(3WC pt1) Production Notes

Whew, I was editing this one right up to the last day. It varies from the HPMoR episodes in several regards. Most notably, I’ve adopted a less “announcer”-like voice for narration, which I feel is better. I’ll keep it, but it makes the reading more energy-intensive for me, as it doesn’t come naturally. I guess I naturally tend to have a declaiming tone. Good for teaching/instructing perhaps, but not so good for storytelling.

Also of note – the inclusion of general background music. Previously I’d only ever done music for very specific scenes were I already had a soundtrack in my head. But lately I’ve been listening to Welcome to Night Vale, and they use background music to great effect. It really heightens the mood of that podcast, and the mix of occasional background music and silence really makes both stand out in striking ways. I was amazed how much more time it takes to add those touches. Not only do I have to familiarize myself with a whole new collection of music*, I have to add another listen-through to listen for places to insert it, and then review to make sure it sounds alright. I’m sure that with familiarity the stress level and time investment of this extra step will ease, but I was not ready for how much it would take.

(*I decided to only use freely available public-use sources. I’m ok using bits and pieces of copyrighted songs here and there, such as for the intro/outro. But to use the entirety of a song without permission seemed both unethical and of dubious legality)

(BTW, if you’re not listening to Welcome to Night Vale, you may want to give it a shot. It’s a series of events that happen in a small creepy town in the desert, as relayed by their local community radio guy. There’s no narrative or story development so it won’t be to everyone’s taste. Mainly it’s cool quirkiness and mood pieces. From the pilot – “The City Council […] would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park. People are not allowed in the dog park. It is possible that you will see hooded figures in the dog park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the dog park. […] The dog park will not harm you.” It’s like what A Prairie Home Companion would be like, if it was supernatural, and didn’t suck.)

Also I removed the use of the Page-Flip sound for breaks. I’d gotten so used to them after all this time that not hearing them was actually startling. I’ll keep it that way for Three Worlds Collide, but I really like them and they’ll be back for HPMoR.

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2 Comments

  1. Not to give much away, but there is somewhat of a plot to WtNV. More…minor story arcs, which I’m betting you’ve seen by now.

    I’ve started using background noise in my own podfics. Just subtle things, almost unnoticeable, set there to help drown out whatever blips come up from silencing stretches of audio. It helps quite a lot.

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