Fiona Thraille - Voice Actor, Audio Adventurer
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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #8

28/1/2012

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_Posted by fthrll on June 12, 2009 at 1:16 AM
Episode 1 is now complete and has been accepted by Pendant as is, which is very heartening. It's a real boost to know that they think the style works - it'll make it much easier to continue that with the music and fx in the next episode, now.

Episode 2 is a little trickier to mix than 1 as it has musical numbers in it, for starters, but I prefer it as a story, which also helps. Episode 1 was really establishing the main characters.

The musical number is going to be fun - I've done it once before in this way. The actor listens to the music and then performs the song. The job then is to match the timing of the original music to the actor's singing, through extending or adding or removing notes or part of them. In the last case, it was a sung piece over arpeggios - it was easy to break up the accompaniment because it was all individual notes, but it took a couple of hundred cuts to edit and the timing itself wasn't so easy. I really enjoyed doing it, but it was very much a trial and error thing (with lots of error!) 

In this case, I'm hoping it'll be simpler, as it's a rehearsal situation in a theatre with an elderly pianist. T actor is performing a Music Hall-style song, so has sent along a semi-sung, semi-spoken version. (Which, I have to say, has fantastic delivery - I was blown away by it). So it isn't meant to be melodic or polished, anyway, which hopefully will make it easier to tackle.

Six weeks left to mix Eps2-4. Episode 2 should be done by the end of next week. It's just about doable. Just...


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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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From the archives Red Sands Investigations #1

26/1/2012

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_First posted on August 7, 2008 at 12:15 AM
I'm going to use this blog to scribble notes about the status of this show.

Red Sands Investigations is a 5 part mini-series that I'm currently writing and will hopefully start producing in the next couple of months, under the production company title of The Picture Postcard Audio Playhouse.

Actually, by my original timetable, I'm meant to have started producing it ... ooooh... about 2 weeks ago, but it's taking a little longer to write than I'd hoped...
It's a post- noir detective series set in an English seaside town. The blurb goes like this...

Carla, the sole benefactor of her detective uncle?s will, travels to the town to sort through his affairs? and soon becomes entangled in new cases.

All is not as it seems. Did her Uncle jump from Red Sands pier or was he pushed? Who in the town knows the truth? Only his pile of dictaphone tapes and his infatuated assistant, Tiff, can help solve the mystery? and maybe avenge his death.

I've written episode 1 & most of episode 2. It is a lot of fun and I'm happy with most of the characters, but there are just a couple who are not so easy to get right.
I originally planned on writing an episode every 2 weeks, but episode 2 has taken double that already.

An old friend, a musician, is coming over this weekend & we're going to work on music for the show while she's here. She plays violin and piano and we have a few other instruments around. It's going to be fairly sparse, obviously, as it's different from using fully orchestrated creative commons music, but that suits the production. She's played a couple of tunes down the phone & I'm really excited to hear them properly as they sounded fantastic.

She's going to do the theme tune and a lot of underscoring music - she asked for a list, so she has one along the lines of:

melancholic, lost love theme
fortune teller's mystical theme
gypsy curse
nothingish curious
nothingish tense and building
nothingish action, fight.

The nothingish thing is kind of important. She writes very lovely melodies, but I've found from directing Wonder Woman, that in fact it's music that's bland that works best under dialogue. Anything too melodic and it's distracting. I will use some creative commons stuff for source music - in the casino, hotel & amusement arcade, etc.

In episode 2 there's also a music hall number, which I had great fun in making as filthy as possible whilst being absolutely clean & innocent: it's a song about drinking, which sounds like it's much, much dirtier. I love music hall songs of that style, so it was great to write an homage. I'll just have to find a bloke with a really filthy vocal delivery to sing it (I'm imagining kind of Sid James/Stanley Holloway style), and it should come off.

Otherwise I have done a couple of pictures for the show (one of which is above). I'm fairly happy with them - they're about to the best of my abilities using coloured pencils and MS Paint. It doesn't matter to me that it's not great - it's more to give an idea of the tone of it.

Other than that I have a Wordpress site to release it on when the time comes. And that's it so far. So yeah... a bit of a way to go still... but it'll come together.

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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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