Audio production company Lead Mojo (producers of NonCensored and Sound Heap with John-Luke Roberts) has launched a new marketplace for scripted audio comedy.
Smelt will offer pre-sales of nine original scripted audio comedy series from exceptional comedy writers including Joel Morris and Ben Willbond (pictured l- r) at leadmojo.co.uk/smelt.
The aim is for the funding platform to hand control to fans who can back the series they want to hear, whilst ensuring that writers, actors, and producers are all paid for their time, whilse retaining creative control.
Money will only be taken if the minimum funding level is reached, and then the show will be made.
It will take about 5,000 people pledging £10 each to buy each project in advance to cover the costs of making it - the time the writer takes to write it, studio time, actors, editing time, music, production.
If eight six-part series are funded, a dedicated podcast feed to release the episodes week by week will be launched. Otherwise any funded shows will remain available only to people who have paid for them.
The launch line-up is as follows:
This Conversation Never Happened by Andy Hamilton (Old Harry’s Game, Outnumbered, Drop the Dead Donkey): A series of imagined conversations from key moments throughout history.
Tamworth by Ian Martin (The Thick of It, Veep, The Death of Stalin): A period sitcom and political satire set in the late 8th century.
Undoable by Deborah Frances-White (The Guilty Feminist, Say My Name, Never Have I Ever): A sitcom about an impossible situation of sexual chemistry in a small town that can only be postponed in agony or end in disaster.
Shadow Rabbits by Joel Morris (Charlie Brooker’s Wipe shows, Philomena Cunk series) & Ben Willbond (Ghosts, Yonderland, Horrible Histories): Spies. Fast cars. Exploding pens. Flirting in casinos. Also: paperwork. Lots of paperwork. The Shadow Rabbits are the crack team behind health and safety forms for the jet packs and third-party fire-and-theft for the underwater cars. Nobody does filing better. Plus there’s a good pension and a Tuesday pub quiz.
The Inn by Alice Fraser (The Bugle): A funny and playful, fly-on-the-wall comedy series based in the initiating location of so many Fantasy genre adventures in which the listener pieces together relationships and stories from overheard snippets.
Broken News from Larry & Paul (Broken News): An all-new series that treats the absurd minutiae of modern life with the urgency of a global crisis. This is hard-hitting cultural satire where the petty is presented as profoundly important.
The Least Bad Of All Possible Worlds by Eddie Robson (Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully, Doctor Who audio plays): A sci-fi comedy about the unusual residents of a Lancashire boarding house, who have accidentally fallen through gateways from parallel worlds and the case worker tasked with helping them integrate.
Randomly Selected by Amna Saleem (Beta Female): Randomly Selected is a sharp romcom set mostly inside the chaotic purgatory of an airport. Funny, quick and laced with social bite, Randomly Selected is a fun romcom about the strange intimacy of being seen in a place designed to strip you down.
Missing History by Mark Evans (Bleak Expectations, The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff): A spoof history podcast in which our hosts finally fill in the gaps in history: events repressed by the rulers of the day; books and documents lost over time; and incidents that were simply ignored because everyone agreed that they were just too embarrassing to talk about.
Producer Ed Morrish said, ‘I grew up listening to scripted audio comedy like The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, The Goon Show and Old Harry’s Game, and I love making it. The thought and planning that goes into scripted audio makes it so much more re-listenable than conversational podcasts, and I hope we can find five thousand people per series who value the craft of writing, recording and editing comedy.’
Ian Martin commented ‘I love the idea of having a paying audience. So much more rewarding than writing for a miserable bunch of moaning cheapskates. I love you all, in advance.’
Amna Saleem added ‘I'm delighted to be involved with Smelt alongside so many people I admire. As a Scottish Asian writer I'm not often given the opportunity to write nuanced, funny and colourful stories that can still sit inside the mainstream world instead of being quickly waved away as too niche. Romcoms belong to everyone!’
And Eddie Robson said ‘Smelt is building a whole new platform for audio comedy and I'm excited to get on that platform and sell you all tickets for a train that's going somewhere funny. I think that metaphor just about holds up - the tickets are the pledges, the train is the show... yeah. Whatever, it's going to be good. People who enjoyed Welcome To Our Village have been asking me for years when I'm going to write another sitcom - here's your chance to force me to do it!’
More here.
