Fiona Thraille - Voice Actor, Audio Adventurer
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Der Tickentocker - Cooperantem Audio

7/9/2013

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I'm pleased to announce that Cooperantem Audio's first release in October will be my Halloween short, Der Tickentocker. 

“Hark! The heart beats in the clock.
The time is come for Tickentock.”

A trailer for a lost silent movie, an ancient folktale and two couples foolish enough to recreate the past.


We have a superb cast in Kymm Zuckert, Marleigh Norton, Pete Milan and Dave Morgan. I am currently going through and choosing the best takes to fit together to make it sound as if the actors are having natural conversations with one another. The actors usually do three or four takes of each line, so there are a lot of possibilities. 

After this part, I'll pan the lines to give the impression that the actors are speaking and moving within a 3-dimensional space. Next step is to insert sound effects and, finally, music. 

It's an odd feeling, mixing actors' lines of your script. Sometimes they will have an unexpected take on the emotion or pace of a line, and that can take it in a slightly different direction. This is the time-consuming, yet the most magical part of writing for audio; hearing your script come alive and metamorphose from something to be read into something to be listened to.  There are always steps involved, stages where you can despair that it sounds so rough and unlike the final production you're aiming at. But as each element comes together, there is nothing else quite like the process. 

Der Tickentocker will be released in time for Halloween at Cooperantem Audio and on iTunes.

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Cooperantem Audio

4/12/2012

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With some excitement I can announce the coming of Cooperantem Audio. 

It's a new platform for original audio drama, set up by Chris Brittain, M Sieiro Garcia and myself.


We'll be releasing series and one-offs later in 2013. 

And that means we've all been doing a lot of writing.

I've gone through some unfinished projects and finished them, so at editing stage are a one-off 45 minute play (a straightforward drama, although with slightly skew-wiff reality and some Welsh mythology) and a horror short, again with some mythology - although made up this time - hopefully for Halloween. 

Otherwise, I have written two and three quarter episodes of a mini-series for preschoolers, "Mr Mostyn's Box of Magical Noises". As there may only be one more story, it will truly be mini at this rate!

Red Sands Investigations II is still on the back-burner for a while, although I did write more during Nanowrimo. It was a scene based in a cafe, and with cat-loving owners in mind, I wondered whether they could actually run a cafe full of cats, and was amazed and delighted to find that such cafes do exist in Japan. And now in Red Sands, too.

Taking part in Nanowrimo (albeit at a reduced rate of words per day) was, as ever, fun and also enlightening. I would heartily recommend it, alone, for bringing a social aspect to writing. Every time, taking part teaches everyone something new. This time, it was that I find prose much, much harder to write than dialogue now. 

Writing is not simply writing - and the skills for writing novels can be quite different from those for writing audio, or poetry or anything else. Books are wonderful gateways into worlds and I would love to write one, but for the moment it's audio that has that immediacy, action, that challenge of succinctness that's so exciting.

I think I'm also finding a pattern in things I love writing about: mythology, whether real or invented, intruding on 'normal' lives; phony, melodramatic end of the pier history, be it fortune-tellers, conjurers, music hall performers, etc. ; alternate worlds; and mystery of some form, with a real-world backdrop.  Thinking about it, I've not really grown up from my young adolescent days, being knocked sideways by the creepy mythical rumblings and time-slip adventures of Alan Garner, Penelope Farmer, Catherine Storr, Gillian Cross and E Nesbitt, just for starters. And Philippa Pearce's 'Tom's Midnight Garden' remains my favourite book of all time. 


They say 'write what you know', but perhaps it's more 'write what you want to read'. Or listen to.
So that's where I'll be aiming from now on. Whether it works out or not, then at least the process will be enjoyable, and that's what counts.


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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #2

27/1/2012

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_First posted on August 25, 2008 at 12:39 PM The music session went really well. We now have an opening theme tune (a solo violin) and a closing one (which Saffron did in 3 parts, recording one on top of the other, so it's kind of 3 violins). The opening one in particular is obviously quite sparse, but I think that kind of fits a detective story like this.

She hadn't done anything in advance for the music hall song. It just needed a piano, as it's just a rehearsal in the script.
I just read the lyrics through rhythmically a couple of times, and she improvised an 'oomp cha oomp cha' piano accompaniment and a couple of minutes lead in for the actor to do the comedy routine over. The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes.

I wish I was anywhere near as good at music as that. The actor will be able to make up their own tune on the top, but it's a wonderful, traditional-sounding chord structure.

Otherwise, the script is still coming. I've got a couple of scenes to write for episode 2, but episode 3 is now plotted out.
I had to travel by train yesterday (which, incidentally, I love doing). It's always my favourite space for plotting stuff out - the most productive writing sessions I've ever had have always been on trains. I guess if I could afford it, the best way of getting down to finishing a novel would be by travelling across Siberia or some similarly long train route!

Anyway, I knew that in episode 3 I wanted some kind of local folklore & superstition to be brought into the plot. I'm setting this in a fictional town on the English coast, and the two main places I'm using as inspiration are Broadstairs on the South East coast (probably best known for being an old haunt of Charles Dickens' and a place I regularly went to as a child) and also parts of the Cornish coast, to the far West.

As I bought my ticket, I happened to look in the 'bookshare' box for commuters to swap books, and what should be there amongst the blockbuster thrillers but a guide to the superstitions of Cornwall? In the middle of the country, that seemed too serendipitous to ignore, so I borrowed it.

In fact, the train was too packed to write with ease, as I was sat squashed on the floor with another family, hoping not to fall out if the doors opened.
So instead I read the book, which told of all sorts of tales of how to deal with little folk like pisgies (treat them with respect, don't thank them for any jobs they do, don't try to see them, otherwise they either run away or punch you in your eye & blind you. Hmm.) but it also had some wonderful tales of lost loves at sea and people sent insane, changed to mermaids and rocks and so on, which has given me a lot of ideas.

No, it's not going to turn into fantasy, but
I wanted to invent some traditional landmarks with accompanying legends that can be used, as the location is key to the main plot going on behind the smaller daily cases.

Well, it's getting there... Little by little, it's getting there...

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    Fiona Thraille is an actor, writer, audio drama creator and active member of the internet audio drama community. She also provides voiceover and narration for educational and commercial projects.

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