With MB And Homeland

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello. My name is Dan Johnson, and welcome back to the Hoop Podcast.

(00:04):
This month, we have a specialguest once again who's joining me today
to talk about their recent or soonto be released fan film entitled A Blip
in Time, And today I'm goingto be talking to the co creator I
suppose of MB and Homeland, andthat is Mark Bray. Mark. How
you doing today? You're okay,I'm doing very well. Thank you for

(00:26):
Daniel, Thank you for having meon. It's a pleasure. Yeah.
I massively appreciate you asking to jointoday because, like I said earlier,
it just came at the right timewhere I was kind of going, I
need a new guest. Who canI have? And I went, ah,
perfect, I'm in. And whenI was, as I said before,
while I was going through, Iwas sitting there going, this is

(00:46):
a very interesting, you know,sort of universe that you've created, because
if you're not aware, MB andHomeland have been creating fan films for over
fifteen years, it must be aboutsixteen seventeen years now. Yeah. Yeah,
I said that was the anniversary,but that feels like it was at
least a year ago. Two years. Yeah, so it rounds up to
seventeen now, I think it's nearlyold enough to drink. I had a

(01:11):
son in this time. Yeah,but we're obviously we're not just going to
be talking about the brand new fanfilm and your own sort of seventeen years
worth of work in making Dot twofan films. I would also like to
talk a little bit about yourself.And we have these intro questions on the
podcast. I handed one to you, yeah last night. In fact,

(01:32):
oh yes, yes. The firstone is always what's your favorite moment immediate?
It's the big question that we alwaysuse to get to know our guests.
Yeah, sure thing. Yeah,so I definitely had a big think
about it, and I guess itreally depends on the question. But I
took it down sort of a storytellingpoint of view in the sense that one

(01:53):
of the things I love in filmsor TV is having characters that you can
relate to a lot, you know, Like, don't get me wrong,
there's there's a lot of joy ingoing and watching a Marvel film or Harry
Potter or Star Wars, and youcould also still have characters in those universe
that are relatable. But I verymuch enjoy watching a character who might be

(02:15):
British or might come from a Britishbackground, and you can look at them
and be like, oh, yeah, you know, like the similar upbringing,
or oh they went for a toughtime and I can relate to that,
and it kind of builds that kindof sympathy to wanting to to wanting
to root for the character, tobeing like I care about this character when
it's a bit too far out,too stretched, you know. I take

(02:36):
an example, character who starts abillionaire, ends a billionaire. It's like,
sure, he's doing some great stuff, and I can enjoy this adventure,
but I'm watching their going if hedied in the next scene, I
don't know, if I don't knowif I care, you know, I
want a root for this guy.I think it's why a lot of films.
I don't want to say joker,because I'm not that kind of person,
but that appealed, that appealed toa generation, That appealed to people

(03:00):
who felt like the system was againstand they felt like they were miserable,
they were unhappy. I think COVIDalso didn't help people, so maybe a
bit more bitter now people, maybea lot more anti social as well,
you know, especially just briefly beforewe started the call, talking about my
job and all dealing with customers,dealing with the British public. Maybe people

(03:20):
are less likely to want to goup to a member of stuff to ask
for help or stuff like that.So yeah, that's kind of what I
took away from the question what Ilike in media characters that are relatable.
I'm obviously a science fiction fan.I like a lot of war films,
nineteen seventeen, Oppenheimer and stuff likethat. But yeah, those are kind
of the things I touched on.Yeah, that's quite You've taken it slightly

(03:46):
in a different avenue. There's nothingwrong with it at all. Yeah,
but the way it's made, themore that I've asked that question, the
more I've realized that my answer islike very surface level. Okay, So
when we talked to my co hostand I, we talked about sort of
like moments in film, especially intelevision, that make us feel powerful and

(04:10):
make us feel like, you know, energized and you know, keep us
motivated. So we talked. Ispoke a lot about how in the first
Kingsman there's the scene, the churchscene, and I think that's probably one
of the first times that I'd reallybeen interested in how they made that scene,
you know, all the hidden cutsand stuff like that, And I
found sort of the flow of thatreally mesmerizing. And even though I don't

(04:32):
really film things per se, whenI write scripts for my audio drama series,
a lot of it is filmed inmy head already because that's how I
imagine it. So I was sortof talking about how, you know,
I can imagine this sequence being along shot and stuff like that. So
is there anything that sort of howyou've taken it is that you've taken favorite

(04:55):
moments in sort of is your audiencesurro good characters, the character as you
empathize with. Is there any particularcharacter that you think represents you the best?
But in all world media or justin like content, I've treated myself
in everything that Yeah, in anyYeah, this is this is why it's
such a big question, because it'swhat, you know, what what sort

(05:18):
of things? So it was acharacter out there I can relate to,
Oh, well, you know,obviously it could be on the lines that
I have with the with you know, that shot. Maybe there was something
that you watch when you were youngerthat sort of inspired you to then go
well, that's the sort of theindustry I want to go into. Yeah,
or definitely. I can relate tothat a lot in the sense that

(05:39):
I grew up watching the Revenge ofthe Sith that I had. I had
the DVD and there was a secondDVD that had all the behind the scenes
on and I remember one video inparticular, which must have been two hours.
It broke down every role of thebehind the scenes, from the producer
to the set dresser to the rightwho, and I remember making no of

(06:01):
every single role, being like,I want to figure out what all these
roles do. So I can relateto that in a sense. But when
it comes to making my own media, I am a big critic of if
I watch something and I go,that's really cool, like like the Kingsman
seen, or like take nineteen seventeenfor example, when he gets up at
the trench and he's running straight acrossand it's beautiful and it's that moment where
the music rises and you're really investedand you love it. I try to

(06:25):
never go that's amazing, I shouldfilm something like that, because I don't
like falling into that category of oh, he's only done that because someone else
did it last year, and ifyou release it very close to the same
time, people can just be like, this just doesn't feel original. I'm
not going to say I'm cool thateverything I've ever made is original. No,

(06:46):
you can go look at stuff andthere's going to be connections to new
who knew who and old who andstuff like that. But yeah, I
guess I try to be as originalas possible. Take, for example,
there's a companion in series and aseries five of my channel where I really
wanted to figure out a clever wayfor a companion to first meet the doctor.

(07:10):
And the companion in particular a girlcalled Isabella who has a rough life,
a rough upbringing. She was bulliedand she's actually about to take her
own life. In the scene,she's on a multi story car park and
actually she does jump. She doesbasically go this is it, And it's
just by chance that the tardis atthe time just happens to lock onto her

(07:32):
because the doctor's actually in distress andher being there she actually saves his life
and he's got no clue that shewas just about to do what she did.
And I was like, that's suchI took that and I go that's
not happened in But I don't knowif someone's going to say in the comments
has actually, but I was like, you know, I felt like that's
really clever. You know, You'vegot a companion who goes from hating their

(07:56):
life hating the world, and thenthe doctor shows her the universe and it's
like kind of uplifts her and showsthat there's good in the world or stuff.
Oh yeah, so that's kind ofwhere I'm coming from. Dylan,
who I do play, I baseda lot on me when I was a
teenager. But the only problem isDylan, in my opinion, turned out
to be quite annoying, which probablysaid has something I based a lot of

(08:20):
it will be Yeah, I don'tlike Dylan. Okay, that's not good.
It's a bit like is it timeHeist? And he says I hate
the architects and the architecture. Butthey do. I think they use that
as like the plot of the ofthe episode, don't they that I hate
the architect therefore it's me kind ofthing? Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
yeah, A long time I thinkonce I've been brains like melting,

(08:43):
isn't Yeah, yeah, I've beendoing a rewatch and I've just finished series
eleven, so I'm going into resolutionnow. But it just meant that because
like yourself, there's an episode thatI've always missed, never watched again,
and I always jumped to certain areasand stuff like that. So I thought,
you know, I'll go all theway through before the sixtieth And it's
been. It's been an interesting process. I'll tell you that, I definite

(09:07):
I've reached some episodes that I founda new affection for and then some that
I just I just thought I notneeds at all. No, that's a
very and very intelligent answer. Actuallysort of yeah. I was like,
I was like, it's sort oflike a box standard question, I suppose,
and you've really like you've thought outof the that's an awful thought out

(09:28):
of the box with it. Yeah. So my next My next question then
is, as we were just talkingabout Doctor Who, is what actually made
you a Doctor Who fan in thefirst place. Oh, that's a very
nice question. So I am.I'm old enough to have been. I

(09:52):
was a fan before the show cameback. I don't want to make it
out of that that I'm only twentyfive, but I was was whether you
look at as being very fortunate orwhether you look at it as being a
curse. My granddad, who livednext door to my house growing up with
my parents, had loads of VHSas a doctor who just a cabinet full

(10:13):
of all those funky VHS logos,which hold a very special place in my
heart because it's such a nostalgia thingand I have no memory of not having
Doctor in my life. That's basicallyso what was my first episode? What
got me into it? The linesof blurry I remember. I can list

(10:33):
classic QWO episodes and go that mighthave been the first one, your spearheads
from Space, Paradise Towers, thetwo doctors, you know, I remember
pretty much watching one of each,every doctor except maybe Heartnell and Pert we
No, no, not Heart NolanTrout because they were black and white and
I was a kid that I grewup with, you know. But I've

(10:54):
obviously grown to love them as anadult because they birthed the show, not
only First Doctor, but First Regeneration. That's such an important part of the
story. So growing up with theVHS's, I know my granddad had not
just the covers, but also hehad something that he'd taped that were on
Telly that day. So sometimes I'dwatch I'd be watching one and then he'd

(11:16):
not realized or had forgotten to tapethe next one. So I sometimes I
didn't know high they finished for years, you know, until finally getting the
DVDs or watching them on BritBox andwhatnot. And then Dr Hu came back,
and I have vivid memories of mysister hiding in my dad's arms,
and you know, watching Rose forthe first time, and it was incredible,

(11:37):
it was amazing, And sadly,a lot of people I'm friends with,
a lot of people my age groupare no longer friend no longer fans
of Dot two at all, Butthey all have the same memory of where
they were when they watched Rose.Even my girlfriend was visiting her Nan at
the time, I think, andthey watched it at her NaN's. How
she's got very fond memories of that. I'm sure you're the same. You

(11:58):
might have fond memories of Rose forthe first time. Well, I'm a
little bit younger than you, SoI was did it come out two thousand
and five? On it? Iwas three, Okay, I'm just gonna
say so, I don't really well, I was, I sort of remember
little bits of Series one, butSerious two. I think there is definitely

(12:20):
where things. I remember being veryscared of Toby in Impossible Planet Stopped.
Never watched that episode for many years. Love and Monsters Wants the same thing.
Scared of the absorble off. Iwas scared of Peter Kay and I
remember just crying a lot during Doomsday. But as you were saying then about

(12:41):
how you had your your grandad's VHSis my granddad had my experience of Classic
Who for many years. Was oneepisode, the first part of Earthshock,
because there was a DVD release thatyou used to get in a paper,
you know, Yeah, So mygranddad bought that and went I went,
oh, I've got Doctor Who.And my mom was like, it's not

(13:03):
the Doctor Who You're think it is, though, and then I put it
on, and then obviously the siteit's the big cliffhanger and the cybermen turn
up and then boom, a cliffhanger, and then I didn't watch the next
episode for many, many years,and that was kind of the only taste
of Classic Who I had. Ido love the irony of the fact that
yours was a VHS and mine wasa DVD. Yeah, someone it was

(13:28):
the Internet was probably their first.Yeah, someone out there, and then
before you know it, twenty yearsdown the line, it will be someone
who was just putting implant in theirbrain and they're watching it through their head,
which, yeah, sure thing.It's like the announcement of the eye
Player episode. They're putting them onEyeplayer for somebody that will be there,
you know, that will be theirway in. To think that when I
was younger, maybe like if Iwas younger, but with the technology that

(13:54):
we have today, like Eyeplayer,I think that then I would probably stumble
across a bit more Classic Who earlierthan I did in terms of watching it
properly, I would. I would. I would say probably twenty twenty was
probably when I actually started watching episodes, maybe even maybe a bit earlier,
you know, really you know,actual episodes of Classic Who, especially like
Heartnell and Trouton. Yeah. Iremember with with my granddad in particular to

(14:20):
get the name of the episode,what's the two part? That's the end
of series for Once Stole Earth soStolen Earthfairs. Obviously, David starts to
regenerate who's gonna be the next Who'sgonna be the next doctor and sadly,
my granddad did pass away between thosetwo episodes. Oh no, I've always
got that memory in my head thatlike what we know, you know that

(14:41):
he didn't regenerate and yeah, MattSmith, Matt Smith, Capaldi, Jodi
and all this doctor knowledge is likehe was such a fan, such a
big fan, and it's mad andit's weird to think about that that in
the future I might be tuning into watch the forty fifth, hundredth Doctor
and then ah, I didn't getto see what happened next. But the
world works in I'm quite cynical inthe fact that that is sort of something

(15:07):
that I do sort of think about, you know, is go, like,
I lost my granted this year,and there's a very similar he wasn't,
you know, he wasn't a doctorwho fan, But I do think
there were things that he never gotto see happen, such such as my
job, because he knew. Aweird way it worked was that as I

(15:28):
passed my test, my driving test, which then allowed me to do my
job, and by passing that test, I was able to tell him and
I was able to go to thehospital and tell him about it, and
he did tell me to get overit, but he never knew that I
actually started my own stuff and Idid. It's sort of that sort of

(15:50):
idea of what happens, you know, how would they react to your life
beyond that point as well, notjust talking about you know, Doctor Who
and that. Yeah, no,totally I can agree. I my grandma
I also lost. We had justgot a new can. We probably had
the cat for like three weeks,and we'd just forgotten to sort of go

(16:11):
over and let her meet the cat, and she passed away. Like this
is small details that you kind ofjust forget to just pop poke your head
in, check in, just seehow people are and stuff like that.
But yeah, we're all mortal thatit's taken quite a dive. Yeah anyway,
Yes, But for me, Ithink that Doctor Who has always been

(16:37):
that sort of steady constant. Iguess where like in school there was Doctor
Who to watch. When I wasworking in my previous job, i'd finished
work quite late, I used to. I used to work in a pub,
so quite quite an isolated job inthe fact that you'd really spend your
time with the chefs that you workedwith, and then when you finished,
everyone else was just essentially asleep andyou know, waking up the next morning.

(17:02):
So then I had Doctor Who Ihad, I had big finish,
and that sort of element kept megoing. So it's always been that constant.
And so I think that as Iwas saying earlier about how I was
rewatching Doctor Who, I started thatin April when he passed away. I
don't know if it was particularly likebecause I feel, you know, because

(17:25):
I'm grieving, I'm going to dothat. But I think that it was
something that could occupy me a littlebit in the same way that these jobs
do, you know, doing thepodcast and things. You know. I
don't like being bored. Really,That's how I kind of describe myself is
that I don't like being bored.So that's why I do all these things.
So that's sort of how Doctor Whoaffected my life in some respects.

(17:47):
I have friends, you know,my best friend, for example, we
spoke and talked because of Doctor Whoat What elements has Doctor Who done to
affect your life? Oh? Mybest friend at secondary school was a massive
doc tor you fan. I thinkit's my only friend at secondary school.
Quite depressing, but dodw fan legendSam who obviously then went on to be

(18:11):
the doctor in my fan series.So oh right. Yes. In terms
of I try to keep D twoprivate with friends and family, I don't
particularly know why. I guess,you know, it's it's I think at
secondary school it was probably something thatwas judged, it was looked down upon,
and now as you're an adult,you know, like I said,

(18:33):
there's so many shows like Star Warsand Spider Man. It's so popular now
that actually it probably is completely fineto talk about dot who and most people.
I guess it's something that I keepprivate and secret, and then it
probably makes me look like I don'thave much going on. So people at
work are probably like, what youdo this weekend? And in my head
it's like I've got this Kingdom filmand I've got all these actors, I've

(18:55):
got this crew coming down, andI've put this location. Oh just just
play video games or you know,And they must think, Wow, Mark
doesn't have a life, he doesn'tknow his time, and I just got
this, like it's like a doublelife, I guess you could say.
But I I remember, very earlyon with crushes or even very early early

(19:15):
girlfriends, wanting to have that connectionwith DoD two with them. I remember
one I had when I was probablyabout eighteen, who had like tallest wallpaper.
Wow, yes, that is atick, that is what I want.
But wow. And then as Igot older, I was like,
actually, it's nice for them tohave their own thing they enjoy, my

(19:37):
own thing to enjoy, because youdon't want to merge them together. You
don't want to merge work with relationshipsand stuff like that. And and my
girlfriend now it's a massive Witcher fanor Lord of the Rings and stuff like
that. Not my cup of tea. I think against the shows. I'm
just not really familiar with them atall. And then I'll have Doctor Who
or Star Wars and we will overlap. Sometimes sometimes I'll make her watch The

(20:00):
Mandalorio and she'll absolutely hate it,and then I'll watch a Lord of the
Rings or a Witcher. But yeah, it's good to have a balance like
that, I think. And so, yeah, I guess Dr You in
life has affected me a lot.I've written a lot about dr especially at
UNI. Like I did my mydissertation, which is like your final thing
in third year. I did thata lot Doctor Who. So and I

(20:22):
was quite fortunate there was this oneteacher I'll never forget her. She was
amazing that throughout all of UNI,I didn't know she'd worked on Doctor Who.
Oh really, and so I'd alwayshad this band with her, always
joking, she always knew me.She always spopped me in a crowd.
And then when I found out she'dworked on to Who, I just couldn't
talk to her. I was like, I can't, I can't talk to

(20:45):
you. I'd be there, satat the table, I'd be really nervous,
just like you worked on to Who. She was a producer on Torch
would and I don't know if youknow the Attack of the Grass, red
Button, Minie ye gay thing sheproduced to that, So I was like,
and I had memories of playing thatin my living room with my dad
on repeat and it's like wow.So and she was very good in the

(21:08):
sense she had so many connections.So when I wanted to write a dissertation
on DOT two, she knew alot of Doctor producers. So once you
know one, they know someone,and then they know someone. And I
went from I went from her toPhilip Pinchcliffe. I managed to interview him
for my my UNI course. Hewas Oh, wow, du Ser of

(21:29):
Classic Who. So yeah yeah,Series twelve to It's the golden era,
I'd say Tom Baker's peak, youknow when Doctor Who was literally everywhere back
then, and that was an honorto speak to him. Clearly he was
another generation, you know. Tryingto do a zoom call with him was
a bit awkward, but once wegot there, I'll never forget that.

(21:51):
Yeah, that must that must havebeen amazing. I mean, I love
it when, like you said aboutearlier, how a lot then you things
that you sort of kept things hidden. It slightly your Doctor Who, and
so the nerds are now taken overthe world slightly, It's not it's now
more acceptable. I remember at school, I used to be told that,

(22:11):
like Doctor Here was like a kid'sprogram, you shouldn't watch it. Yeah,
and now you know, it doesn'treally matter. No one cares beyond
you know, the surface level anymore, you know, No, no one
cares about that surface level. AlthoughI am to have a partner that had

(22:32):
tardest warpaper just scared me a bit. Though wherever she is now, tirdest
warllpaper, There's more to a relationshipthan tardest warpaper, of course, I
think. Yeah, I remember atschool, it was around that period where
I've just joined secondary school and Idon't know why, but everyone, I
don't know if you can relate,but everyone changed. It was like over
the summer of primary school and secondaryschool, everyone was almost acting tougher or

(22:56):
cooler. They'd seen all the latesthorror films, or they'd seen all the
latest eighteen plus films. And you'vegot to keep in mind, we're only
like eleven, you're eleven and twelveyears old. And I remember they'd always
talk about I just saw this horrorfilm, and I'm not particularly good with
Gore, and they were all bondingover these sort of horror films that they'd
seen. It's like and then hecame in he stabbed her and blah blah
blah, this blah blah blah.And I wanted to sound reliable, so

(23:18):
I was like, yeah, Isaw this horror film the other day where
there was just this robot mask andit opened and there was a skull inside,
and they went that was doctor Who, And I was like, no,
it wasn't. It's the Padorca openswhen there's the it's when the cyberman
the helmet opened to the skull inthe middle. I was like, no,

(23:38):
no, it's not or who.They're like, yes, it's to
hear what are you talking about?And I was like, oh, whoop
to in what's the scariest thing I'veseen recently? That wasn't even that scary.
So you said about your your dissertation, then, didn't you can you

(23:59):
can you go into maybe like thetitle, I don't expect the full essay,
but it's really fun read. I'mjust curious because ye to think Like
at my school, I did mediain a levels and when I did,
they the idea. I could literallysit there and I wrote, like,
you write a PowerPoint and the firstone you do about film? So I

(24:22):
did? I did? I thoughtRagner Rock, I think, yeah,
I did. And then as wewent through you could sort of example they
loved examples and then you go andI remember writing something about and I was
like, I remember that they putyour dune in a tube station for series
twelve, and I was like,I can talk about that. I can

(24:44):
talk about, you know, themarketing of this and all of that.
And to think that then I couldwrite, you know, a dissertation in
the same way that I write essay, video essays, episode things. They're
probably not as higher standard is asa dissertation, but it's hard. I'll
tell you that I fail as wellto fill you in. We had it's

(25:07):
two different pieces of coursework. Thefirst was the pitch what you want to
do, and the second thing wasthe actual essay. And I don't want
to say the word failed, becausefailing is you didn't have it in.
I got a low mark on it, and I was like, this is
going to be really, really tough. But they gave good feedback, and
they gave constructive feedback, and itmade sense where I'd gone wrong. But

(25:27):
it's called the Producers of Doctor Who, easy title, and I looked at
it more from I got to interviewa lot of producers I think nine in
total, only one from Classic Who, though Philip Hinchcliffe, just simply because
no one else is alive, sadly, bars A. Lambert's gone, John

(25:48):
Nathan Turner's gone, and everyone inthe middle is gone. But to be
able to interview him was a lotof fun, and I just sort of
went through and I broke down,not necessarily every producer. But you talk
about the six these darle itt Mania, You talk about the seventies with Tom
Baker, you talk about the eightiesand why it started to drift off,
and then the revival and then whereit is in its current period, and

(26:10):
just sort of what each producer broughtto the table, like how did they
make it their own? You know, why did John Nathan Turner put a
question mark on every doctor that hewas in charge of? You know,
who knows? But that was kindof what it was about. Mainly just
getting kind of quotes from people whoare no longer with us, like Verity
finding stuff like that, or videoclips. But yeah, a lot of

(26:33):
fun. I haven't read it ina long time though, but it did
well, it got it got agreat grade. Oh good, Yeah you
said about video clips. Was thatin terms of like for reference or was
that Oh? Yes, because likeyou make a film or anything. Did
you know? It was mainly forlike if you quote someone and you put
it in paragraphs and then you putat the end of your essay that your

(26:56):
appendix. Oh god, this isall coming back to me. You have
your appendix and your references and youhave to make sure you do your Harvard
referencing and it's all correct and allthat lot. But yeah, it was
just you know, i'd find aninterview Verity she'd say, oh, I
did this because this, and thenI'd like, drag drop, copy paste,
you know, there it is,and there you go. But I

(27:18):
probably enjoyed the interviewing more. Theinterviewing was so fun because it was it
was fresh new knowledge. I didn'thave to go looking for it. I
could just be like, you're infront of me. I remember I remember
interviewing Philip Hinchcliffe and I my firstquestion to him was what got you into
Doctor Who? And he went thatthat's easy, and I was like,

(27:41):
oh, well, I'm going toask some hard question. In my head,
I was thinking if he thinks thisis easy, I'm going to ask
some tough questions. So I rememberasking, why do you think the show
wasn't good in the eighties? Whathappened? And that's not something you really
want to ask producer of Doctor Whoto then criticize a successor or a predecessor.
But he gave some honest answers andand you know, you know,
he's an adult about it and stufflike that. So I was like testing

(28:03):
the war with certain people. Whatcan I say? What can't I ask?
You know? Yeah, that's that'ssort of what I like about it.
The few things I like is thatwhen you do the interview, you're
kind of you're live. Then you'rejuggling your questions and trying to nego I
like that element, but it isa case of what can you get that
gets the best out of that person. But yeah, it must have been

(28:27):
quite a fun thing to do,especially for someone that's so prolific in terms
of their importance to the show.Yeah, that must been I remember just
I type my answer, so I'dsay, ask a question, he's talking
to your answer and he could hearme typing at one point and went,
what's that sound? And they're like, I'm just typing what you were saying,

(28:48):
you know, But bless him,I don't want to sound I'm talking
badly about it. It was starstruck. But at the same time it
was like, maybe don't be yourheroes or you know, like it wasn't
a bad interview at all. Infact, it was probably the best one
I did. I got to speakto Matt Stevens as well. Oh and
Nicki Wilson, who was paired.I never got to talk to Russell or

(29:11):
Chivnor or Muffat or anything like that, but just people who were very close
to them, people who who werein their bubble. So that was always
a lot of fun and also nothingwrong with the top top tier, but
a lot of people probably want totalk to them, so actually getting to
know, you know, there's somepeople who you might not even know their
job title, you might not evenknow they worked on Doctor Who, but

(29:32):
without them things would have fallen apast. Just the importance of and generational things
as well. It's interesting hearing howPhilip Hinchcliffe was a producer. He was
trying to stop people from doing strikesin the eighties and stuff like that compared
to now and how other producers tacklethings, and it's not just a producer,
it's a producer's assistant, and thena producer costume design and they all

(29:55):
kind of tear off. But hewas kind of the helm of it,
so to speak. Yeah, thatmust have been. I just like when
I was looking back, like sorry, when I was like going through the
box sets, the collection box sets, I find that very interesting looking back
in the stories about how they madethe show were sometimes more interesting than the

(30:18):
actual episodes. Yeah, yeah,no, I agree, Yeah, yeah,
I remember its viewing someone who isa producer of class. He was
amazing to talk to in the sensethat because John Nathan Turner wasn't alive,
I couldn't ask him why he foughtthe show got canceled, but I could
talk to someone who was a producerof a show that did get canceled because

(30:38):
Class wasn't renewed, so I couldmake parallels with stuff like that and so
on. But yeah, a lotof it's coming back to me. So
I've hadn't remembered this stuff for avery long time, probably missing, but
yeah, it was, it was, it was nice. Yeah, I'd
have to have a look at itbecause it does. It does fascinate me,
that sort of behind the scenes stuff. So finally, then, do

(31:00):
you want to talk about the beginningsof MB and Homeland? So what sort
of inspired you to first start makingfan films seventeen years ago? If you
can remember, yeah, yeah,ell, yeah, Well so I remember
every year, probably around Christmas.I don't know why, but my dad
made it almost a tradition to puton the films he made as a kid,

(31:26):
and they were he'd literally have toset up an old projector and find
a nice white wall, or bringa projector in and put it in the
living room. I remember my grandmawould always complain about it, but it
was something we did, and Iguess it's kind of something that's quite homely
if I think about it. It'ssomething that I think a lot of my
childhood about. And he would playthese things he made when he was a
kid in the seventies and as aseven year old, not realizing the difference

(31:52):
between a camera from the seventies whichhas shown film compared to digital ones or
your mobile phones, I remember askingif I could use his camera to make
my own films. I want tomake my own stuff. And he was
a bit reluctant to it because thisis an old camera. It's probably worth
quite a bit now, to befair, you know, it's shooting on
eight milimeters or whatever. So Iwas a bit burnt out. I was

(32:15):
a bit disappointed. I really wantto make my own films. And it
was at that point I found outmy next door neighbor Tom had got a
camera for his birthday, probably histhirteenth birthday, it's twelfth birthday or something
like that, and I literally saidto him, I said, should just
make our own doc two adventures.I didn't say fan film. I didn't

(32:37):
even know what that until I wentonto the internet. But I was like,
should just make our own DoD twoadventures and film it? And I
had, for some reason painted anold cupboard that my grandmother had. I
painted it blue. It was probablythe height of me then now not not
anymore. It's all down here.But yeah, we just we just started
filming, and I spoke to himthe other day actually in it. It

(32:59):
ended up being a short, soit's actually on the Instagram and on the
YouTube channel, but there's a shortthat says like what if Tom said no?
And I was thinking about that theother day. It's like I've spent
the last seventeen years making content andit all leads back to Tom, would
you like to make films? Andhe said yes? And what if he
didn't say yes, you said buggeroff? Or you know, like what

(33:19):
would have How old was it?Yeah? And it's like it goes to
show that we don't realize how weaffect people's lives, Like small things like
just answering a question yes or no, creates this chain of events. It's
very doctor who he in the sense, you know, like Father's Day she
saves her dad and the effects atthat cause. But it exists in the

(33:40):
real world, and I guess it'sa reason to be positive, to be
good, because we can change people'slives for the better, you know.
So that's where it started. Itwent from just being siblings acting, and
then I went to school and thefew people who would appear in it from

(34:00):
school did, And then I wentto college and then they'de appear, and
then I went to UNI and theyappeared, and it's sort it sort of
expanding and expanded expanded. I wouldn'tsay it stopped, but I kept track
of like how many people would joina year, and I think probably twenty
twenty two and twenty one was probablythe peak, whereas like twenty people appeared.
That's amazing. But now it's likeeveryone's graduated and they've all fanned out

(34:23):
and they've gone to Cardiff or inManchester or whatever. So it's not like
they're not picking up my calls.It's just like just too far away to
appear and stuff. So now it'smaybe smaller, and that's kind of what
a blip in time is. It'sjust about a crew about ten people,
but people really passionate and people whoreally wanted to make this the best thing
it could possibly be, yeah,because that was the thing that I found

(34:45):
probably the most interesting about your fanfilms and which wants fan films in general,
is that you have quite a biggroup of people, and if I
do that with my friends, forexample, I just don't see it working
out. I can just see ittakes quite a bond between them all for
it to work. But like likeyou said, I was going to ask

(35:07):
you about later on, it's like, how did you find the people that
you work with? And then howyou know, what if there's like issues
in terms of logistics of like whatif somebody needs to get the bus because
you know they can't drive, sothey have to get the bus down or
they live further away, And Istart, are there any stories linked to
sort of issues with cast? Andbecause even I've only done I've tried to

(35:32):
make Lego once when I was younger, and I've stopped doing that because I
think I just grew up a bitand Lego is a very difficult thing to
try and realize into animations exactly.So I started doing audio adventures about started
about two three years ago, writingand producing three stories, and it's just

(35:52):
taken us this long to get tothis stage. We've you know, we've
had casting issues where people can't doit, and then and you know,
these are just done, you knowa lot of them are done like this,
and sort of the juggling of thatI think is probably the worst,
worst process because it's more than justpointing and shooting. It's how do you
get the person there? You know? So yeah, definitely, yeah,

(36:15):
I mean that is a big questionbecause I feel like I can relate a
lot to you in the sense thatyou know, starting off in the early
days, Yeah, they're work castingissues. I remember around the twenty fourteen,
which is when we first started puttingit on YouTube, so we've made
content as kids. You can technicallycount it, you don't have to,
but we've had nine steady years ofbeing on YouTube technically since twenty fourteen.

(36:38):
And like I guess, if youlook at series two or a lot of
our early work, you'll see thatthere's a character that maybe appears in episode
four but wasn't in episode one,two and three, and is why And
it's like, well, we filmedthat first and then he dropped out,
and then we had to basically inthe previous episode pretend to pick him up.

(36:58):
Oh, there he is on boardend credits, so that it made
sense in the next one why hewas there, and it made things very
janky and very very annoying. ButI guess the more I've grown up,
I guess the more I've been associatedwith people who, first of all,
I try to make sure that theyknow before they get involved the commitment.

(37:21):
Like take Callum for example. It'slike, we're about like making series six.
Okay, this might take two yearsto make. You might attend fifty
plus filming days and you know,don't get me wrong. Always I'll let
you know two weeks in advance.Ideally four weeks in advance. Okay,
I've booked this location four tuesday.What's your rot? Like, oh,

(37:44):
I need to swap a shift,but yes, I'll be free, Okay,
goodew forew you know if for therecord, try not to book the
location before you know if the actoris free. But yeah, that's a
bad example. But yeah, butyes, early days, people would draw
and it would become difficult. Butthey were kids, and we were kids.

(38:05):
And as I got older, especiallygoing to UNI, like I mentioned
this massive influx around twenty twenty thatwas just simply because I'd gone from asking
friends or family or people at collegeto appear, and then it's a different
environment at UNI in the sense thatyou're surrounded by people who not only want
to be there unlike school where youhave to they want to be there,

(38:30):
they want to make a name forthemselves, they want a career, but
they're also just like you in thesense that they are so passionate about filmmaking.
And the influx of people who joinedI was very fortunate to be probably
the largest friend group in that year, which is saying something. The fact
that, like I said earlier,when you're at school, doctor Who is

(38:51):
nerdy or even gay, some peoplewould say like them. And then to
be the biggest friend group, andI wouldn't say all of them were Dodu
fans, but varying from Doctor Whoto science fiction to people who liked their
spirited away or anime or whatever.Like to be the the alpha males in
the group, but also be likethe nerdiest and the worst that talking to

(39:13):
with it, it's like, wow, that's weird. The tables have termed.
But the one thing I loved themost though, was there were people
who joined the group from UNI andthey'd either never seen doct to you,
or they just frankly didn't like it, but they still joined because they wanted
to make something. But they alsowanted to make it their own. So

(39:34):
instead of appealing to the fans appealingto nostalgia or a reference, Oh,
let's throw in a river soong referencethey'll love that. It's like, well,
actually I know very little about DoctorWho. I know the premise,
Yeah, I know what it's about, but I want to make it my
own. It's maybe why the channel. I wouldn't say the channel is not
popular. I guess it's maybe notas popular as some other DOCTU channels out

(39:55):
there, but it tries to beoriginal and that's maybe why people go all
there's films like Doctor Who, butthe story centers around I don't know's there's
an episode that talks a lot abouta terrorist attack. You know, people
might go, WHOA, that's notfamily friendly. Or there's one that we
meet Alan Schuring and it tackles homophobia, you know, and it's like that's

(40:17):
you know, I like Doctor Who, but WHOA, that's that's not the
Doctor Who I know. So it'sbeing experimental. It's we're not restricted about
the BBC that we can play aroundwith things, not trying to trigger or
offend people, but maybe having bolderstories, maybe darker stories. But and
that that was perfect. Don't getme wrong. People joined who loved Doctor
Who, and they were great,and they were passionate and they were hard

(40:38):
working. But having that mixture,and it also kind of breaks the ice
because as a kid, you're nervousto ask someone to help out in case
they don't like Doctor Who. Butnow I've got used to people saying I
hate Doctor Who. Come on board, you know, come on board anyway.
That's fine. It's like, youknow, and it made such a
portfolio for so many of them,and so many of them have gone on

(41:00):
to do such great things. Soyeah, yeah, I understand what you
mean in many respects because even thoughI'm not sort of aiming for a career
in sort of you know, beinga director or anything, I'm still this
is almost like there's a lot likea magic something that I want to I
feel when I watch Doctor Who oranother bit of you know, median films,

(41:22):
and I kind of want to replicatethat in the stuff that I make.
But at the same time, Idon't just want to nick episodes from
from other writers and yeah, youknow, things like that. So I
think there's I think you can payhomage, but you need to like add
a line to it. Yes,you know, like there's there's episodes where

(41:44):
we have autons in and obviously wecan't have done it without referencing the past
and stuff like that, but buthaving a bit of a spin on it,
like the one we did the Futureis plastic. It's not heavily hinted
in the episode, but it talksa lot about plastic surgery andysmorphia. And
there's one point the boyfriend of oneof the companions says, you could do

(42:04):
with some work. You know,you'd be better company if you've done some
work, and kind of really tryingto have an underline of you know,
plastic curury can be good, butalso what it can do to people and
the younger generation of people who mightlook up to that or be or be
be hurt by that. So yeah, so, but at the end of
the day, you also just wantto make a nice, fun doctor story
where you're running up the down corridorsbeing changed by dogs. Yes, I

(42:28):
love that. I love that.I think that's a great part of Doctor
Who and it's all about balance atthe end of the day. I mean,
my daydreams are basically, you know, running through corridors and sort of
you know, I remember, likewhen I was at school about Pe and
I used to sports day, andyou did a lot sitting around on sports
day because they had to go througheach line, so then you'd all run

(42:50):
a race, and it's I can'tremember stuff like that. Yeah, I
can't remember it, like how itran entirely, but just the idea that
you just do this like constant nextline, next line, likes night,
so you sitting and for some reasonwe had to rehearse it, so you're
sitting there, and I remember thinkingof it like a danger, like the
tardest, like appearing in the skyand like and so of those sort of

(43:10):
things may not make good D twoepisodes, but I think they could be
refined to make them more interesting.And then, you know, now sort
of I come up with ideas forstories and sort of bounce them off people
as I don't think I would havedone before, And a lot of it
basically stems from essentially a daydream,rush our thought or something like that.

(43:31):
Yeah, yeah, but I regularlyI'm not going to show you. But
on this phone, if I thinkof something, I put it in my
notes, you know, because there'salways stuff I'm thinking about. Just the
other day, I saw maybe fouror five people stood at traffic light,

(43:52):
and it was one of those trafficlights where if you don't push the button,
it will not change. It's notlike a free right. Yeah,
And they were all stood there,and they were all on their phones and
no one to push the barn.And I just remember I wrote it down
because I thought it'd be funny ifyou know, a person saw it on
their way to work, four peoplestood there, no one's to push the

(44:13):
barn, goes to work. Ninehour shift later, he's walking home and
it's pitch black and they're still there. Yeah, just like just random ship
like that. You just you justwrite it down because it's funny. That's
like, you know, that's avery good job. I can see that
being like an a good right filmalmost, you know, like Shoring of
the Dead kind of style. Iguess, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah. No. So you spokebriefly about sort of tackling harder issues that

(44:37):
you did within your episodes to Doctor, and I found that very interesting because
you've done. You've done a lotof stuff in seventeen years. You've you've
you've rewritten the Doctor's origin story.You've genocide. Yeah, you've had death,
You've had murder, like you say, you've had body dysmorphia. You
know, a lot of dark things, awful relationships and things like that,

(45:00):
and mental health issues. And Iwas gonna ask you was it daunting taking
on those elements, because I thinkit could be very It could be one
thing just to say I'm going towrite a story about, you know,
being depressed or anything like that,and then it's one thing to have that
subject matter, and then if youdon't do it right, it just comes
across. You can always tell whenthere's always something wrong with it, where

(45:22):
it just feels, Yeah, itjust feels disingenuous. Yeah, I think
it's Does that ever scare you alittle bit? Where you might get sort
of like a negative backlash to things. I know that you had a I'm
going to say negative backlash, butit wasn't really when you was it in
Series six or Series five when youhad a missing person's case sort of like

(45:45):
yes, and you sort of didthat effectively in real life and had posters
and a website and stuff like that. So is there anything that sort of
frightened you in that respect? Icould touch on that into points that The
first is if I know it's aserious scene, or you know you're filming

(46:05):
something that's very powerful and it needsto be done right. It's obviously about
setting the mood, you know,like we have a laugh on set.
We're sometimes more famous for our bloopersthan our episodes, but there are moments
like there's an episode in a seriesfive spoilers if you haven't seen it,
skip to whenever in this video,but there's a wedding scene and someone gets

(46:28):
stabbed and it's a very sad,very powerful scene. I think a tear
runs down the doctor's eye, whichSam never cries so for that was a
miracle and it was it was sucha powerful moment. I just remember there
being calmness on set, or justgiving the actors time and just not rushing
them. So but you can alsodo that and have backlash. I think
that is one of our most dislikedepisodes. No clue why, but it

(46:52):
is YouTube disabled dislikes, so noone knows that I can see that there's
it's very rare, there's ever abalance of like fifty to fifty with dislikes,
you get the odd one or two. It's life. But that one
maybe has like twelve and it's maybegot fifty likes, and it's maybe more
like a seventy five twenty five.But due to that decision, then due

(47:15):
to that decision, I don't thinkyou presume anyway. Yeah, it's very
difficult in the sense that we don'tlive in a society where when people don't
like something, sometimes they just don'tcomment it. Sometimes people comment a lot,
and sly. I hate this becausemy YouTube comments are set up in
a way that if you use acertain swear word or something that's racist or

(47:37):
homophobic, it will get reviewed andI then look at it. Sometimes people
you swear to say they like something, this was fucking great. You know,
fine, I approve that, butI never take away comments where they
are genuine constructive criticisms. You cango read them. They're everywhere. There's
probably one on every other video orsomething like that. I guess the only

(47:59):
christ and I really had with somepeople, like you said, going back
to the Missing Person, which waspart of my first year at UNI,
I actually came up with that beforeworking on series six, or at least
it was very early days of seriessix, and I think, yeah,
some people did kind of going.They felt hurt or they felt offended,
that they felt like they'd been deceived. I remember feeling quite bad the number

(48:22):
of people who like, even whenI shared the poster around it does say
at the bottom, this is afilm poster, but people would still go,
I hope they find her, Ihope everything's okay, And I'm like,
maybe maybe they haven't read what's there? Yeah, And I tried to
riddle the website with bloopers there wasor not not bloopers of things that yeah,

(48:45):
little jokes and yeah I watched thevideo, Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah. You had little jokes everywhereabout about Yeah, like there's a blogger
or people could put their memories ofher and someone talks about her shoe size
or what something like that. Iremember her having size fourteen feet. It's
like, you know, but it'sa great way at testing who are your

(49:07):
fans are loyal and who of yourfans are because some people, this is
what I always noticed with if Iupload an episode that's thirty minutes long and
it just went live seven o'clock.Sometimes someone would comment and minute in and
go, great episode, loved it, it was brilliant, And I'm like,
well, you haven't watched it.It's been you got twenty nine minutes

(49:27):
left, so you really get aload who's watching, who's not, and
who's commenting hoping you click on theirchannel and check out their stuff, and
those that are actually loyal fans.So I basically just took it as if
you genuinely took offense with this,then I'm sorry, but you were missing
something. You were missing something thatmaybe was obvious or maybe wasn't as obvious
as I could have made it.Yeah. So yeah, I mean that

(49:47):
was basically it. Yeah. Myso when I when I watched it,
I thought my opinion of that ofthat was that it's incredibly Uh. I
want to use a better word thanballsy, but that's all I can think
of, but it's it requires youknow a lot of a person to one
go to that level of detail,but then to do something that I think

(50:10):
can be quite a trigger scenario forpeople. I understand, I understand why
you did it. I do thinkit's like a really interesting way of doing
it. I do you think thatI I, he's something I wouldn't have
done personally, but yeah, yeah, I just think it was. It
was very clever though for it tobe done. And I think if you

(50:30):
can't make, if you can't trythings and then for them not to come
out the way that you wanted themto, that's kind of the point of
you know, YouTube and the pointof sort of making all those films and
everything like that, was that youare learning a craft in many respects.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, AndI remember it was just it's called transmedia

(50:50):
storytelling, the kind of the elementof what it is and just learning about
it in UNI. I was like, you know, just a book,
a Star Wars book is transmit thestorytelling because there's the films, there's the
games, there's the books, there'sthe toys, and yeah, I think
I probably took the missing person ideaprobably a lot from like the fake what
a White website from Breaking Bad.It's like the or the fake Clive website

(51:15):
from Doctor Who, where it's stillup you can still go check it out.
It too, is riddled with jokes. I think there's one that says
he I saw the doctory cable andhe took my doughnut out my hand or
something something round about that, youknow, and just wanted to tell It's
a great way just to reach abigger audience. You could even say me
being on this podcast is transit becausethere's an audience I reached as an audience
you reach, you know, andit kind of it sways and roundabouts and

(51:39):
stuff. That's sort of why Ilove doing it in many respects because this
is my sort of outlet to goto sort of branch out. I guess
in many respects, I'm not youknow, nowadays, I'm not fussed about
how well the videos do, butfrom sort of like a personal connection in

(51:59):
order to to people and sort ofgetting different insights and things like that.
As I talked about, I findthat sort of the rewarding part nowadays rather
than how many people are watching orI love positive comments and you know,
things like that. Obviously you knowthat I think they're important part of you

(52:20):
know, there's nothing more rewarding thanmaking a video, uploading it and then
people also agree with you telling youthat, you know, the thing you
made was was funny and sort ofyou know that it was up there with
some certain companies like Big Finish thatmake audio drums. So that always been

(52:42):
quite interesting to me. I likewhat that feels like. I don't know
what that feels like. I wasgoing to ask. So obviously we talked
about that element, the fact thatit also takes a lot of confidence,
because you strike me as a veryconfident per some thank you, you know,
not just because obviously you're tackling thesebig issues and Doctor has never really

(53:07):
shied away from that. But yeah, I also find it quite interesting that
for me personally, I would neverfilm in public. I would like I
mean, I probably would now,but if it was on my back to
do it, I wouldn't. Iwouldn't approach it because I would be too

(53:28):
self conscious of the things that arearound me. So have you had any
sort of weird interactions in that respect? Oh, yes, I remember one
occasion. Before I say any further, I want to make it clear that
when we do film, we're coveredby I think or public liability insurance,
so we always make sure we runit by the film office or whatever film

(53:50):
office we are, so for filmingin Bristore or Cardiff or something, we
run it by them. So wealways make sure we do things safely and
accordingly and it's always just a goodplug that those who might be watching this
and go, I want to makemy own doctu stuff in a few years
time down the line. Make sureyou get your insurance because the budget goes
higher. But have you ever haveyou ever filmed where you shouldn't be filming?

(54:15):
Has that happened before? Probably inthe early days. I guess the
rules is a fine line in thesense that if it's less than six people,
you do not need to let thefilm office know at all. So
if you go and film down yourlocal woods near your house and you're filming
with the six of you, doesn'tmatter. And as a kid, there

(54:36):
probably could have been ten or twentyof us, and we didn't tell them
because it's a gray area filming indoors, getting places out, renting venues,
a blipping time has a beautiful,glorious room that looks like it's from Buckingham
Palace or something like that. Weobviously let them know right sneaking they're going
on their break. Okay, we'vegot fishing. But yeah, I'm trying

(55:00):
to remember what the start of yourquestion was. Oh, yeah, of
course. So there was one timewe were filming in the city center of
Bath. It's the scene where it'sin series five. It's when it's like
Callum's first episode, so that's seriesso that's episode four. So we decided
to have him regenerate halfway for aseries because it's been a long time since

(55:22):
Docks Who's done that. And Iremember pulling up, unloading the car and
assembling a police box in under likefifteen minutes. We try to set a
record every time at how quickly wecan set that police box up. But
there were a group of people inhoodies who were there, who were just
chilling, who were minding their business, and it's a public space and obviously

(55:42):
we're not going to tell them togo. We're going to tell them and
enjoy themselves and just have fun.But these people, I try to sometimes
think what it must have been liketo be them, because you're there chilling,
You live in your life. Youknow, you're being cool whatever,
you're smoking your cigar or whatever.A bunch of people show up put a
police box next to you, Yeare like what happened? Like what just
happened. I've had people come upto me, especially when filming in some

(56:07):
quarries or some sort of disused areas. They'll sometimes be walkers, people aught
their dogs and stuff. I've hadpeople say are you littering? Are you?
Are you dumping? People think thatwe've put the police box there and
we're going to go away. No, we're not dumping this here. We
once filmed at Royal Crescents, quitefamous area of Bath. We assembled a

(56:30):
police box on its lawn again,all with permission and everything, and then
someone who lives in Royal Crescent camedown and actually spoke to us and was
like what's happening, Like what isthis? And he had just dropped his
son off at school and it signsa massive fan of doctor and wish is
some wish to have been there.So he took some foes of the police

(56:50):
box and stuff and he went onabout his day. I can't think of
any No one's come up to usand been aggressive. No one's been violent,
no one's yelled at us. Wemight be filming in someone's playing a
stereo loud. That could be ashame, but you wait for them to
because it can feel sound. Butother than that, it's not a big
deal. I've never had anyone die. I've never had anyone glad we haven't.

(57:15):
Glad you haven't take that one offthem. No one's hurt themselves,
well, minor things that you mightscratch your arm or something like that,
but no limbs lost, no death. Yeah no, because when I was
when I was quite young, myneighbor and I and my sister filmed well,

(57:37):
we try to film a Doctor Whoepisode called the Lone Cyberman, which
I wrote on two thousand and twocomputers, so it was old at the
time anyway, and we used thelike a bush as the tardis. Of
course, it's just the bush atthe front and that's all we used.

(57:58):
And initially it was like we're gonnabuild a tartists, but that never came
into fluition. So we're just usingthe bush and we had little costumes on.
And we had issues with with lightwith dog walkers because we live right
by a park and then people comepast, and it was never that they
were sort of going, what areyou guys up to? Because no one
really cares what you're up to.But I think that there's an element of

(58:24):
I think it goes back to theidea of going they're a massive nerve.
They're filming Doctor Who outside, likeyou know. I think nowadays, if
I was to do it and sortof devote myself to it a little bit,
you'd have the full proper costume andthen to you know, to almost
like to get on a train,for example, in a doctor Who costume,
like in cosplay, sort of fearssense fears in me anyway, you

(58:47):
know. Yeah, to be fair, Yeah, yeah, I yah.
I'm still trying to think back toany times anyone has ever come up or
been aggressive for anything like that.I don't think they have. I mean
what we typically try to if yourcrew you wear high visits. If you're
in costume, you wear your costume. So once people kind of see a
crew not a huge budget, butmaybe a camera that has a gimbare,

(59:13):
some nice light setup, then theyagain, they just leave you be.
I've had people ask for our YouTubechannel, which is always a fun thing,
especially when I've had people comment sayingI'm the guy who bumped into you
down that tunnel and I'm like,oh my god, yeah it's you,
and he's like I love your channel, blah blah blah. That's always a
lot of fun. Yeah. Interms of being nervous about filming in public,

(59:37):
I think it's preparing myself for it. It's getting things ready. I
remember one time, for example,we were just in the lane of my
house, like it's like a dirttrack where all the houses are, and
just being like we staged it asif we were on stage, like you're
going to stand there, you're goingto say the line here, You're going
to do this, And we rehearsedit maybe five or six times so that

(59:59):
when we filmed and we had thathour of window before the sunset, there
were no mistakes going. There aretimes I go in not prepared and I
suffer for it. I feel likesomething like Series six probably did affect my
health. Probably. I was talkingto a friend about this, who I
lived with at the time, andwe were talking about my original order from

(01:00:22):
McDonald's. What my typical order wouldbe. Normally, normally you get burger,
drink and chips or something, butI was known for having like the
five burger roulette or something. Ihad a funny name something like that,
something really weird, or like I'deat a large pizza to myself, or
on one time, me and himboth got the biggest bucket from KFC each

(01:00:44):
It was like forty pounds or somethinglike that the banqueting bar we ate and
we ate it together, and Iwas thinking back to it because I can't.
I could barely eat half a pizza. Now I was looking back at
it, I was going, man, I must have been depressed. And
he turned to me and went,yeah, yeah, you were what you
were? I was like, really, I didn't because you don't think about
it. But it's the stress offilming days, you know, just nine

(01:01:07):
hour long shifts. I also,I maybe would go tunnel vision and I
wouldn't think about food, so otherpeople might have breaks to eat. But
then I'm pacing going walking film nextand I probably did some bad things to
myself, like like body wise,I'm not drinking none. But yeah,
it's kind of why maybe something likedoing a series seven is daunting because I

(01:01:31):
barely crawled through the other side ofseries six, you know, you know
it was. It's like earlier whenI was talking about how sort of the
organization to do one of these feelslike quite a daunting thing in my mind
with my job as well. Butthen you know, to go out and
actually film as well, do Ithink we'll definitely take it out of you.
And you know, if you're doingdays like that, you know,

(01:01:52):
nine hour well how I mean yourfilming day could be anything really, yeah,
but been twelve nine meantimes it canbe two days back to back,
obviously going to bed, but yeah, filming one day you go to Bay
waiting this moe and filming. Nowwhat I suppose this is due to my
lack of experience. I think Ithink a lot of that fear comes from
a lack of experience, not actuallybeing filming one. Yeah, but when

(01:02:15):
it comes to sort of things likethe weather, like as we were talking
before about you know, I've gotissues with the weather in my job.
It must be pretty awful if you'retrying to film something, especially if you're
filming it over two days, andyou've had all the people booked in,
the location booked in, and thenit rains on your second day and or
the weather's even different, then continuitywise, things go out the window,

(01:02:36):
don't they. You know? Yeah, it's the same way like I remember
doing videos in the in the frontgarden as I was talking about earlier,
and you notice that when you startedfilming things, you know, it'd be
much lighter. Then as it gotdarker, you'd end up with like footage
that's barely usable because there wasn't anythingon it totally. Yeah, yeah,

(01:02:58):
a lot of that with my earlystuff as well. In the same so,
I remember one time there's a scenewhere they're running and it's autumn.
Oh no, no, it's it'ssummer. And then when they run from
the other side, it's winter becauseall the leaves have vanished. So yeah,
weather is just unpredictable. It wasone of my questions I asked to
most Doctor producers. I was like, how do you deal with weather?

(01:03:20):
And one of them who'd worked onPlanet of the Dead when they go out
to I think it's Saudi Arabia andthey film with the sand and there was
a sand storm at the time.Just they lost the dates to that,
and that's just what you do.That's life with a blip in time.
We have been very fortunate. It'sprimarily an indoors episode. There's some very
grand, beautiful rooms that we filmin, but there's a scene that does

(01:03:42):
take place in a field, andwe were just very lucky. It was
probably I think it was the hottestday of the year, just by chance,
and I think I got a terriblesunburn that I might still be rubbing
off because it was only only filmingwrapped I think a month ago, so
it's still still fresh in our mindsthat heat wave, didn't we towards?
Yeah, I think it was thetenth of September or something like that.

(01:04:06):
Oh yes, yeah, I rememberthat weekend quite well because that was the
week my sister moved to university andthe Uni holes was so incredibly warm.
We were on a desperate hunt fora fan like it was, so it
was absolutely boiling. Yeah. Butyou know, like I said, it
goes back to that day because withthat lack of experience and things like that,

(01:04:27):
what do you do when you're ina high pressured environment anyway, and
then you then add on things thatyou can't control, like the weather.
I mean I get quite panicky inmy job now about tomorrow, for example.
I know I'm fairly okay, butI am sitting there going tomorrow it's
going to rain all day. Imight not be able to work tomorrow.

(01:04:47):
So of those elements to then havethat with with doctor as well, would
would would terrify me. Yeah,And I kind of relate in a lot
in the sense that, like weall get it, it's that door feeling
where like take this call for example, I could have woken up this morning
and gone, I'm on cool tonight. I don't really feel like it.

(01:05:08):
Sorry Dan, I've got cold.I'm sorry I can't come on bye bye,
And we get that feeling, weget that stage fright almost oh yes,
I do now still yeah, Imean I can relate a lot.
It's work tomorrow, but you know, yeah, the I think there's like
so there's this apprehension that I like. Partly, I like it, you

(01:05:29):
know when I do this because thisis a thrill in my podcast. I'm
sitting there going, I'm doing theinterviewing. I know the questions from you.
From your perspective, you don't knowwhat you may be asked, so
there's that element of fear to you. But then you know, for me,
I get I got back at likehalf six from work, and in

(01:05:49):
that time it's well, I'm gonnahave some tea because otherwise I'm gonna be
sitting here with my with my rumbling. I've got to sort of the lights
out that have to hope that therecording works, because I've had times before
when I've done four podcasts and thenit all to disappear. So that you
know, those fears, but they'reall part of the apprehension. And as

(01:06:11):
I was talking about earlier, youknow, sometimes you end filming and you
just like, at the minute,you can see by the way that my
hands are moving around and various thingsthat I'm sort of buzzed. I'm full
of energy because I'm doing something likethis, and you know, that's probably
gonna last with me for most ofthe evening because I'm going to talk very
fast and rambly. I'd like toactually just segue this in because thinking about

(01:06:32):
talking about fear and stuff like that, I I just remember because you mentioned
Union Halls. There's a scene inseries six where Dylan goes home to spend
some time alone with a plastic friendof his. Okay, okay, it's

(01:06:53):
playing on the autom element, andwe basically play on the fact that he
has a block that is an automnand I remember being in I must have
been wearing underwear, it must havebeen, but I think that and a
dressing gown. And it's a veryfunny scene. It's very comedic. It
did get a lot of backlash becauseagain, is this doctor not you know

(01:07:14):
Rose in the Eid Rose, there'sa fra away line where eccleston says something
like everything's going to come to life, every shot with a dummy, everything
plastic, and Rose says every boobjob, you know, as a joke,
and that kind of maybe made methink, although it be funny if
a black dog came to life andtried to kill Dylan. But I'm filming
that wearing very few clothes in adressing gown, pretending to fight a black

(01:07:36):
dog, acting as if they're hittingme. But I'm hitting myself. And
it's my first year at UNI,and a lot of beautiful women live there,
you know, a lot a lotof people that I'd maybe like to
go clumbing with, and you know, something might lead to another, and
I'm there fighting myself to death witha black dog. Why I did that

(01:07:58):
and why I wasn't scared doing that, I do not know, because I'm
not here sitting like I have nofear and I'm not afraid. It's terrified
at heights. I don't like gore. As I've previously mentioned about horror films.
You know, why did I dothat? And that might be a
question I just can't answer for you, And I don't know. I guess
just doing things and going fuck itlife. I think I'm going to see
them again. The tunnel thing reallybecause sometimes I filmed something in my friend's

(01:08:26):
house for a joke, and itwas just that I quote dots here on
a daily basis, and in myhead it really worked out and I could
run into the room and shouted dotwho quote basically yeah, and it's not
you know, it's not a completelybut it's a nice little snippet just to
break up the you know, thewords I'm saying. Yeah. And when
I did that, I went froman outside of his perspective, this is

(01:08:48):
really weird, like I am.I was like, if you push the
sofa forward and you sit there withthe phone like that, and then I
run into the room shout something thatyou don't get the reference to, and
then you know, I thought,there's actually many things that to me sounded
like that sort of element, anda lot of people have said that when
I sort of did the podcast,this sort of different version of myself comes

(01:09:12):
out, and it's I think alot of it is the excitement, and
I think a lot of it issort of that television like Showtime stage fright
thing as well. I suppose that'skind of what carried you through that as
well. Yeah, I can relatea lot in the sense that recently,
because this was such a secret,a blip in time that ten people knew,
family didn't know, friends didn't know, and I was hanging out with

(01:09:33):
a friend and I do probably likeyou just sometimes to shout out around a
Dot two quote, but I Iwas quoting the episode. It's in the
trailer, so it's not really aspoiler, but there's a line that goes,
why do you cling to this worldso dearly? Doctor? And I
just said that out loud in frontof him. He doesn't know what I'm
about. He doesn't even know I'mworking on anything. And he turned him
and went what And I went,I'm just quoting a Dot two episode.

(01:09:57):
He doesn't know doctor that well,so I can get away with so it's
like, okay, fine, Butthen I'm like, Jesus, why did
I do that? You know thatprobably looked very weird, And he doesn't
know what I want about. Soa couple of months down the line,
he'll know what I'm talking about,but for now, it's just like okay,
oh, dear, Yeah, yeah, Like like I said before,
we started, I said, it'sit's sort of I think my friends have
got quite used to it the wayI you know, the way I talk

(01:10:20):
and I talk to myself. Italk to myself quite a lot, and
that tends to be when the doctorquotes come out, and I sort of
do silly voices to myself sometimes andrealize I'm doing them out loud. So
it's you know that my friends maybe listening right now, so hello,
I may be currently in the roomas well. I do hope I'm not

(01:10:41):
wearing this jumper, because that hashappened many times before. Yeah, I
have, I have gone I'm wearingthe same clothes, but I made sure
change the same thing. Well it'sit's it's cold. I've only got like
three jumpers, so I improvise andwear the same clothes over and over again.
Yeah. Yeah, so people likeTom Scott always wear a red shirt,

(01:11:04):
so you could make it your own, make it my my trademark,
yes exactly. Yeah, not verygood in a heat wave, but yeah,
so they now send me tiktoks andstuff like that, and so they
sort of they I love them forthe fact that they're sort of coming into
the world a little bit and they'reaccepting and almost trying to learn elements.

(01:11:29):
So yeah, they're taking an interestin it. And they've watched Doctor Who
with me as part of the podcastnow and Luke, who was on last
month, never really had an experiencewith Doctor but still wanted to be part
of this to join me, tosee what it was like and you know,
to sort of go into this aspectof my life, you know,

(01:11:51):
which is quite interesting. So definitely, as you were talking then about sort
of things that or scenes that werea little bit maybe not the retrospect scary
to do, is there. Whatdo you think has been your biggest filming
challenge in terms of behind the cameraor of course in front of it.
Oh. Probably I think filming witha dalek is harder than you think.

(01:12:19):
Oh really, yeah, because likeyou'll watch the episode and go, oh
cool, darlk, that's great.But like I remember, we filmed a
quarry once and not only was itthe dalek, but it was also the
tardest and it's not a quarry thatsuddenly is road accessible, So you end
up carrying everything probably back and forthbecause there's probably six of you, so

(01:12:43):
you probably spend an hour just gettingthings there, and then a quarry is
not the best place to move adalek around, so you're trying to find
the flattest area to wheel it on. Yeah, and we're very fortunate.
The quarry just happened to have thisone surface, this strip that's probably the
length of this room. That's likeperfect, like like a row. Just
I don't know why it was there, what it was used for before,

(01:13:04):
but it had a purpose. Andso we could move the dark up and
down. Couldn't go left and right, but it could go up and down.
And then if we had to gosomewhere else to tell the story,
it just had to stay where itwas. It just had to be stationary.
He could wiggle its arms to moveits head. It's so amazing filming
with it. It's so amazing watchingit when it was made. I've never

(01:13:28):
actually really revealed how it was madeby. There was a guy on eBay
who I can plug. I can'tremember his name, but I can I
can find it in a couple ofdays time or so. But he he
made the dalekt for us, butcertain things like he didn't wire it up
for us. But because my dad'san lectural engineer, he could do stuff
like that, So having the lightsand there was actually a physical microphone that
depending on how loud you spoken toit, depending on how loud the lights

(01:13:51):
went. Just small things like thatwere just very nostoutic, just really fun
things like that. I'd like tosay I have good memory with that,
Darlk. I think I do,but I can't watch it like a fan
would and be like that's so cool. I watch it and go that day
was That day was awful? Youknow, that day was so hard to

(01:14:13):
film. Looks beautiful, sounds beautiful. You know, you could tell me
this was from the show, andI believe you, But actually being there
and filming and the stress, thatwas always very tough. But probably the
best memory, you know, anda real milestone. You can kind of
see why we went out on afifteen year anniversary with a darkin Yeah,
because it was like, yeah,we've completed Doctor Who Goodbye. It's a

(01:14:35):
right of passage, isn't it usinga daralek at some stage. And it
must have been fun for you aswell, because obviously being a fan,
you sitting there and you go,I get to film a dalek. That's
my own doctor you know, thisis my own universe, and that's our
darlik. You know, I don'tthink about it, but it's kind of
like playing with action figures. Yeah, you think about it like that,

(01:14:58):
but it's kind of like that ina sense that like, you know,
here's my custom Callum figure and he'sgoing to meet a dal like blah blah
blah blah. There's a thing inThe Five Ish Doctors where Steven Moffat has
like a bunch of doctor figures onthe table and stuff like that. But
yeah, I am very proud ofthe channel. I will not lie with
the stress of series six. Therewas a year and a half I didn't

(01:15:19):
think about it. It was probablymainly due to third year at UNI.
I had other priorities and I didother things that I was proud of.
I worked on some documentaries for UNI. I worked on some I worked for
a football team. I made apromo video for them. I had a
lot of fun doing other stuff,and I left the channel not entirely dormant,
but the odd short film would goup that we'd make at UNI,

(01:15:41):
and that was about it. Andthen just going back and rewatching some of
them brought a real, real nostalgia, real feel for it again. And
I just saw a friend the otherday. He didn't. He worked on
series six but wasn't involved in ablip in time. I think forty seven
people worked on Serius six. There'sonly ten in a blip in time,

(01:16:03):
so and the half of them I'venever worked with before. So there's a
very small number of people that haveever worked on the channel before. And
he said when he saw the trailer, him and his friend who had also
been in it, then stayed uptill one am, just watching old stuff,
just being like, wow, thiswas incredible. We did this.
I remember that, and I getthat every now and again. I'll get

(01:16:25):
a message from a friend that goes, I've just been down memory lane.
It's like, do you remember whenthis happened? You know? I do
it myself. I messaged a composerwho worked on series six. It's been
a year since i'd messaged him,but I went, I've just been listening
to your score. Thank you.Just wow. You know. I do
sometimes step back and I go so, I don't I'm not the doctor,

(01:16:47):
I don't film it, I don'treally act in it. What do I
do? I sometimes think that aboutim being homeland I go back, go
what did I do again? Iguess I'm putting everything together and then I
let them do their thing. Butyeah, like so many doctor fan channels
out there, the actor who starsas the doctor who rights it also runs

(01:17:11):
it. Yes, I think that'swhat makes MB and Homeland unique. It's
like, Okay, here's a crewof twenty people. You go out and
film. I mean, I've nevermissed a film. I'm always there,
but I don't have to be there. You go out of film. I
trust to you, you know whatyou're doing, and then like glee and
excitement at looking all of the rushesand all the footage when it comes back
in. Yeah, so what youmove beautifully into my next question In fact,

(01:17:32):
okay, so when you finish astory, like what are your feelings
towards it? Because I asked thismostly from my perspective of when I finished
something, it's like, thank Godthat's finished, because it does sometimes take
you know, once I finished thisaudio series, there will be that element
of finally, that's like, that'sthat finish, that's wrapped off that section

(01:17:56):
and onto the next thing. Whatevermade that that may be. And I
was obviously spoken a little bit aboutit about it and sort of going,
you know, that element of burnoutand that sort of stress level. Yeah,
So do you do you find itworth it? You know in the
end, you know, because thatis the question, Yeah, is it?
Is it worth it? What awhat a big question for you?

(01:18:17):
There? Is it worth here?I would say, I'll just touch on
this very smallly, but it's worthit for portfolio work in the sense,
oh, you're a UNI student andyou made stuff on the side. That's
great. That's that's that small segmentgone. In terms of how I feel
after I finished an episode, thereis a I wouldn't say resentment, but

(01:18:41):
there is a sense of what you'resaying, thank God, it's over.
I often find, and I alwayssay this to people who are fans of
my work, I'm incredibly jealous ofyou in the sense that you are sitting
down and you're not knowing what's coming, but I know it inside and out.
Yeah. I I could probably sithere and quote in order every line

(01:19:02):
in a blipping time, because I'vespent the last month veediting it. I
could just say every single line.It probably spoilers, and it's like I
will never be able to relate tothe fans in the sense that even when
I rewatch it after a year,I start having memories of being on set.
I never rewatch it and go,I have no idea what's coming because

(01:19:25):
because I made it. Yeah,I'm probably sounding quite simple. So it's
the something I feel about about thestuff I make, though, is that
that you like, you drive forthat feeling that you have when you watch
Dot two, but you can't becauseyou're too close to it, you know,
emotionally, you know, listening toit over and over again and things
like that, and you think andthen you sort of because then you're in

(01:19:46):
that mind frame of like criticism oflike it's like when your own voice,
like when you record something and you'rein your own voice, and then you
go that that sort of sounds off, that sounds like I'm cut anything.
I was like, no, Ihaven't. That's my thought. That's how
I talk. Yeah, I finda lot is sometimes I'll have an idea,
it'll be in my head and I'llwrite on the script, but there'll

(01:20:09):
be key things I've just forgotten notto write down. I know in my
head, oh that this character's themaster, for example, I know that,
but maybe I didn't hint it enough, so the fans then go,
I didn't. No one said hewas the Master, so I don't know
that. And then so and it'skind of why I'm gonna I'm gonna praise

(01:20:32):
Tom Skinner here. He's the guywho I've been making this contact since I
was a child. Everyone needs aTom Skinner because showing someone your work and
just being like, so I havethis idea of writting it down and you
just hand it. I just handhim stuff and he go, this doesn't
make sense. And he was brutal, and he was honest, lovely guy

(01:20:53):
by the way, very very strongChristian background, not a bad bone in
his body, you know. Buthe is someone who can give very good
criticism in the sense like what's thischaracter's motive. It's like, ask,
great, the Master's back, becausethat will bringing the audience, that'll bring
the fans because he's a recognizable name. But why is he back? And
why is he doing that? Andhe's very good at basically suggesting things.

(01:21:17):
But he's also he doesn't tell youto put it in the script, because
there's the whole element of show.Don't tell you don't want to be like,
oh my god, my character theMaster's back because of that thing that
happened two episodes ago. It's like, you can know the Master's motives but
leave it out the script. Aslong as you know his motives, you
might want to bring it up ina later episode because you might want to

(01:21:40):
have mystery, you might want tobuild this suspense. Why I'm using the
Master as an example, but yeah, like why is the Master back?
Why are the Daleks doing this?You don't have to write down every little
detail, but that's kind of somethingthat was perfect about Tom Skinners, just
having that someone to be to criticize, to give feedback. And I think
everyone needs a friend like that.So Tom Skinner, if you're listening wherever

(01:22:02):
you are, you know he livesin Bristol, So it's a flat direction.
Let's get up. Let me bringhim. Yeah. I have a
similar dynamic with my co host coproducer. So we've been friends since I
think, you know, primary school. And it's a case of I think
that it's almost like I'm the straightman. He's the kind of like everything

(01:22:27):
like all at once, sort ofbit of chaos that kind of changes the
script and adds different ideas to things, and a lot of jokes are things
that Will's come up with. Ican't claim all of them, but I'd
like to say that I came upwith some and then Will kind of comes
in and maybe improvises a few moreand sort of changes the lines around a
little bit. So it kind ofplays to each other's strengths in that respect.

(01:22:49):
Yeah, definitely, Yeah, yeah, I like that just having someone
just again I say Tom Skinner asan example, but having someone a friend,
someone close, and someone who's honest. You know. Yes, it's
definitely that the fans. The fansin the nicest way, will praise some
will just praise anything I release.People are very excited for a blipping time
to come out, which is great. But when they watch it, are

(01:23:12):
they going to be I don't know. I hope they will be. Obviously,
I'm not saying there's a big plottwist. Yeah, it's suddenly you
know, something terrible, But youknow, it's those people who are genuine.
They're giving feedback because they care andthey want to see you be the
best version of yourself, you know. Yeah. Yeah, So obviously I
haven't spoken a lot about it interms of it itself in depth, but

(01:23:35):
a blip in time. Then howdid it come about? Because it's also,
in many respects a crossover episode betweenyour self and Fractured Universe. Yes,
yes, so so. Like Isaid, there's about a year and
a half. I just didn't lookat the channel. I just ignored it.
And then going down memory lane,a lot of nostalgia, seeing a

(01:23:56):
lot of good memories. And Iremember at the time, I'm Daniel had
often hinted on Instagram like you knowthat sometimes there's like Q and a's where
send me in a question, I'llanswer it. And one of them he'd
put up was who would you want? Someone had asked him who do you
want to collab with? Who wouldit be? And he said, Mbi
and her nad. I love theirwork, love to a cllab with them.

(01:24:17):
That'd be great. Around about Januarythis year minded my business, you
know, I'd mentioned to my girlfriendat the time, like I'd be great
if we did doctor Who again.You know, it would be so much
fun. But what what would wedo? I don't know. And then
one day she just sort of ploppeda script in front of my face and
was like, I've written this,you know, I've put Daniel in mind,

(01:24:40):
but it doesn't have to be him. You could take him out and
put Sam's doctor or another doctor fromanother doctor who timeline and she said,
you can do whatever you want withthis. You don't have to make it.
But I just because she's a creativewriting master's degree student, so she's
a graduate now, so we're quitethe power cup with the sense I like
to produce, she to write.But for the longest she's never appeared in

(01:25:02):
Mby and Handland ever, and it'sbeen a role. It's been a rule
of mind for the longest time.But you never really collide relationships with with
your hobby or your dot two stuff. Because I mentioned the girl with the
Tardest wallpaper, Well, when shecame into my life, I looking back,
I bamboozled her with like, youcan appear in this episode and you

(01:25:23):
can write this episode, and longstory short, she's not with me anymore,
so don't do that. So it'scoming up to the free year mark
with me and Gigi, and it'slike she plops a script down in front
of my face, and I'm like, I've always been hesitant about collaborating with
stuff like that, but but Iwas like, Okay, let's go with
it. Hopefully I don't live toregret it, or else that little clip

(01:25:44):
will age poorly. There will bea long time. Yeah, that's very
witty. So then I got oncall with Daniel. He was one hundred
percent down with it. And that'skind of where it's spiraled out. I
mean, like I said, tenmonths ago January, so we spent about
eight of those months pre production,getting cast, getting locations, refining the

(01:26:10):
script. It did bug me onsome of the filming days. People were
still going, I don't think thisline makes sense, and it's like we
spent eight months planning this four daysfilming. Believe it or not. Wow,
that flew by took three weeks.I remember it being one week we
had one filming day, then therewere two in one week, and then
there was one at the end.So it had a nice kind of one

(01:26:31):
to one and then filming wrapped.And then since the sixteenth of September,
which is when we wrapped, soa month and two days, we have
just been we've been editing and Ican probably say on cool now again,
this won't go up for a coupleof days, but as of today,
the eighteenth of October, we've justdone the picture lock, which is film
terminology for the picture is done,still needs color grading, and now we

(01:26:57):
move on to sound. So yeah, it's further along than some people might
think. Some people might have seenthe trailer and gone, oh, they've
just started making something. Now we'vefilmed it, we've wrapped a cast of
all gone home. Well, there'sthere's quite a few interesting questions. I've
got a lot. Yeah, thefirst but I'm much the same. The
first is you said about sort ofdoing a picture lock, So at what

(01:27:21):
stage is the episode now? Soyou say without sound? Is that without
music and sound effects? And sothat to me that is like you're falling
behind. I don't know how longthe episode is, but like in my
mind, I don't start like releasingtrailers until like I know the date,

(01:27:42):
I know it's coming out. Yeah, you know, I would say,
we've probably maybe not cut it short, but a whole month to color.
One person will color grade, oneperson will do the sound design. I
can understand if it was just you, you'd probably be like, I've got
a month to do all this.But having different people do different things,
it's not mbying Homeland's cashphrase, butit might as well be. It's not

(01:28:04):
what you know, it's who youknow. That's basically the motto I live
by. So I've been the personto do the picture lock so that's kind
of where my skills lie. Ilike producing, but I'm also very good
at putting clips on a timeline.CGI shots are all done by Daniel.
He is a legend. Some ofthe shots are incredible. Some of them
I only had sent through to meabout within the last week, so they

(01:28:27):
didn't make the trailer, but ohwell, they're a nice surprise and people
will see them when they come out. And then the color grades going to
Tom Ford, who was our cinematographer. He did the trailer's color grade,
so I trust him. I thinkhe's going to do a great job.
And at the moment, I amthe sound designist, but I also do
have someone composing who's worked on theChannel before, so I don't have to
worry about music. And you mentionedrun time. At the moment, it's

(01:28:51):
about fifteen minutes, which is interestingbecause I refer to this as a mini
episode. But I was going throughthe channel earlier today just before calling you,
and Series six's shortest episode is seventeenminutes. It's longest this thirty one.
It's shortest this seventeen, so itkind of borders on a half episode

(01:29:13):
more than a mini episode. Likeif you look at series seven, like
Official Doctor Who, they did likesome mini episodes like a pong ye stand.
I think there was one with theDoctor and Clara as a child on
a suit. Yeah, yeah theydid. They did prequels, if I
remember for that's it. Yeah,series was it? Seriously, this is
the I always remember the one fromuh the opener, the series opener with

(01:29:35):
the President's phone bit and this.Yeah, each one has got like a
few like maybe like a four minuteprequel to it. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, And I don't want peopleto think that it was like that.
I don't get me wrong. WhenI first thought about this, I thought
it probably would be that. AndI remember when Gigi was kind of working
on the script, I kind ofsaid, if you are going to do
anything, think about maybe like fiveto ten pages, nothing too long.

(01:29:58):
And then when she presented like atwenty page script, I was like,
okay, oh dear, But wemanaged to rap it. We actually get
it done in four days, whichis incredible, so a whole month.
A month. Today, the episodegoes up two weeks to color grade,
two weeks to sound design, andthen two weeks to reflect. Show it
to the group, what works,what doesn't? Okay, go away,

(01:30:20):
show it to the group, Doit again, rinse and repeat, rint,
some repeating till you're happy. So, yeah, I can understand what
you mean where you say the pictureblock's a bit late. Like if this
was official Doctor Who and the sixtiethwas about to come out and they said
to you, yeah, Pitchlocks finished, you'd be like, yeah, this
we're in big trouble. But fifteenminutes, you know, Like it's short,

(01:30:43):
it's sweet, it's got a greatstory. I think it's doable.
I hope it's doable. Well,it's like you say, when you've got
a team like that, when youhave people behind you. See, I'm
a bit of a control freak.I think sometime where I can't say,
you know, I don't it's notI suppose I don't trust somebody enough where
you know, if you want somethingto do it, do it yourself.

(01:31:04):
So it's like I'm doing the sounddesign and the music and everything like that,
and I think that sometimes that's sortof my disadvantage, where then you're
going, I don't know anything aboutmusic, for example, I can't compose,
you know, cutting cutting music verytricky. Yeah, and it's all
just sort of like that learning curve. But if you can focus on each

(01:31:26):
other's strengths and obviously yours is youknow, sort of like the producing the
shot lock and the shot lock,yeah, and things like that picture lock
that's the worst. Yeah, yeah, sort of that element. And obviously
it's it's quite interesting that you saythat, because I was going to ask
you about, in terms of theshooting of it, what that production was

(01:31:47):
like, because I Daniel does notlive in the same city as you,
doesn't he no, easily, helives quite far away in Ireland. I
thought he did, Yeah, andI was wondering, sort of in that
respect, how did you film it? Did he come over to you?
Or and yeah, you know,it's quite a commit it is. It's

(01:32:11):
quite an interesting story. So thescript was originally written in mind that he
would meet us in the flesh,and the fact that I started the sentence
with that you can probably tell whatthe ending is. But he sadly could
not come over. It was.He was originally all for it. He
had family that are not too faraway from where we live. So that's
actually it was a plus side,but due to some personal reasons won't get

(01:32:32):
into and again, I don't knowmuch about myself because it's it's his business.
But he was unable to come down. So the story then ended up
where it is. All of hisstuffs done on green screen. I despise
green screen, but only because I'mnot very good at it, right,

(01:32:53):
Yeah, and that's and that's kindof why. When when he said I'm
sorry, I can't come down.However, I will edit every single CG
I shot, I was like,okay, I'm happy with that. And
like I said earlier, he's donesome incredible stuff. I've told you it's
screen screen, but when you watchit, I challenge you to spot what

(01:33:14):
screen screen was some of his stuff. I spoke to him just the other
day. I said, I forgotthat was screen screen. I forgot.
I genuinely thought you were in thatroom or whatever, because I would have
presumed as such for something like this. I even I think, I mean,
some stuff you can obviously just filmin Ireland over filming where you are.
Yeah, but you know, Ithink there's a shot where there's some

(01:33:36):
feet walking. Obviously that's just butthose elements kind of tricked me into thinking
that it was filmed together. Soin terms of the location filming for that
for the story then, so howdid it work? So you said it
was a four day shoot across acouple of weeks across by yeah, over

(01:33:56):
three weeks. Yeah, so yousaid you had that sort of that beautiful
room, and you know, howlong did you have that? Four and
sort of you know, how muchdid you? How would you how are
you able to spread your time betweenthat amount? Yeah? Sure, well
I guess it all primarily started withthe pre production, making sure that we
got the locations first, making surewe got the cast. Not a single

(01:34:21):
member of the supporting cast I've everworked with before, so Callum is the
only face you will recognize. Everyoneelse is new, which is always a
lot of fun. And yeah,so the beautiful room, the banqueting room
as it's called. We were veryfortunate we had that nine till five,
So with that for eight hours,and I think we had four pages throughout

(01:34:44):
the whole day, clean plane,plain sailing. And that's the one thing
that was bad about Series six waslike there were days, no joke,
same time period nine till five ornine till six we did like fifteen pages
or twenty pages. Yeah, god, this is is horrible, you know.
And it was like, okay,we filmed that, let's move on
to the next thing. Well,don't you want to get a second one

(01:35:04):
or a backup. We don't havetime. But with this episode in particular,
and I think it's why it looksbeautiful. Tom fall If cinematographer,
here's his biggest critic. He hateshis work. He always complains about it.
We just went through the picture lock. I showed it to him on
call and he just was like,oh hate all these shots awful And I'm

(01:35:27):
like, we're talking about it beautifulor amazing. But that is what makes
him such a legend, is thefact that he's constantly trying to improve himself.
And I think once you feel likeyou know everything, you stop learning.
So for him, he is he'sthe perfect man in the That's how
I summed him ford up with.So to give him a massive room to
spend four pages for nine hours,eight hours to do whatever he wants.

(01:35:53):
We have no joke about three hoursand thirty minutes on the cutting room floor
of just alternative shots, not notdelateted scenes or cut lines or anything,
you know that's the odd line that'scut just for pacing. But we did
so many alternatives of the same scenethat theoretically you could probably make this episode
two or three times again using alternativetakes if you wanted to. I don't

(01:36:17):
know, I'm not gonna do.I'll give it to someone else to do,
but it probably wouldn't be as good. And I'd like to hope we
have picked the best shots for this. But it's interesting. It's interesting to
think about it in that sense.And don't get me wrong, out of
those three and a half hours,probably like half of them are probably bloopers
or someone missed the line, orthere's a continuity and chair and shot,

(01:36:39):
you know, stuff like that,things that that happened. That's that's actually
watching one of your bloopers the otherday. And then Sibodly goes across there's
a microphone writing for the time isyeah. But I was it sort of
daunting going back to applicate to thatsort of Doctor Who universe, because once
you did the interaction active story thatended serious was it series six? The

(01:37:05):
pick your ending? Yes? Didyou feel like that? That was then
put to bed? Completely before youwent or was that little It's like Russy
Davis says, you never really finishedwith Doctor Who. You're always sort of
working on it. Yeah, i'dsay I was always thinking of ideas and
I yeah, I I won't lie. I know for a fact, like

(01:37:28):
I said, with series six,some of it was rushed. Some of
it we really took our time.But I know those endings were rushed.
And for the fact that a companiondies in either of them, depending on
which one you pick, there's notreally much sorrow with it. I don't
know any fan but left going.I was blubbering. You know, I
can't believe Dylan's dead. I don'tbelieve Isabella said so. For me,
I felt that there was some unfinishedbusiness. And I won't go into too

(01:37:50):
much detail about a blip in time. And it's and it's not ninety percent
of Boo who Dylan's Dead or Boowho Isabella's Dead? But it obviously gets
mentioned. It's obviously like fresh inhis mind. He's just come straight from
those adventures. I mean, Idon't know if anyone spotted it, but
in the trailer there are glasses onthe console. You know, it's not

(01:38:13):
David Tennant's glass. These are Dylan'sglasses, you know, these are He's
sorrow, He's sad, he's missingthese people. So it's kind of just
kind of tying up some loose ends, maybe humanizing the doctor Moore. And
in terms of coming back to it, there were days with series six,

(01:38:35):
like I said, where health,my own health or filming days, or
something went wrong and I had toit's all about problem solving. There was
one time we showed up to alocation that we had booked, we'd confirmed,
we had actors coming from all overthe place, but no one told
the security guard to you wouldn't letus in. And it's like that is
an immediate like everything's going fine,brick wall, and you have to work

(01:38:58):
out how how you resolve this andit's a miracle that that got resolved.
In the end, everything went fineand we filmed and there wasn't an issue
I think because we spent eight monthspre production on this project of blipping time.
When we filmed, there was nota single hiccup, not a single
hiccup like did an actor maybe showup twenty minutes late? Who cares?

(01:39:23):
You know? Everything else went fine, you know, so yeah, it
kind of made me hungry for more. I won't lie. I finished this
and gone, I could probably makea mini episode every year for the rest
of my life. And I hadfun with this. You know, this
was fun and maybe that's what Seriessix was missing was it was fun at
times, but there were times whereit was like I was losing my hair

(01:39:46):
or pulling my hair out, youknow. So with this, it was
like, Wow, that was satisfying. That was fun. I met new
people. I networked, so Igot people's contacts. I got to meet
new people. And I've left feelingvery happy with this story as well,
in the sense that sometimes Series sixepisodes were like there's a good idea in

(01:40:10):
this, but it falls flat inthe beginning or at the end, or
it's rushed up, it's wrapped uptoo quickly. With this, I love
my Unclenall is a guy called Grahamwho has appeared on the Channel. I
think he's played Rassalon or a coupleof characters here and there. But he
is a big book lover. Heknows a lot of authors, quite a
lot of famous authors, and heis the biggest critic of my channel or

(01:40:36):
of episodes. He can sometimes bea bit quiet about it, and it's
only a month or two after theepisode goes up. He goes, yeah,
I didn't really like that part,and it's oh, he could have
said this ages ago, but hegave this story his seal of approval.
He went, this is an incrediblestory. So that's my way of basically
saying, Okay, we've got goldhere. You know, this is something

(01:40:59):
that people were going to be veryexcited about. Yeah, I will definitely
be watching on the eighteenth when itis released, if it goes up,
if you finish the ad. Yeah, I find it interesting in the fact
that now you mention it when Ithink back to what I've seen a series
six and I think, you know, some of those shoots, if I

(01:41:20):
was tackling and then myself, youknow, the wedding scene for example,
I would feel like that would bethat's such a difficult thing to shoot because
you know, if you've got location, for example, that has a tight
time constraint and you're trying to getthrough, as you said, like twenty
pages, you'd really struggle, andwhen it comes to something like a BLIPINTI

(01:41:41):
I think that you know to takethat moment to sort of step back and
to to plan your script, toorganize everything in place, I think always
lends into a lot more of anexciting, pleasant experience for you, especially
when you've filmed it. Yeah.Yeah, And one thing I do like
is just setting myself like little goals. It's like, like I said,

(01:42:05):
all the supporting casts and new people, but they didn't need to be I
could have got Graham to play Churchillor put me in a wig or something
or a board cap or you know. And the locations apart from the titles
interior, which everyone knows, everylocation we've never filmed out before. But
I could have filmed it in afield that I have filmed in a hundred

(01:42:27):
different times before. But it's likethere's little goals you set yourself, and
that's kind of maybe where the satisfactioncomes from. It's like, wow,
you know, this is you know, like ten years ago when I started
making YouTube videos, I remember filmingin the field just down from my house
and I thought that was like gold, you know, I was like,
wow, I've never done this before. And then ten years later it's like,

(01:42:49):
Okay, now we're still filming withinthe same area, like we're still
film in bath but it's like,Oh, there's that building that I've walked
past every day for the last fouryears on the way to work, and
it's beautiful, it's got a greatinterior. Why don't I just ring them?
Why don't I just pop them anemail? And it's as simple as
that, really, you know,Yeah, I think there's there's an awful

(01:43:13):
lot of admiration they have for youfor the fact that you're doing that,
you know, beyond just going youknow, I think I've sort of chosen
the easy way in the fact thatI'm just grolled to do it on audio,
like I can just do it thatway. I do think that's very
hard, and it's something I've neverI think I think it's harder than visuals
because my lecturer at nied one ofthem. I remember him saying, you

(01:43:35):
can get away with a camera beingslightly out of focus, or you can
get away with a camera having aslight Dutch tilt or whatever. But if
there's a glitch in the sound,everyone knows yes. And so I've never
bothered to attempt what you're doing.So I've spoken to people who do audio
books in the past. I admirewhat you're doing. I could never do

(01:43:56):
what you're doing. It's why domusic is like the bane of my life
in many respects. I mean,even now episode episode one's out. Episode
one was finished, it came outin July. An Episode three is mostly
finished, so i've sort of I'vefinished it in December. It's episode two
that's the challenge that needs a lotof work to it, because a part

(01:44:18):
of the issue is that when wewrote the scripts we were two years younger,
and now we're two years older.We're going, actually, I could
do this way better, and thenwe're coming up with different ideas, and
then you know, everything keeps sortof changing. And so with episode one,
you know, like you say,there's that you're listening back to it
and you're going But even now thatit's finished, I'm of the mind of

(01:44:42):
that can't quite like there's something slightlyoff about it. And I think it's
because it is my own. Sowe have we have learned quite a lot
today, haven't we. We've learneda lot. You know. Dot two
wallpaper is not the foundations for agood relationship. Yeah, don't data just
for doctor wal Before I let yougo, Have you got any further projects

(01:45:08):
in coming either in terms of doctor. Who anything that you're excited to talk
about for the channel, but yourown personal development as you know, a
filmmaker, etc. What an interestingquestion they are, like, I'm just
about to start. I think it'sfunny enough. It's the day clip and
time goes up. I'm helping afriend with his short film. I forget

(01:45:32):
the name of it. Got thescript written down somewhere on my computer,
but I'm primarily helping as an assistanteditor. So if I can think of
the name or anything, I canalways give him a shout out, giveim
a plug. There are always smallthings. I know. My friend Lewis
is working on a short film he'svery passionate about, and it's really nice.
Kind of since UNI, we've alljust been so driven on finding work

(01:45:54):
that we've actually forgot to be creative, so it's so great. My friend
Ollie's also he's coming to me withshort form ideas. Even Tom who's the
cameraman for this. Tom Ford,he just said to me recently, is
like he's trying to get a directorwho he knew from UNI to help out,
and he wants me to produce it. So there's all these great little
things too early to fully put apin in them in terms of more mbient

(01:46:18):
Homeland, which might be the questionyou might be alluded to, or more
people you might want to be interestedin. I said it earlier, like
I said, this minipisode was somuch fun, I could do it again
so easily. So I would probablysay for people out there who are keen
or curious to know if there's morebeen Homeland content coming, I would say

(01:46:42):
more mini episodes. Maybe. I'mvery passionate on the number six because it's
sixty years adopted who at the moment, and the idea of maybe doing six
mini episodes would be something quite fun. Whether or not they'd be able to
be released in time for the sixtyIf they they might fall within a year,
so they might be coming out aroundthis time next year maybe, But

(01:47:04):
that's something I would like to do. And also like Series six was such
a daunting task that Series seven isnowhere in the future that I can see,
you know, even if I evenif tomorrow I was like, let's
make it, it's going to bea year of pre production or something like
that. And Series six took twoyears to make, so this would probably

(01:47:28):
take even longer. So for peopleout there, I don't want them to
go, oh, I'm being Homeland'snot making anything anymore unsubscribed by you know,
I don't want people to think thatthere's never going to be a Series
seven. There could be, youknow, if I win the lottery tomorrow
or something, I would just makefad films all my life. But I
would love to do more mini episodes, So that would probably be where we're

(01:47:50):
leading to, you know. Andtypically a series like Series five, like
Series six would have six episodes,so doing mini episodes that, like I
said, fifteen minutes is kind ofa half episode. So if there were
more half episodes that were the samenumber of Series five or Series six,
then it's not actually too bad andit's still a decent amount of content,

(01:48:11):
you know. So we're not talkinghour long things, but between the fifteen
to twenty mark, so that's somethingthat you know might happen, it might
not, but but unhopeful that somethingnew will happen. Yeah. Well,
I understand where you're covering the factthat when once you've done something like that
that it's taken up so much time, you don't want to just do it
again. So I understand obviously whyyou didn't want to do a seventh series,

(01:48:33):
especially one A lot of people want. A lot of people everyone's always
like series seven. You know,yeah, I think I think since I've
actually started to produce stuff, Ithink you do get a bit of a
understanding for why directors and various thingslike that. You know, like The
Office I think is a prime examplewhere they at the end of their third

(01:48:55):
series, maybe even less than thatforty to hours two series, they did
that and they went, we'll putit to rest. Now, that's that's
it. It was a quite agrueling writing process, and I'm sure you
know, creating the show is tricky, and as much as they loved it,
it was tricky to to you know, it was that chapter of their
life and then the book closed onit. And that's kind of how I

(01:49:17):
feel about a lot of the olderprojects that I've done, is that their
time passed and therefore they closed.That's not saying that, you know,
for you you know, you're justgoing to stop or anything like that.
I'll always be making something, butdr Who might not be the chapter.
Its form is going to change.I mean, you've done quite a lot
of short films over the last year. Yeah, as well, unique stuff
yeah, which has been which hasbeen a lot of fun. And like

(01:49:40):
I said, I've got notes onmy phone. There's always ideas, there's
always this and that, and yeah, you can kind of relate a lot
with filmmakers, like take Christopher Nolanfor example. He'll make an amazing film,
brilliant, it will go out,but we're probably not going to hear
from him for another five years.And that's just how it is. But
then when he drops it, it'sit's great or or not in yeah,

(01:50:05):
and Iva was great, but nottell it, you know. So there's
things like that. So yeah,I don't think I'm going anywhere. And
I similar to you. In thepast, I have interviewed people who I've
been fans of. I've been oncalls with people. There's a guy I
forget his name. I think it'sChris Hoyle or something like that, but

(01:50:26):
he made a bunch of Doctor fanfilms in the nineties and he's still being
interviewed like this now. So eventhough I might cease to make Doctor Who
content like he did, there's goingto be someone in ten years time who's
like, I just came across yourchannel. I'd love to interview you get
to know you and that's that's justthat's gonna happen. There's probably the biggest
curse I've laid upon myself. I'llbe fucking seventy. We like, I

(01:50:50):
want to interview you about this fanfilm you made sixty years ago when series
seven question Mark. But yeah,it's a blessing and yeah, it's just
nice to be a part of thecommunity, you know, yes, definitely,
yeah, And the Internet has justchanged everything like that for people like

(01:51:11):
you. Look at like Nicholas Briggsand how he started off making stuff in
the nineties and even Mark Gatis didstuff and they became the generation that made
Doctor Who, and now we haveon just just look on YouTube. Just
look at big fan film channels,look at big Doctor Who channels that are
presenters or passionate art people. Theyare the next generation that are going to

(01:51:32):
lead Doctor Who. And as excitedas I am that Russell's coming back,
I think he knows that I thinkhe's coming back and going I'm paving the
way for that generation. I'm gonnaump it as much as possible. And
then it's like here you go earlythirty year olds to forty year olds who
grew up with my stuff. Yeah, I think, and I think the

(01:51:54):
rising start at the minute that's comingout of sort of this new area I
think will probably be Emily Cook andwe're not just with big finish box sets
but now sort of working into theinto the series and Dominic g Martin as
well for similar aspects. Yeah,yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah,
I'd love to speak to him atsummer stage. He's very I've spoken

(01:52:15):
to I've met once at Comic Con, but I messaged him once and said,
oh, do you want to makea voice so a voice of a
voice over? Cameo, oh it'slate then, and then he's very kind.
He's very nice, very generous,So I don't I don't see that
being an issue, so I saygo for it. Yeah, yeah,
something something to go for in thefuture. Well yeah, so thank you

(01:52:38):
very much for joining me today.I do hope you had a good conversation
about dogs who and yeah, relivingthings I suppose as well. Yeah,
all the trauma, yeah, notall of it good. But obviously the
film of Blipping Time will be outon the eighteenth, which I think is
a Saturday, isn't it thirteen daysaway? After this episode of the podcast

(01:53:00):
is released if you're listening to iton release day. I was just going
out checking out your massive back catalogof episodes as well. It's something that
I've slowly started going through. Ithink I've watched bits of Series six and
maybe a few a Series five,and I'm going to go back and have
a look and I try and tellin a bit further because you have to
series four, right, so newaudiences start with series four. We kind

(01:53:24):
of do like Peter Capaldi did withthe pilot quite literally fresh start. You
don't necessarily need to know what's happenedpreviously. Yeah. Yeah, that's my
advice to anything. Do those twoseries. That's what twelve episodes love.
Yeah, tie you over till tillthe sixtieth or perhaps even series fourteen.

(01:53:45):
Yeah yeah, I mean it's sortof like that. I love the canon
aspect as well, you know,to that sort of stuff, is that
there's so much freedom of like asandbox. Yeah. So if you want
to check out the podcast on variousdifferent platforms you can. We were on
Spotify, We're on deezer SoundCloud forsome reason. We're all over the place
and I don't even remember all ofthe names, but I don't need to

(01:54:08):
because they're all in the description belowin the link tree, so if you'd
like to go and check that out, and you can very nice your links
mark me down in the description below, of course, so were mine,
and until next time, thank youvery much for for joining me, and goodbye.

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