Or... They've just postponed to fit in the recording of seriously busy actors
Cheers
Tony
What do we figure (roughly) the process is?
- the pitch -- either a writer with an idea, or the EPs with notes wanting someone to write a story
- beg for money from Jason H-E (lol), whom I gather has a bit of coin and spends a lot of time managing his various businesses
- go back to the writer with the greenlight
- writer spends x number of days/weeks/months writing their story
-- longer, if they're reading a novel and figuring out how to adapt it to audio
- story is submitted to Nick and/or other EPs, who undoubtedly already have a pile of
other scripts waiting to be read
- once Nick has time to get to it, he has to read, digest, and provide notes back to the writer or editor
- writer/editor has to take notes and make modifications
- re-submit final script...which sits in the inbox again till Nick can get to it
- somebody has to schedule all of the actors in question (which, regardless of
individual availability, in a
group is probably on par with herding cats)
- get everyone--both cast and crew--in to record
- record for x number of days
- edit for however long that takes, send on to the audio engineers for effects sounds and whatnot
- record ADR if necessary
- finish editing
- commission an artist to do cover art, approve as needed
- negotiate for physical pressing of CDs and send out for physical production
- have the logistics team do all the shipping (though I suspect this last part is actually outsourced)
- at any and all steps along the way, still
other people at BF are trying to drum up marketing and buzz for the product.
Now--all of that is going on...with 20-50 stories at various stages of production
at all times...?
I've noticed in recent years that Big Finish really does like trotting out the 'busy actors' explanation to justify delays and long lead-times, but at this point I just find it such a flimsy and transparent excuse that I have a really, really hard time believing it. Probably not really fair to pass the buck to the actors either, if a project is announced and then it takes longer than expected to work through all the pre-production stuff.
We get it, Big Finish folks: you are
craaaaazy busy. You don't need to pass the blame on when things don't go quite to plan. We still love you and all that you do
Or to be considerably more concise: it's hard to say the actors are busy when the scripts are turned in 4 months late. Especially when the actors in question's IMDB pages show neither of them having done much (on screen/film) for the last 2-5 years