Help “20 Minutes Into The Future” Build A Family:
Bringing Fans an authentic, vintage, NEW episode of “Max Headroom” as an audio drama!
Support us at patreon.com/austinrich to make this happen!
There are Seven Levels of membership for fans, with membership as low as $1 a month. ($12 a year!) There are perks available at every membership level! We have five Goals we’re hoping to achieve, and with each goal unlocked, the production of “Families” gets better! This is your way to get new, authentic Max Headroom in a form that is actually possible! Here’s all the secret details… and more!
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If you are a fan of Max Headroom, then there is a story that you are familiar with, even before Heather and Austin got the creators to talk about in on their podcast, 20 Minutes Into The Future. In this story, our favorite TV Show was canceled way too soon, while the creators were in the middle of filming the next episode, penned by Michael Cassutt and titled “Families.” Everyone was, as you imagine, disappointed.
This script continued the story of Network 23, its star reporter Edison Carter, his Controller Theora Jones, their tech-savvy friend Bryce Lynch, and the computer generated AI known as Max Headroom, created by Bryce, of Edison’s mind, which has since taken on it’s own personality. All of this was set “20 Minutes Into The Future,” in a Science Fiction world that was fantasy in 1987, and has, unfortunately, become horribly true in 2021.
For over 20 years it was impossible to find Max Headroom available in anything other than a bootleg form. In 2010, a DVD was finally released, but even that has faded from memory in the streaming era, where the show is not easily (or legally) available. Reboots have proved almost impossible, in spite of the resources hoping to make it happen. It seems that, if there is ever going to be more NEW “Max Headroom” in the world, it will be up to the fans to make it.
When Heather & Austin launched 20 Minutes Into The Future, they had a very modest goal: talk about Max Headroom, and maybe have some fun while they do it. Now, through a series of circumstances, not only has the show evolved into a lot more, it has also become your number one source for New Max Headroom in the world. Working with Michael Cassutt, who has given us his script for “Families,” and the full blessing to produce it as we see fit, we will be making a fully-cast audio drama version of this lost episode, and the quality of the production is entirely dependent on the number of people who sign up to support this very unique project.
To Sign Up, and get your name thanked in the credits, head over to patreon.com/austinrich, and choose one of the SEVEN “MaxHead” levels available to you, starting at just $1 a month! (That’s only $12 a year.) Every supporter at every level gets wonderful perks for making this possible, and as we amass more supporters, we are able to do more for this production, like hire profession voice actors, pay for quality music and FX, and reunite cast members to recreate their characters in this production! And: supporters get more cool perks, too!
This is a rare opportunity that is unique in the world of fiction. While many series that were loved many years ago make many efforts at comebacks, very rarely is there original scripts like this, that were written when the show was on the air by the creators of the show, but were never produced for a variety of reasons! This would have been the next episode of the show that fans COULD have seen in another universe, where we decided to live 20 Minutes Into The Future a little longer than we did in this one. The chance to bring this story to you is very exciting, and we want to make this possible with your help.
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MAXHEAD LEVELS OF SUPPORT
Here are the different MaxHead Levels of support, and what you get for supporting us at each level!
MaxHead Level 1: General Support Credit. ($1 / month)
You will not only get credit in the production for helping us make this possible, but, like all supporters of “20 Minutes Into the Future,” you get a fan membership badge, letting others know that you support our podcast.
MaxHead Level 2: Custom Pin Set ($5 / month)
Supporters at this level receive a “Custom Pin Set,” featuring images from our show! New Pin Sets will be released periodically, featuring different characters or scenes. But you can only get them if you support us at level 2!
For all support levels 3 and higher, you will receive early access to our shows when they are available!
MaxHead Level 3: Max Headroom ‘Zine ($10 / month)
Austin wrote a ‘zine, dissecting the Max Headroom episode “Lessons,” and is now only available to people show support our program at Level 3 or higher.
If you support our show at level 4 or higher, it also comes with a unique “Families” Pin Pack, to show your support for this particular Audio Drama!
MaxHead Level 4: Let’s Make CDs! ($15 / month)
You are probably the kind of fan that will want to have this episode of “Max Headroom” available as a piece of physical media, to own for yourself. So, support us at this level and you will receive a high-quality audio CD of this production when it is complete, with unique packaging designed by Heather & Austin!
MaxHead Level 5: Scriptbooks! ($25 / month)
Level 5 support comes with a printed and bound version of the script, signed by Heather & Austin, containing some behinds-the-scenes bits and bobs about how this production came to be.
MaxHead Level 6: Movie Style Poster ($30 / month)
You might enjoy this if you are the kind of person that likes posters, and we want to bring you this: a commissioned piece of poster art, in the style of a 1980’s Sci-Fi movie, promoting our version of “Families.”
MaxHead Level 7: Appear In Families (Limited Quantities) ($50 / month)
Maybe appearing in something like this is too good to pass up, to if you want to support us at this level, you will get to voice one of the characters in our audio drama! Be a part of this unique production, that you made possible!
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Perks are very cool, but the way we get this production to really take off is to get a lot more supporters. The more people that support this cause, and want to see the show grow into something cool, the more ways we can turn our “Families” production into something that is a lot more fun for everyone involved. We have five different goals, as we grow our audience from where we are now, to 500 Supporters.
We want to do some ambitious things with the “Families” script, but we may have to do something much less “huge” if we don’t hit the goals. So this is where word of mouth comes into play: after you support our efforts to bring you “Families,” tell a friend! The more people we get supporting us, the more we can do with this show, and ultimately, deliver the best version of this broadcast that we can.
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GOALS!
Without hitting out first goal, Heather and Austin will already record a solo version of us reading the script, doing all the parts and all the lines ourselves. For the podcast, we’ll cut in some rough SFX from the audio of the TV show into this recorded version, slap on a couple basic music cues (also stolen from the show), and present to you the story of the “Families” script, in a pretty rough-hewn sort of way. Not very glamorous, and we know we can do better with more supporters. But that’s the baseline we’re hoping to improve upon.
Here’s what we’ll do if we meet our goals!
Goal 1: 100 Supporters
If we can get 100 Supporters at any level for 20 Minutes Into The Future, Heather and Austin will read the “Families” script live with a few friends in the other roles, and will include some very basic music cue and SFX production afterwards for the podcast. Supporters will get to watch the reading over a video call of some kind, if they would like. At some point in the future, this recording will be available to the public in the podcast feed.
Goal 2: 200 Supporters
With 200 Supporters at any level for 20 Minutes Into The Future, Heather & Austin will produce a podcast version of the script. This will include studio recordings of the various parts using friends and basic music cues and SFX, mixed and edited to work as a sound play. (A step up from a live reading, for sure.) Because we will use our friends and some less-than-professional studios to finish this, production will take some time, and may not all sound 100% professional for all the roles. But there will be a supporter’s “Zoom Party,” where they get to hear a version of the script early, before it hits the podcast feed.
Goal 3: 300 Supporters
If we are able to get 300 Supporters at any level to chip in for 20 Minutes Into The Future, this will allow us to cast voice actors for the parts in “Families,” upping the production to a pro endeavor. Heather & Austin can afford to pay their cast for their work, using affordable rates for voice acting performers. This will improve our production in a number of excellent ways, and will lift the overall acting quality of the production tremendously, which will pay off for the listeners at home. Some sort of supporter’s “Zoom Party” will occur, where you can hear an early version of the show before it is complete.
Goal 4: 400 Supporters
With 400 Supporters at any level wanting to see 20 Minutes Into The Future to succeed, we can afford to hire a musician to write and record the music for the sound play, and well as pay for SFX producers, and an actual editor to lend a hand with the production! This will include new renditions of the Theme Music, and all of the musical cues and SFX found throughout the entire production, and anything else we might need for that particular episode. This will also speed up production tremendously, to have a real editor lend a hand. We’ll also throw a supporters Zoom Party.
Goal 5: 500 Supporters
This is the thing I’m the most excited about. If we can get 500 or more Supporters at any level, wanting the “Families” script to get produced in an audio format, then we can do something that may well turn this into something incredible. With that kind of support and funds, we will reunite the actors from the original TV Show, to recreate their roles from when Max Headroom was on the air. We will do whatever we can to hire back as many of the original cast who are still alive, contacting their agents and using real money to accomplish this in the end, and will pay them competitive Hollywood rates, too. Where the original actor is not able to do this in spite of funds or other issues, we will hire a voice impersonator to fulfill the role as best we can (or, another actor who makes sense for the role in the here and now).
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We can do this. Not only is it possible, but the longer we wait, the less likely it is we can get the older cast members who are still with us. The time is now! By making new Max Headroom from an old script like this, we can finally able to add this missing chapter of the story back into the running order, where it was meant to be in the first place.
LET’S MAKE MORE MAX HEADROOM! Support our cause today!
patreon.com/austinrich
20 Minutes Into The Future 