Category: production notes

Sometimes I wonder about putting future information into my readings. The first time I read this chapter, this exchange really didn’t mean anything to me:

“Yess,” hissed Harry. “Would never break promisse.”

The snake seemed to hold still, as though in shock, and then began to sway again.

Later on, based on things we read in future chapters, it becomes very likely that a snake-listener can detect the truth-value of a statement spoken in Parseltounge in some magical way, and this sentence suddenly makes a LOT of sense, and becomes much more important. In my recording of this scene, I placed a good deal of emotional emphasis on this line, much more than I would have if I didn’t have this knowledge from future chapters. I’m not sure if that was a good thing to do.

I had to compare myself to Bezbozny when recording this chapter.I love his rendition of this scene, and I’d recommend listening to it if you haven’t yet. It’s very victorious and vibrant. I intentionally avoided this for several months before my recording, as I didn’t want it to overly influence me. I went in a different direction in my rendition, which flowed more smoothly with the mood of the previous episodes, and I like what I did. But I think his rendition is just as good, and I’m glad the world can contain both and I don’t have to choose between them. :)

I knew I had to do something special for the flashback. Simply adding an echo wasn’t enough. I’d known for quite some time that I was going to use the background music from Max Payne’s dream sequence, as that’s the best “someone is breaking into my home and murdering my wife and infant son” scene that I can remember, ever. It took a fair bit of doing to remove all the stuff I didn’t want in there, and loop what was remaining to the correct length, but I’m very happy with the final result. :)

I felt that the normal HPMoR Intro/Outro of “Catch That Goblin” was a bit out of place for the Humanism arc. I wanted something darker, something foreboding. I was in the midst of a big Tool kick at the time, and “Wings For Marie”/”10,000 Days” seemed fitting, being both a lamentation of death and, in a way, almost a triumph over it.

This was the biggest production up until this point (soon to be topped though!). I think it’s also the first instance of a sound effect actually taking the place of the narration. I wanted to make sure the association was solid with the listener and they wouldn’t have to guess at what they were hearing, so immediately before the stick/plop section where the text reads “ as she slowly peeled the fingertips of one hand off the wall with an extended sticky sound. Her hand plopped back down again almost as soon as it was lifted.” I underlaid the words “extended sticky sound” with the FX of the stretching balloon, and the words “plopped” with the plopping sound. I assume it worked, as no one has complained.

Again, there’s no real reason that Millicent is French (or Cajun, depending on my skill…), I just thought it’d be fun and distinct.

In the first pass I had put in the Headmasters Office Theme at every point where background noises where brought to the reader’s attention (after several of the page breaks). It was a bit overbearing though, and it didn’t have the effect of drawing attention to the silence between the speakers (which I assume was the intention in the text. It certainly worked that way for me.) I dropped every instance but the first “introductory” one.