Hi everybody, this is a Tales from Davidstown supplementary episode with me, producer, director
Cal and...
Me, executive producer Julia. Let's just call it producer chat. It's a producer chat.
Is that going to be the thing going forward? Have we inadvertently christened ourselves
another project within the TFD project?
The producer chat.
Okay. It is the 28th of January 2025 already and if you've been following TFD you will
know that we are about to release season one of Tales from Davidstown, the audio series,
to the wider world. Which is exciting.
Very exciting. So you will be able to listen to the audio show on... now I have to get
this right. Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube and hopefully soon iTunes as well.
Yeah, maybe. We're still working on that one because that isn't an easier one to do, weirdly
enough. It takes more effort and money, which is annoying. But certainly those three and
maybe some other ones, smaller ones later on. But those are the main ones we're covering
just because they're the biggest players in the field, so to speak. And we shall go from
there. I know there's probably like 20 different streamers out there by now.
So many now.
We don't need to do all those.
Let's just stick with the main ones.
Okay. So I suppose I wanted just to sit here and just chat for a short time. This isn't
going to be one of our usual jobs where it's an hour long, I don't think. So I'm kind of
timing this to a point. But I kind of wanted to do this chat with Jules for the benefit
of you guys listening to this. Just so we covered a few kind of questions and maybe
we covered some extra bits as well as to the change in plan with TFD and how we're approaching
the production, the marketing, where it's being played.
And also give some new context for hopefully our new listeners.
Yes.
Because if they listen to the first three episodes, which they will be able to do soon,
I don't think it fully reflects where we have gone with Tales from David's Town in the last
year.
Yeah. Okay. So it's worth bearing in mind for any new listeners is when we started TFD,
the first few episodes, I mean, most of the first season, in fact, we produced back in
2023. So first off, these episodes are already a year and a half old. They haven't been anywhere
else except on Patreon because that's where we started the whole project for our paying
residents there to listen to it. Also, like with any series, I think that you develop,
and we kind of did this a little bit ad hoc, we spent a few episodes finding our feet with
it.
Absolutely.
As in what it was going to be. Like we knew it was going to be about a female werewolf,
Emily, Emily Hargreaves, the character. But we didn't really know much more than that.
So the challenge was very simply, let's create a pilot episode where we have a character
describing themselves turning into a werewolf for the first time with the sound effects
and all the rest of it. And then see if anyone goes, oh, that's interesting. And that was
literally the premise for this thing.
Just us to pick one of the most visual genres out there to make an audio show.
Yes. But you've got all the soundscapes to work with, which was why we thought that this
thing had legs to some degree. Anyway, so we went ahead and produced an eight minute
pilot, which is essentially a single scene really with Danny Shepherd, who plays Emily
throughout the whole show so far, just to give it a go and see what happens. And the
reception was really good.
When we thought, okay, let's, we can maybe look at making a series out of this. We wrote
a couple more episodes with how, which had a similar kind of vibe as in she's telling
like she's telling another story from an inner monologue sort of thing. And again, she turns
into a whelf and very quickly we realised that this would get boring really, really
quickly because there's not really a lot you can do story wise with that. I don't think.
No. And I remember I had the conversation with the Weller and one of our, in our official
BTS podcast, which will be coming out later next month, I imagine, where I basically sort
of said it was going to, I was worried it was going to turn into like that, the seventies
version of the Incredible Hulk. I don't know if you ever saw that Jules.
No, I didn't see that. But let me guess he turned into Hulk.
Yeah, of course he did. Yeah, because he's the Incredible Hulk. But it was like, you
didn't, he was the only character there other than this one guy, I think who was like a
reporter who was like following him or something like that, trying to expose him or something
or other. There was no other regular characters that I remember. And I just thought, yeah,
that's kind of, yeah, it's going to get boring real fast. We realised that really quickly.
So very, it's a very niche audience as well. Yeah, yeah. But I think, you know, outside
of the werewolf side of things, which again, you like, you said Jules, it's, it's a super
visual, normally a super visual kind of genre or sub genre to follow without a bunch of
good characters. I think I just, I was, I think certainly it would have run out of steam
almost immediately. So we made the decision to start creating a wider world. That meant
turning this town, David's town into something a little bit more, adding more characters
that are again, more than meets the eye. Nothing to do with transformers. Sorry. Also playing
with the symbolism of the werewolf. I've always found that was quite interesting in terms
of taking that motive of transformation and discovering power within you, discovering
strength within you. And that can relate to very different circumstances. So even if you're
not a fan of the werewolf genre, or you're not a fan necessarily of the supernatural,
the characters are so relatable and deeply rooted in human experience that the supernatural
is just an element that we play with to make their experience even more extreme.
That's right. So we didn't just want supernatural for supernatural sakes and then there's nothing
else to get invested in. Exactly. Everything has to be about fundamentally a sort of human
experience, whether it be loss, whether it be transformation, whether it be discovering
your true self or whatever themes we work with.
And if you look at the best supernatural shows, they all do that very well.
I think if you look at any of the best shows, you need good characters to get behind and
good characters with good conflicts. And because we've got a really fun bunch of characters
that all have their own kind of agendas pretty much.
And we're putting them for a lot.
Yeah, we should do. And that will continue. So that's a little bit of background about
season one. As we sort of progressed through season one, I think by the time we'd got to
episode nine, we were sort of already at the stage of thinking, okay, the story's moving
in a direction. We just need to think about how many episodes we're going to do for season
one and where we want to kind of wrap things up before we decide about continuing.
And things were things were looking okay as far as the self-funding nature of the project
has been on Patreon. We've not been paying ourselves loads of money and things like that.
We have actually all the money we've made, every single penny we've made from this project
has gone straight back into the project. And if you're wondering what possible costs go
into producing a series like this, well, it's not even just a series. It's our whole offering.
We've got the audio series, we've got the audio book, we've got the graphic novel, we've got
our running costs with things like websites, web development. Now we've got additional
costs with, I mean, minor additional costs, but costs all the same. Marketing costs, we've
got costs with disseminating the podcast, the episodes through the internet on these
streaming platforms. So all these little things or some bigger things, you're paying for your
actors, obviously. You're a comic artist. You're a comic artist, yeah. It all adds up.
And so every penny we've been investing, every penny we've made through Patreon has gone
straight back into that project. And we've effectively been working with Sweat Equity,
as I think you were told referred to it as a while back. That is to say, we believe in
this. We want this to be a bigger thing so we can do this full, full time. We are filmmakers
by trade, but we'd love to be able to invest a hell of a lot more time into this so we
can bring more episodes much more regularly and really build this thing into the ultimate
goal, which if you weren't already aware of, is a live action something. And that could
be either a feature film or maybe even live action, a live action series, who knows? So
that's a heap of background to sort of throw at you inside of a 10 minute window. But...
So if you listen to the first three episodes, stick with us. The story will develop. The
characters will go through a lot. We get some good characters start appearing as well. I
mean, obviously we get Emily in episode one. She's, I mean, she's in every episode. Naturally,
she's our main character. She's our lead. Jess appears fairly soon, especially with,
I think she appears in episode three. We've got Dr. Paul. He appears in episode two. And
then other more interesting characters, even more interesting characters start appearing.
We've got Mei Ling, we have Seraphina much later and so on and so forth. So, and then
the connections start forming between all these characters. And there is a wider array
of supernatural characters as well. I'm not going to tell you too much. We don't want
to tell you too much. Exactly. Yeah. So there's a lot to, there's a lot to look forward to
over the course of the 12 episodes of season one. Now we refer to season one a lot. We
have a second season in production at the moment. And that for the time being is just
going to be on Patreon because it's still in progress. We're still trying to, we're
not trying to, we are still making that, writing it, producing it. We need to record all of
it, et cetera, et cetera. But in order to try and keep the, we need to, we need to be
able to give our paid support to something as part of the perks essentially, right?
Something extra. Extra. And that means super early access to season two because they, they
give us, they're making this happen. They make the comics happen. They make the episodes
happen. They make everything happen without, without us paid supporters, there is no project
simply, simply put. And that is the economy of it. I'd love to be able to say, oh yes,
money is no object. We're just going to throw, make this thing and for you guys, and that
would be lovely, but it's just not the reality of things, unfortunately. And there is a lot
of perks that you will get. Yes. Should you be interested in becoming a Patreon subscriber
and supporting us, which would be lovely and we would very much appreciate it. You'll get
the audio book 1916, which is a prequel story to the main series set in 1916. If you are
a fan of audio books, I can highly recommend that. No bias. Um, then the graphic novel
again, super early access. So if you want to see the story come to life in a, in comic
form, then that is available. We also have all our behind the scenes podcasts, episodes
and Q and A's with actors. You are able to shape the story with user polls that we're
doing. You can ask our actors and cast writers, producers can ask them questions. Part of our
discord. We have our AI chat bot characters. So some of our main characters have been AI
created in AI. So, you know, people can actually chat and interact with them. Get all of Emily's
sass. Yep. Or all Jess's sass and all of Emily's anxiety. Werewolf anxiety. Um, so we are, and
we're building on this. Or if you get to episode three and you're like, I can't wait until
next week, please feel free to subscribe to the Patreon. Absolutely. If however, you'd
rather just take your time and listen to it on good old Spotify or Amazon, wherever you
might be listening to this or the episodes in general, then we will be rolling those
out weekly, uh, throughout the first season along with BTS stuff. So like chats like this,
but more importantly, uh, our BTS interviews with cast members with Luella usually depending
on people's availabilities. Cause we all have the and or job roles at the moment. It's just
the nature of in indie production. Um, so there's a lot to, there's a lot, there's a
lot on offer and there's more hopefully to come in due course as we hopefully grow this
thing. But if you want to support us outside of Patreon, then please feel free to follow
all our social media channels, like share, subscribe, comment. Every engagement is welcome
and helps us build the audience, helps us build the whole thing and bring that universe
to life. We're doing, I feel like we're doing something that isn't generally done a lot
or you know, in least as far as the way that we're doing it, I feel like it's quite unique.
I don't, I mean, there's plenty of, there's plenty of great podcast shows out there. Um,
even in the genre, I suppose, you know, sort of the supernatural genre, but I suppose we're
offering something, you know, unique that's, you know, we're all kind of putting everyone
who's involved in it is putting the kind of the heart and soul into. And, um, you know,
we want, like I said, we want to grow this thing into something that everyone can, more
and more people can enjoy more often. Um, and that's the plea of the, the, the content
creators, the producers in our, in our case, because yeah, we, I mean, we've worked, we've
worked pretty hard on this over the last year and a half and we want to see it grow and
we're in a creator economy. So we need to create. Absolutely. The main, the main question
we're going to get, and we already have started getting is, okay, why are we now releasing,
you know, publicly online rather than just keeping it gated on Patreon? Patreon has changed.
The internet has changed. Companies like Apple have introduced extra fees, which kind of,
you know, made things more difficult for our supporters to, you know, support us because
of, you know, doing things out of our control. Ultimately we've decided that we were changing,
we're changing strategy to better control what we're doing and how we can offer it to
people. And ultimately our main goal is to get it, to get this in front of as many eyes
and ears as possible. I mean, you know, because what's a good, what's a good story? Hopefully
a good story if it's not read or listened to or watched. And that's really why we've
sort of had to make this change. I think we always planned to do something similar at
some point, but I think this has kind of just kicked us through the door a little bit earlier
than we might have originally planned. But that's usually the way, in our experiences
as producers, that's usually the way things happen. So, yes. So this is super interesting
anyway. I'll be interested to see what happens over the next year as we sort of grow this
thing, as we meet more and more people who are keen on the series.
Also, if we can grow the audience, it warrants doing Comic Cons. Yes. I'd love to do that.
Actually meet people who listen to the show in person. In the UK, in the US even. So the
possibilities and we've had, we've had fans, current fans tell us this, the possibilities
for the project are pretty big. I mean, even thinking to your original interview with Llewela
last year that we just published recently as our first sort of test stream actually
on whatever channel you're listening to this on. You know, we've got potential ideas for
games, interactive things, books, additional comics, board games, I don't know, you name
it, we can think of it. Merchandise.
Merchandise. Whatever people want. We've got ideas for it. It's just, you know, this is
the why we need, this is why we want to build, put it in front of the audience, a bigger
audience and hopefully get people on board listening to Emily and Jess and May and everyone
else and yeah.
And Paul.
Anyway, that's probably enough from us from now. We will probably do more sort of interesting,
I guess, in depth, producer-y stuff for you guys to sort of understand. Definitely in
terms, if you've got any questions of what goes into producing a podcast or in our case,
an audio drama slash comic book slash everything else that we're doing. If you've got ideas
yourself and you want to think, oh, how could I make my own? Well, we're happy to chat with
you about our experience, about the experiences we've got coming, pretend that we don't know
about because it's only January and we've got a big old year ahead of us. So if you've
got any thoughts or questions, wherever possible, you can either, if you're listening to this
on a platform with comments, drop a question in the comments. Otherwise you can email us
at tfd at aro pictures uk dot com reaches there or you can get us on our socials, Instagram,
Facebook. Those are our main ones currently. And yeah, we really hope you enjoy season
one and all the other content that is to come. Yeah. So that's been, that's me, Cal, producer
and Julia also producer, but more producer-y as exec producer. Lovely talking to you guys
and we'll catch up with you real soon.
Chat with you soon.
Bye.