You may notice that there’s a few lines missing from this episode. And I don’t just mean the usual dropping of “he said”s that aren’t needed. There’s actual legit lines I removed from the final version of this episode, because I couldn’t get them to work right. /sigh. It’s episodes like this one that really remind me of the difference between me and the professionals.
I usually get all the lines for a single character all at once, remotely. The actors never get to meet each other, or hear each other’s lines or how they’re delivered. It’s up to me to give lots of feedback, to make them match. In this episode I failed to do so, and so several times the dialog between Jimmy and Eleanor didn’t quite work. The words were as written on the paper, but the tone of a response didn’t match the tone of the delivery, and I had to cut either one or the other. I considered leaving them in, but the difference was really very jarring. Honestly, I think it would have done more violence to the original work to leave in those lines than to cut them, and it would not have been fair to Alexander Wales to make it sound like he’d messed up the dialog when it was entirely my failure as a director. I hope that the episode is still OK, even as imperfect as it is. I will strive to do better going forward!
SFX: 1940’s Office, doorbell
Music:
Intro/Outro – Handlebars, by Flobots
Luthor Manor – Wagner’s Rienzi Overture
Crime Scene – Nightmare, by Tabletop Audio
Bar – Creep, by Postmodern Jukebox