If you’ve been interested in Night Terrace but not sure if you wanted to buy the first season, well, now’s your chance to get in on the ground floor: we’re releasing Night Terrace episode one, Moving House by John Richards, for free!

Why now? In one week, on March 27, we’ll be launching the Kickstarter campaign for season two! So we thought this would be a great way to let potential new fans check out the series before they decide to back it. As with our first season Kickstarter, we’ll be offering a discounted price on the full season – and you’ll be able to get either or both seasons through as campaign rewards! (Though note you’ll have to wait until the end of the campaign on April 24 to get your copy of season one that way.)

The free episode has a brief intro and outro, but is otherwise exactly the same as the version found in the season one download, and there are several ways to get it.

You can download the mp3 from us: Night Terrace: Moving House (free version)

You can stream or download it through Soundcloud:

And you can also listen to it on YouTube, with a brief video introduction from Ben and Petra:

We hope you enjoy Moving House, and please, spread the news to your friends! We’d love for as many people to hear it as possible.

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Today is the day the Terrace is launched! All the digital files have been polished and doilies placed on the download codes… we’re ready to go!

We’re having a party tonight in Melbourne for some of our fabulous Kickstarter backers and we’d like to thank everyone who has made Night Terrace happen, from the fantastic backers to our brilliant cast and everyone who helped us on the way.

So thank you! And feel free to help us spread the word. Blogs, podcasts, forums, facebook pages – if you know people who would enjoy Night Terrace please tell them. If you’d like to interview any of the crew you can contact us at media@nightterrace.com .

And if you’d like to buy a copy of the series simply click here.

Enjoy the trip!

We thought you’d all appreciate a peek behind the curtain at the Night Terrace production process, so we asked co-creator and “Sue” actor Petra Elliott to fill you in…

Here it is – the long awaited Night Terrace.

Well, for our backers at least. Those who supported the creation of this series as part of our Kickstarter campaign back in March can finally hear what we have been secretly squeeing about for months. (The rest of you, well… It’s coming. Soon.)

The feedback from our backers is so amazing and I’m glad you’re as excited to finally receive Night Terrace as we are to be delivering it to you! Now we’re at this point I can’t help but reflect on the journey of developing the series.

Since we last touched base with the completion of recording session number three, our sound wizard David Ashton has been hard at work editing each episode with all of the cast voice recordings, SFX, backer cameo lines. He’s also scored original music for a number of episodes. Each time I saw a new “Episode x – final edit” file ‘added to Dropbox’, the squee factor became immense.

Of course as each episode was finished we had to quality check them, and so I listened to all the episodes, multiple times. Like, a lot. So if something really bugged me as Not Quite Right after several listens, I was sure to pick it up! Then I made notes. Lots of notes. Some are really, really pedantic:

• Take this word and swap it with this one.
• Add .004 of a millisecond pause here.
• Should that door sound like a future space door, or a normal door?
• Overlap this persons line with the start of the next one.

I’ve resisted the urge to ask David to make my footsteps sound 10kgs lighter… ah the vanity! I listened to the episodes repeatedly and still didn’t get bored. So I know you’re in for a treat.

Choosing photos and sound clips for the trailer has also been a very interesting process. (An audio series needs images – who’d have thought?) What will give you just the littlest taste of the story without… well… spoilers!? (CAPS LOCK! BOLD!) We wanted to hint at the fantastic adventure and comedy in both writing and performance, without giving away the punch lines or the plot.

Following our super fun photo shoot with the amazing Steve Scalone, we began scouring through hundreds of pictures for the ultimate image. What will best give a sense of the characters, the adventure, the … sheer gingerness of the main cast? (That was accidental, for the record). For me personally, every aspect of creating the image of Sue was carefully thought out. Costume, make-up & hair, posing – shooting and choosing the right image for Sue’s character was so tricky – she’s so complicated, yet mysterious. The image needed to be true to her character, without revealing too much. I even had a Queer Eye For the Straight Girl session with John, going through my wardrobe to pick potential “Sue” attire. It involved me getting my gear off in front of John repeatedly. He didn’t care. Neither did I. I guess that’s a sign of a good working relationship – being “naked” in front of your associate. If only that were a metaphor.

Then we had to narrow 4 hours of story audio into a 15 or 30 second trailer. I even created a spreadsheet to capture one-liners or dialogue exchanges from each episode to use in the trailers, and coded it with ‘sci-fi’ ‘gag ‘story spoiler’ ‘SFX’ so I could filter it to the type of snippet we wanted. So lame!

Gosh, we’ve even been debating phrasing, capitalisation and punctuation in the names of the episodes. What size file is best to offer? In what format? But as with every aspect of this series, we are taking such care with all of these decisions to simply make Night Terrace the very best it can be.

As well as all the work on the main series, we’ve been hard at work preparing for the additional features, such as The Adventures of Eddie Jones, meeting Josh Kinal for interviews which will be included in the audio “Making Of” documentary and David’s pieced together some intriguing selections from the cutting room floor. Not to mention planning the official launch. It. Is. All. Happening. And we are so, so proud.

And so, so happy that those who supported us from the very beginning are getting to share in the adventures of Anastasia Black, at last.

We sincerely hope you enjoy what you hear.

Much love,

Petra
(and by proxy, John, Ben, David and Lee)

We’ve just completed our third (and final) studio day on Night Terrace so it’s a perfect time to tell you what we’ve been up to.

Our third day included all the Kickstarter backers who chose to record a line and we were thrilled with their performances. We also had our first chance to work with Eryn Saunders who we’re certain you’ll be hearing more of in the future, Aamer Rahman brought his talent to the role of “Tony”, and the gloriously talented Dave Lamb and Amanda Buckley came in to provide a range of voices.

Our wizard of sound David Ashton has been putting the first mixes together and it’s all sounding fantastic. Curiously David is unflappable when the script calls for “the sound of the universe being torn to shreds in an explosion, then sucked into a single tiny point, then thrown out again in a new and exciting way”, but gets deeply annoyed when we ask for footsteps.

We’d also like to thank the wonderful people at Big Finish – especially Kris Griffin and Nick Briggs – who have been extremely generous with their advice and help.

We’re hoping to have the show finished and in your ears in September and our public launch party for Kickstarter backers will be in October, but we’ll tell you more about that soon.

Final cast update!

We’re pleased to announce the remaining guest stars for series one of Night Terrace!

Joining our amazing line-up of actors are Aamer Rahman, Virginia Gay, Andrew McClelland, Naomi Rukavina, Jason Tamiru, Eryn Saunders and Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie!

Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie is a musician, actor and street performer who has appeared in the feature films Dead Heart and Quigley Down Under. He started out in the band Stony Broke and the Hi-Spenders and has recorded with Not Drowning Waving, Joe Dolce and Alies Sluiter. He co-founded the Indjibundji Tribal Aboriginal Cultural Dance School in 1985, and was the lead in Ray Mooney’s play Black Rabbit at the Victorian Arts Centre. He won the title of ‘World’s Best Busker’ at a competition in Coff’s Harbour in 1992, and is famous for his Elvis impersonation. He’s not playing Elvis in Night Terrace but you will find him in episode six, The Last Hunt.

Also in episode six is Jason Tamiru. Jason is an actor, musician and producer and currently the indigenous audience development consultant for the Malthouse Theatre. He’s been the producer of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Deadly Funny competition and Blak Cabaret for the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival. You’ll also find him in the feature film comedy 10Terrorists, and we’re thrilled to have him onboard.

Virginia Gay is best known to Australian audiences as registered nurse Gabrielle Jaeger in the television series All Saints and Frances James (“the sensible one”) on Winners and Losers. Virginia is a WAAPA grad and alongside her TV work has a stellar theatre career, including playing Julia Gillard in The Wharf Revue, a “prize bitch” in Eddie Perfect’s The Beast for MTC, and a transgendered actor auditioning for the role of Hitler in The Production Company’s The Producers. Despite that last qualification, she doesn’t appear in episode five, Sound & Führer, but rather plays the central role in episode three, Time of Death.

Which is where you’ll also find Andrew McClelland. He’s best known as a comedian, having toured four times to the Edinburgh Fringe, appeared in 15 consecutive Melbourne International Comedy Festivals and has won the coveted “Piece of Wood” Comedian’s Choice award. He’s also an in-demand DJ, both at his own hugely successful club night Mr McClelland’s Finishing School and at special events around Australia. His television appearances include Spicks & Specks, In Siberia Tonight, The Chaser’s War on Everything and Slideshow. Night Terrace is hardly Andrew’s first foray into voice acting; he provides the voice of every character in ABC3’s The Dukes of Broxtonia.

Naomi Rukavina works mainly in the theatre, where you may have seen her in Yellow Moon or The Crucible (both for the Melbourne Theatre Company), The Seizure for The Hayloft Project, or as both Tybalt and Romeo in The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet for the Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company. She’s also been on the telly in Offspring. She’s in episodes six and seven of Night Terrace playing two very different characters, and she’s fab.

Eryn Saunders is probably the most professional actor we’ve worked with on Night Terrace…and she’s only ten! As well as appearing in episodes six and eight, Eryn also stars in the upcoming supernatural drama television series Sonnigsburg (alongside Night Terrace’s own Petra Elliott), and will soon be on stage with the Australian Ballet in The Nutcracker. We think she’s a performer with a big future in front of her.

Aamer Rahman rose to fame as half of comedy duo Fear of a Brown Planet with Nazeem Hussain, winning the Best Newcomer award at the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. As well as playing to sell-out crowds around Australia, Aamer has toured overseas and in 2014 opened for Dave Chappelle on the Melbourne leg of his tour. His debt solo stand-up show, The Truth Hurts, has played in Melbourne and London, and he recently successfully crowdfunded the making of his first comedy DVD. In Night Terrace, Aamer’s confident attitude serves him well in an important role in episode four, but he also got to live out his Star Trek dreams with a bit part in episode two.

Plus there’s some cameo surprises – but we’ll let you discover them for yourself!

We’ve been having a great time putting Night Terrace together and we’re really hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do! The show will be coming very soon to some ears near you.

And we’re done! Thanks to nearly 300 backers on Kickstarter we have funded season one of Night Terrace. The Kickstarter funds will immediately be used to hire the studio, pay for our actors’ time and cover other costs of production, so  a huge thank you from the Night Terrace team for making this possible. We have our first readthrough this week and our first recording session next week, so it’s full steam  ahead for Anastasia and friends.

We’re also thrilled to announce four more cast for the first series of Night Terrace!

 

Chris Taylor is a comedian and writer, most famous for his work as part of The Chaser comedy team. He has co-written and appeared on CNNNN, The Chaser Decides, The Chaser’s War on Everything, Yes We Canberra and The Hamster Wheel. He is also the writer of the musical comedy Dead Caesar which premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2007, hosted the documentary series Australia’s Heritage: National Treasures and his JJJ mockumentary The Blow Parade won the 2010 ARIA Award for Best Comedy Release.

Chris will play a guest role in the second episode, where he may or may not be in control of a spaceship.

Dave Lamb is a genuine Shakespearian actor, having toured versions of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth to Australian high schools with both Complete Works Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare. He has played Orlando in As You Like It and Prince Hal in Henry IV Part I, and recently directed a minimalist cut of Julius Caesar for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. His non-Barded work includes Yasha in The Cherry Orchard, a mad museum tour guide in the 2012 Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, a traffic cop on ABC’s Time of Our Lives and various crazy roles in ABC2’s The Bazura Project, including a futuristic robot with the voice of Shaun Micallef.

Amanda Buckley is about to reach her second decade of performing for theatre, corporate and festival audiences both in Australia and overseas, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe Festivals and the UCB Del Close Marathon (NY). Notable show credits include: Impromptunes: The Completely Improvised Musical (currently playing in the comedy festival), The Increasingly Handsome Adventures of Earl Bircher and other tales of Adventure, Spontaneous Broadway, Beaconsfield the Musical, Dungeon Crawl, Scrabble Unscripted, Blank! The Musical, iMPro3 Shuffle and Late Night Impro (also playing in the comedy festival).

Dave and Amanda come on board Night Terrace as part of our ensemble cast, playing various roles in multiple episodes.

Phil Zachariah is a graduate of the National Theatre, with a background in science including three years performing for the CSIRO Science Education Centre. He’s famous for playing high-profile individuals, including John Ruskin and George Bernard Shaw for ABC Radio National, H. G. Wells in ABC2’s The Bazura Project and since 2003 he has been performing a highly successful one-man show based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. His Dickens has taken him across Europe, the UK, New Zealand and Asia and the show is a regular fixture each December at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre. He has also sung for the Victoria State Opera and played Scruff in the oft-forgotten 1984 science fiction feature Future Schlock.

Phil plays a critical role in episode five…but beyond that there shall be no spoilers!

We hope to have some more casting and production news soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks to 170 amazing backers so far, the Kickstarter campaign for Night Terrace has already exceeded its base goal and is now at over $11,000! That means we have the base budget required to fund production of the first series –  but we’re only half-way through the campaign, with two weeks left to go. You can still back the series and watch our pitch video by clicking here.

So where do we go from here? And if you’re not a backer, why would you jump on board at this stage? Well, there are lots of reasons – here are eight of them!

1. You get a discount! The final retail version of Night Terrace will be $30 for the eight-episode first series. Pre-ordering through the Kickstarter saves you $5 – even if you only pitch in $10 for the first two episodes. (You’ll get a discount code or link to buy the whole series for $15 later.)
2. Most of our rewards are exclusive! USB keys, signed CDs, scripts, the vinyl…are all exclusive bits of Night Terrace stuff you won’t be able to get once the Kickstarter is over. Not to mention the chance to be mentioned in an episode, perform a line of dialogue or become an associate producer!
3. Pledging now helps us reach our stretch goals. These are targets above the campaign goal, and if we reach them, we’ll make extra bits of Night Terrace content!
   • At $12,000, we’ll produce The Making of Night Terrace, an audio documentary with discussion, interviews and outtakes. It’ll be available to anyone who backs the campaign or (even after the Kickstarter) buys the full first series.
   • At $15,000,  we’ll make a prequel series of mini-episodes, The Adventures of Eddie, about our hapless sidekick before he meets Anastasia. This one is exclusively for backers of the campaign (of $25 and up).
   • …we might have another one planned. But we don’t want to be presumptuous.
4. To maximise our chances of making Night Terrace happen, our base goal represents the minimum amount with which we can reasonably make the show – which means paying everyone involved (and there will be more than twenty cast and crew) only a minimal fee. This isn’t the sexy side of crowdfunding, but everyone is going to work hard and the more money we raise, the better we can pay everyone for that hard work – and the more we can afford to ask of artists, designers and actors.
5. Being involved in a crowdfunding campaign makes you part of the project. We’ll be celebrating that on Night Terrace with the launch party for backers of $50 or more, but also, once the campaign ends, by keeping you all up to date with pictures and news from the production of the show. It’s not a reward in the campaign sense, but it feels good to be part of something like this!
6. If you’re anything like me, you’ll forget about the project after a while in between when the campaign ends and when the show is finished – so you’ll get a nice surprise when that email arrives with your download code! And you’ll get actual non-electronic mail (yes, the e stands for something!) if you pledged for one of our physical rewards. EVEN MORE EXCITING!
7. The whole team gets excited every time we receive a pledge! This happens almost in real time as John, Petra, David and Lee check the site every five minutes. (I get instant notifications via my phone so it’s in real real time for me.) Wouldn’t you like to make us happy? Wouldn’t you? What are you, a monster?
8. Think about the future! The more listeners and backers we get for series one, the more likely it is we’ll be popular enough to make a second series…

We hope that’s convinced you! But if not, in any case you’ll be able to buy the series when it’s down – though after all our Kickstarter backers get to listen first. Which I suppose is a ninth reason!