The pod casting of old Stargate:Horizon episodes

[cpw3bsr]

I started watching Stargate SG-1 when it moved to the Sci-Fi channel. This was the same time I started thinking that some of the cable shows were a lot better then what was on over-the-air channels. I thought SG-1 was well produced and acted though I was a little confused because I was seeing episodes out of order. My Sam’s Club, a discount warehouse store, was selling the first five season boxed sets for $28.00 a piece.

I picked up and watched all five season in order. Then started looking on the Internet for the latter SG-1 season box sets because I wanted to get them cheap. During that search I found GateWorld website. Through that web site I just learned about Stargate:Horizon website.

I thought your concept for a website was not only original, but also a great idea. I think you are going to see more and more of these type of websites popping-up all over the Internet. First it gives new and young scriptwriters a great chance to learn and perfect their skills in writing. It also gives the scriptwriters great feedback on their work from all types of readers, which they could never get from a school. It also teaches them the discipline need to write scripts for TV, movies or theater.

Now I see that you are adding an art department of artists and graphic designers to your writing staff for Season Two. This will also give these people a chance to perfect their skills along with the discipline needed in their trade along with the feedback from the readers.

I’m sure this addition of artists has put a lot on your table at this time to get up and running on your website. However I would like you to consider the following idea for the future. What about offering your older seasons episodes on online in mp3 format for downloading from your website. This would give young aspiring actors, musicians, musical composers and computer sound engineers a chance to perfect their skills. Not only that it would also give them the feedback they desperately need and want too.

Being an old man I remember listing to scripts over the radio. To the younger readers of this diatribe there was a time before TV and the Internet. If you would like to learn more about this time go to http://www.radiolovers.com/ and listen to some old time radio shows for free. One of the best sci-fi show on radio was X Minus 1, (http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/xminus1.htm ) in the 50s and 60s. Some of these shows may seem a little corny to you now, but they were really the “cat’s meow” in those days.

Reading a script on your website is great fun and reading should be encouraged. But if your scriptwriters can also hear there stories being performed will help them improve there writing along with the story lines. These performances do not have to be done by highly paid professional actors, narrators and musicians, but amateurs who are aspiring to become a professional artist in their trade. It would not surprise me if some of your readers were just such people who are amateur actors, narrators and musicians and would love the chance to perform.

It would be nice if the old episodes could be podcast and drop into an iPod or MP3 player for mobile listening, or just turn up the speakers and listen right there on our computer. What fun it would be to have episodes for listening on long walks, in the car or at the gym. It would be fabulous if these podcast could be free, but it would also be understandable if their was a small charge for the podcast to help support the website.

It would enjoyable to hear what other members of this forum think about this idea or their ideas on this subject. And to the Webmaster, I know this would be a lot of work.

[Sir Ruff]

I have to say that that's a great idea and I think this has been suggested before? I just listened to Orson Welles' podcast of the war of the worlds from the 30's and I was really impressed. And i think it would be great to have Horizon in this format too but that would take alot of work i think.

Alex what say you?

[Erik Pasternak]

I'm not Alex, but I think I can answer this question: probably not. As you might have seen in the GateWorld news release, Alex chose a virtual cast for the series, with specific actors in mind. Since those specific actors would not be able to do this, chances are very slim that this would happen. Sir Ruff is right, by the way, this has been suggested before.

We do have some podcasts available on the download section of the Horizon page, but these serve as episode commentaries, like you would find on DVDs.

[Alex Rubit]

It's a really interesting idea, and it would definitely be fun to listen to.

Like Erik said, right now I don't think it will happen too soon. Mainly because it would take a lot of time; a lot of work is okay, but you do need the time for doing it, and right now producing the show as it is takes quite some time (especially with having a whole additional department for 3D designs and promo pictures).

But as I've said before, one day maybe we could do something along those lines. But of course I'd really like to have our actual cast to do it, so I suppose we'd have to work around some schedules.

There are no plans for any of this at this moment, especially since the series is just getting of the ground in many ways. But you never know where it will go at some point. Right now, and for quite some time to come, it's a virtual series.

On a related note: I've just listened to parts of one of those radio shows. They sound quite interesting; I'll be listening to some more of those.

[Osiris-RA]

cpw3bsr has a great point about how this kind of thing is a good expereince for new screenwriters and teached them about how life in this type of job would be. That's exactly what I thought about this - that and it's pretty darn entertaining!

I've always liked radio-shows because it kind of shows the imagination behind the person who's created it. You need to have a good imagination and eye for things so that you can convery it as vividly as you can to your listening audience. I heard the Orsen Welles Alien Invasion show before and I loved it. And hey - the guy was a great story teller obviously. People thought it was real. So radio shows like that are really a great, imaginative expereince.

I think it'd be awesome to have SGH done like that too - but I'm happy for now with the way we have it. We've got a huge audience, people are reading, and that's great. If we could get it heard, that'd be even better but as Alex said, it'd definitly take a lot of time and energy to get it done. But I'd definitly support it. If we could have our virtual cast in on it - hey, that'd be amazing!

Funny, when I was a kiddie, I used to tape myself on my recorder doing a kind of mystery show sort of. I was all the characters and I made my own sound effects, and the whole thing was adlibbed so..there were lots of pauses while I came up with good lines, hehe. That was fun. As you can probably tell, I was an only child. Ah! Those were the days!

[samjack4ever]

If anyone out there wants to have a go at turning one of the SG:H scripts into a broadcastable show... Go right a head!

Just let us know first ....

[StevetheWraith!]

This is a really interesting thread, although it seems to be deceased! I totally agree that if this gets turned into a podcasted series, that the voice overs don't have to be top notch. You see, this thread reminded me of a really cool author called Scott Sigler. He is a writer and when a series of unfortunate events (and no I don't mean the Lemony Snicket's movie!) struck down his book, he decided to do a really cool thing. This past Spring/Summer he released his book, called EarthCore, as the world's first Podiobook (Podcasted Novel) for FREE! Needless to say the public's response was phenomenal. He reached 10,000 "readers" and recently thanks to the massive public response to it he managed to re-publish his book on Amazon! So his book went from being a pulled e-book to a smash hit. What was really cool about it, besides the book's amazing plot!, was that it was read by him alone in his house!! There was no professional team at his disposal. Instead he read and performed the entire book (each episode was like 40+ minutes and the book spanned 22 episodes!) all by himself. He even gave each character in his book his/her own voice. So even though he didn't have a legion of actors at his disposal, his book still kicked ass. Although this post wasn't meant to be a plug for his books (although I do love getting the word out whenever I can!) it was meant to highlight the fact that you don't need a professional crew and you don't even need an actor for each role. Although I doubt that the crew has enough time to do even this, perhaps somebody out there, like sam said, would try reading an entire episode all by him/herself. Who knows maybe it will catch on? The possibilities for this show are endless! All hail SGH

PS> Scott has started on his second book which is called Ancestor. It is excellent, and the voice overs and recordings are waaay better then EarthCore. EarthCore was great so if you like action/horror/thrillers! like Relic and you have free time then I highly recommend that you either download and listen to it as a Podiobook or pick up the book. Below are the links.
(1) EarthCore's main site is: EarthCore

(2) Ancestor's main site is: Ancestor