Phew! What a last couple of weeks we’ve had. We have (as usual at this budget level) hit a couple of roadblocks - but we’ve made it through to tell the tale. We found a ridiculously cheap company to do the subtitling for the film; I’m never a believer in cheapest is best, but we wanted to make sure that as well as the feature film, we had subtitles available for all of the special features too. Accessibility is important to us and even more so because we have a disabled son and also because one of the crew members on The Stagg Do was profoundly deaf.

​ Of course, we always knew the accents would be a challenge and but we were assured by previous customers of this company and the company itself that they could handle it. They couldn’t.  I knew this might happen so I had built extra time into the schedule to allow me time to make any corrections. Which I did twice (taking almost 2 whole days in the process).   Only to twice have timecode errors defeat us!  Anyway, we got there in the end - only 2/3 errors in the film and about a dozen in the Drunken Audio Commentary... Maybe we’ll have a competition for people who can find all of the mistakes. It’s a pain in the arse because I hate typos but we just ran out of time.

For the last few months I’ve been asking around for recommendations as to who we should use for the DVD and CD replication... But people were slow to respond, so I found a company that I was going to use online.  And spent a couple of days working with a new (to me) designer on finalising the artwork for the discs - setting them to the replicator’s templates etc. Then at the last minute - ie this past week - everyone’s recommendations came in and they all recommended the same company - but a different company to the one I was going to use!  Now it turns out the recommended company is a partner of Sony DADC - ie the UK’s biggest DVD manufacturer... you don’t really get a better recommendation than that. Price-wise they are very comparable to the other  company - so all seems good.  Only problem, they have a longer lead time and use slightly different packaging templates to the other company. So that meant another few hours with Gary The Designer - (who it turns out went to school with Pob and Staggy!) - to resize stuff again. Oh and we had to acquire some barcodes... And then finally the DVD and CD masters got sent off. So we are completely beyond the point of now return now! 

An important knock on from this, is that Kickstarter backers who have requested tickets as part of their pledges WILL NOT receive them in the post prior to the DVD Launch Party on November 6th.  Instead tickets will be left at the door of The Tyneside Irish Centre  for you in an envelope in your name on the night of the event. So if you haven’t RSVPd or are unsure of anything please feel free to drop me a line.  And we still have Room 2 tickets for any ditherers who may be reading this!

​Thanks again everyone!

We got a 15 across all elements, we're now just waiting for the DVD black card. Have to say it's not my favourite thing to spend £1922.71 on, but it's done and we're now legal!  Subtitles for the hard of hearing are due back on Monday and then we'll create the master DVD to go to the replicators.  Exciting times.

Tickets for the DVD Launch Party have gone faster than we expected and we now have under 40 left, so if you want to come, get your tickets ordered soon. Once they're gone, they're gone.