In Which I Consistently Fail to Make Things Easy on Myself

Last night, the Earbud Theater crew went back into the studio to record another audio drama. Our July play, Bea Little (written/directed by Earbud founder Casey Wolfe), is in the final stages of post-production and should be made public in just a few days – and it’s a wicked good time, I can tell you. Last night’s session was for my script for our August play, Escape (The End of Humanity Song). I took the night off from acting and sat in the director’s chair, which was a pretty addicting experience. The cast was strong, playful, and brought all that emotionality that I craved. I think it’s going to be a funny and moving piece, if I can cut it together well enough.

It was a reminder to me just how much the logistics of production can influence the writing. After the long and difficult post-production on Habitat, I pledged to do a number of things with the script for Escape that would make the editing easier. Fewer sound effects, simpler transitions, longer dialogue scenes, shorter script – all conscious choices that played a role in picking what story I would tell and how I told it.

Of course, every solution generates new problems, and what Escape has that Habitat didn’t – three-character dialogue scenes – proved to be its own headache, as the studio only has two microphone set-ups. This meant we did a lot of recording one character in the scene, dismissing that actor, then getting the other two in later. This is basically standard operating procedure in animation, but I think these podplays thrive on a quasi-theatrical energy of real-time interaction between the performers, so I do feel like I’m asking extra of them when they have to imagine a performance from earlier in the gaps of their dialogue.

I have an outline for October’s episode (tentatively titled The Sounds Below), which I am hoping to write a first draft of in two weeks during a break period from the novel. We will probably try and record in late August or early September. I envision nothing but two-character scenes. Of course, it’s going to be a sound effects-heavy show, because it’s Halloween and you want the creepy sounds. You NEED the creepy sounds.