Category: production notes

Sorry to everyone who tried to download the episode in the early morning – the host servers experienced a power outage. Happily, things are back up and running now.

In the first take of the humming scene, I had attempted to match the audio somewhat to what was being described. Slowing at first, altering the pitch to sound awful for a few words, generally sounding chaotic. However the effect upon listening was really poor. It sounded like a series of audio effects, and didn’t really convey what the auror was being subjected to. There was no way for such a brief scatter-shot approach to even partially convey an attack which relied on incessant wearing over hours of time. I re-did it with a straight reading, relying again on the superior imaginations of my listeners. :) I did eventually keep one small pause near the beginning, just to give a small taste of the frustration of an expectant pause. Hopefully it added a little spice without destroying the section the way my initial attempt had.

I didn’t start writing production notes until I moved HPMoR to it’s own website, around chapter 59. When I re–worked episodes 1-9 I wrote notes for them as well. Today, instead of writing a production note for this episode, I wrote notes (some of them very short) for many previous episodes.

Last week I took the week off work so I could stay home and put 40 hours into finally finishing the re-edit and polishing of earlier chapters. At last it is done! Chapters 1-9 have been redone in their entirety. Chapters 10-20 have been gone over with sandpaper and a noise filter. And every single chapter has had large sections of my poor voice work removed and replaced with valiant voice volunteers, giving a distinctive sound to many characters. Never again will anyone have to suffer through my McGonagall or Weasley Twins. Chapter 50’s Padma is now done by Amanda Grassello. In fact, over a dozen voices from early episodes have been upgraded, also including:
Ernie Macmillan
Anthony Goldstein
Auror Komodo
The Carrow Twins
Madam Hooch
Morag MacDougal
Gregory Goyle
Pansy Parkinson
Lucius Malfoy
Neville Longbottom

And of course there are still some roles available, see here if you’re interested.

*(I realize a couple lines are off… I hadn’t gotten them recorded, and for completeness I substituted a place-holder that means something very similar. These will be replaced with the correct wording in a couple weeks)

The shouts of the Wizengamot are actual recordings of Parliament in England – all from the House of Commons I believe. In retrospect, I don’t think it added anything to have the source be “authentic”, and it was fairly limiting. Much like Draco’s Colloportus idea, I got hung up on actual Parliament sounds because it seemed so clever at the time. By the time I realized I’d be better off with generic cheers/jeers I didn’t have enough time left to make the revisions. /sigh

Spending the week of this writing doing massive revision to earlier episodes. Will have lots of updated stuff next week.

It never fails to infuriate me when someone comments about how they “got out of” jury duty, or conversely, complains that they couldn’t get out of it. When I served on a jury a few years ago I had to repeatedly rebuff friends and coworkers who tried to offer me their condolences. The judicial system won’t work if all the smartest people focus their efforts on shirking this responsibility. If I’m ever up on false charges, or in a dispute with a neighbor, I want my jury to be the brightest and best of the population. There isn’t a lot I can do to make that more likely, but there are a few things, and one of those is to heap scorn on those who try to wriggle out of jury duty, and praise those who make the effort to be the best jurors they can. Serving on a jury is a thing of pride, and anyone who tries to make it seem like anything undesirable is immediately told why they are wrong, and that I won’t participate in their “joking”. Otherwise we may fall back into Wizengamot-like political feuding where the powerful are above justice and the masses are beneath it.

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!)