Author: Eneasz

It’s unfortunate (and frustrating) when brilliant artistic decisions don’t translate into other media, so today’s production notes are basically an apology to Eliezer for my failings as an audio producer.

Dumbledore’s office has a musical theme. It is the janglings and auditory punctuations of all his flibberty-widgets, and in the original text this is represented thusly: “Whirr, bzzzt, tick; ding, puff, splat“. When this is used in Chapter 39 it appears first at the top of the chapter as the introduction to Dumbledore’s office. Every time thereafter it is used during a surprised pause in Harry and Dumbledore’s conversation, starting off the action after a scene-break. The scene-break itself is a device to punctuate the last action and start us off on a new mental track, since the scene didn’t actually change.

On the page, this works very well. In audio format, it sounded a bit weird, at least to me. If I had more experience at the time perhaps I could have made it work. But many chapters back, in Harry’s first visit to Dumbledore’s office, I used Mystic Mysidia as background music to Dumbledore’s office. So I thought “Ah ha! I’ll use it again, and it will take the place of the narration of “Whirr, bzzzt, etc”! This works extra well, because all those audio cues are right after scene-breaks, which are natural points to reintroduce background music.” And it did seem to work well enough. Until we got to Chapter 119.

Having already established in our minds the link between a line of sound effect noises and a pause in the action, Eliezer uses it to full effect here. When a bomb is dropped in the conversation and everyone needs a minute to stop and absorb it, Eliezer doesn’t need to point that out specifically. He simply puts in “Beep. Tick. Whirr. Ding. Poot.” This tells us that a silence has descended over the human participants, so sudden and complete that the background sounds of the office are suddenly thrust into everyone’s awareness by contrast. And as those sounds are so firmly linked to Dumbledore himself, it also serves to remind us of the Headmaster’s absence in his former sanctum. And after that touch of sound effects Eliezer can launch right back into the dialog without missing a beat. It’s a masterful move, and I loved reading it.

But, having excised those lines of text in my audio version, there is no connection in the minds of my listeners between those sounds and shocked silences in the middle of conversations. There isn’t even a connection between those sound effect words and Dumbledore’s office. I had inadvertently destroyed what made those lines so fantastic. ARGH!!!! I couldn’t just have the Mystic Mysidia music come back in as a substitute, because background music does not call attention to itself like a line of “Beep. Tick. Whirr. Ding. Poot.” does, and therefore doesn’t associate itself to the specific action happening at that exact point in the text. If I just used the music it would sound like background music coming in again for no particular reason, rather than “Everyone fell silent in shock.” If I narrated the words “Beep. Tick. Whirr. Ding. Poot.” it wouldn’t mean anything to the listener, because I hadn’t done so when the device was first used and so no association was made. It would just be random words without meaning or emotional context. There was no way for me to recreate what Eliezer had written.

Instead I simply said out loud what those words were meant to signify. But dammit, that doesn’t even remotely compare to the artistry of the original text. So, to everyone listening, and Eliezer especially, I apologize for failing in my adaptation here. I wish it was better.

Readers of the original text may be surprised to find that Oliver has had a gender-swap to Olivia. I know I’ve taken a few liberties with the text, but depending on how one rates these things, this may be the most drastic departure so far. Which, all things considered, isn’t really that drastic, right?

I had Oliver’s text in the “Available Roles” file, and the first person to contact me about it was April. There were a number of new male roles that had come up, but only one female, and that one had been snagged very quickly. April wanted a part, and suggested gender swapping Oliver. I dunno if I would have jumped at the idea to gender-swap Oliver if it had just been presented to me flatly. But she took the additional step of recording every Oliver line as Olivia and sending that in at the same time. Firstly, I’m a big fan of anyone displaying that sort of initiative. And secondly, it saves me a bunch of work, because all the lines are already done and there in my email inbox! She even went and did a second take with all of them, so I have two to choose from. Oliver is a single-appearance role, and his/her gender doesn’t really make any difference overall, as far as I can tell. To allow a fan to partake in a role she is excited about, and saving me additional work at the same time, well, it’s kinda a no-brainer. :)

Last week the podcast website went down for a few days. For the few people who noticed, it was a blip. For me, it was a personal crisis. I spent the entire first evening flailing at it ineffectively. The next day at work I was horribly depressed. I assume it’s like what having a sick kid feels like. I thought “Shit, I recognize this emotion. This is what my life was back in the bad old days. This is what it feels like for life to have no purpose, for existence to be meaningless. No wonder I drank so much. This is awful.”

Yes, I know it’s a silly over-reaction. My emotions are stupid! I spent the following evening and the morning of the next day continuing to make repairs. Ultimately I had to deleted WordPress entirely and reinstall it clean (something got corrupted, I still don’t know what) and revert to backups, then recreate the last few weeks (which hadn’t been backed up yet). I was hesitant to do all this, because I didn’t know how badly it would screw things up, but it turns out there was very little screwing at all, as far as I can tell. Everything is OK again. Plus my life has meaning. Yaaaaay! Crisis averted. :)

Life Lesson y’all – back yo shit up.

(One might think the life lesson is not to let your sense of personal worth be entirely dependent upon a flimsy piece of tech which can be destroyed with an errant power surge, or which you can be cut off from permanently by someone snipping a few wires. Maybe to find purpose in something more stable and physically present, such as the love of the people around you. Those people have a very different way of thinking than I do. Plus I would remind them that accidents and disease are a thing. I’ll stick with my mp3 files, thank you very much. At least they can’t move away to pursue careers elsewhere.)

As for this week’s episode – I tried to lighten the mood when I switched to Anna’s POV, I hope it came through in my voice and my choice of music. I had to go with a song from the Jet Grind Radio soundtrack, as JGR (or JSR for your purists) is the closest I came to athletics in my youth. :) And boy did I spend a lot of hours on it! So when I think sports, these are the songs that come to mind.

You may notice I snuck in another new voice, as Flitwick. That was a last-minute change. When I was listening to the final episode I was hit by just how out of place my Flitwick sounded. I’ve gotten really used to hearing other people doing the other voices, and me doing Flitwick was jarring. Thanks to Francis for volunteering at the eleventh hour! I’ll back-edit all the previous Flitwick lines the same weekend I find the time to fix the Patils lines. So, you know… Thanksgiving?

And damn – we’ve made it to the denouement arc.