(78b) Production Notes

It’s been quite a while since I began re-recording the early episodes. After the initial push I haven’t done many more. I’ve decided to stop with Chapter 9 – the episodes from then onward aren’t so bad they need a full redo. Up to the mid-teens they still aren’t that great, but I need to draw a line somewhere. I will, however, be going through and doing some re-editing on everything up to the Azkaban arc, which includes replacing my voice for every role that now has an actor. And because I don’t want this to last for months while I do an episode here or there, I’m planning on taking a week off from work in mid-February to dedicate 8-hours a day to podcast editing.

What this means is that if you’ve been wanting to do the voice of Anthony Goldstein, or Sybil Trelawney, or even just “Fifth-Year Slytherin Girl” – sometime in the next few weeks would be a great time to do that. :) It’ll let me mix it in with the least amount of fuss and you’ll get to hear yourself within a month or so. See the submissions page for lines and tips, and please be sure to contact me first to make sure no one else grabbed the part already.

(78a) Production Notes

There’s a new Madam Longbottom.

When I originally recorded chapter 38 I asked my girlfriend to do Madam Longbottom’s voice. I had already slated her to play Amelia Bones, because my girlfriend is also a tough-ass bitch and she feels perfect for the part. But I didn’t yet have anyone for Madam Longbottom, and it seemed that this was a one-off role which wouldn’t reoccur, and had over a dozen chapters from her appearance to Amelia’s appearance. No problem, right?
Not long after that Taboo Tradeoffs came out, and not only do the two of them appear in the same chapter, they actually speak directly to each other. >.< Epic facepalm.
So I have recruited a new Madam Longbottom. I’ve also gone back and replaced Melissa’s lines in 38 with Sabrina’s, for consistency. Hopefully Lily Potter won’t ever have a conversation with Molly Weasley…

In non-Potter news, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson is absolutely awesome. It’s got power armor, lightsabers, and an awesome messiah character. It’s full of Capital Letter Ideals and if you like fantasy I highly recommend it. Not strictly rationalist fic, but lots of problem-solving, some research, and at one point the messiah character asks the Fundamental Question of Rationality almost word-for-word.

(77b) Production Notes

I somehow missed in my first read-through that Snape had removed the memory of his presence from everyone who witnessed the Harry-summoning. Which – first of all – holy crap! How did I miss that level of malfeasance? But secondly, makes you consider just what a really powerful and dedicated group of wizards could do with rituals if they really put their minds to it. Might they even be able to nearly-perfectly erase an entire city of out of the world’s memory?

I used a time-rewind-ish sound effect for the Obliviation. I know the repeated Obliviations aren’t actually a time-rewind, but it felt very appropriate given the trail-and-error nature of the attack. Perhaps I’ve played too many video games, but I was reminded of the fail-rewind-try again mechanics of Prince of Persia and Braid immediately, so I jumped right to that.

The Mr Hat-and-Cloak whisper was frustrating. The first time he appeared I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with his voice, but I wanted something interesting. So I did several different takes of his lines, figuring I’d pick whichever sounded best, and apply some sort of filter. As I was listening to them I thought “Hm… this might sound kinda cool if I just layered one over the other…” I tried it and liked the effect and went with it. Unfortunately I didn’t really have a procedure for what I did, which made replicating it this week darned difficult. I don’t feel that this is quite as good as before, but I don’t have the time to redo it entirely. Hopefully it’s very close, and it certainly won’t have been the first voice to have changed over time.