Internet-Created Free Audio Dramas?

fraser_joat asks: "The other day I finally took the time to watch Starship Exeter, previously reported on Slashdot. Coincidentally, I also revisited the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, following the hype caused by the recent movies. The two of these got me thinking: while _Exeter_ was clearly a huge effort, it looks like they had a lot of fun making it. In many ways they are scratching the same sort of itch that generates free software. So what about audio drama? The technology needed to produce it is freely available, things like Ardour and Csound. So is it possible to produce an audio drama based on free texts such as those from Project Gutenberg in a distributed fashion, with contributers from all across the Net, just like with software? Would they even be useful as an introduction to classic fiction or just as pure entertainment?"

"While the technology exists to cut a play together, I see several possible problems:

• High-quality audio recording equipment is expensive, and homes are not ideal environments. Can source material of sufficiently good quality be generated without professional facilities?
• Since the actors could be widely separated, can they act in isolation in a sufficiently convincing manner that they can be cut together later, in the same way that film actors must pretend that the special effects exist during shooting?
• Are there good (royalty-)free sound effect libraries available?

I think the possibilities are interesting, if people can be gathered together to actually do it. Imagine the subtle horror of Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado, or the adventure of Stevenson's Treasure Island, all staying as faithful to the book as possible, without Hollywood's story-twisting and sensationalism spoiling it all.

It would need to be a real community effort - I fancy that I could produce a passable script adaptation of a book and help with the audio production and sound effects, but I'm no actor, nor do I have equipment at home that even approaches what would be required. What about it?"

Comments

Cartoons

[RazzleFrog]

Aren't cartoons done in a segmented fashion? You don't get all of the actors in one room. Each one records there segment and then everything is spliced later on. Actually, there is no reason that you couldn't do exactly like you suggest and find somebody who is willing to do some low end computer animation.

Re:Cartoons

[geomon]

That's one of the difficulties noted in the article. The cartoon audio tracks are recorded on high-tech sound gear and are edited with equally high-quality audio edit gear.

Not that getting 'good' quality productions would cost a mint, but there are still blending and overdub techniques that would take some practice in getting right. Consider some of the audio productions of Shakespeare produced on vinyl. The actors are clearly interjecting and interacting in such a way that reproducing that effect from two different locations would be tricky.

It would certainly be fun to try.

Re:Cartoons

[matt4077]

As someone currently action in a Macbeth-Production, I can reassure you, that it is absolutely impossible to do stuff like this without actually meeting. So much of the later experience for the audience just has to develop between the actors before. There are times where the actors actually almost start to fight each other, because they disagree how a single line of text should be interpreted. If you let everybody do his thing and then mix it together later you will have n different versions of a single play.

Re:Cartoons

[Anonymous Coward]

The straight-to-syndication, Firefly-ripoff show "Starhunter" has a character who's supposed to be a hologram interface to an AI, played by some guy in England. The rest of the show was filmed in Canada, and the live on-set actors (and I use the term loosely, particularly in regard to the lead) never met that guy, or even spoke to him on the phone. They just each deliver their lines as directed.

Now PLEASE believe me when I say I'm not holding this cheeseball space opera forth as an example of great art, but it works well enough to demonstrate that good direction is 50% of acting (and in this case, good editing is probably another 25%). Add people who can actually act to boot, and I believe it can be made to work. Add some virtual-spaces software and hardware, and it might even work well. Or at least in an interestingly different manner. Not going to keep me away from live theatre, but I might be bothered to download it for free. And if it's n different versions of the same play, I say fire the director.

Re:Cartoons

[Microlith]

In the US they are done this way.

In Japan, for instance, all the actors are in an open soundstage and read their lines with everyone else present, and in many cases it keeps the actors from sounding stilted.

Re:Cartoons

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't cartoons done in a segmented fashion?

Yes.

A real-time, linear production puts a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.

Anime Fanfiction Radio Plays

[Bonker]

http://www.nabiki.com/radioplay/

Radio plays made by people who write anime fanfiction. Yes, this is the *pinnacle* of geekdom!

Make more!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I really want to see poorly coreographed lightsaber duels with AfterEffects glow slapped on top.

Set to a bastard child combo of John Williams and Fatboy Slim and you've got a hit! You're an internet movie star, baby!

Re:Make more!

[Randolpho]

Because I really want to see poorly coreographed lightsaber duels with AfterEffects glow slapped on top.

Rent Star Wars. ;)

Don't get too excited

[Entropy_ah]

Just remember that internet radio can to terribly, terribly wrong.

Hayward Sanitarium

[LxDengar]

A few years ago, I ran into an audio series on the Internet, although it was originally on NPR Playhouse. Apparently it was one of there most popular series of all time. Its a wonderful, campy radio drama. I wish these guys would do more. Highly worth checking out.

Check on Google, but ther RA files can be found here:

http://www.cincinnatisoftball.com/specials/hallo we en99/hayward_sanitarium/hayward.html

Nice niche

[Urban Garlic]

This might be just the sort of thing to fill a little niche in the consumer marketplace. I personally enjoy audio dramas, as well as a lot of spoken-word work, and it's hard to find in the commercial marketplace. Presumably this is because there is insufficient demand for it to catch the eye of big distributors. I, for one, would welcome this. Might even pay a buck or two for it.

AKA--Community Theatre

[endoboy]

it could certainly be done as the poster describes, but most of the benefit of such productions (certainly for the participants, and often for the audience) is related to being in the same room.... immediacy of human contact, and all that

take away the thrill of being on stage, and I'm not sure how much merit there is to producing "Spartacus meets Elvis" for display in a browser window

Re:AKA--Community Theatre

[Milo Fungus]

You could recreate some of the synergy (buzzzzzzzzz) of actors working together in real time if the performances were done simultaneously with an instant messenger using an audio stream or webcam. If done correctly, this could solve the problem of disjoint performances.

But it would create a few logistical problems. The performers would need to record their own work at their own computers. That would mean each of them using Audacity or whatever and knowing enough to get good sounds out of it. They would each need good quality sound cards and microphones. And pretty fast internet connections. That's a lot to ask.

Then there is the problem of mixing down. First the actors need to get their wav files to the sound engineer. Wav files are HUGE! You could cut down some of the size by using FLAC or something, but you're still talking about some pretty massive files. Another reason why the actors need fat pipes. Mixing down an entire book would be an enormous task. It takes hours to mix down a three minute song. Mixing an audio book is a bit simpler than a pop song, I imagine, but it would still take an incredibly long time to do.

I think this would be really cool, and I'd like to participate if someone gets a project going, but there are a few things that need to be worked out. The fact that I can write this post using Galeon on Linux is a major testament to the power of peer production efforts.

Books on tape?

[tachyonflow]

Perhaps a less ambitious and more realistic starting point would be to produce "books on tape" of some of the Project Gutenberg works. One person could produce a work with minimal effort and no sound effects.

Similar Issue

[ackthpt]

On the StoneTrek site, there's a piece concerning the distribution of these extraordinarily well done hybrid (Flintstones-Star Trek) cartoons. Music was one particular sticking point, as portions of both themes play in the episodes. Assuming a less restrictive copyright code (both shows are over 30 years old, right?) and a better spirit of cooperation between enterprises (not including the ship, no pun intended, either) it's a heck of a smooth effort and very entertaining, but will not see the light of day on TV or commercial distribution.

Oh, you can find StoneTrek here, to save some bandwidth on the home site.

Re:Similar Issue

[NaugaHunter]

The "good" news here is that copyright holders end up over-complicating things and hurting each other. On the commentary for The Emperor's New Groove* they mentioned that John Goodman had to sign something so they could use the scat that he made up in the one scene. Similarly, the reason Beavis and Butthead releases are without videos is that while MTV had broadcast rights, they don't have distribution rights to the videos, even though the majority are snippets. Whether they are unwilling to try for them, or they failed, I don't know. The irony here being B&B is where I usually learned about new music I ended up liking. Whoever chose the videos tended to be way more eclectic than the standard playlists of the day.

* - Yes, discussing a Disney movie in a copyright context will probably provoke numerous cries of "Foul!" However, I think that while the movie industry has a number of faults, other than the encryption issues many DVD's are good deals. Not much more than CDs, but hours more use. Especially considering many CDs have less then 15 minutes worth of good stuff on them. If we could just convince the MPAA that they should have a campaign to go after street corner vendors and leave home users alone. After all, those are where they actually lose sales.

Still need talent...

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched Exeter, and it was a good effort. In fact, I think its safe to say that it was a pretty darn good effort, and that from a prop and production sense, it was very similar to the original Star Trek.

But, SOMETHING was missing, and I don't know what it is. Maybe it was the director, perhaps it was the acting. I mean, could Bill, Leanord and DeForrest have made it better, with everything else the same?

Voice actors have the same issue. It's very difficult to be convincing over audio when all you have is some pages and are locked into a silent recording booth.

My favorite audio play is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". The production on this CD is absolutely amazing, from the actors, the sounds, the music, everything. Simply incredible. (it's funny as hell too)

So, while we may have the technical means to produce "cheap audio", there's still a human factor involved that is difficult to quantify.

Re:Still need talent...

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Voice actors have the same issue. It's very difficult to be convincing over audio when all you have is some pages and are locked into a silent recording booth.

Plus, though I think there would be a *plethora* (SAT word of the day) of volunteers, many would be geeks/nerds, who tend to have the least inflection in their voices of anybody...

Auditioning people to do the voices might be worse than what the judges of American Idol have to sit through. You saw how suprised the tonedeaf people were when they were told they couldn't sing...
imagine the DDoS attack from a vengeful nerd who you told couldn't speak well.

Dr. Who audio dramas

[Masem]

There's been a few specially written audio dramas written for Doctor Who and featured on BBC's Cult site (can't recall URL presently), which IIRC have used some of the original actors when possible as well as some reasonably famous celebrities for additional voices.

Re:Dr. Who audio dramas

[mbourgon]

You're probably thinking of Big Finish Productions (http://www.doctorwho.co.uk/), who have done a ton of Audio Dramas, most newly written for them, typically by the original writers and starring the original cast members. Well worth the effort to get, especially if you spend any time in a car.

Alternatively - look around, there's already a ton of audio dramas, most done decades ago. It's called OTR - Old Time Radio. Suspense did "The Dunwich Horror", Lux Radio Theater did a ton of movies (most with the original cast - it was a way to advertise the movie), X-1 did stories by Sturgeon, Heinlein, etc. And frequently the collectors own the original tape, and have cleaned it up before posting mp3s.

Alt.binaries.sounds.radio.oldtime is a good term to google on (most people who do it are OTR geeks), or a good newsgroup to look at.

Plays and actors...

[MosesJones]

I'm really sorry to break it to all the geeks here BUT you do actually need to act to do Radio plays. It can be much harder to convey feeling when all you have is a voice.

People who can act have a skill, just like coders. And lets face it...

No one has ever said that communication is the strongest skill that a geek ever had.

Re:Plays and actors...

[PCM2]

People who can act have a skill, just like coders. And lets face it...

No one has ever said that communication is the strongest skill that a geek ever had.

Wrong side of the bed this morning?

I didn't read anybody talking about destroying Hollywood and ushering in a new era of Internet-produced audio drama as our only form of entertainment. All I read was somebody offering up an idea. Sounds like fun to me. Don't be a dick.

Free audio facilities

[risingphoenix]

More and more universities are offering their students high quality audio equipment for free use. One place I know of is Johns Hopkins, where a number of people I know have produced professional sounding recordings simply by taking a quick class in how to use the equipment offered by the university.

Possibly other places, like libraries might do the same for out of school people. The equipment's there, there just needs to be the time and the money.

I don't know about the legal issues with use, though, such as students using the equipment to bootleg concerts, etc. Other issues might include people renting the equipment to make "home videos".

There's tons of them out there already!

[sh00z]

There was just a mention of a Star Wars fan-created drama right here!

There's plenty of free professional-grade stuff at Seeing Ear Theatre.

Scifi.com occasionally even throws in some classic radio stuff, but the best source for "X Minus One" (Bradbury, Dick, Zelazny, etc.) is Old-Time Radio mp3 trees where you trade CD-R's through the mail.

Dramatizations vs. Audio Books

[Titusdot Groan]

I find dramatizations can't hold a candle to the original work.

The example you gave, BBC's dramatization of Lord of the Rings is very poor compared to the performance of Rob Inglis in his unabridged "reading" of those books.

This is even more apparent with the American dramatizations of LotR's or for the BBC dramatization of The Hobbit vs. Inglis' performance.

The most difficulty is in the abridgement -- especially for an amateur cast -- the author doing the shortening had better be good.

However, a dramatic reading could be done by a single person with modern technology and you wouldn't have the problems of remote communications you mentioned.

Audio drama is perfect for science fiction

[harlows_monkeys]

Before television was popular, there were many radio dramas. I'm way too young to have heard them originally, but I've heard rebroadcasts of some, and what stands out is how good science fiction can be on audio.

Consider something like the the bar with the aliens in "Star Wars". In an audio drama, all you have to do is have a few words by the narrator (something about a typical seedy spaceport dive, with a band of aliens playing exotic instruments), and then some simple sound effects, and the listener gets an image of the place.

Not "the" image...but "an" image...which is better, because everyone gets the image of the perfect seedy spaceport dive for them.

In a movie, all we get is the director's image...and unless they spend a lot on costumes and effects, it's a cheesy image at that.

When you don't have to spend most of your budget on effects, you can spend more on story. Many classic SF stories that we'll probably never seen done well on the screen were done in the 50's on radio.

Finally, audio works great in the car.

While this could certainly be done

[kfg]

I think it falls into the catagory of "why bother?"

If you've got a net everything starts to look like a net problem I guess. I've never known any physical local that suffered a shortage of dramatic wannabes. I know towns with populations in the hundreds that have *more* than one community theater.

While the net would be an ideal medium for *distributing* such works just putting a notice on a college bulliten board should turn up more actors than you need to stage the complete works of Shakepeare without repeating anybody.

Of course the college is likely to bust you for distributing those "illegal" mp3 files, but that's a different issue.

KFG

Re:And Webcomic Radio Dramas

[Bonker]

My god... I think we've found a new slot for inclusion on the Geek Hierarchy

People Who Draw Anime Webcomics
\/
People Who Read Anime Webcomics
\/
People Who Act in Radio Plays Based on Anime Webcomics
\/
Furries

Take a Cue from Public Access Cable

[serutan]

Back in the eighties I had a lot of friends who produced public cable access TV shows. You can borrow the cameras and use the studios and editing facilities. Depends on the city, but in Portland Oregon all you had to pay for was tape. Most of the shows were on the level of two people sitting in the studio with a fake potted plant between them. But there were some scripted stories shot on location with local actors, or at least acting students. Very amateurish but occasionally interesting and sometimes actually good.

My point is that people who want to do these things are already doing them. There's nothing holding back anybody from producing audio drama and throwing it on Live365 etc.

Way ahead of you

[Straker Skunk]

There's a charity that specializes in doing exactly that, through the efforts of volunteers.

(I've been thinking of giving it a go someday....)

Re:Way ahead of you

[cowtamer]

too bad they don't seem to have it online in mp3 format... (unless I didn't look carefully enough)

Re:Way ahead of you

[Kelerain]

I would have called it RTFB.

*sorry*

Re:I had to chuckle...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to chuckle when I saw how you appear to have misread the article. I think the author was aware that radio dramas have existed for some time. Note, for instance, that ey refers to "revisiting" the BBC radio adaptation - the sort of action one might expect to be taken by someone already familiar with the work.

Your condescending attitude... That wasn't worth a chuckle.

I've been trying to do this for a while.

[rdewalt]

So far the hardest part has been to get the Voice Actors to record with the same settings, as close to the same way as possible.

Nothing like a VA who doesn't understand the format request, giving 4khz/8bit when you ask for 44khz, 16 bit.
Or the VA who speaks three angstroms from the microphone.
Or the VA who practically whispers so quitely the 'cut off' clips most of her audio, and what you -do- get is "household" noise.

I'm still going to keep attempting this. I just find that the hardest part is Voice Actor wrangling.

good audio sci-fi

[Triv]

It's not free (and it isn't really what you're talking about) but ZBS Media has been putting out sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas for close to two decades. Their most notable series are the Ruby Series (a film-noir detective set on another planet - I recommend the first one. Oh yeah, and she slows time. :) and Jack Flanders (an inter-dimentional traveller, for lack of a better description. More fantasyish. Check this one.) Both are awsome. They're also completely not-for-profit, so if you like their stuff you can donate at their website.

Enjoy.

Triv

This question goes too far :)

[timothy]

Rather than complicated, multi-part dramas (though those would be nice, too), what I would like to find is a collection of audiobooks in the same style as Project Gutenberg. That is, a competent reader, clearly recorded, reading works with unambiguous copyright clearance.

I've recorded myself reading a few snippets from books on Project Gutenberg, and will spare anyone else from every listening to the results, so I can rule myself out as "a competent reader" for such a project, but there are a lot of folks with better voices.

(Ditto language learning materials! I'd like to be able to practice German, or learn some Spanish, by popping a CD of compressed files into a car player as I drive place to place. Eventually, those compressed files would be Ogg, but for now, I'd settle for MP3 ;))

timothy

Futuristic Wasteland Original Audio Drama

[cimmerian]

I recently produced a radio drama exclusively for the Internet for downloading and also airing on my station RantRadio. There were 9 x 1 hour episodes coming from the creative mind of Sean Kennedy.

Called 'Tales from the Afternow', it's pretty damn creative and if you take into account that NONE of it is pre-written and all spoken on the fly your mind will be blown away. With background sound effects etc.. etc.. it's a good listen.

Re:Futuristic Wasteland Original Audio Drama

[TaoTeCheese]

Plus, it must be mentioned that you should wear headphones while listening to this amazing show. It really is some of the best cyberpunk media I have ever encountered.

Old Time Radio - learn from your past

[tomwhore]

For decades the radio was "the" medium for performance art. Spoken word was king and it ruled the airwaves.

Imagine hearing Orson Welles doing the Third Man every week or The Goon Shows when they were brand spanking new. There were some hits (Johhny Dollar, Mercury Theater, The Goon Show, The Great Gildersleve, XMinusOne, Dimmension X, etc) and some real duds (the plethora of soaps, the cheesy hard boiled detectives, the paper thin comedys)

Its hard to imagine but at one time folks would rush home at night to be able hear these shows, for those who are nowcentric that would be like preTivo TV watching.

Over the last few years there have been several groups activley preserving these gems in digital formats. Its amazing how much has been passed on and can be gotten.

If you want to listen to some these gems there are a mass of sites that have the shows. Some good starting places are

http://www.wayback.net/
http://users2.ev1.net/~ ey/audio.html

For the Goon Shows try
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~robertd/GoonShow mp3.h tml

For all the Jean Shepherd broadcasts you can devours head on over to
http://shep-archives.com/

Coyote Radio

[pdrome4robert]

A group in Prescott, Arizona started Coyote Radio, a local radio comedy group. They produce, write, act, and foley a live show once a month with a simulcast on KJZA 89.5 FM. The producer/co-writer/director, Andrew Johnson-Schmit, told me that the live feedback from the audience adds a lot to the performance. Their stuff is edgy/political/toplical and damn funny. Check them out of you are between Prescott and the Utah border.

I know they have given permission to universities to produce Coyote Radio scripts as class projects. Give them an e-mail if you are interested in seeing some scripts.

Some day they hope to have a streaming server for their material, but it is very expensive for a volunteer organization to mount.

projects exist

[tunesmith]

I created one called StorySprawl a while ago - it's for people to actually write cyoa adventures together, and we started doing an audio rendition of one of them, chapter by chapter, "Dreams Of Esterton". Low budget but fun. The "old" version of storysprawl is at www.storysprawl.com and the new version is in development... people can always write me if they want to have access to one of the sample audio chapters.

Curt

FINALLY!

[Hubert_Shrump]

...produce an audio drama based on free texts such as those from Project Gutenberg...

Gripping audio versions of The Inferno and Tom Jones! I cannot wait to fall asleep at the wheel while Virgil (in a nasally German voice) goes on for eight hours. Whee!

...should be easy to do

[Artful Codger]

I've had a good look inside some world-leading drama studios (eg CBC Canada). The following points were raised in the preamble:

"While the technology exists to cut a play together, I see several possible problems:

• High-quality audio recording equipment is expensive, and homes are not ideal environments. Can source material of sufficiently good quality be generated without professional facilities?
  Since the actors could be widely separated, can they act in isolation in a sufficiently convincing manner that they can be cut together later, in the same way that film actors must pretend that the special effects exist during shooting?
  
• Are there good (royalty-)free sound effect libraries available?
  

To the first point... high quality computer audio is dirt-cheap these days. A SB Live Value has better record/play fidelity than the majority of pro broadcast gear used in the 60' to 80's. 24-bit cards can be had for under $300. Decent mics are an order of magnitude less expensive than 10 years ago - eg a Chinese large diaphragm condenser for $99 (Nady, Marshall, APEX etc). Very effective multitrack software can be had for well under $100 (example www.ntrack.com). So the gear is THERE!

As far as a recording space...funnily enough, many radio drama studios pride themselves on how realistic a 'room' sound they can create. Amazing how much a living room can be made to sound like ... a livingroom!. Ditto for other desired spaces. A quiet basement room in a quiet neighbourhood, late at night... is decently quiet. So ultra-dead $$$ rooms are NOT necessary!

The best sound effects for radio drama are custom-created and recorded, libraries might get used for hard-to-get stuff, or for less critical backgrounds. Again, a guy with a MD recorder (or a rented DAT) and a mic can gather just about any required effect.

The sellers of pro libraries have fallen on hard times. Pro Hollywood-grade libraries are selling at 50% or more off usual price. A good general 10-CD library can be had for under $300 on sale. Check out the Blue Plate Special at www.sound-ideas.com. And there's alot on $ 10 "multimedia" library CDs. And finally, tons of free stuff on the 'Net.

Regarding actor collaboration, yes you will still get the best results with the actors playing off each other in the same studio.

So, it would be easy and rewarding to do this over the Internet. Let's go!

Oops

[Straker Skunk]

My bad. Guess I missed the bit about Project Gutenberg texts...

RFBD does mostly new books, and educational ones at that. Copyright issues prevent the recordings from being freely distributed.

Anyway, these folks are interesting not so much because of their finished products, but because they recruit volunteers to record and produce them, and have all the actual equipment necessary to do that. It's a nifty way for hopeful voice actors / dramatic readers to get some footwork, and perform charity at the same time. (Yes, educational books only, but there's a whole art to not sounding like Ben Stein on Valium :-)

P.S.: Someone please mod my previous comment (-1, Overrated)....

Star Trek's future...

[Peterus7]

Is in fanfilms. Exiter wasn't bad, and the graphics were in some ways better than TOS graphics, lol. Anyhow, I think Star trek fanboys could create some pretty good fan-episodes and stuff.

Down with hollywood! Up with kids who build star trek sets in their parents basements!

Although if the Exiter people keep on churning out good stuff, they could *accidently* produce a major hit, like the blair witch project...

Online Voice Acting

[TheGatekeeper]

My younger sister is an AVA, or Amateur Voice Actress online. There's quite a community of voice actors, who frequently produce original radio plays, and those based on books, movies, anime or TV.
Fanfiction is perhaps the most popular form of online voice acting, as the producers and actors are able to take more liberties. Fandubs (generally the fan-dubbing of anime) are quite popular, as are rewriting books into script-format and recording them.
These generally turn out fairly well, sometimes better than professional dubs, and the actors record their lines in their own homes, without ever having met the rest of the cast.

The most popular site for AVA's is FLAVA (Fun Lovin' Aspiring Voice Actors).

The VAA (Voice Acting Alliance) is a very good place to learn more about how these productions are made.

One of the most popular original online radio plays, which is beautifully mixed, is Legacy of a Hero, and definitely sets the standard for amateur producing and acting. LoaH is highly recommended listening.

My sister's AVA resume will give an example of the range of productions.

In short, online voice acting, in people's homes, mixed with lines of other cast members whom they've never met, can work out incredibly well, and have been doing so for several years.

radiotheatre.org

[overunderunderdone]

I don't know if this is something you'd be interested but the evangelical christian group "Focus on the Family" produces some very high production value radio dramas. They are obviously coming from a conservative evangelical christian position but most of their dramatisations are of classics & childrens classics. For example: Silas Marner
Les Miserables
Billy Bud by Melville
Dicken's A Christmas Carol
C. S. Lewis'The Chronicles of Narnia
the Secret Garden
I've also heard that their dramatisation of the life of Deitrich Boenhoffer is very good.