he want to be, he just does these audios because I asked him nicely.

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have you considered recasting? or are you that short of actors?

also -- and this is purely an aside -- why didn't matt (or yourself, for that matter) get blasted for suggesting that mike's a lousy actor? i did it once and i got no end of flaming, particularly from mike himself. how come everyone else gets off so lightly? it's a btr conspiracy, i tells ya!

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That and he had a really sore throat that day.

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and he's one of the leads in an audio production... have you not heard of this thing called rescheduling?

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Well, he met the requirements of the Director (me)

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you were? never would've guessed from all those credits you gave yourself on the web site!

seriously, though, would it have hurt you so much to at least go with a credit of "written, produced and directed by"? it kind of looks silly having every second crew credit feature your name, though only because each role is listed individually. (i'm guessing that's the rupert booth syndrome matt was talking about, and i'm afraid it is unintentionaly funny to read.)

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isn't that what every production is meant to do? regardless of some people's views?

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why the high horse? matt was being complimentary! besides which, despite this statement of yours being entirely correct, it should never prevent those people from being allowed to express their views -- be they positive or negative -- without some director feeling he needs to get up on his high horse for whatever reason.

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Yes, Danny Elfman is one of the best! Or at least the best to me!

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given that your first sentence was a qualitiative sentence, it is clearly implied that you are expressing your own qualitative judgement, thus making the second sentence redundant.

well, except in such circles where people really are idiotic enough to equate someone's opinion with an attempt to lay down some sort of erroneous fact or other. which i can assure you won't be happening here any time soon!

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the music came from the soundtrack of Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas".

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an interesting attribution, albeit one based on actual promotional material so i'm not having a go at you, david. interesting, because tim burton didn't in fact direct the film.

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Do you always judge a book by its cover?

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i very much doubt he does. but i was of the understanding that matt was, at that point, judging a cover by its, erm, cover. had he been judging a book by its cover (i'll take the metaphor at face value to remain thematically consistent with your description of "quiet beach" as a short story), i suspect matt would've written his little paragraph on the cover art, then given his rating, and been done with it. whereas you may in fact notice, if you look really carefully, that he also included a detailed and thorough review of the entire production as well.

honestly, this is worse than that time i recapped the plot of "the big f up" in about 200 words in my 2500-word review and you claimed i was using up literally half the review on plot recap!

this is obviously a thorough review, so matt clearly decided to reference all pertinent elements relating to the production -- of which cover art can be a significant one, particularly to the producer, as it does help to sell a product quite often.

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Good, good.

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a reaction to a positive audience appreciation that i would never have expected from the producer.

(yes, i was being sarcastic.)

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Let's hope its longterm

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shouldn't you be doing more than hoping, and perhaps be, i don't know, actively doing something to make sure it's maintained? i mean, it's your performance, so you've got an opportunity to spring from feedback in a positive manner instead of just leaving it up to the fates to decide.

no wonder quality wavers so much in your productions -- you're obviously happy enough to let some mythical higher power learn from your experience instead of learning from it yourself.

matt said:

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My advice for future productions? Give your script to 2-3 people to read through before recording begins

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or to your script editor. i thought you had one.

btw, when matt says "2-3 people", i don't think he just means give the script to the cast before recording begins.

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Does Witold do that to the scripts he writes? Or is he trusted so much that the first draft is perfect?

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is there something at all significant about this shift of focus from dam to btr? it's just that i always find it a pretty weak justification for anything to say "well you do it too" and hope that the person is so wracked with guilt from being exposed as a hypocrite (or, to be more charitable, offering advice learned from mistakes they've made) that the accusation (or, in this case, friendly suggestion) is forgotten. as the following evidence will suggest, no such hypocrisy is at play, and i do hope that you don't ignore matt's advice, david, as it's pretty good advice. especially when you're (oddly) skipping over the script editing stage in pre-production.

you obviously missed a post i made some months ago which is pertinent here, so i'll recap the relevant part for you. this season, i even went so far as to abandon one of my own serials, as i felt it wasn't working.

on previous occasions, matt has always had last vet on every script (not just mine), to offer that second opinion. i've always sought to discuss my scripts with him more than any other scripts, because i know i need a second voice. "quiet beach" was written in heavy consultation with matt. i will sometimes send my scripts to darran for feedback from a fellow writer. i will discuss them at length with my partner, kath, to see if she has any feedback.

in short, the answer is "yes". except on a couple of rare occasions when we've been a bit rushed to go into the studio. but even then, i think i've only ever gone in with a first draft the once, and that was after i went over it very thoroughly. we've produced a few of my first drafts, but only because it was felt by several parties that they were fine as they were. (essentially, in this case, they were what you describe as "perfect", i suppose. or at least up to scratch.)

however, i dare say this is all a moot point, as i'm the script editor, as opposed to the star/writer/producer/director/sfx guy. a more appropriate comparison to make would be with "sentinel", on which matt was all those things. during the production phase of that story, his script went through a script editor, whose services he actually bothered to use instead of skipping the guy even though he's in the cast. even during "invasion", before btr had a script editor, the script was heavily workshopped during rehearsals, and was tidied by no less than three hands.

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My productions are always at this level on the Matt-K-meter... ah well.

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not true: "the big f up" got "?/5".

anyway, so what? it shows your productions are consistent in matt's eyes, and at least he thinks they're good. would you rather he started throwing in some ones and zeroes to mix things up?

anyway, if you want to to score higher, try harder. try listening to some of his suggestions (and those of everyone else) instead of continuing as you were and hoping some miracle of cosmic fate will change things for the better. if you don't actively do anything to change your work, then it's highly unlikely (barring some extreme luck) that anyone's estimation of its quality will change.

then again, perhaps you don't have a cavalier attitude to constructive criticism and it only sounds like it because you're trying to be smart or cheeky or (perhaps, though i see no evidence of it) witty. either way, people will start to take your appreciation of their offered feedback less seriously, and may stop giving it in the end if they feel you're just shrugging it off all the time.

just a thought.

(this text has been edited, mostly to fix typos.)

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just read about who listens to these things...well, I know for a fact that btr, dam, crossover and stag stors are very well represented on winmx, the file sharing thingy.....

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you're right -- i'd forgotten all about that. many's the time that i'll see heaps of fan audios in people's collections on file share engines. it's kind of flatterring, really, except that most seem to avoid going past "magigal history tour" for some reason!

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I have to admit, Id love to know what you lot here think of our stuff...the bucky chron trailers etc.....you seem to give good critiques and also good advice, always important.

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speaking for myself, i haven't really had a chance to listen to any staggerring stuff except that schroedinger piece (i think that was you guys). there's just too much "regular" fan stuff to get through first. but i for one would be happy to get around to checking your stuff out and dropping some feedback, especially as i now know it's appreciated.