Interview with Barnaby Eaton-Jones
Any regular readers of my blog will know that I am a huge fan of the Robin of Sherwood TV series, and the more recent audio adventures. Today I am delighted to welcome Barnaby Eaton-Jones, the producer of the audio series.
Q:
How did you come to be involved in the Robin of Sherwood audio project?
A:
The short answer is that I set-up and ran the 30th anniversary convention for the show, where the two Robin of Sherwoods (Mr Praed and Mr Connery) appeared on stage together for the first time, and I was then asked to be co-producer by an audio company – if the audio licence they were enquiring about to make a new series came to pass. It didn’t, sadly. But, at that convention, I was gifted an unproduced script to give back to the Richard Carpenter Estate (that had been auctioned off and was in the possession of Rowena Sayer). This became the basis of a new bid to acquire the licence to do this as a one-off and it was then successful.
Q:
What were the main differences between recording the audio books and the full cast adventures?
A:
The script. It’s as simple as that. With a full-cast adventure, you’re writing as if it’s a television episode – creating pictures with dialogue and with sound effects and music. That may require a little explanatory chatter now and again, which should be natural rather than shoehorned in (not as easy as it seems!). With an enhanced audio book, you’re writing – again – to create pictures in the imagination of the listener but you have the added advantage of a narrator telling the story. So, you have one voice, reading a story, rather than a collection of voices acting out a dramatization. I rather like the halfway house in-between, which we trialled with the recent Christmas Special ‘Sanctuary’, where we had a narrator but we also had a self-contained set of voices to read in the character’s dialogue. So, it was half audio book, half audio play; and it seemed to work really well.
Q:
What have been your greatest challenges?
A:
There have been many! The main one was when the original co-producer and his audio company upped sticks and left a few weeks before going into studio with ‘The Knights of the Apocalypse’. That meant having to re-cast, re-book studio dates and find a new audio company to release KOTA. And then, a few weeks before going into studio with the enhanced audios, my new co-producer upped and left too. Fortunately, his was for health reasons and he’s returning in 2018, but it does appear that Sherwood is jinxed. Ahem.
Q:
What was it like working with so many well-known actors?
A:
Joyful. It wasn’t intimidating or frightening, as they had all stayed so close as friends and they were just a lovely happy bunch. It was nice to have got to know the majority of them through the 30th anniversary event I ran, so we weren’t strangers. But, they’ve been a very, very supportive bunch. I still have to pinch myself sometimes when my phone flashes up Jason Connery’s name when he rings. If it all ended tomorrow, I hope they’d still talk to me and be happy doing the reunion convention weekends, because it’s all being so much fun. They are genuinely fantastic actors to be around.
Q:
Have there been any particular moments that have stood out for you?
A:
Yes. Many. Here’s my Top Five (which I’m sure would change if you asked me again tomorrow!)…
Standing in for Jason Connery during ‘The Knights of the Apocalypse’ (we recorded over four days, with as many actors as we could get for each session. When we were missing actors, I filled in the voices) and having to tell Marion, in the form of Judi Trott, that I loved her in the script. At the exact point I was saying it, my phone was buzzing in my pocket. When I pulled it out, it was a missed call from Michael Praed! Ha. You see, the first Robin is still clearly jealous that the second Robin stole his lady away from him! Ahem.
A local BBC News piece about the new audio adventure had been picked up by the main BBC News website and then proceeded to garner a million hits in a very short space of time. There’s clearly a lot of love for this telling of the legend!
The Premiere in London, with news crews and a fantastic bunch of fans crowded into a lecture hall to hear the first half an hour of ‘The Knights of the Apocalypse’.
Getting the licence, after so many negotiations, to continue on with ‘Robin of Sherwood’ as an official entity; which has created what I hope will be very long-lasting friendships with my co-producer Iain Meadows (from Spiteful Puppet) and Harriet Whitehouse (Richard Carpenter’s daughter, who runs his Estate).
Being filmed on Ray Winstone’s mobile phone whilst I was in ‘battle’ with Jason Connery during their recording session for ‘The Knights of the Apocalypse’ – I was playing the big villain and fighting with Connery’s Robin. Ray found it so amusing, he filmed it! Ha.
Q:
You narrated one of the Robin of Sherwood audiobooks yourself. How was that experience for you?
A:
It was genuinely thrilling. It wasn’t going to be me. I mean, I wanted to do it – especially as the script was written by someone I’ve known since I was a teenager (we both watched ‘Robin of Sherwood’ together!), but I did ask three of the original cast – one after the other – to be the narrator but each one had scheduling issues because of the fixed studio date. I’ve done voice acting and narration before, so I’m not a novice, but it’s not something I do regularly. We recorded everyone else in that particular audio first (Michael Praed, Nickolas Grace and Andy Secombe) – all of whom were brilliant. Then, I had less than an hour left on the clock to get through a script that was also less than an hour. So, it’s pretty much all done in one take and I’m rather proud that I didn’t mess it up!!
Q:
What does the future hold for the Robin of Sherwood audio adventures? Can we expect any more beyond the 2018 release?
A:
I genuinely don’t know. We have a period where we get to renegotiate the licence towards the middle of this year before it runs out towards the end of the year. Rather boringly, we have to work out whether it’s financially and creatively viable to continue on. Not many people know that the main movers and shakers behind this whole thing are myself and Iain Meadows – neither of whom take a penny for our jobs, in order that we can funnel everything back into the production. Now, we can’t keep doing that, especially as we both have other projects that we are getting paid for. So, it really is down to how many units the public buy of the audiobook downloads, or pre-ordering the Summer 2018 box-set of four adventures; as that will make the decision for us!
I’d like to thank Barnaby Eaton-Jones for a wonderful interview, and to encourage my readers to give the series a try if you haven’t already. You won’t regret it, and your support may even lead to future releases.
