drorystory-blog - Tumblr blog

[drorystory-blog]

Can I produce a HIT Podcast in 1 WEEK!?

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1S0kPVzKO4&feature=youtu.be

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYtMBNSMTbU

In this thread I’ll be going through the exact steps I did to finish this challenge on time. I’ll be breaking it down into what I did on each day.

Day 1: Sunday

Came up with the idea (I was inspired by the DND Improv Show in the Winnipeg Fringe). I got a cast of improvisers together. Made prompts to inspire the actors. Ronnie and Bradley came by and did about 40 minutes of character development and then improvised their scene for the microphone. I enhanced the scene with music and effects afterward. I recorded everything into Reaper and with a Rode NT1-A. I sourced all my sound effects from YouTube and downloaded them through YouTube - mp3.

Day 2: Monday

Mark, Adam, Raegan, and Karanveer came to record their scenes. After about an hour of character development, they took to the mic in groups of 2 and I recorded. I edited their scenes afterward, adding in sound effects where appropriate and a beat when Adam and Mark start dancing. I have a lot of fun making sure the sound effects enhance the story by bringing it to life a little more. In editing, I noticed that Adam and Mark were heading towards their friend from college who’s been highly successful and Raegan and Karanveer were just caught by the King. It made sense that the King and the friend from college was the same person.

Day 3: Tuesday

With everyones first takes done I began thinking of a logical, dramatic way to tie up episode one. It seemed there had to be an Evil King character so I went towards casting it. I decided that I will play the Kings assistant then my girlfriend said she wanted to do a role later on so I let her do it (I played the guard and the kid waking up at the end). I wrote the script for the end of the episode. The script had 6 additional scenes and was about half of the total time of the episode. I contacted a graphic designer I quite like to make a sketch of an image for the series. He wanted 60$ per character so I decided on 1 character and he agreed to take his price down to 50 for a shout out in the video. I started scheduling people to record their last lines.

Day 4: Wednesday

As much as I’d like to keep the script improvised, I couldn’t get actors on the same day so with the written script I was able to record the remaining lines of 2 characters on this day. I wrapped Adam and Raegan. I produced Gnarbelarbezub’s rock and roll doorbell by using some guitar samples on top of the doorbell melody I made in Logic. I layered the Logic Melody with an electric guitar plug-in. I got a few samples of art from the graphic designer. We’re narrowing down the final product but overall impressed with this guys professionalism. His Instagram is @kumobleu. I still needed a king and a narrator so I asked Connor, my girlfriend's coworker and old improv teacher and Brooklyn, a host at the radio station I work at and they luckily both said yes. I was particularly happy to have Brooklyn on board because she was my main teacher at the radio station and I was proud to be able to say that I had a project with her.

Day 5: Thursday

By the end of this day, everyone’s audio files were in for me to start slicing together. I got this day off work so I could have actors in and out all day. I had Connor over at 1:30 to record all his lines, we recorded Audrey’s lines at this point too. With Audrey's help, we finished the script for the narration and sent it over to Brooklyn who sent me the recordings within 2 hours. Very impressive. I quickly recorded my guard lines. Mark, Ronnie, and Bradley came over at 6 to record their lines and Karanveer finished his lines up at 8. I had all the files that I needed so I got to work piecing the story together in Reaper. I had 9 scenes and ended up staying up til 5am to finish getting everything together.

Day 6: Friday

Woke up around 11 and started downloading my stems from the 9 scenes. My coworker, who produces a show at the station let me use his studio after work so at 4 I hopped in, uploaded my tracks and started mixing in Pro Tools. I didn’t mess too much with EQ because I’m not confident with my ear for that yet, basically, I just made sure the volumes were all good. I put a limiter on all the speaking tracks. It was difficult to get the improvised scenes good. The first 2 scenes took me 4 hours to get because the limiter was crushing it too much and I was getting lots of distortion when I’d listen back. I do like the improv scenes so in the future, I may try to give them on their own mic channels. That’s one way I’d like to see this project grow. The improv scenes are a little more natural-sounding than the others. During the scene where Slevin and Dorgy are communicating through the intercom, I had 2 beep channels, one was EQ’d so that it would only play the lows. The intercom voices were lowered and filtered as well to make them seem a little distant. I was mixing in the studio and finally finished at 1am. I got the art earlier in the day and am 100% happy. Listening to the podcast as a whole, with Brooklyn’s narration felt really great. I’m proud of myself.

Day 7: Saturday

I put all my vlog footage together and made a video in Final Cut Pro and at the last possible minute titled this project: How to Fail at Magic Without Really Trying, Episode 1: How to Love One’s Elf. There were a few different title options and I had a very hard time picking but this one was the most popular with the cast.

If you have any questions about anything specific, I’d be happy to answer. :D