(62) Production Notes

These episodes with extreme emotion are rather difficult to do, primarily because I’m really not a voice actor. I have to really psych myself up, and do several takes. The only reason I can do them at all is because I feel what Harry is feeling, which is entirely due to Eliezer’s skills as a storyteller. When I first read the Azkaban arc I couldn’t breathe through most of it. “Acting” is much easier when it isn’t actually acting, it’s just expressing & recording what you are already feeling inside. It kinda feels like cheating. I hope it came out alright.

There’s also the technical problem of such drastic changes in volume blowing out the microphone, it seems I should have adjusted even more for that, but it’s not awful.

The phoenix call I used was primarily the red-tailed hawk cry. People often assume this is the bald eagle cry, because it is used in TV and Hollywood in place of the real bald eagle cry, which is a fair bit less impressive. Obviously one’s national bird should have the coolest cry – and if it doesn’t, we can fix that in post!

(61) Production Notes

As some of you may have recognized, the intro music is from the theme to Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd GIG. That was a last minute decision, while I was editing this episode I kept thinking how much the rescue scene reminded me of the premier episode when Section 9 stormed the geisha house in their thermo-optic camo suits. It occurred to me that using that music to open up an action sequence would awesome. :) I ended up using the 2nd season theme rather than the 1st as it starts off with more energy. I think the Ghost In The Shell parallels work for the rest of the chapter too, as the Section 9 crew would often sit around as a group in debriefings and try to figure out what the hell was going on.

I’m glad to have so many people contributing voices to the show now. I didn’t actually add up the seconds, but I think this is the first episode where my speaking time is less than half of all the speech in the show! If only someone had cared to do Thicknesse I would’ve gone an entire chapter doing only the Narrator. :) (well ok, and a few words by Harry)

The New Website Is Live!

Welcome to the new home of HPMoR: The Podcast. I hope you like. In addition to posting a new episode every week, I’ll also be posting production notes for each chapter. I learned a lot while making the site, starting with basically no knowledge of website creation. I still don’t know much (WordPress is awesome), so I’m sure as I learn more it’ll get better. Much like the podcast. Which brings me to…

A couple months back I re-listened to a few of my very early episodes, and wow are they bad (comparatively). I didn’t know anything when I first started. I much prefer learning-by-doing, it’s a lot more fun and you get a feeling of accomplishment. On the other hand, people see the early things that you learned on. I have to thank all my long-time listeners for sticking with me. Therefore I will, over the next several months, be reworking the earlier episodes to bring them closer to the quality level of the current episodes. I plan on re-recording the first 9 episodes entirely (the first 2 are already done and updated), and then going back and re-editing up through 20-something. I can’t make them great and still stick with the one-new-episode-per-week schedule (which I refuse to abandon), but they’ll be a lot better than they are now.

I’m also bringing in more people to do voices! You’ll never have to hear my screeching McGonagall again! :) Or my horrific Weasley twins. Many roles are already spoken for, but if you’d like to contribute to the project I’m accepting submissions for minor roles. Ever thought Gregory Goyle doesn’t sound nearly ninja enough? Here’s your chance to make that better! Just send a few lines in any common audio format to hpmorpodcast@gmail.com with the character’s name in the subject line, or see the Contact page.

Hope you like the new site.