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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #8

28/1/2012

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 #7

28/1/2012

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Posted by fthrll on May 11, 2009 at 1:07 AM
Just a few days ago, Jeffrey introduced me to the cover artist assigned to Red Sands Investigations and we've been discussing ideas ever since. I have to say, I am extremely happy he volunteered for this show. Not only is his art simply awesome, he's also a delight to work with.

His first question was asking about how far Red Sands was based in gritty noir, and how much was modern - at which point I realised we were on the same wavelength.

The answer is the town itself is very much based on that kind of background, noir being a favourite genre of mine. But, as I would never begin to attempt to tackle that kind of use of language that writers like Chandler or Hammett do, it had to be I guess 'post-noir', plus it's set in England, which also changes things culturally.

The existential detective is already dead. Carla is an outsider to the genre, with a clear sense of right and wrong, trying to work with the more morally ambiguous characters around her. A lot of the time she fails, but whether it has a traditionally bleak ending or not would be spoilering.

In fact, the British/American English language aspect was even more challenging than I'd thought. Several characters in the show are American, most notably Carla herself.

Being a huge fan of American film and tv shows, I tried to 'Americanise' her speech, but missed the mark on lots of occasions. Luckily, Marleigh was absolutely invaluable as a script editor. I learnt a lot of new phrases and structure - and words that just simply don't exist like roundabout (the driving kind), seafront, tatty, to name just a few. Seafront was a particularly tough one to lose, as 'beach' just doesn't mean the same thing in British English.

I was fully expecting it to be hard to write with any hope of authenticity, but even going in expecting that, I was amazed by how different the two Englishes are - and that's just standard dialects. If I do any more writing in future, I think I'll stick to British or non-specific dialects and encourage the actors to improvise around their own dialect.

But back to the artwork - the artist's name is Daniel Chon - and he's simply fantastic. The designs he has come up with so far are really stylish, professional and... well, I'm really, really excited about having him on the team.

At least, whatever I do with the mixing, this show is one that'll look good...

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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #6

28/1/2012

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Posted on April 29, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Mixing for episode 1 is now fully underway. Much of the dialogue is set and locations reverbed, so then it's just a question of effects, panning and music.

Normally when actors send lines, I try to listen to every one of them in full in advance, and if I have time, do stuff like noise reduction and volume tweaking there and then. As this production's episodes are so long, I didn't manage to listen all of the way through every take for every single character as they came in - just enough to check that there was nothing missing and that there was at least one 'clean' take.

So I'm still getting some surprises in the takes, which is always a fun part of the process. I was delighted to hear one of the actors actually light up a cigarette (or make an excellent impression of doing so, lighter and all) when the script called for it. Not that I'd want to encourage voice actors to endanger their health, of course, but for purposes of authenticity, it was absolutely wonderful.

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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #5

28/1/2012

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Posted by fthrll on April 21, 2009 at 3:29 AM
The script for the final episode has been edited and accepted and has now gone out to the cast. So now the focus is on post-production. I'm rather glad that, despite some 'real' life things cropping up, the show seems to be on track.

Looking at the length of the scripts, Pendant is labelling this as an Original Feature, rather than a mini-series. It makes more sense as it is more of a 4-part arc than an episodic show. Also, I think Original Feature sounds rather cool.

The episodes look as if they'll end up at about 30 minutes long. It's hard to tell exactly, as I'm going to be trying for fairly tight dialogue mixing, but want to give some space for the atmosphere, too. I know in my head how I'd like it to sound, but whether that's going to be easy to translate into audio, I guess I'll soon discover. Looking forward to trying anyhow.

Anyway, all lines are in for episodes 1&2, bar a couple of redos, and so I'm hoping, if at all possible, to have finished all episodes before mid-July.

The one absolutely essential sound effect for setting is some seagulls, it being a seaside town. Obviously, all effects and music have to be royalty free creative commons, and I looked high and low for the kind of background seagulls that just do a few cries and set the scene. It was a trickier hunt than I'd thought. There's a real dearth of good quality seagull 'extras' out there. The only ones I could find sounded like they were tearing each others' heads off - really hamming it up.

In the end, I had to actually buy a set of seagulls' cries (pretty cheaply - and they'll get extremely good use). They may have charged a nominal fee, but these ones were proper pros, giving a much more subtle performance which is just ideal.

Birds! Hah! Never again... :-P

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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #4

28/1/2012

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Posted on January 24, 2009 at 8:20 AM
Fantastic news - the show is going to be released by Pendant Productions

First, to explain about Pendant, and then what it'll mean for the show.
I've been involved with Pendant for oooh, must be coming up for two and a half years now. I've done and still do some acting there; they trained me in audio directing and I directed 15 monthly episodes of Wonder Woman, Champion of Themyscira.

Pendant is a well-run, friendly group who release monthly shows to a regular schedule. They produce or have produced 7 original shows to date, and 11 fan-based ones, with several others in the pipeline. They have an established listenership and good reputation.

In terms of Red Sands Investigations, I will still be directing (mixing) it. When all four episodes are completed and mixed and approved by Pendant, they will then be released to schedule.
I intend mixing it at the same pace as any other Pendant production: giving actors 3-4 weeks for each episode's script, and mixing the episode within a month of receiving lines.

So, in summary, this means that there will be almost no change at all for the actors in the actual pacing of the putting together of the show, but it will benefit from the support, experience, advertising and established listenership that'll come from being under the Pendant umbrella.

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From the Archives - Red Sands Investigations #3

27/1/2012

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Posted on October 24, 2008 at 1:21 PM
Due to time - and also plot, I've decided to shorten the series to four parts.

Once I started thinking about how to do that, it actually seemed to suit the characters better that way. It meant rewriting the third episode, and a small part of the second, but in fact it means it'll hopefully be about as lean as it can be. I hope the timing works out, but then, I've been thinking about some of my favourite OTR shows and films, many of which have almost no 'down time', so I'm hoping it'll benefit from being pruned a little.

As (once cast) that will take four months to produce now, rather than five, I'm also going to make sure that the fourth episode is complete in a first draft before going to the casting stage. It'll go through rewrites again later, but at least it means the whole project is pretty much ready to go, then.

I've been collecting sound effects in quiet moments, so that side's coming together, too. It'll just be a question of getting actors interested. So far, there appear to be a total of fifteen characters in the series, most of them smaller parts, but with a core of three: Carla & Tiff, Nick and then Jim, too. Apart from the final episode, there are about another 4 characters in each episode.

It's not an enormous cast for what'll be about 2 hours in total, but it is in terms of getting that many actors. Well, we'll see... Casting calls hopefully in a couple of weeks.

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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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