Category: production notes

Having a distinct voice for Neville kinda ruins the surprise that it’s Neville standing up to the bullies at first and not Harry, as in the text he isn’t identified right away. But I didn’t really see any way out of that. It’s a detail that is unfortunately unavoidably lost in translation.

It’s also a bit odd when different people pronounce proper nouns in different ways. That may be avoidable, but it’s harder to do when contributors are spread around the country/world and you can’t coordinate in real time. It’s probably not a big deal, since people do pronounce names in a variety of ways in real life – as the owner of a very unusual name myself I’m used to several variations on “Eneasz”. I’ve never had the Data/Data problem. But it feels weird in story form, since the Narrator is supposedly the Voice of God and the characters aren’t supposed to diverge from him. Right? /shrug

Mr. Bester was my attempt at a Carl Sagan accent (or Agent Smith if you prefer, since they have the same voice). It wasn’t as good as I would have liked.

I toyed with playing T1000’s death screams while Quirrel melted the inkwell. It was too over the top. :)

It didn’t occur to me until much later (the SPHEW arc, with the Patils, to be specific) to differentiate between speaking twins by alternating them between the Left and Right channels. When I updated this chapter with Greg’s voice and did the alternation I discovered something – I have some hearing loss in my right ear. Or, more likely, I have some hearing loss in both ears (I did the whole “massively loud metal while wearing headphones” thing when I was a teenager) and it’s worse in my right ear. I found it odd that George was also quieter than Fred, even though I had their volumes set to the same level and Greg had done one line after the other without changing his setup. I thought maybe my right headphone speaker was going out, so I flipped the headset around… and now it was Fred that was quieter than George. Doh. :/ Ah well, what is true is already so, and now my model of the world is slightly less wrong.

I felt a sympathetic pang of sadness when I first read this exchange:

“You’re welcome,” said Professor Quirrell. “I hope you will not object if I go on making him a particular focus of my attentions.” Professor Quirrell’s face was now very serious, and very still.

Dumbledore looked at Harry.

“It is my own wish also,” Harry said.

“So that’s how it is to be…” the old wizard said slowly. Something strange passed across his face.

There was something very disheartening about Dumbledore, who thinks in stories, realizing that he was being written out of the book. He would not get his last major role in his final act as the Mentor of the New Hope For Good. That would be Quirrell. Dumbledore’s story was over. I like Quirrell much more, but I still felt bad for Dumbledore.

But it turns out he still gets plenty of screen time in later chapters after all.

This was the first episode that required desperation and crying. I had noticed before that when playing anger I got angry. This was true for pride and playfulness and pretty much any emotion. Doing the “omg I’m being beaten up and I’m afraid for my safety” was actually emotionally draining. Obviously not as much as actually going through that experience would be. But it was very uncomfortable, and I’ve gained some appreciation for the actual work that (some) actors do.