Frunt Room Series One

Hmm...Critique or Showcase? Showcase or Critique? Oh ok, Critique then.

We've been working on the Frunt Room concept for alomost two years now, making a podcast a month and honing our craft. For the last six months we've packaged six episodes as Frunt Room Series One, which is now complete. I'm currently scripting Series Two, so I guess this is the perfect time to ask for a bit of helpful feedback.

The series is here: http://www.fruntroom.tv

A tiny bit of background: Frunt Room is an audio-only/radio sit com/soap opera with a new and exclusive soundtrack produced (by us) for each episode. The contemporary soundtrack samples other media to make it curiously relevant, but the comedy harks back, at times, to Carry On culture for a timeless and rather 'British' feel.

Thanks in advance, folks, I know this won't be to everyone's taste, but your thoughts are gratefully received...x

You may also post this (as series one) in Showcase. I see no problem with that. Thank you for taking the time to think about your decision though. I really, really appreciate it.

In return I shall have a listen.

Thankyou, Leevil, I'll post in Showcase too then...

Okay, honestly. I don't think I could listen to that for 21mins. It's very well produced, as in there's obviously someone who knows how to mix all that stuff together. But there's one big problem with this. Pacing. A very important role in comedy, and here it's completely lost.

I'm not sure when I would be in the mood to listen to this, part music-part comedy. A mistake people often make is mixing two formats together. The case for most people is, I'll listen to comedy when I want to listen to comedy and I'll listen to music when I want music. I'd be tempted to fast forward through the musical interludes here.

Personally I think you'd be better off with 2 min 'max' segments compatible with YouTube.

I couldn't follow the dialogue I was too distracted by the robotic voices.

To finish on a good note. It's very well produced, along with the website I see a lot of love has gone into it. It needs a serious rehash though if you want to get it seen/heard on the internet.

Gosh, that was quick! Thanks for such speedy feedback. We're currently achieving around 4000 listens per month, so I don't know if that's good or bad for one series. And I'm very much aware that FR's an 'acquired taste' and we therefore target quite a specific audience (ha! specific, or just small?).

Thing is, we absolutely love making it and it's great you can tell what a labour of love it is. Our desire for a bigger audience is just to justify the time spent on it really, though if a radio station like 6 Music/Xfm/Resonance FM wanted to broadcast the series in a late night slot we'd be chuffed to bits.

My personal aim is to become a better script writer through learning on the job, and our joint aim is to produce something really different where we stand a chance of carving a niche without having to compete too fiercely.

Thanks for the time you spent responding, I'll brace myself for any other feedback which comes my way. I'm particularly interested in what you say re. pacing - that's obviously a skill which is important in any scripting I may do in the future.

Cheers...x

Quote: Sandy Steelfox @ October 20 2010, 3:05 PM BST

We're currently achieving around 4000 listens per month

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I'll shuttup.

Oh, so we're doing ok then? Brilliant!
Thanks for that, I feel better now (phew!)...x

Hi Sandy.

I pretty much like this. The musical segments are well done, and as a whole it does sound very professional in terms of production. The comedy would be much improved by using real people and cutting down the length of the music bits, as good as they are.

Kind of reminds me of a gentle Jam, or a Green Wing not set in a hospital that you can't see. Plus 4000 listens per month is 4000 times more than I have achieved in anything.

The musical elements definitely add a nice style. It just needs some serious editing.

Ah right, so cut the music down? Interesting point, thanks both. We've already done that once (these days each piece is never longer than two minutes) but we were only talking the other day about the idea of making it even more 'incidental'. I'll definitely feed this back to the other two I work with - originally FR was a music based project, but it's mutated quite a lot along the way.

And as for using real voices, that's also something we'll take on board. It's been fun making the electronic ones take on human lives, with emotions and personalities, and has perhaps made my script writing apprenticeship more challenging for that reason. The thing is, throughout the story, the ongoing joke is that they're robots pretending to be humans, and very quaint ones at that, so to use real voices instead would mean a big change. In Episode 5 'Party' the house gets struck by lightning and all the robots are badly affected by a power surge which results in them having to reboot to fix the problem (cue lots of Windows sfx). But yes, I'd be very curious to hear my writing delivered by humans instead, and hopefully it's something that'll happen one day.

Cheers...x

Quote: Sandy Steelfox @ October 20 2010, 4:41 PM BST

throughout the story, the ongoing joke is that they're robots pretending to be humans, and very quaint ones at that,..

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I may not have been listening closely enough as I had no idea that was the case. Probably my bad ears.

Quote: scratchyr @ October 20 2010, 4:45 PM BST

Probably my bad ears.

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Not necessarily. If you didn't pick up on that it's entirely possible the joke's too subtle? Though to be honest, I'm happy for people to interpret FR however they want. That's why working with audio only is so interesting - your audience has to use its imagination an awful lot.

We deliberately haven't ever named the characters either, because in that way it makes them more ambiguous. They could be humans with funny voices, or android-style robots, or they could even just be voices on a computer floating in the ether???