The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie's Botanarium

[size=150:1iubm6oq]About Uncle Bertie's Botanarium
Project Published on 10/04/2012 07:06 a.m.

[size=150:1iubm6oq]Salutations
Greetings seafarers, city slickers, country types, historians, botanists and lovers of the ridiculous.

[size=150:1iubm6oq]What we are trying to do
Help us to make our dream of Uncle Bertie's Botanarium Episode I: Cheese Dreams in the Gravy Isles come true. We are planning, come hell or high water, to make Episode I of a radio podcast, scripted by Duncan Sarkies and featuring the music of Lawrence Arabia and performances by Jemaine Clement and Nigel Collins. The podcast also features sound design by Nic McGowan and illustrations by Stephen Templer.

[size=150:1iubm6oq]We need your help
We will be recording the podcast in May and we are determined to do a really good job of it. This Pledge Me campaign is an important way you can help us to raise the minimum funds we need, and you will get something cool in return.

[size=150:1iubm6oq]A little bit about the story - Episode 1: Cheese Dreams in the Gravy Isles
Mr Banks is a famous aristocratic idle botanist who is a lord in the ugly squalor of Damprot-Upon-Tyne, the jewel of the Gravy Isles. A varicose vein cheese dream leads him to the secret botanarium of Bank’s Uncle Bertie. Uncle Bertie was a laughing stock amongst botanists due to his belief in the existence of ‘Heaven's Clover’, a plant on the other side of the Boiling Ocean rumoured to offer a lifetime of pleasure. He disappeared in search of the plant, never to be seen again.

Mr Banks announces that he will set sail to the Boiling Ocean and beyond, to restore his family name and to rid the world of pleasure. He selects a crew of untrustworthy seafarers, botanists and dandys. As the sailors leave the port for pastures unknown and probable certain death they sing a moving farewell dirge, I Left My Heart in the Gravy Isles.

[size=150:1iubm6oq]A little about us
Lawrence Arabia is a splendid musician. In 2010 he won the APRA Silver Scroll with Apple Pie Bed. He has written many other songs worth crowing about:
Talk About The Good Times, The Beautiful Young Crew and Auckland CBD. He has toured with Crowded House, Feist and Okkervil River and will soon be jetting to the UK to promote his forthcoming album The Sparrow.

Duncan Sarkies is a writer who is mostly known for working with brother Robert on Scarfies and their highly anticipated film Two Little Boys. He has written two episodes for the Flight of the Conchords and his novel Two Little Boys has been warmly received in New Zealand and the UK.

Stephen Templer is an illustrator, artist and amateur shaman. He has illustrated for Fatcat and Fishface on their short animated film The Wreck of the Diddley and designed props for The Hobbit. His artwork can be seen all over the country and is always in hot demand. See his website to get an idea of his style. Also, we've displayed some of his artwork below.

Our other collaborators are a superb bunch. Jemaine Clement is extremely well known for his HBO TV Series Flight of the Conchords, Nigel Collins has toured extensively with the Flight of the Conchords, the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra and much-loved theatre show Wheeler's Luck. Nic McGowan has produced radio plays, albums by many prominent Wellington bands and created sound designs for film and theatre. He is a perfectionist;
he can often be found in the wee small hours rustling trees and sloshing around on boats to capture soundscapes for his many projects.


[size=150:1iubm6oq]Where we have been and where we are going
Uncle Bertie's Botanarium is a project that we have been working on for three years and has so far resulted in a short film, and a rollicking ten episode synopsis that we will turn into more radio podcasts and a grapic novel. After that, who knows, but we do salivate a little at the prospect of eventually creating a feature film…

emira wrote:And it looks like not only one Clement will be working on this project! :#aziz#:

You’ll be helping me make hopefully the weirdest music I’ve ever made, within (as well as) [size=150:1grgqn3k]a absurdist radio play featuring a narcissistic, megalomanical botanist played by Jemaine Clement.

sargifster wrote:

You’ll be helping me make hopefully the weirdest music I’ve ever made, within (as well as) [size=150:1g0xsljy]a absurdist radio play featuring a narcissistic, megalomanical botanist played by Jemaine Clement.

[url=Full article at Lawrence Arabia's website][/url]

sargifster wrote:

You’ll be helping me make hopefully the weirdest music I’ve ever made, within (as well as) [size=150:2yzgmmth]a absurdist radio play featuring a narcissistic, megalomanical botanist played by Jemaine Clement.

[url=Full article at Lawrence Arabia's website][/url]

[size=150:2v6kspq5]New Zealand writer gets donations to fund project
Tue, 22 May 2012 10:43p.m.

By Elizabeth Puranam

Duncan Sarkies is one of the country's most prolific script writers, having written the movie Scarfies and for the TV show Flight of the Conchords.

But when he needed funding for a psychedelic radio podcast set in a parallel universe, he went to the public for money and got it.

Sarkies is just one of many people using "
crowd funding"
to get their projects going.

His project is called Uncle Bertie's Botanarium.

“Joseph banks in a parallel universe travelling through the boiling ocean to go to the very source of pleasure, which is a plant known as heaven's clover to cut if off at the roots and destroy it because he wants to destroy pleasure,” Sarkies says.

As well as providing the laughs in the studio, musician Lawrence Arabia is in charge of the sound track for the podcast.

Illustrator Stephen Templer's drawings bring the accompanying short film and graphic novel to life.

After working on the idea for two years, Sarkies says they were determined to make it their way, so they went to crowd funding website Pledge Me.

They raised almost $8000 - $1000 more than they asked for - to make the first episode.
Click here to find out more!

Depending on how much money they contributed, pledgers received anything from the pod cast or Templer's art to a dinner party with the creators.

Pledge Me co-founder Anna Guenther is not surprised they got so much support.

“Those guys, they're all really well known for what they do and they're really well known in their fields. But they had a crowd and they had people interested and they're quirky. I think that's what really sold them is how quirky and random they were.”

Anna Guenther launched Pledge Me in February of this year. Since then, it has raised $210,000 for 35 projects.

The website gets 5 percent of all pledges that reach their target.

Megan Salole is Pledge Me's most successful case yet. She wanted enough money to start an organisation that would help Kiwis mobilise and campaign around issues like social justice and the environment.

Her pledgers raised $11,000 in five days.

“New Zealanders are extremely generous and when they care about something, they can put their money there.”

The money raised for Ms Salole will only cover her first month's work, just as the money raised for Uncle Bertie's Botanarium only makes one episode.

But with more than 300 websites like Pledge Me around the world, it looks like crowd funding is catching on as a way of getting a creative project under way.

[align=center:2v6kspq5]The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie'
s Botanarium
Cast and Crew - first day of production May 15th 2012

L to R: Nigel Collins, Lawrence Arabia, Fiona Elwood, Stephen
Templer, Duncan Darkies, Jemaine Clement, Nic McGowan[/align:2v6kspq5]

Good things take time, so they say, and when a recording is finally ready for public consumption you, dear friend, will be first in the queue to receive your very own download of Uncle Berties Botanarium, Episode One: Cheese Dreams in the Gravy Isles. I expect you will see it in time to warm your winter months.

The stories and world of Uncle Bertie’s are created by Duncan Sarkies, Lawrence Arabia and Stephen Templer.

Episode One:
Scripted and directed by Duncan Sarkies
Recorded and mixed by Nic McGowan
Music by Lawrence Arabia
Illustrations by Stephen Templer
Produced by Duncan Sarkies &
Fiona Elwood

Featuring:
Jonathan Brugh (Narrator)
Jemaine Clement (Lord Joseph Banks, Uncle Bertie)
Lawrence Arabia (Solander)
Nigel Collins (The Cheesmonger , Salty Jules and others),
Gentiane Lupi (young Joseph Banks)
Stephen Templer (the Publican, the Illustrator and others)
Duncan Sarkies (various)

Recorded live at Island Bay Studios and various sites around Wellington

blondesnotbombs wrote:Do we know how many episodes there are in total? I have the first three downloaded, but I don't want to sign up for Howl until all the episodes have been posted to ensure that I don't miss any.

I've been enjoying a lot of audio dramas lately, so I'm really looking forward to binging on this once I have all of the episodes.

Amily wrote:There are 12 episodes. The last one aired June 1st.

Amily wrote: I'm going to be saving the rest for the hours long drive my sister and I are making halfway across the country in a couple of weeks. :#haha#:

blondesnotbombs wrote:That's a good time to listen. :#thumbsup#: I like to save these sort of things for long, tedious chores. It's a nice incentive for me to do things I don't want to do. :#haha#:

onlyalways wrote:From [url=Lawrence Arabia's instagram][/url]:





JEMAINE IN RIDICULOUS PERIOD GARB. :#ded#: :#ded#: :#ded#:

Sounds like [url=Uncle Bertie's is getting a second season][/url]. :#aziz#: (I still have to catch up with the first!)

emira wrote:That's great! (Although the first episode was too weird to get into this show. I guess I'll have to give it another try :#shy#: )

Amily wrote:Just came across this. :#lol#:

[size=110:2mxlkwfs]Just coming to the end of recording season 2 for Uncle Bertie's Botanarium!

Thanks to Matt Grace for some awesome photos.

blondesnotbombs wrote:Oh goodness, I better finish the first season! :#shy#: