(79b) Production Notes

When I began the podcast, it was my intention to simply and faithfully transfer every written word into audio without making any changes. The work was excellent as written, I certainly didn’t have any of the skills to improve on it (nor the chutzpah to think I should), and I felt that to alter any author’s words without their permission was sacrilege. I hold my nose at abridged versions of audio books.

As soon as I integrated other people’s voices into the podcast I realized this was more than a bit naive  I was immediately hit with lines that were delivered in a manner very different from how I had read them, and yet I could not say that they were wrong. In fact I was often pleasantly surprised to find an interpretation of a line or character that played much better than I had done it. It dawned on me that simply by reading this in my voice, using my inflection and my emphasis, I was very likely subtly altering what the author had intended when he was writing it. Much as no plan survives contact with the enemy, no artistic intent survives contact with the audience.

(This also allowed me to not beat myself up too much when I let technical slips pass through that didn’t alter the meaning, as mentioned a few notes previously)

I did, however, still try to keep as literal of a reading as I could. After the cast had reached a certain size I got a note from a listener pointing out that with so many unique voices, I no longer needed to interject “said Harry/Dumbledore/whoever” constantly. It’s a requirement for the written word, and any skilled reader barely even registers them as s/he reads, but they were distracting in audio and entirely unnecessary. I felt kinda foolish for not having come to this conclusion on my own, I guess the transition to other people was so gradual I didn’t notice I was still doing it. I started dropping them soon after.

Now a new problem crops up – often the speaker-attribution isn’t simply the word “said”. Sometimes it’s more descriptive. Do I still drop it when the word is “shouted”? Obviously physical actions should be kept in – things like narrowing of eyes. But what about when the voice is described as “carrying an edge”? Even if we were professional actors (and we aren’t), the sound of a tight, angry voice is not the same as hearing the words “carrying an edge.” What to do when the voice-description doesn’t match the line as delivered (say, the voice is described as wavering and wild, but the line is delivered without enough waver to be noticeable? Like I said, we’re not professionals here, just amateurs doing our best). Should I leave in the description and cause dissonance in the audience, or do I drop it and lose some of the tone and some of the author’s intent?

The problem with learning as you go, rather than being taught by someone, is you don’t have answers for this sort of thing. I try to strike a balance, hope the author isn’t maltreated and the audience isn’t irritated, ask my ancestors for forgiveness, and forge on.

(edit: holy crap, Eliezer reads these notes!)

(79a) Production Notes

Interrupting is difficult. I imagine it’s always difficult, even when everyone is gathered together in a room or on a stage, because when you’re putting on a show you all have your assigned lines and it’s natural to take turns saying them. It’s hard to leave the “You go, now I go” dance and move into listening for the sentence to come close to the interrupt point and start speaking while the other person is still talking. It’s not made any easier when the lines are delivered remotely and there’s no one else around to actually interrupt. In editing I’ve erred on the side of making sure every word is intelligible (as it is when you read them) and never had any voices overlap. I sometimes wonder if that was the right decision.

Interrupting is also a marker of status, and a sign of politeness. McGonagall is very proper and rarely interrupts anyone. Severus is abrasive and interrupts all the time. Most other characters follow social norms and freely interrupt those below them, occasionally interrupt their peers, and almost never interrupt a superior. It’s interesting to note that Harry Potter will freely interrupt anyone he’s talking to when he feels he has something to add. I asked a friend who didn’t like the fanfic what turned her off, and she said it was the way Harry showed disrespect to McGonagall. I was a bit surprised, because I didn’t feel he had (at least not egregiously). But I had been reading under the assumption that Harry was a person, and so him treating McGonagall as a peer didn’t shock me. My conversational partner was a parent, and viewed Harry as a child, and for him to interrupt her or question her was too great a violation.

(78c) Production Notes

Hearing recordings of your own words can make you painfully aware just how much of a disconnect there is between the things you think you’re saying, and the words that are actually coming out of your mouth. Sometimes it’s a simple slip of the tongue – saying “must” instead of “much”. Sometimes it’s a slip of the mind – there has been a lot of times where I’ve said “Draco” rather than “Harry”, or vice versa. While clear communication is certainly primarily the concern of the communicator, I’ve come to realize how important it is to have a charitable audience that helps with the translation. Talking to a hostile audience probably makes inferential distances far worse, as they are no longer working with you to bridge those gaps.

In today’s episode there was a line I simply omitted. An entire line that I thought I’d read out loud, but had instead simply skipped over. How the hell?

When it doesn’t change the meaning of a sentence I’ll generally leave such slips in, but if it’s a noticeable error I have to go back and re-record an entire sentence or paragraph and splice in the re-take. I hadn’t realized that when I started this, but you can’t simply splice in the word that was flubbed. The cadence and rhythm doesn’t match. What’s worse, even redoing an entire line or paragraph, it’s still rarely a good match. A lot of things affect the final recorded sound – distance from the microphone, my energy levels, the posture I’m sitting in, even when I last drew a breath. Over episodes small variations in tempo, tone, and pitch are unnoticed, but a sharp change from one line to the next is jarring. I have to repeat the correct line several times, attempting to manipulate those variables as much as I can to match the original reading, and pick whichever works best. And it still usually doesn’t quite sound right. /sigh

It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, I pay more attention when reading now. Like they say, it saves a lot of time simply doing it right the first time.

But still, how did I overlook a whole dang line?