The second episode of Red Dwarf X was recorded on 23rd December at Shepperton Studios, with a studio audience. I wrote this about it.
Apologies for the writing being even more sub-standard than usual. Look, it’s Christmas Eve, you’re lucky to be getting it at all. Now piss off.
“What is the point……really?” – david barnes, DwarfCast iTunes review
So, Red Dwarf X is starting the first of six audience recordings this Friday. And I can’t resist plugging the latest DwarfCast from Ganymede & Titan that I’m “proud” to be part of, talking about our hopes and expectations for the new series, alongside a healthy dose of ignorance.
We’ve been doing these for over five years now, and they’ve grown from being crap, to not being that crap but still quite crap. Give us a try if you’re at all interested in the upcoming series, though.
So, you want a more inappropriately placed end voiceover than the one on GOLD the other day? How about this one, taken from tonight on Challenge+1?
Well done Challenge. You have LITERALLY managed to disrespect the dead.
It’s fairly simple. If you’re using pre-recorded voiceovers, make sure you preview everything to check your timings are right. If you can’t be arsed to do that, at least place them 15 seconds or so before the end, so you’re unlikely to crash the programme.
Don’t make it look like you don’t give a stuff about the channel, or the viewers. If you can keep the dead out of your incompetence as well, so much the better.
(EDIT: Listening again, only just noticed – the voiceover repeats halfway through! Ouch…)
I really don’t want to turn this into a BITCH-O-BLOG. But sometimes it’s tricky, when UKTV are present in the same universe as you.
Have a look this post on Ganymede & Titan – a Red Dwarf fansite I co-run. (One of our more positive reviews: “A website run by a group of friends that don’t just make ‘fan’ a dirty word, they soil it like a pair of decade old underpants.”) To cut a short story shorter, UKTV have been pointing people towards our site thinking we’re Grant Naylor Productions – something that is “fairly obvious” we are not.
Whilst we’re on the subject of GOLD transmission errors, the below – broadcast yesterday – brings me out in FISTS OF RAGE. The dinnerladies episode Minnellium – and just as we get to the discovery that Anita was the one who abandoned her baby:
One of the most heart-wrenching endings they ever had to an episode: ruined. The last joke in the episode: ruined. One episode of dinnerladies: ruined. All because they triggered their pre-recorded voiceover in the usual place, rather than actually checking the end of the episode to see if it fitted.
Brilliant, GOLD, well done.
Oh dear, GOLD’s going through an identity crisis. Broadcast at around 7:40pm on the 19th October:
For anyone wondering how that happened, I’m fairly certain that’s a dynamically created trail – not a pre-created piece of video, but automatically generated by the playout server. Clearly, the right schedule information, audio, and video clips were present – but the wrong channel graphics were selected…
Some things I write, I know at least some people will be interested. At other times, I decide to write articles about Gimme Gimme Gimme and aspect ratios.
Still here? Amazing. Buckle up, here we go.