This is the first of (what we hope will be) a series of updates on the progress of "Time Rift", our fan video project. If you get this message, it's because you asked to be put on our e-mail update list. If you have any questions, or anything you want to discuss with us or anyone else on the list, send me e-mail.

We figure it might be best to simply answer the first batch of questions that you're bound to ask:

Q: What is this "Time Rift" thing anyway?
A: It's a full-length four-part adventure (running at least 90 minutes, probably more) which folks from the Baltimore/Washington area Doctor Who clubs are producing. The ad hoc group behind the production is known as Half-A-Dozen Lemmings Productions, for reasons which remain obscure even to us. (It's from a rather bizarre line in the script, and we're rather bizarre people, so it works.)

Q: How far along are you?
A: We're more than halfway through shooting! As we speak, we're logging footage so that we can start editing episode 1 in a week or so. We've got all but the last minute or so of episode 1 shot, bits of episode 2, about two thirds of episode 3, and a good chunk of episode 4 as well.

Q: So when do you think you'll have this thing done?
A: (hysterical laughter) Well, we've just had yet another delay on the next leg of shooting, so now we're looking at a release around August / September.

Q: Jeez. How long have you been working on this thing?
A: We started shooting June 12th, 1993, went insane squeezing in as much as possible over the summer, and then decided to relax and shoot the remaining three-fourths at a more reasonable pace.

Q: Are there any monsters in "Time Rift"?
A: Only if you count the script. (This thing is so big you could kill small mammals by dropping it on them. Seriously, it really is about the right length... for a five-parter.) We're trying to work out a cameo monster appearance or two, but there are already enough people out there who would want to sue us over this. So all our monsters are going to be in human form.

Q: OK, so how about the TARDIS?
A: Have we got a TARDIS! We've got the Amazing Collapsing TARDIS! (Currently disguised by its chameleon circuit as a random pile of wood, rusty nails, and cardboard.) Missy Abend of the Leisure Hive built one for a short video a few years ago, and bequeathed it to us. Such a warped sense of humor, Missy has... The TARDIS was the single most uncooperative piece of lumber we've ever had to deal with, but we got all of the scenes we needed it for shot, and some of them actually look pretty good.

Q: Ah, I see. What's the rest of your equipment like?
A: In the best tradition of Doctor Who, we're doing a hell of a lot on hardly any money. Most of our budget has gone to copying scripts. Actually, wait, that's not true -- we spent plenty of money buying a good microphone, but didn't have enough for a boom pole, so we improvised one. You know those extender-poles you use for paint rollers? Well, we hooked a bunch of those together, clipped the mike on the end, bound the whole thing up in duct tape, braced it with a couple of sticks when it all seemed about to collapse, and voila!

The same philosophy has been used for our props. Our biggest piece of equipment, the matter stream accelerator, is a hodge-podge of parts from a modem, a VCR tape rewinder, a laptop computer, and a washing machine. I'm telling you this because you won't be able to tell onscreen -- this thing really looks like the kind of thing the Doctor would slap together.

We're shooting this on standard VHS, but we're using professional editing equipment and a real musician for our incidental music. We won't promise BBC quality... well, maybe BBC quality circa 1970... but for a bunch of broke college students it's pretty impressive.

Q: Where are you shooting?
A: Get a DC map. Close your eyes and point to a random spot. We were probably there over the summer. We've shot at the Capitol Building, on the Metro (which Kevin Costner couldn't even get permission to do for "No Way Out!"... gloat gloat...), at a sewage treatment plant, on an Air Force base, at the gates to the Naval Research Lab (one of the highest-security naval establishments in the area), in the tunnels under Crystal City, on the longest escalator in the Western world (Wheaton Metro), and assorted woods and fields. Plus, we shot at the Pentagon, and had the wonderful experience of three cop cars coming up to us, sirens blaring, to ask us what we were doing. We had permission... but we didn't know that they'd just received a bomb threat...

Since the fall semester started, we've been shooting mainly interiors around the University of Maryland. Our UNIT lab is the vibrations lab in the engineering building, and the rest of UNIT HQ -- including lots of corridors -- is the design building, Marie Mount Hall (best described as "a maze of twisty little passages, all different").

Q: So can you tell us what's gonna happen? Pleeze? Pretty please?
A: Well... not yet. Let's just say that it features the seventh Doctor, Ace, and UNIT North America, in Washington DC of the very near future.

Q: Who are you guys anyway?
A: Well, here's a quick run-down of the usual suspects. Pay attention, there's going to be a short quiz afterwards.

JONATHAN BLUM as Our Fearless Leader -- playing the Doctor, directing, doing a lot of the writing, and coming up with this whole bloody idea in the first place. A 21-year old senior at the University of Maryland.

AC CHAPIN as Ace, co-writer, and Special Assistant Director In Charge Of Doing Backflips on Concrete. A fellow computer science major at the U of MD.

ITZY FRIEDMAN as Dr. Frederick Black. Itzy's our ringer -- he's actually got professional acting experience, and he's doing a frighteningly good job at stealing every scene he's in. The dirty old man of our cast. :-)

MARSHA TWITTY as General Adrienne C. Kramer of UNIT USA. A writer and artist who escaped from Howard University several years ago.

KEVIN CHERRY as Captain Stephen Walker of the Navy. Kevin's also one of our best cameramen -- everyone does double duty on this production. A long-time Councilmember for NRTTA (the DC area club), until the Council decided to dissolve itself.

ELDRIDGE BROWN as Timothy Hartnell (no relation), a Washington weasel and political deal-fixer extraordinaire. Eldridge shot most of his stuff over last summer, and he's only going to be dropping in occasionally for the next few months. Yet another one of the Maryland gang. And...

AMY STEELE as Ray, a psychopathic Dalek Killer from the year 2165 (and Ace's new best friend). Amy is our assistant director, our props manager, also doing a bit of writing, and she seems to walk off with any scene that Itzy hasn't already fled with. Amy is currently the most enthusiastic member of our cast -- which might have something to do with the fact that she goes to school at Cornell, and therefore gets to skip lots of shooting days.

VERN ROSEMAN as Camera Dude. He's also our stunt coordinator, and one of our best Expendable Extras. There's one scene where Ray gets to bang his head into a wall which looks frighteningly real. He's double majoring in Comp Sci and Philosophy at Maryland and is currently trying to get a computer program to apply the Turing test to itself. It thinks, therefore it is?

BEN STEELE as our all-around techie -- doing camera, our boom mike, and slipping us chocolate whenever shooting goes on too long. In one of the many romantic encounters on the set, he has become Marsha's love-slave. (At least whenever she can catch him.)

KRIS KRAMER as our other regular techie -- wrestling with the boom mike, turning the camera sideways to get a person in shot, and filling in as an extra at a moment's notice. On the verge of graduating with a Psych degree from Maryland, she is also a photographer skilled at catching us at our most embarrassing moments. (Other than the ones already being immortalized on videotape.)

DAVID HAMMONN as our video editor -- a professional who's doing our editing for free. Thank you thank you thank you... A long-time member of the Leisure Hive (the Baltimore club), he was one of the first people crazy enough to volunteer for this project.

ROD HUDSON for incidental music -- he hasn't started work on his score yet, but we're trying for something that combines the feel of the most recent stories with a touch of "Deadly" Dudley Simpson.

We've had a couple of people drop in for time to time: CRAIG REED as our fight arranger (Amy then became our fight re-arranger), SAM ROSENBAUM as our chess consultant (yes, folks, this is a McCoy story...), and ANDY WALKER as UNIT's transportation manager (he supplied the main UNIT van and did some stunt driving. At about 15 mph.).

And, of course, we have our assorted extras, including MATT MAGITTI, DAVID KINDRED, ADAM KORENGOLD, TRENT & COLLEEN HOBBS, PAUL DEA, and about a half-dozen more people who we're going to need for occasional days of shooting. (Hint, hint to anyone in the area!)

You'll notice that there are a lot more than a half a dozen people in Half-A-Dozen Lemmings Productions. I'm sure this says something about us. Still, we've got room for an infinite number of Lemmings here. Those of you on the list who are reasonably local, we could use your help. (I'm sure after reading this, you know we need all the help we can get.)

We'll probably send out another (much shorter) update in a week or two, once we get the next couple of days of shooting done. Have fun till then!

Well, here's the latest update on "Time Rift" shooting -- in mid-July, some six months after our last one. And what a long strange trip it's been. We've got a recap of recent shooting, a look ahead at the last few days and the remaining post-production work, information about when the story will become available, and a few hints about what this story will be about. (OOOOOH!)

Before I get into the stories, though, a small side note. Due to clerical incompetence, I've lost the real names of most of the people on this list. (I'd fire myself for that blunder if I could.) So if you get this message, could you please drop me a line with your real name?

As of the first of July, we're down to our last 8 or 9 days of shooting. At this rate, we should be done shooting by the end of September. Yes, I know that's when I originally said the video would come out... we've had a number of very interesting delays.

The biggest Fudge Factor in our scheduling is one actor in particular -- Eldridge Brown, who plays Washington weasel Timothy Hartnell. The man who saved this production way back at the beginning, when he stepped in at the last minute for another actor who backed out, recently brought the entire production to a standstill. And how? Well, first of all, we pushed most of his scenes back to late spring and summer, to accommodate his school and work schedule. Not too much of a problem... except that now we're at the point where almost every single day which remains to be shot requires him. And just as we were reaching this point, what did he do?

(We're considering bids for hit-men... for after we get this thing finished. If you're interested in applying, please send me your business card, as well as any relevant news clippings of your work.)

Fortunately, this only pushed us back a week or two, because we managed to cobble together a fake moustache. Amazingly, it looks just as real as his real one... though that may be because his moustache looked incredibly cheesy to begin with.

But the latest production delay came about when Eldridge mentioned that he'd gotten a second job, and joined a new band, and that the likelihood of him getting to shoot very much in the immediate future was somewhat less than the chance of Elvis Presley kicking off his new concert tour on Mars.

We really don't bear him any ill will. It's just that by now, I think we all want to just get this thing OVER with. :-)

In any case, most of the remaining scenes feature me and Eldridge, and Marsha Twitty as General Kramer. Most of the rest of the cast will gradually disappear over the next few weeks. Kevin Cherry (Captain Walker) has been pretty much gone since about February; we only need him for one more day of shooting. Itzy Friedman (Dr. Black) is down to his last two days. Amy (Ray) goes back to Cornell in late August. (Of course, between now and then she's assistant-directing, editing, doing promo work, shooting her last two days, and generally being indispensable.)

And AC Chapin has already left. This wasn't exactly as I'd hoped. She was one of the people who helped with this project from the very beginning; it literally wouldn't have happened without her playing Ace. But, sad to say, emotional stress has taken quite a toll on both of us. Back in March, she told me that she couldn't continue with the video. She agreed to do two more days of shooting, which we finished in June, and now there's not much chance we'll be seeing much of each other any more.

It's made continuing the project rough. Just on the production side, her departure meant having to cut down Ace's part in the story -- so, just when we thought the script would finally be finished, we had to find ways of eliminating her from scenes. I'm especially thankful that Amy agreed to take on some of Ace's material in the story, and stuck with me to help salvage the story when everything seemed to be crashing down.

As a result, I couldn't face writing the crucial final pages of the story -- a very intense Doctor-Ace scene. Then AC let me know that she would be going home for the summer, and that I had less than a week to write and shoot it. After an all-night writing binge, I managed to get it out on paper, and the next day she, Amy, and I were rewriting it on the set. That day was probably the production of "Time Rift" in a nutshell... on one level chaotic and half-assed, on the other consummately professional. Even with the disintegration of my relationship with AC, we all still put in everything we had, for the sake of the story. We rewrote and polished the scene, sharpening it until we bled at the touch of it, and threw everything we were feeling into our performances. There are very few people in this world who would have given as much so willingly, knowing they wouldn't get anything in return. I really am grateful to her... and I'm even more grateful to everyone else who is still sticking with this project, with all the hell that's going on.

Then again... did I say hell? Recently Kris, Amy, Ben, and I, after agonizing about working out yet another shooting schedule, went to see "The Crow". We looked at what happened with that movie... and somehow that put it all in perspective.

On the other hand, this latest leg has brought in some new faces as well. Our irregular tech crew has grown to include Adam Korengold and Cary Gordon, two childhood friends of mine who had pretty much escaped the pull of the video till now. (Adam had a brief stint as an extra in the opening scene, but now he's doing camera and boom work as well.)

Cary in particular has been indispensable lately, as he owns our emergency back-up video camera. Lately, our main camera has acquired the knack of dying horribly at the worst possible moment. It picked it up from our boom mike adapter plugs -- last summer, we went through seven or eight of them, and another one flaked out in the spring. In fact, all our equipment seems to have decided to break simultaneously. On one recent shoot, the camera died, bits broke off of our "matter stream accelerator" prop, Eldridge cancelled out of shooting at the last minute, the Doctor's hat got squashed, and his umbrella handle broke off. Someone's trying to tell us something, aren't they?

If they are, we're not listening. We've been persevering in spite of this, with help from lots of duct tape and Krazy Glue. We've rewritten scenes around broken props and absent actors. And the decrepit state of the Doctor's umbrella -- which actually ceased to be a working umbrella back in January, thanks to an insane winter storm -- even inspired a wonderful gag which became the basis of the final scene of the story. If that which does not kill this project makes it stronger, we must be halfway to Arnold Schwarzenegger by now.

But anyway, this leg of production is winding down. Our next task is to finish cobbling all the footage together. We've got everything we've recorded so far logged in detail, and we're working on EDL's (edit decision lists) -- shot-by-shot blueprints for the finished episodes. We've already got a rough cut of part one, and we should have the final cut done in the next few weeks.

So when will you finally get to see all this? Thanksgiving. We're going to have a sneak preview at Visions in Chicago, and simultaneously at Survival T94 in Melbourne. It'll probably be the first two complete episodes. Either way, those will be the first chances for you to buy your very own copy... for delivery whenever the rest of it gets edited.

Of course, folks, you have to realize that a time rift works on the uncertainty principle. Just as attempting to observe the state of an electron knocks it into a completely different one, the mere fact of attempting to predict a schedule for "Time Rift" means that that schedule will not happen. :-)

But while you're waiting, we'd really like some feedback from all of you on pricing. How much would you be willing to pay for a full-length four-part fan story, complete with video FX, incidental music, and a cast of tens? We can't charge too much, because if we turn a profit the BBC will have an excuse to sue us, but we would like to try to recover some of our costs. So if you could let us know what you think would be a fair price, it would help us out quite a bit. If we know about how much we can expect to get back, we might be able to justify throwing in a few glossy extras for the story...

Besides editing, the two other areas we're currently worrying about are video FX and sound. Unfortunately, our connections for a Video Toaster just fell through... we can get to another one, but the company charges by the hour. But plans for music are going ahead nicely -- we're now talking to Neil Marsh of the Whoosier Network about doing sound FX and incidentals somewhat in the style of Mark Ayres.

For those who remember our death-defying shooting day at the Pentagon -- which, incidentally, we ended up losing sound on and having to fake with close-ups at a different location -- you'll be interested to hear about our latest brush with the law.

On AC's last day of shooting, we ended up staying on campus till after 1 AM, finishing the night scenes. And so we found ourselves packing up in the lobby of Mary Mount Hall, acting loud and silly, surrounded by video equipment and various unidentifiable objects. I was wearing all black, Amy was wearing combat gear, and Cary looked scruffy as all hell.

Who were we, he asked. Students working on a video project, we said. We had permission, we said. We showed him the key we'd been given to the building. "You better hope it works," he said, and tried it in the front door. He looked a little crestfallen when it did. He asked for ID. We had it. He made a big show of reading our names, spelled out military-style, into his walkie-talkie. He gave AC a hard time for identifying herself as a senior when she was only 18. "Oh, so you're a brain, huh?" She gritted her teeth, smiled demurely, and said yes. Finally he told us that he'd called in a report, and that if anything was missing from the building they'd be in touch with us. I asked whether they'd be in touch if they found something there which hadn't been there before, that we'd left behind. He said sorry, it didn't work that way.

And then he left. We wished him a nice night. Only then did Cary (who is diabetic) let us know that he had been about to give himself an insulin shot, and that when the cop came in he'd had a loaded syringe out and ready in full view. Finally we decided that we weren't sure what scared us more -- that the cop might have noticed this suspicious behavior, or the fact that he hadn't.

I've had a number of people asking for hints about the story. While it's tempting to drag things out a bit longer ("Go on! Grovel before me! CRAWL!!"), I think it's about time that we let out the first taste. And so, consider this teaser, written in the style of a New Adventures back cover:

TIME RIFT

"How very convenient, isn't it, that whenever the TARDIS malfunctions it always materializes JUST where there's a crisis brewing! It's SUCH a coINcidence!"

The Time Lords are once again manipulating the Doctor -- the TARDIS lands in Washington DC in the near future... twenty-four hours before the city was destroyed in a mysterious blast the size of a small atomic bomb. The question is, is the Doctor supposed to prevent it, to find out what happened... or make sure it happens? Will the blood of millions turn out to be on his hands? What would the cost be of changing the future? And who else has come to this place and time, for reasons of their own?

As the Doctor is forced into a game without even knowing the other players, it opens up quite a different sort of rift between the Doctor and Ace.

(The interesting thing is, writing that summary, I'm thinking of half a dozen other ways I could have told this story. Maybe some better than the one we used... but I think you can be sure it won't be quite what you expect.)

Well, that's where things stand. I'd like to thank all of you for your continuing interest -- if you have anything you'd like to ask or suggest, just drop me a line right back at jblum@eng.umd.edu. I'd also like to thank every single person who's still sticking with this video after so long -- especially Amy Steele, Ben Steele, and my girlfriend of more than two years, Kris Kramer. All three of them have worked on this project since before the very first day of shooting, and Kris and Ben in particular have slaved away at almost any opportunity for the entire time. It's people like you that really make this feel like we're all in it together.

(As a side note, it's interesting that just about every single major cast member has at some point been diagnosed with some sort of unusual mental state. We've got two people with multiple personalities, several cases of depression, one person who sees visions of the future, and Eldridge. :-)

And one last comment. Someone asked about accents... well, I've been told that my Scottish accent is pretty passable, and AC's is definitely somewhere in the Atlantic. But we have a trump card in this production. This is the first Doctor Who ever in which you will hear convincing American accents!

At long last, here's another update on the progress of "Time Rift". In some ways, a lot has happened since last I wrote; in others, not much at all.

We've been "on hiatus" from shooting lately, because of the sheer mass of editing we need to do, but the editing has been going spectacularly well. We've still got the last few days of shooting to finish up, but slowly but surely we're getting there.

Since last you heard from me, we've managed to finish off a few more cast members in shooting, and at the same time a few new faces have appeared.

Towards the end of August, Amy Steele finally packed up and headed back for Cornell. She's been absolutely indispensable since the beginning of this project -- writing, assistant-directing, flat-out directing on some days, and sinking her teeth into all sorts of details. She's made props, edited our first-draft blooper reel, hosted cast parties, designed promotional fliers, and delivered a scene-stealing performance as Ray in her spare time.

There's one recent crisis in production which I'd really like to thank Amy for helping with. In the emergency rewrites after AC went back to Salisbury, a chunk of Ace's role was transferred to Ray. Amy and I agreed that the new scenes shouldn't just be the old ones with "Ace" crossed out and "Ray" pencilled in. And so we spent hours thrashing out the scenes together. With Amy's insights, we managed to build Ray up in such a way that now she's pretty much a second companion to the Seventh Doctor. I'm even beginning to think about featuring Amy in another story -- but any moments of lunacy where I even consider going through another project like this one are brief. :-)

I won't pretend that the writing was actually fun -- after all, we were working frantically at the last minute, and we didn't get the scenes right until we were actually in the middle of shooting them. Add to that the fact that we have very different creative styles -- Amy likes to talk her ideas out, while I'm more the type to think about ideas in silence first. But somehow we avoided strangling each other, and on the whole I really do think the story is better for it. I'm extremely grateful to Amy for being there to help out throughout it all. She, AC, and I were the original heart of Half-A-Dozen Lemmings Productions, and now I'm the only one left. Sigh.

On the other hand, Amy's brother Ben has been quietly making himself just as indispensable. He's been shooting with us from the very first day (June 12th, 1993), and has worked his way up from soundman to cameraman to occasional one-man crew. He's been available on miniscule notice, and stuck around on over-long shoots till the bitter end. His patience and tolerance has been positively superhuman at times, and I hereby apologize to him for all the times I've snapped at him while in mid-crisis. I'd also like to congratulate him on parlaying his experience with "Time Rift" into a volunteer job as a cameraman at the Fairfax County cable access station. Now if only I could persuade the man to get some sleep...

The first Sunday in September was also the final day of shooting for Itzy Friedman, a trouper in the old theatrical tradition (and, I'm proud to say, my cousin). A last-minute addition to the cast, over the past fourteen months Itzy has lifted this production to undreamed-of level of class. His good humor and utterly warped jokes have made the mood wonderful even when we're really behind, and his acting is wonderfully subtle. He brings to Dr. Black a lovely ambiguous quality -- just when you think he's implicated in all the story's double-dealing, one of Itzy's line deliveries will make you wonder whether he's completely innocent... or whether he's even more involved than you think. If AC, Amy, and I were the heart of the Lemmings, Itzy's been the soul, and I admire the man tremendously for having shared his life with us.

It's kind of sad that the old gang is breaking up... out of those of us who have persevered through all these months, only me, Ben Steele, and Marsha Twitty remain. Eldridge Brown and Kevin Cherry will be stopping by for a day or two apiece, but for the most part they've been gone for a long time. Here's an extra special thank you to all of them, especially to Ben and Marsha who have stuck with it pretty much week in and week out from the very first day of shooting.

On the other side, we've had a couple of new arrivals to our little band... neither of which I've actually gotten to meet in person. Our incidental music is being done by Neil Marsh of the Whoosier Network; his credits include a self-produced album called "Tales from Ra'Hash-nir" and the catchy theme from Whoosiercon. The ideas he's sent us suggest the good McCoy scores, the Stranger videos, and something distinctly his own as well. Besides being great at bringing out atmosphere through music, Neil is also incredibly enthusiastic about this project, for which I'm extremely grateful -- it's people like him who are keeping us all motivated to finish this. Neil replaces Rod Hudson, who had to drop out due to lack of time.

Our video effects are being done by Mark Sachs, another longtime Whovian who volunteered the use of a Video Toaster. A few weeks ago he sent me his first tape of finished effects... and I can honestly say that this man floors me. Remember when I promised you that this video would try to be "BBC quality circa 1970"? Well, so far these effects are BBC quality circa "Survival". Mark hasn't gotten to any of our really fancy effects yet -- so far it's been mainly flashes and zaps, digital TARDIS materializations and opening credits -- but when he tells me his specialty is 3-D animation it really gets me old heart a-pounding. We've even altered the script to the final episode slightly, throwing in a few shots which will really give Mark a chance to show off.

Remember Eldridge, who shaved his moustache off between shooting days without telling us?

It seemed like it would be so easy. Just drop in the special FX shots Mark had gotten to me. I decided to do the editing on campus, because they only charged $10 per hour, as opposed to the $15 at the local Do-It-Yourself Video Editor.

Small problem #1: The campus only has two VHS editing suites. One is an S-VHS system... a bottom of the line S-VHS system. The control deck didn't even have a preview function -- I had to edit blind. So I switched to the other editing set-up -- a pair of Stone Age VCR's, circa 1981, and an editing deck held together by masking tape.

Small problem #2: This deck slipped several seconds with each attempt at an edit.

Yes, thanks to the University of Maryland, there was now a nice big long dropout running through several shots. Our video FX were in the wrong place, our sound was out of sync, and all my painstaking work was shot to hell.

And so, a day or two later, I went back to the Do-It-Yourself Video Editor and started the painstaking reconstruction of the edited master from scratch. Right now it takes about an hour to edit 35 seconds, and it's thrown our schedule back significantly.

Because, in a way, starting over was the best thing I could have done. Now that I'm more comfortable with the editing decks, I can make the cuts look and sound better. Not least because now I've got a chance to choose different takes, so that even the acting is less hideous. I got to fix the glitches and trim the rhythms and apply a nice layer of polish to the whole production.

And I can honestly say, even as a person who is mercilessly critical of my own work, that it looks fantastic.

(Well, most of it. On the umpteenth viewing, I still notice the slight jumps in the audio tracks, and the jumps in lighting between shots, and the little tiny continuity errors in hairstyles and the like. But as of October 3rd, we have 9 1/2 minutes of finished footage which I'm actually not ashamed to show people.)

The only problem is that, at $15 an hour, it's going to cost a bundle just to get episode 1 finished. Ben is trying to get us access to the equipment at his school -- they've got all sorts of neat gadgets, including (so he tells me) a random-access editing system like the pros use -- but it's still not certain. So, if anyone else out there is still interested in doing some editing, let me know and we can talk.

There is one way that we know of around the editing costs... cable access. It's entirely possible that we could get this thing broadcast on one of our county cable stations -- Ben is a technician registered in Fairfax county, and I'm a producer in Montgomery. And once they agree to air the program, we've got free unlimited access to their editing suites. There would be the matter of converting all the VHS tapes to three-quarter-inch, but that's just tedium, and we're well used to that.

The only thing stopping us, aside from the possibility that we could get laughed out of the programming offices, is the question of what the BBC will do if they find out. If any of you know how to reach Ryan K. Johnson (the producer of the "Seattle stories" starring a female Doctor), please let me know -- I've heard that Ryan's videos were cablecast a while back, and I'd like to find out how they managed to do that legally. If we can successfully reassure our local cable access stations that they won't get sued, who knows? We might even be able to beat Amblin's pilot onto the air.

The first taste the world will have of "Time Rift" is a 2 1/2-minute trailer, which we're also currently editing. It's not an easy task -- we're trying to include enough clips to give people a sense of what the story is about, without actually giving much of it away. It's also a bear to edit... our current draft consists of about 90 shots, or about as many as the first 10 minutes of episode 1. This is like trying to edit a music video -- except that they haven't recorded the music yet.

Ben Steele has already got a rough-cut of it together. After that, Neil will do a score for it, and it will first see the light of day as a preview included with the As-Yet-Unnamed Doctor Who Club of Newfoundland's new video, "The Oracle of Time", coming out some time in October.

If anyone else out there would be interested in showing the trailer (or, in a while, the first episode or two) at any convention they're going to in the near future, drop me a line. We might be able to arrange a sneak peek!

The Lemmings' brushes with the law continue... this time with a truly impressive encounter.

We knew it would be a bad day for shooting when we found that our location had disappeared. They'd been doing construction at the University of Maryland gatehouse, and we'd planned to shoot around it, but sometime between Thursday and Saturday they demolished the whole bloody gatehouse. This, we figured, counted as a slight continuity problem.

So we moved to the other gatehouse, on the far side of campus, and set up shop there. By picking a careful angle, we figured we could get the last shot we needed to finish the scene. And so we set up the shot, which involved Vern Roseman and Kris Kramer as soldiers patting me down. Then, Kris escorted me away at gunpoint, while Amy, in the foreground of the shot, took aim with her pulse laser at Vern.

After about five takes, the police car pulled up. Seems the officer had noticed something suspicious going on -- kids on a college campus who didn't look normal. The first thing he spotted was Amy brandishing her pulse laser. Yes, our highly trained campus police officer was alarmed by the sight of a woman holding a repainted Lazer Tag gun, with a few electronic parts and bits of a lacrosse ball glued on.

Having decided that we presented a clear and present danger to society, our stalwart policeman acted decisively -- he pulled up on the wrong side of the road, by the camera, and sat there and waited while we went through several more takes. Only then, after staring at the Lazer Tag gun for a while, did his keen powers of observation notice the much more realistic prop gun which Kris was holding on me. (I wonder whether he also noticed that, between takes, Kris and I were holding hands, laughing, and generally acting like the boyfriend and girlfriend which we are. Then again, perhaps he thought this was an incident of domestic violence.)

And so, when we finished shooting, we walked over to the police car and put on our best what-seems-to-be-the-problem-officer? expressions. He asked us what we were doing. We told him. He asked us if we had permission for this. We rattled off the list of half a dozen or so faculty and staff members we'd cleared this project with at various times. He looked vaguely nonplussed and tried to think of something else to bust us on. He asked us if those people knew about the guns. We said some of them had seen them, but we hadn't bothered to tell them we were shooting with them today. Why not? he asked. Because they're fake pieces of plastic, you moron, we almost said but didn't.

We went on for a while, with us being as deferential as we could and him putting on his best Dirty Harry do-you-feel-lucky-punk attitude. Finally he told us, with a glint of steel in his eye, that we shouldn't be walking around with things that looked like guns -- and that included the pulse laser -- and that we were lucky he'd noticed the camera, because if he hadn't "I woulda dropped you."

How reassuring it is to know that the frontier spirit is alive and well, and that at the University of Maryland a lawman can still drop a stranger in his tracks for carrying the wrong-shaped piece of plastic! How thankful we should be that our officers of the peace actually deign to notice the camera crew right in front of them before they draw their guns! How grateful we should be that all we got was a lecture, instead of the pistol-whipping we so greatly deserved! Thank you sir, may I have another!

And all this while Ben was holding the camera. You'd think the police would've learned something about how sledgehammer tactics and videotape don't mix, after that little incident with Rodney King, but I guess not.

It's now been a year and half since the meeting of The Leisure Hive at which I first formally pitched the idea of "Time Rift", and it looks like it'll be another six months before it's finished.

Meanwhile, we're still planning to have episode one premiering at Visions '94, and (assuming all works out) at Survival '94 in Melbourne as well. Episode two will have to wait a while -- but I can honestly say that I think it might even be worth the wait.

Well, that's about it for the update -- let me leave you with a filk which we wrote to celebrate our one-year anniversary of shooting a while back.

(You think that's bad? Wait'll you hear our version of the "Animaniacs" theme...)

Slowly we're getting there. As of this writing, January 31st, we're down to our last four days (and about 15 pages) of shooting. Episode one has had its gala premiere, and we're about to start editing episode two (and shortly three).Since my last note, nearly three months ago, a lot has happened, and I'll try to detail it in order.

There were two major days of shooting in the late fall -- one with major portents for the future, the other marking the end of an era for us.

The first was a relatively brief day with a few extras in Mary Mount Hall, our UNIT HQ. Three new people joined me, Marsha Twitty, and Vern Roseman (one of our eternal cameramen) as UNIT soldiers -- Phil Tracton, Mary Alvarez, and David Dougherty. Mary has since stuck around to become a fairly regular crewmember, and David has proved his versatility in more ways than one. On this day, he also stood in in long-shot for Eldridge Brown (remember him? Timothy Hartnell of the funky facial hair problems?)... unfortunately, he doesn't have a moustache. Then again, I'm not sure Eldridge does at the moment either. See if you can spot this clean-shaven shot when you see the story.

The second day of shooting was for a big fight scene in part four -- for which David, our resident judo expert, doubled as fight arranger and as Hartnell. This time, we were prepared... we gave him a fake moustache, and were promptly bowled over by the amazing resemblance between him and Eldridge's version of Hartnell.

The reason this day was so important for us was because it marked the last day of shooting for Kevin Cherry, who has played Captain Stephen Walker of the Naval Research Laboratory, and done camera work for us, since the beginning of shooting. Kevin has been a friend of mine for more years than I can count... he's stood by me through good times and bad, through fan-club-building fits of megalomania and angst-ridden personal crises, to the point where I trust him absolutely. And the moments when he's shown me that he trusts me, when he's finally let his walls down and confided in me about what's really going on in his head, are among the richest I've ever had with a friend. I have tremendous, unbelievable respect for this man... he's one of the few people I know who can still hold onto big ideals and dreams. "Time Rift" may have caused him some personal pain (he's had a big role in the on-set soap opera), but he's always been there to do what he can.

As payment for putting up with all the frustrations of shooting, we saved his big fight scene for last. In it, he gets to throttle me, clobber Marsha, and generally beat hell out of us. I think he enjoyed it... a little bit too much. When you see the lovely purple color I turn on camera as he strangles me, be aware that I'm Not Acting!

Unfortunately for Kevin, in the midst of shooting, he stumbled and sprained his ankle. The thing that amazes me is that this barely slowed him down at all -- he kept on with the scene, and the amount of pain he was in didn't show in the slightest. That's either unbelievable dedication... or homicidal rage. Watch the scene and decide.

A little while ago, while hanging out with Kevin late at night, I mentioned that if I'd known how big this project was going to be, I probably wouldn't have started it. He said that he'd known exactly how long it would take. Now, I've learned to trust Kevin's predictions of the future; I just wish he'd tell me more of them before it's too late.

But the thing is... he told me that he didn't tell me because he knew that I probably would have dropped the project. And he knew how important it would be for me to see this one through and not get discouraged. In fact, way back on the second day of shooting (after we'd lost our first Hartnell, and I was having a nervous breakdown in a restaurant) he was the one who talked me into not giving up on the whole project. So he let me continue in my false hope that this whole thing could have been finished in a year, because he knew that this way it would get finished someday.

He wanted to see this video through, for me and for him, because he really was enjoying working on it. So he kept me in the dark. That's Kevin in a nutshell: part devious manipulative bastard, part incredibly sweet guy. I wish him and Melissa the best of luck in the future, and give him thousands of thanks. I don't know how I can ever repay you, Kevin... but rest assured, I'm plotting ways even now...

So episode 1 of "Time Rift" is finished -- finished, that is, apart from a few music cues and sound effects which Neil Marsh hasn't had the chance to get to yet, due to lots of chaos in his personal life. It was ready just in time for its pair of international premieres, at Visions '94 in Chicago and Survival '94 in Australia.

Which would have been fine, except that all three of the major guests listed for Survival ended up canceling out. Two of these were Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, whose reactions I'd hoped to get to seeing themselves portrayed on film by a couple of crazed Americans. The third was Kate Orman, who was the person who was supposed to be presenting it. So Australia has to wait just a little while longer to see the story... but more about that below.

In any case, Visions '94 became the exclusive world premiere of "Time Rift", thanks to George Fergus and the incredibly helpful Visions staff. Kris Kramer, Ben Steele, and I were on hand to present it; this meant that we spent Friday frantically putting up fliers to advertise it, and otherwise stewing ourselves silly as 8:30 approached.

The big shock for us was finding out, right before we left for Chicago, that Sophie Aldred was coming along as a surprise guest, instead of going to Australia. We instantly saw the possibilities of Sophie getting to see Ace's return in "Time Rift". ("Saw the possibilities" isn't actually the right phrase, "Thrilled with fear at the possibilities" is closer, though if she actually likes it you won't be able to get me down from the ceiling for days.) So once I got to meet her, and once I scraped my jaw off the floor from seeing how gorgeous she looks, I somehow managed to invite her to the premiere. It turned out she was busy -- she'd accepted an invitation to a room party with Kevin Parker and the Elisabeth Sladen Information Network -- but she was interested in seeing the story. So I'm going to mail her a copy as soon as we convert it to PAL.

Then it was time for the premiere. We were ready and waiting in the video room... but George Fergus, the fan video room operator, wasn't there with the tape. So, Kris, Ben, and I started spieling madly as our guts twisted into knots. By the time George got there a few minutes later, we'd told the audience almost the entire story of the production, we were talking so fast. Then, George arrived, and we dimmed the lights (a struggle in itself), and the story began.

There was a moment a few minutes in when it hit me... "Time Rift" was actually working. People were listening. People were laughing in all the right places, and only a very few of the wrong ones. Someone behind me actually went "Ooh! Cool!" at the sight of one of our special effects. Someone else said they liked the direction after one of the action scenes.

And there was one sequence, towards the end of the episode, where everyone watching got absolutely quiet. I could feel them listening. To hear people hanging on every word of a story -- a story you've written, words you're saying on screen -- is a thrilling experience. Even the high I got when the whole thing was over, and everyone started applauding, didn't equal the feeling I got from those few moments of absolute silence.

Afterwards, we talked for a while, and showed Volume I of our blooper reel, and had people fill out comment forms. Then we had to vacate the room, so we spilled out into the hallway. I spent a delightful time carrying on with a gang of fans, including Steve Traylen, Alex Kinnon, Eric Hurd, and a bunch of others... while my vocal chords were well shredded by the next morning, it was more than worth it.

Then my adrenaline buzz finally faded, and I ended up zonked out on the hallway floor, doing a jigsaw puzzle with Kris. And then it was up at the crack of noon the next day, to roam the convention and enjoy ourselves. We had a second showing of part 1 that evening, which went over just as well if not better, and then we attended the variety show, which was a hoot and a half. The evening ended in the bar, in which a bunch of us had a truly bizarre conversation with Sophie Aldred... it ranged from DOOM (her boyfriend is a DOOM addict) to Barney to '70s nostalgia. I never would have pictured her as a Partridge Family fan...

Other highlights in the fan video room that weekend were Ryan Johnson's last female Doctor story, "Broken Doors", which was a gorgeous style piece (if a bit short on plot), and a truly awe-inspiring British-made fan video called "Regenesis", featuring an eighth Doctor. "Regenesis" is what I hoped "Time Rift" would be -- a professional-looking production that still captured the feel of Doctor Who. As soon as I can get more concrete information about it, I'll be glad to pass it on to you -- this story is well worth watching.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who came to see "Time Rift", at either or both of the two showings... thanks to you, the cloud I was walking on for the entire weekend was tremendous. Of the 50 or so people who got to see it over the two days, almost all the reactions were favorable -- there were just enough negative points made that I knew that they weren't giving me a snow job. I've listened to all the comments, and I've tried to take them on board... as a result of feedback at Visions, we're going to use the Video Toaster to paint our TARDIS a darker blue, and to wipe the boom mike out of a few shots. And the incredible amount of praise really helped give us all a sense that we're doing something right. The moment when I was stopped in the hallway by someone who recognized me from the premiere, and who actually gave me money to order a copy, left me higher than a kite. Bless you, every one.

And as a special note to George Fergus -- no, I did not use prosthetic eyebrows in the video. When I squint, my eyebrows really do twist like that.

A few weeks ago, I picked up David McIntee's New Adventures novel "First Frontier," which is set partially in Washington DC in 1957. While I got a kick out of a few of the inaccuracies (such as Ace's feats of derring-do on a bridge which wasn't built until 1964), there was one detail which caused me to laugh out loud.

One of McIntee's main baddies, Major Kreer, is based at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Kevin was very much amused to hear who his predecessor was at NRL, and about the weirdness and interservice rivalry that was going on even then. While we're not planning on going back to NRL (we shot a few scenes at their gatehouse), I wonder if they'd like to know that their base is getting a reputation among Whovians for interstellar incidents?

Those of you who have been following these bulletins for a while are probably aware about our changing attitudes towards Eldridge Brown... from overwhelming relief when he stepped in at the last minute to play political bureaucrat Timothy Hartnell, to gradual disillusionment as he became less and less available for shooting, to outright hysteria when his moustache kept appearing and disappearing without warning. We haven't been able to shoot with him since late summer, when he turned up for one day of shooting... the only way we'd shot any of Hartnell's scenes since then was with David Dougherty doubling for him in long-shot. Since Hartnell's scenes are the last ones remaining to be shot, I ended up devoting much of my Christmas vacation to trying to find a way to finish the story with a minimum of Eldridge.

Then I looked at the shots of David in his Hartnell costume... not the long ones, but the closer ones. They didn't look too bad, even with his cheesy Eldridge-style moustache. Then at the material we'd already shot with Eldridge... there wasn't much of it, and not many close-ups.

And so, after a few phone calls, it was settled. The part of Timothy Hartnell is now played by David Dougherty, with Eldridge Brown as his stand-in in long shots.

This is either going to make "Time Rift" work better than I'd ever thought, or sink it. The plus side is that David is terrific -- he plays Hartnell very low-key and straight, where Eldridge tended to make him broader and more comic. At last the guy on the screen is the guy I wrote! The minus side is that we can't reshoot most of Eldridge's scenes, because they involve AC and Amy (who are now even less available than Eldridge). And I'm still not sure how noticeable the changing back and forth between actors will be. Still, Eldridge's scenes are concentrated in about fifteen or twenty minutes of the story, and he has maybe a dozen lines in total... with some careful direction to David, so that his voice and mannerisms aren't too obviously different, we might just pull this off.

So far this month we've done two days of shooting with David as Hartnell, and I'm still impressed. David has had very little acting experience, but it doesn't show -- the character of Hartnell plays to his strengths by being unreadable and difficult to pin down, which David does very well. And he does have quite a bit of experience behind the camera, having made a few short Super-8 films of his own. He's shown himself willing to put up with a number of discomforts and oddities -- including memorizing bunches of complex lines, and wearing the inevitable fake moustache to match Eldridge's. Still somehow he remains enthusiastic for this project, and he's even buoyed all our enthusiasm... not least because now we know this project will be finished some time this century!

It pleases us no end to announce that Itzy Friedman (Dr. Black), who had considered himself retired from acting, has accepted the part of the Rabbi in a dinner theater production of "Fiddler On The Roof". His daughter-in-law Debbie, incidentally, is playing one of the townswomen and understudying the role of Chava... which is exactly what Sophie Aldred was doing when she was cast as Ace. (I love coincidences.)

And it's even more thrilling for us that Larry Friedman -- Itzy's son, Debbie's husband, my cousin, and a general friend of all of ours -- has just been cast in the national touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar", playing Annias and understudying the role of Jesus. A perfect role for a nice Jewish boy. Larry's played Jesus before in local productions of "Superstar", and I'm overjoyed to see things going so well for the whole Friedman family.

Our big decision on how much "Time Rift" will cost is that we haven't decided. We'd discussed a price of $15 plus $3 shipping and handling, but it might well be possible that we can drop the price... it all depends on whether we can get to do our remaining editing for free at the cable access studio or not. So, I guess I'll have to ask all of you who desperately want to throw money at me to hold off for a while longer. For those of you who have already thrown me money, well, I'm keeping the checks safe and not depositing them until we're finished.

We have one more day of shooting to do in the winter, with me, David, and Marsha. Then, we'll have episode 2 finished, and all but a few inserts for episode 3. We'll be able to edit both these episodes, and then shoot the last remaining outdoor scenes for part 4 in the spring, once we have leaves on the trees again. That should be no more than three days, plus anything which absolutely positively has to be reshot. At the rate we're going, all four episodes should be together by... (he sticks his neck out as far as it will go, and risks the "Time Rift" Scheduling Curse...) May.

In the meantime, part 1 will have at least two more public airings. First, it will be shown at the January 28th meeting of The Leisure Hive, the Baltimore-Washington area Who club. (I'll post something in rec.arts.drwho giving information and directions.) Then, in mid-February, "Time Rift" part 1 will finally have its Australian premiere -- Kate Orman will present it at Tri(c)on, on February 16th.

And that's where it stands.... we're inching towards completion, ever so slowly, but the end is finally in sight.

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The Story So Far:
theDispatches
by Jon Blum

TIME RIFT

"How very convenient, isn't it, that whenever the TARDIS malfunctions it always materializes JUST where there's a crisis brewing! It's SUCH a coINcidence!"

As the Doctor is forced into a game without even knowing the other players, it opens up quite a different sort of rift between the Doctor and Ace.

Jon Blum
jblum@zip.com.au

The Story So Far: theDispatches by Jon Blum

TIME RIFT

"How very convenient, isn't it, that whenever the TARDIS malfunctions it always materializes JUST where there's a crisis brewing! It's SUCH a coINcidence!"

As the Doctor is forced into a game without even knowing the other players, it opens up quite a different sort of rift between the Doctor and Ace.

Jon Blum jblum@zip.com.au

The Story So Far:
theDispatches
by Jon Blum

Jon Blum
jblum@zip.com.au