Building the Panopticon - Making MAG 158
[INTRO MUSIC]
ANIL
Hello and welcome to this special behind-the-scenes look at The Magnus Archives! I’m your host, Anil Godigamuwe, and with me I have:
JONNY
It’s-a-me! Jonny!
[SNICKERS, A WHISPERED ‘GOD’]
LOWRI
I’m Lowri, and I produce The Magnus Archives.
ALEX
Alex, I play Martin and direct and help on production.
ELIZABETH
I’m Elizabeth Moffatt and I work on the vocal cuts for Magnus.
ALEX
(as translation) She does the hard work!
[LAUGHTER, AGREEING NOISES]
(snickering) She does the really hard work!
[CROSSTALK]
JONNY
I can’t respond, but.
ANIL
Alex says thank you from all of us.
ELIZABETH
I love our chats, Jonny. I do. It’s very intimate moments.
[MORE LAUGHTER]
JONNY
It’s great! I love having a conversation where the other person just can’t interact at all.
ALEX
That – that doesn’t surprise me.
ANIL
You’re a writer, of course you do. Well, today, we’re going to look at what I think is safe to say the most challenging episode of Season 4. Episode 158, “Panopticon.”
ALEX
(matter-of-fact) Get away from my secrets, we’re not gonna be telling any, everything went fine, stop asking.
ELIZABETH
Yeah! It was great.
ANIL
Let’s delve a little bit deeper into that, shall we?
JONNY
I mean, I just wrote some words. I don’t know what the big deal is.
LOWRI
Yeah, pretty much.
ANIL
Cool, let’s start with you, then, Jonny!
[LAUGHTER]
On the writing side. Um, what were you hoping to achieve with this episode?
JONNY
The two aspects of it, I think, were probably revelation and resolution. Because we knew what was going down in Season 5, and we knew that 159 was going to be the emotional climax of one very important storyline, and 160 was going to be the start of the final phase. 158 was very much our last chance to get all the other – all the sort of the disparate – strands of…
ALEX
You can say it. “Put every single character in the entire series into a single episode.”
JONNY
Yeah, it was our last chance to take all those different storylines and put them – get all the pieces in place for Season 5. In some cases tying them off nicely like with Gertrude or with Peter, in other cases getting them in a position so that when we go into Season 5… (ominously) we can do all sorts of interesting things with them.
ALEX
I had a writing teacher once who called it – which is a thing from there as well – “readying positions.” So it’s like, if you’re gonna do a multi-season thing, you need to make sure that everyone is in “ready positions!” For next season.
JONNY
Yes. It was getting everyone in ready positions, getting some of them dead, uh, and…
[LAUGHTER]
ALEX
Dead is a ready position.
[AGREEING NOISES]
JONNY
Yeah, dead is a ready position. Ready position… (smugly) for other people to be sad.
[SNICKERING]
ANIL
So that leads me on to the question, at what point did you realize that it was going to involve so many characters?
JONNY
I mean, pretty much from the off, to be honest. Like, when we were sitting down and planning out Season 4, we did mark 158 as the episode that was going to cause us problems. I think some of the problems that it ended up causing us were not necessarily the exact ones we’d anticipated.
ALEX
Some of them were unpredictable as well.
JONNY
Yeah. But we certainly knew that – we knew that it was going to be a big complicated episode with a lot of different scenes and a lot of different characters and interactions to it.
ALEX
Well it’s ‘cause as well – thanks to Lowri, we have a big shiny, like, spreadsheet which changes color. And one of the colors it can go is a nice big bright red.
LOWRI
(dreamily) Yeah.
ALEX
When there’s too many, too many people in an episode.
JONNY
No – sorry, Alex, I don’t understand. It’s all red.
[LAUGHTER]
Red is the only color it goes, I thought!
ALEX
Yeah, yeah, there are all the colors – they’ve never come up, no.
ANIL
It’s different shades of red.
[MORE LAUGHTER]
ALEX
There’s one that’s almost black, that doesn’t come up too often.
JONNY
That’s my favorite.
LOWRI
I can’t take credit for that spreadsheet, that was yours, wasn’t it?
ALEX
Uh, it changed a lot. I built the rudimentary little wagon, and then you turned it into a Ford.
ANIL
Shock, horror, Alex and spreadsheets.
LOWRI
Yeah.
ALEX
Spreadsheets solve most, but not all, problems. There is the problem for too many spreadsheets.
LOWRI
In my experience, spreadsheets highlight the problems.
ELIZABETH
Exactly!
LOWRI
In bright red!
ANIL
On the writing side, how long did it take you to write MAG 158?
ALEX
Ooh, good question.
JONNY
That is a good question, and kind of a difficult one, because the scenes got written at different points, both because of recording considerations and because of – some of them were resolutions to different storylines and so got written sort of concurrent to those storylines. Like I think the, I think the Gertrude-Elias one was actually written… a good few months before a lot of the other scenes, and there was a lot of the Peter-Martin scenes.
ALEX
Is 158 the one where we had to do a last-minute rewrite due to a recording breaking that had Fay in it?
LOWRI
I think so.
JONNY
Yes, yes, I think it is. Uh, yeah, so there were some scenes that got –
ALEX
(simultaneously) So that was one that had an emergency rewrite as well.
JONNY
And there was also – there was some rewriting when we realized that Ben and Alasdair weren’t going to be able to go to record together.
LOWRI
(remembering) Mm!
ALEX
(remembering) Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Forgot about that.
JONNY
That was – that led to quite a few, quite significant script revisions.
ANIL
(laughing) Yeah, we’re gonna come to that. I have specific questions about that!
JONNY
Absolutely. ‘Cause writing, writing dialogue that can be recorded in isolation… it can be done and you can get good dialogue, but it – it’s something you need to be aware of when you’re writing the lines, because you don’t have, you don’t have a lot of overlap. You don’t have a lot of, like, direct back-and-forth.
ANIL
Yep. Moving on to once you’ve finished the script, we’ll move to script editing. Alex, when Jonny passed you the script, what was your first reaction?
JONNY
He loved it.
ALEX
That is a very strong word. Good word, “love.”
JONNY
Loved it. It was like, “Jonny, you’ve done it again!”
[LAUGHTER]
ALEX
So we have a couple of rules we should do with maximum number of people. We accepted that this was gonna be a big one. I cried a little bit –
JONNY
(intoning) With joy.
ALEX
When, when I saw how many scenes it was. Because there’s one thing to bear in mind on the production side which is worth knowing, which is… this is gonna sound really weird, so bear with me. More scenes, even if it’s with the same number of people, is worse than less scenes with the same or even less people. What it comes down to is, if you have multiple scenes, you have to do the audio equivalent of an establishing shot, which is where – like, people know it from TV. So you’ve got, like, your big – you start with the exterior, big spooky house exterior. Cut to interior. And I’ve assembled all of the suspects here, blah blah blah. And it’s an establishing shot, the people know what they’re looking at before it starts. You have to do that with audio as well, but what that means is, if you’ve got ten scenes, you have to do establishing shots and you have to make sure that everything is distinct in pace and in soundscape and in tempo and so on, so that when you are bouncing them between those scenes, people know where they are?
That, I wasn’t ready for. I was ready for there to be lots of people. I think at some point it must have flown under my radar when I went, “We’re now at ten?” Or something?
ELIZABETH
Ten. Ten’s what it was.
LOWRI
Ten scenes, ten people.
ALEX
Yeah. There were ten, where we, we started the series with an average of two. And then we hit ten on that one, and that one caught me by surprise. I was expecting – I was expecting, like, maybe six, you know. I was like, “That’s manageable.” Ten’s… a lot. Ten’s a lot. So that, that threw me.
JONNY
We had close to ten for the Unknowing.
ALEX
That’s fair, but I used a few tricks and cheats in the Unknowing, it was a lot easier!
[SNICKERING]
ANIL
That leads me into, like, how do you go about breaking it up for recording, something that is as large as that?
ALEX
That’s probably worth handing over to you, Lowri, insofar as I think for 158 you broke it up more than anyone, just because you were handling the logistics at that point.
LOWRI
Well, I guess it’s breaking up by person. I mean, ideally you want people to travel the minimum number of times and you want everyone in the room at the same time. Which can’t always happen, as I discovered on 158.
I mean, I don’t know that I did do much breaking down, because I – Alex, and Jonny had produced this, you know, a spreadsheet, that I work from, essentially, which is breaking down all the scenes. So I just saw – “Right, there are ten scenes, there are ten people. Some people are in scenes with different people, so they need to be in the room at the same time. That’s a bit of a nightmare.” Yeah, I don’t know that –
ALEX
I think with this – with the spreadsheet, for instance, how it works is you – you take an episode and you split it into scenes, even if it’s not, like, a clear transition between them. And so like, Elizabeth, you’ll – you’ll do this all the time, where it’s like, we’ll have statement and then the post-statement is a separate “scene” in inverted commas.
ELIZABETH
Yeah.
ALEX
But for that one we just record it together. There’s no reason to separate it out. Whereas for 158 and for anything that’s got a huge number, you end up having to go scene by scene.
And you also can go by version and scene? So you can have like, Scene 1, which has three people in it. Now let’s say that those three people can’t be in the same room. So you’ll have Scene 1, and then you’ll have Version 1, which is with this person; Version 2, which might be with these two people; and Version 3, which is this person. So you have Scene 1 – Version 1, 2, 3.
Then you have takes within versions. So you have Scene 1, Version 2, Take 2! Scene 1, Version 3, Take 2. And then you combine versions, and – you pick the best take from each version, you combine the versions, and then you have a scene. And then you combine the scenes into other scenes, you have an episode.
JONNY
Sorry, I wasn’t listening, could you say that again?
[BURST OF LAUGHTER]
ANIL
The vocal clapperboard, basically.
LOWRI
Mm.
ALEX
Honestly, yeah. And people laughed when Lydia, playing Melanie, did the clap when she was gonna do a recording, and so on. That’s what we’d literally do. Like, we – you literally do markers on tapes and so on. But I think Elizabeth would agree that the process of combining all of those is trivial –
[LAUGHTER]
(heavily sarcastic) No time investment whatsoever, and is, is almost automated by this point, really.
ELIZABETH
Well, I mean, for episode 158 it ended up being 4 hours and 8 minutes of recording. So, uh…
[ALEX STARTS CACKLING WILDLY]
ALEX
I didn’t know that! I didn’t know that metric!
ELIZABETH
So that’s how much recording there was of recording sessions.
JONNY
(faintly) That’s more than I’d considered, actually, um…
ALEX
(still losing it) That’s horrendous!
ELIZABETH
Some of those were the same scene, but you had one – like, not-Sasha, I think, was, um…
ALEX
Hoo. Yeah, she was recorded in isolation, yeah.
ELIZABETH
She was recorded separately.
JONNY & LOWRI
Yeah.
ELIZABETH
And then obviously we had Ben recorded in isolation, and all of those combined – so it’s only, and it was like – yeah, 4 hours, because I just did a quick check. And then of course you’re like, well, for those 4 hours 8 minutes you’ve also got at least two people in each scene in each recording, so there’s probably like – maybe a living 12 hours worth of actual…
ALEX
Yeah, yeah.
LOWRI
I did prepare myself.
ANIL
For a half-an-hour episode.
ALEX
Things to bear in mind as well, just because – from production experience and other stuff. This is gonna sound peculiar. Like, for anyone who’s like doing this professionally, they’re gonna go, “That’s actually a decent, like, ratio of raw-to-thingy!” But what it is is, the reason that we as a company function is that we’ve pared processes down as much as we can and we keep shaving and trying to make it more efficient. So bizarrely, for – like, let’s say for a radio play or if you were doing TV for instance, that – not, maybe not live broadcast, but you know what I’m talking about, like, the ratio. That’s not a –
ELIZABETH
If you’re doing one-to-four, I think, in film, that’s considered pretty good.
ALEX
Yeah, yes. Film – film, I think last time I checked, average is at one to ten.
ANIL
Yeah.
ALEX
One-to-four is like, “Yeah, you’re doing a good job, you’re a good director if you’re managing one-to-four.”
This is significantly higher than ours, but it’s also worth bearing in mind this is audio only. We have, like, 140 episodes under the belt in terms of infrastructure. So yeah, going up to that, that’s, what, a factor of – maybe a factor of 10? Higher than we would normally have, relative to the… It’s hard to say.
ELIZABETH
I mean, I guess the average episode, where it was, like, just a Jonny episode, would be maybe 40 minutes worth of recording?
ALEX
Yeah, that sounds about it.
ELIZABETH
35, 40…
JONNY
Well, yeah. ‘Cause the statements –
ALEX
That’s a secret. That’s a trick.
JONNY
I mean, like, the statements, you get maybe 10 minutes more than you’ll actually get because it’s generally one storytelling take with sections repeated if I’ve flopped up a word or that sort of thing. I think most dialogue scenes we generally do…
ELIZABETH
Couple of –
JONNY
Maybe three, four takes if we’re struggling?
ALEX
Yeah, that’s fair. So, yeah, as a rule Magnus is actually bizarrely, like, surprisingly efficient. The wastage isn’t that high, but.
ELIZABETH
I mean, obviously that time includes you guys chatting in the start, (laughing) you guys chatting in the end…
ALEX
What do you mean? We give you nothing but pure gold.
JONNY
We are absolutely professional.
ELIZABETH
Going out to get the door ‘cause the doorbell’s gone…
[ALEX GROANS, ELIZABETH LAUGHS]
ALEX
Never arrange multiple shows to record in the same day. Yes, it seems better on paper, but it isn’t. It just isn’t.
JONNY
(singsong) Bing-bong!
ALEX
Yeah, don’t.
JONNY
Bing-boooong!
ALEX
We’ve removed the doorbell today. It’s literally not going to ring.
ELIZABETH
Huh! Nice.
LOWRI
Ah, cool!
ANIL
But it does mean you get quite happily nice little outtakes!
ELIZABETH
Well, yeah. I have, like, a small collection of just doorbell noises.
[LAUGHTER]
You would be surprised what I’ve stored.
[LOWRI GASPS, MOCK-SCANDALOUS]
Like, a folder of like, “things that are for me!”
ALEX
I’m happy to let it be known to the public: there is a breath library there’s been building. We have a breath library for, “What’s happening?” “Well, this person’s in the scene, but they’re not speaking, but we need them to feel in the scene. We’ll just use some of ‘Jonny, Breath 7!’”
[JONNY STARTS WHEEZING INCREDIBLY LOUDLY AND PAINFULLY]
ALEX
“Actually, you know what, this sounds more like a Breath 6.”
[ALEX DOES SOME HIGH-PITCHED WHEEZING]
JONNY
(clearing his throat) Ack, okay, that was – that was actually a bit much.
ALEX
But genuinely we do have like, stock breaths just built up organically.
ANIL
That’s fairly natural, because room tone is something that is very consistently needed and used in audio and video productions.
ALEX
Oh, yeah. Which is why it’s a benefit – so we actually record in an unusual room, which is: normally when you’re recording vocal work you don’t need this extreme? Like in terms of soundproofing and baffling and so on? Because you end up in something called, like, a “null space” or, like, a, like, “dead space.”
JONNY
I’ll be honest, I haven’t been in that many recording studios that have as many cold iron glyphs embedded into the walls?
[LAUGHTER]
ALEX
It helps with the resonance, mainly.
JONNY
Right, right, right.
ALEX
Um, your resonance, specifically.
JONNY
Sure.
ALEX
But – so if you’re doing, like, corporate voiceovers, yeah, you’ll be in a null room. You know, like, “Come to Canada! We’ve got – bears!” I don’t know.
[SOFT SNICKERS]
But, like, you put that in a null room. But when you’re recording audio drama and scenes, it normally needs to sound like it’s in a… room! Shocker. So as a result you just use standard soundproofing, which is a little bit worse, whereas we’ve built this to be as dead as it can be. Because we’re bouncing around between locations and stuff. But it does mean that we had to add artificial room tone.
ELIZABETH
Plus we used to have Mike as a character, so.
ALEX
Oh my God. Oh my God.
ELIZABETH
I mean, that guy… could fill up an auditorium with that.
ALEX
(remembering, against his will) Yeah. Yeah. Sandbags –
JONNY
One bassy boy.
ALEX
Sandbags are a valid strategy to deal with Mike. Much like an enormous flood, a sandbag is a good way to deal with that problem.
LOWRI
(genuinely curious) How does – how do you apply a sandbag to deal with Mike?
ALEX
Uh, you get –
JONNY/ANIL?
You just thrash him with it.
[LAUGHTER]
ALEX
Genuine answer, you get him to hold it. It absorbs the chest resonance –
LOWRI
Ohhhhh.
ALEX
– so it doesn’t just go boom!
LOWRI
Wow!
ALEX
Yeah, there’s a reason that when we were recording off single mic and stuff, he used to stand at the back of the single file.
LOWRI
Amazing.
ALEX
So that everyone – all of the fleshy meat sacks could absorb his, his resonance.
JONNY
I still remember just lining up in that corridor.
[ALEX SIGHS NOSTALGICALLY]
JONNY
That was, what was it – it was you, then it was me, then it was…
ALEX
There were six of us. I remember that.
JONNY
Yeah.
ELIZABETH
What was that for?
ALEX
This is like, in the early days, where we had to do a finale with multiple people. Like, Season 1? 2?
JONNY
Yeah, it was you, then me, then Eve, then…
ALEX
Season 1, then.
JONNY
Ben – no, it was Season 2, we were in the disco flat.
ALEX
Oh, no, you’re right, we were in disco flat.
[CROSSTALK]
ANIL
Brutal sounds of –
JONNY
Yes, it was –
ANIL
Brutal sounds of brutal pipe murder. (laughs)
JONNY
It was the era of my mother to sit on a chair, in a corridor, under a disco light.
ALEX
Yeah, I remember. So let’s, let’s run through the list, then, just – I know I’m really going completely off-piste here, but you know, it’s what I do.
ANIL
Don’t worry.
LOWRI
It’s interesting.
ALEX
And so we have, Setup 1: a clotheshorse –
JONNY
The Yurt!
ALEX
– a clotheshorse with some blankets on the sofa, in the flat that I was a lodger.
JONNY
Asbestos Flat.
ALEX
Uh – no no no, this was way Pre-Asbestos.
JONNY
Oh, is it?
ALEX
So this is clotheshorse in James Ross’s flat.
JONNY
Oh God, yes!
ALEX
Because he let me start Rusty Quill Gaming in there! And the first episodes of Magnus were recorded there.
JONNY
Yes, I’d forgotten that.
ALEX
From there, we migrated to Asbestos Flat –
JONNY
Which was (inaudible) in the Asbestos Flat.
ALEX
(agreeing) Which was (inaudible) in Asbestos Flat.
JONNY
Which was really weird, because it was literally one minute’s walk away from where I had been living a year before –
ALEX
But we thought we’d make him wait, it was inconvenient.
JONNY
And we just sort of missed it.
ALEX
Yeah, then AsbestosGate happened, where everything that I owned was destroyed. So, after the chaos, we bounced to an old place called Twickenham. I mean, now I can say I’m not by now, Twickenham Road, which was sort of near but not the same place. So then we were recording there, where I literally bought furniture specifically because it was more useful to record with, and that point –
JONNY
That was where we piled, what, five duvets on Lottie?
ALEX
That was where we did –
JONNY
So she could scream at midnight.
ALEX
Yeah. That’s where we did screaming until 4:00 a.m. and none of the neighbors – oh, they heard, they just –
JONNY
Didn’t care.
ALEX
Didn’t care. Then after that one we bounced –
ANIL
It’s London.
ALEX
Yep. Then after that one we had to bounce – that’s disco corridor.
JONNY
Yep.
ALEX
Disco corridor, ‘cause Martyn, our Head of Tech, we had – we found a corridor that he had in his flat, and I was like, yeah, I can make this work. Put some blankets and so on.
JONNY
It was nice, it was on the 13th floor.
ALEX
And so up on the 13th floor, which is away from tough traffic – nice. Although wind, big problem.
[SOMEONE MM’S]
Martyn thought would be hilarious if he replaced the light bulb where we were recording with a disco light bulb! So if you turn the light on while you’re recording, it was full, like, (makes beatboxing disco noises) Like, bright greens and yellows and –
JONNY
That’s what the thing is, it wasn’t quite – it just sort of slowly, sadly rotated.
[LAUGHTER]
ALEX
It was a good disco ball!
JONNY
It was lovely.
ALEX
Then we migrated from disco corridor to here. But pre-studio “here.”
JONNY
Oh, when you just – pinned a bunch of –
ALEX
(laughing) I just stapled a bunch of sleeping bags to a wall! And then we –
JONNY
My poor father…
[ALEX STARTS CACKLING]
ALEX
Your poor – oh, yeah!
JONNY
…just staring into the Sleeping Bag Wall.
ALEX
He took such a leap of faith. He turned up when he was, it was still Sleeping Bag Wall. It wasn’t even Corridor, where, like, your mum was like, “I understand what’s happening here, that’s fine. This is a temporary…” Whereas your dad was like, “So this is your permanent setup.” I was like, “Yeah!”
[BURST OF LAUGHTER]
“Yeah, it is! Now put this sleeping bag on.”
ANIL
(trying not to keep laughing) Okay. Let’s bring this back to 158 in specific.
ALEX
Yes, sorry.
LOWRI
I enjoyed that.
ANIL
Um, Lowri, when Alex told you what the episode was going to require, what were your thoughts?
LOWRI
Well, I don’t remember Alex telling me. I just remember looking at the spreadsheet and going, “Oh, 1 – oh. Oh. Oh, there are ten scenes, and ten people, who all live… scattered across the country. Not everyone’s in London.”
ALEX
Yeah! ‘Cause it’s the cast – it’s, that episode happens to have all of the most far-flung people, all in the same episode.
LOWRI
Yep!
JONNY
Fay’s Cambridge, Ian’s down from Manchester…
[CROSSTALK]
LOWRI
Ben’s coming up from Brighton, though that isn’t that big a… thing for him anymore.
ALEX
Yeah, we’ve got that one down to a fine art.
JONNY
Eve was… I forget where, but it certainly wasn’t London at that point.
ALEX
She was away at that point.
LOWRI
Alasdair in Reading, your mum –
JONNY
Oh, yeah –
ALEX
(high-pitched cackling) No one was in London!
LOWRI
No one – and you know what else? The big thing for me – so I had been only producing Magnus for, I think three months, at this point?
ALEX
Oh yeah, this was horrendous, this was horrendous.
JONNY
Yeah, you came in mid-season, which… I cannot imagine (laughing) how dreadful that was.
ANIL
‘Cause you came in to cover the previous producer, who had to leave.
LOWRI
Yeah.
ALEX
‘Cause I will say, yeah, that was Story Sylwester, who did a fantastic job –
JONNY
Oh, she was great.
LOWRI
Absolutely.
ALEX
And she basically left to pursue other projects, more power to her, erm – and it was hilarious because I know for a fact that Story was like, “We’ve got this, it’s all gonna be fine,” and then was like, “I’m gonna have to move on.” At which point I was like, “Story said that we have this. Little did I think I should probably make sure that that is passed to Lowri in some way.”
JONNY
Mhm.
ALEX
So I need to put this in the, in the, on the – set the record straight. Story was wonderful, and all of the reasons for any difficulty transfer was me.
LOWRI
Well –
ALEX
(laughing) This was all me.
LOWRI
I don’t think it was – there was a bit of a gap between her leaving and me starting as well, I think.
ALEX
Yeah, ‘cause that’s, that’s my point, is –
LOWRI
Which – yeah.
ALEX
I had to produce it for a while.
LOWRI
Yeah.
ALEX
And that’s when problems start.
[SNICKERING]
LOWRI
Just because you have so much on, right.
ALEX
It – (unconvincingly) yeahhhh, that’s it. That’s it, that’s it.
[LAUGHTER]
JONNY
I remember – I remember there was a phone call. I don’t remember why, but I was in Seven Dials at the time, I was literally sitting on the little – in the little roundabout.
[A FEW SCATTERED AW’S]
ELIZABETH
I work right by there!
[SNICKERS]
JONNY
And we were talking, and we were chatting, and, and this was the conversation where we were like, “Oh, okay, well, let’s – we’ll have to do a bunch of it, like, recording separately.” Like, this is a, this is a –
LOWRI
Oh, was that me and you?
JONNY
Yeah –
LOWRI
Oh, right, yeah.
JONNY
Yeah, this was the conversation where I was like, “Okay, well, for this episode we’re suspending our policy of, ‘always try to have people in the same room.’” And you know, it was, it was a lovely conversation, you were like, “No, I have had a little cry. It just happens –”
[LAUGHTER]
LOWRI
(giggling) That’s probably true
The thing that really put a spanner in the works – well, there were two things that put a big spanner in the works, that I did not foresee, was Edinburgh Fringe.
[GROANS ALL AROUND]
JONNY
Oh God, yeah.
ALEX
(simultaneously) Oh, the Fringe.
LOWRI
So I looked at this and we – according to our, another spreadsheet, we needed to have the recording done by mid-September. And this was July at the time, so I was emailing people, “Hey, can you come in, we’ve got some scenes here, lovely.” And of course so many of the guests were in Edinburgh, so that took all of August out.
So I was like, “Okay, that’s fine, we can do this.”
ALEX
It is – it is worth explaining. So for US listeners –
LOWRI
Oh, yeah, of course.
ALEX
– there’s the – is it formally International Edinburgh Festival now, or is it still Edinburgh Festival?
[CROSSTALK]
JONNY
Okay, so there’s a whole bunch of festivals at the same time. The Edinburgh International Festival is one of them, er, the Fringe is a separate thing. There was the Edinburgh Film Festival at the – on at the same time for a few years…
ALEX
But that’s shifted now, hasn’t it.
JONNY
That’s now shifted.
ANIL
There’s the Book Festival –
JONNY
There’s the Book Festival –
ANIL
There’s the Data Festival.
ELIZABETH
There’s the Tattoo –
LOWRI
Mm!
[MORE CROSSTALK]
ELIZABETH
The Tattoo’s – so you can get Americans to come over for the Tattoo, for example. And they’re like, “What the hell else is going on?”
[AGREEING NOISES]
ELIZABETH
“Oh, huge comedy festival.”
ALEX
So long story short, there’s a massive, massive, massive festival that happens in Edinburgh.
JONNY
All August.
ALEX
I say one, it’s like eight of them. But it uses up a whole month.
ELIZABETH
Yeah.
ALEX
But there’s a thing in the UK, which is that pretty much everyone in the arts will be in there in some capacity, and as a side effect, it means that almost all things get made around that month.
JONNY & LOWRI
Yeah.
ALEX
It warps the production calendar for everything.
JONNY
I mean – like, the last couple of years – or, the first couple years in like ten years, I haven’t been up there doing something along the lines with either Mechanisms or some other project.
ALEX
I only stopped once, erm, basically once the company was running.
JONNY
Yeah. I miss it a bit.
ELIZABETH
You must enjoy your money, though, ‘cause the problem about the Edinburgh Fringe is whoever goes up there, regardless of what you’re doing! Attending or performing – you’re losing money.
JONNY
(overlapping) Oh, actually, actually, we – with Mechanisms, we did alright, actually.
ELIZABETH
(surprised) Oh, really?
JONNY
‘Cause we were, we were a free show, but we had – we sold CDs afterwards as like, “Oh, a fiver will also get a CD.” So a lot of people were like, “Oh, well, it was free to come and so we’ll just – buy a CD.” So we actually did, did alright!
LOWRI
That’s good.
ALEX
Nah, I don’t miss it. I would mostly be up in Edinburgh with – ooh. Caveat here, it would be with like six shows or something. But it’s because I’d be like – I’d be Creative Director on one, I’d be Resident Director on another, which is where you just make sure that the show doesn’t fall apart, but you’re not, you didn’t build the thing. And I’d be tech in a few as well.
JONNY
(overlapping) To be fair I did pitch you this – I did pitch you Magnus at the Edinburgh Fringe.
ALEX
Oh, yeah. Like I’m eventually gonna have to go back, but, um. Yeah, I’m not – I’m not hugely keen, if I’m honest?
[GIGGLING]
ALEX(?)
(clapping in rhythm) I still wanna do it! I wanna do the Fringe!
JONNY
I mean, go there, doing something, and be aware that it’s not – if you enjoy really intense, kind of going a little… unstable across the course of a month because you’re exhausted and stressed and really busy all the time? If you enjoy that sort of thing it’s amazing. If you don’t it’s – it’s very bad.
ELIZABETH
Well, you don’t have to do the whole month though.
[AGREEING CROSSTALK]
JONNY
No, that’s true.
ANIL
You might also just do a week or two these days.
ELIZABETH
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ALEX
Like – I realize we’re going off on one again. And I would say as a caveat, it depends whether it is a full professional business thing for you or not. If it’s a full professional, like, “this is your livelihood,” you’ve got to do at least three shows a day to even begin looking at covering costs. Plus, you then want to have a side gig – so for me it was teching other shows and things like that, but it does mean you are genuinely working 12 to 13 hours a day, like, hard work as well, not soft work.
JONNY
I would hate to do it in any sort of professional capacity.
ALEX
It’s not –
JONNY
It was, it was great, sort of the seven, eight of us crammed into a flat, going, “actually…”
ALEX
Yeah! But like, the self-contained project where that’s your thing, you do it and you leave, I’ve done before a while ago, it was great. When you’re – it’s like, this is me doing my networking for an entire year in a single month at the same times doing all of this? Blah.
But to circle back around, there’s a reason why the entirety of our list is just dead. Just dead, every year.
LOWRI
Yeah. And it’s very hard to book people for August.
Yeah, so the second thing that kind of put a spanner in our works, was someone very, very selfishly getting married at the end of September.
ALEX
(innocent) Wha?
JONNY
What a prick.
LOWRI
Yeah, absolutely.
ANIL
(laughing) Oh dear.
LOWRI
That, of course, takes the studio out of play for – weeks.
JONNY
I mean, no, but that would only be the case if whoever was getting married… lived in the house with the studio.
ALEX
Which would be madness, by the way, because London real estate is, is fractionally, like, zero. Like, rent is zero in London, so there’s no reason for that.
[CROSSTALK]
LOWRI
Absolutely.
JONNY
That doesn’t make any sense.
LOWRI
Gosh, maybe I was mistaken and it was all unnecessary.
[SNICKERING]
ANIL
Or if, like, half the company weren’t going to said wedding.
LOWRI
Yeah. Yeah, it was quite challenging to get everyone in the same room and in fact, we didn’t get everyone in the same room, and I –
ALEX
We did.
[BEAT]
It was more of a tent, but everyone was inside!
LOWRI
(humoring him) Alright.
[LAUGHTER]
ANIL
So how do you go about organizing a cast recording of that scale?
ALEX
(quietly) Jeez.
LOWRI
Doodle polls.
ALEX
Good start!
LOWRI
Yeah. Actually I looked back on my emails before coming here, just ‘cause I wanted to get some dates right. And… the very first, I very naively just sent out emails, and then about three or four emails later…
ALEX
Oh, sweet summer child.
[LAUGHTER]
LOWRI
so much oh please just put your availability in because ah yeah I remember getting that back and you and Ben in particular Alex just looking at nd like there is no day there is not a single day I both of you combined were like 50 options or something ‘cause one of the benefits is – having our own studio comes a couple of advantages and one of which is it makes the flexibility plausible this the stuff that we make would physically not be possible if we didn’t do our own studio like categorically is completely out the way and we can utilize a commercial studio on the basis that we record well no because even things like if someone’s like for a recording great you recording shop which is fine when you don’t release the thing until the entire things recorded and you have a 16-month production we know we don’t it’s we’re making way too much content so that’s a big thing so you have to have your own but even then so that means that on a doodle poll that was like 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 v like there were 10 options per day 40 days and of course that makes it even worse when you think about the fact that alex has to be here for the recording to happen because he runs the studio so if you won’t be able to get he does not understand compression and I many times you drill it into him here’s the couple look if you balance your EQ’s, you get a Dreamy. He just steals the bag and runs.
Oh, he’s a good cat. And buffet he’s quite good on narrative structure now! Been taking me through some basic – maybe six scenes find three we’re gonna get a co-writing credit on season five their secret the cat in Magnus Archives isn’t Casper.
I think fans know that by now, but still, there may be new, new people. New people. Who are not actually that vocal! He’s not just sort of silently glides up and then you’re like, “Oh, hello Casper!” And then he’s like, (dark hiss) “Embrace Me.” “Okay!”
Sure. So aside from the scheduling, were there any other kind of difficulties that you ran into?
Yeah, honestly, this was the first show of this scale that I had produced. Because I had come from Gaming, which – because it has been running for so long and is so regular in its recording schedule, it’s actually yeah it’s not I mean you need a producer but it’s not it doesn’t keep changing exactly as you said it’s stable it’s it’s built to be as boring to produce as possible yes I think coming in to Magnus and you know I’d never produce something I mean Gaming is improv so I’d never had to think about the fact that, “I’ve booked this recording, I have to tell Jonny to write that script.” you know that was that was a thing where I had oh no there has been a “Okay, Lowri, I’ve finished up this script,” and it’s been like, “Oh, actually that’s not the one we’re recording next, we need these two episodes.”
It was a steep learning curve, okay?
It’s all right. To be honest, I am – I’ve said it before – I’m a bit of a deadline writer, so I’m quite happy being like, okay, two episodes in, in two days. Yeah, sure, that’s fine, leaves me the rest of the week to not do anything!
Why would you tell me that! because we’re putting this tomorrow I mean if you do I’ll get it written I won’t I mean I won’t good in the recording because I believe so how long did it actually take to record all the different things though oh I don’t think I’m going to answer that I don’t know so talking from raw audio which was four hours and four hours eight minutes of time demonstration like from foot like from the the day the first thing with recorded to the bed when was on the 6th of September because there was so when did the episode drop it was edited by the 21st of September yeah one day late most of the time so Mac 160 was 31st of October well 30th because we have we released a day early for the Patrons. so yes a mid October with the episode drop and we’ll talk about some of the other problems on that side a bit in a bit I mean I came here prepared to look at us within the eye and say I’m so sorry I couldn’t say from first scene of that episode being recorded to last scene more than a month oh definit maybe pushing to yeah because I think I think the Gertrude Elias scene was recorded quite separately - but I don’t think they were recorded together right uh no ghostwritten Elias because they were the hardest of this episode yeah yeah they do oh do they know that when I was trying to match it like with other ones like with you know the Martin Peter Elias I had the overlap of the people being in the room together who were in the room together and then I could work with that and that had that natural flow I was the only one way it was completely yeah it was two separate ones and I really found it hard to find whether an overlap would work or because when you’re editing it I sort of visualize it right I’ve got Rome and I might think about like are they gonna pace you know I think of it almost like television or film I stopped the apothem teleporting across the room in terms of timing Majan re blocking that you’re doing that I found that seeing the hardest by far that’s one that I spent way more time on the nude aspect compared to the other scenes and especially I think that in Bert we got trinkets sharp edge and the takes that are head and it was written in the script you know like Street and words that cheese is shocked but she’s not yeah but she didn’t give any bracelet thorn like when you fall down the stairs or something happens which is a bit of a shock to your body you take very short shallow breaths so I built in some of that breath works but then afterwards when I noticed that the scripted three shots didn’t occur when I listened to the episode I was like maybe that’s my fault maybe if like three shots two things happen there one was that that is an element but my your fault insofar as like the timings for three didn’t work like they just didn’t yeah the second thing is because we were so up against it I think mentally I made a mental note of what I’ll do is I’ll do one shot and then I’ll say I’ll have him say pity and then just do two more shots after she’s on the ground and then I can just dodge the timing thing then didn’t that concludes the explanation I do remember listening to it back and going timing the work I’ve been giving this a lot of thought the work around I had was you had to do the two shots after the fact I mean I’d be fine yeah post was a little bit stressful I mean it was flawless okay so moving on to some questions about the directing given all the issues with the recordings being so split up like that how smoothly would you say that the actual recordings went intense where’s Alex it’s a big complicated question because the variation is huge so once you realize that a recording session is one Scene one version so you can do multiple takes in a single recording session but you can only do one version per session you can’t do two versions in the same session otherwise you just have them in the same room at the same time so what that means is like between recording sessions as huge variation I would say that generally speaking things were better than they would have been if we’d have done them earlier because a lot of people got used to some of the shortcuts and tricks that we use so for instance early days doing any kind of combats so like the Daisy Basira and the running and blah blah blah was rough people didn’t know what worked people didn’t really know what you were getting at I’m gonna make a bit of an elaborate comparison, but bear with me on this journey. I’m not as pompous as this will initially sound. Okay. Any of you know about, like, the director who worked on the Mad Max remakes?
I believe so, but I don’t know – like the Fury Road it’s not remakes it’s the same guy who did the original so he’s done it like there’s a one square that you can basically all the action happens in yes yeah yeah So I am not comparing myself to that director, let’s put that to bed. I am saying though is that he was well known my own record especially for the newer one as basically the cast didn’t get what he was getting at, and a couple of them openly publicly confessed afterwards, they were like, “I was a bit of an ass like did not get what you were getting at I totally see it now it’s fine.” Combat in the early days of Magnus was a lot like that, where people, like, don’t really know what’s happening. A lot is that what you don’t know what you are yeah yeah a lot of knocks you grab yourself and shake. And people look at me like I’m insane, I’m completely lost the plot. It’s like, no, trust, trust me on this. But as time has gone on people have learned these tricks and they’ve heard the end result, gone, “Okay, so that makes you do this and that’s the fix! That –” Da da da. So that went a lot easier.
That said, there were a few issues, which was – time compression was a huge problem. Which is that a recording session can be compressed to a point, and then no more. And where it’s just the case of this was probably the episode most where at the end of a recording session I would just contact Lowri and go, “Yeah Lowri, we were meant to do three scenes two versions, we have done two scenes two versions.” And it’s not a case of, “Okay, can we accelerate, guys?” Because if you accelerate you’re ruining the Ted scenes. The scene is garbage. The – take this garbage, do it again. So if you go quick, you’re doing more takes, so it actually takes longer than if you just cut off. What that means is, you would book a recording for, “let’s get three scenes done today.” And you will get one scene done staying all we need an emergency recording to pick you up and then you do the emergency recording if somebody comes up in you and you do one scene not the other two so you need another recording so this is the one where within room, everyone was very professional. Things were fine. I think there was one bit towards the end where I started to lose my temper a little bit, which was: the recordings had broken. It – Was this the episode where Alasdair’s I forget that it might have been 1-5 I think we had him in, because we had him, we had him doing 158, and there was one where I didn’t lose my temper at performers but I did lay down the law, in a way I don’t normally do. It is – all conversation that is not recorded, stop now. Stop. Stop, stop talking, no, now. If we don’t record this within the next ten minutes, the episode will not drop. Shush. Stop. I don’t normally operate like that, so that was a bit of a weird one. But for the rest, mostly people started to be aware that we were up against it, and with that comes an element of, people don’t mess around. And that’s not me sort of casting aspersions, it’s just that when you’re up against that, people tend to put the game face on, you know.
Also, to be honest, Alex, you are a good director and you inspire a certain degree of loyalty, so most people are willing to, like, really go to bat to record an episode when they need to.
It is better to be feared than loved, and to convince everyone to say that you are loved on audio.
Strong adjectives here. So actually, on the directing side as well, did you learn anything from the Unknowing at the end of Season 3 that was useful?
[Laughter]
I learned a lot in the Unknowing, mainly in what you can get away with, none of which was applicable. Which is why 158 was a headache. So for the Unknowing I knew straight out the gate – hang on. Ah. Number one, I have creepy circus music in the cab. Wasn’t originally creepy circus music, it was nice circus music, that we then made creepy. Fantastic. But then with the Unknowing – this is something that I genuinely have had and you can corroborate, Jonny – we have had sit-down meetings. So I’ve gone, “Right, it’s time to learn what is easy to edit and what’s hard to get wasn’t easy to recorded most talking about Season 5 with, you know, a while back, and I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be really tough because there’s like loads of loads of proper hellscapes in this. This is a transformed world, a lot of episodes are going to have, like, strong Unknowing vibes.” And you’re like, “Oh no, that’s fine, that’s fine!” Because 158, the difficulty was it was all in the real world, so everything had to sound real. And what Alex has drilled into me over and over again, mainly verbally, sometimes physically, is that things that people don’t know what they should sound like because they are Otherworld all right hell of a lot easier up - soundscape the things that people, like, people know what running through a corridor in a basement should sound. The error margin is tiny. People know what it sounds like when a door gets kicked in, even if it’s not sure it’s that classic thing that a punch and you’ve also got to take into account that some things you don’t need to sound realistic. You need to figure out what brand of non-realistic people will correctly act. Exactly, exactly. It’s like, no, that might not be how a door actually sounds when it gets kicked in, but that is the knot but you need to figure out which of the noises that people will be like, “That’s what’s happening.”
Gunshots are a good example, that – the secret with, with… the secret you’re doing a good gunshot in audio is that you need to really, really compress the tail. So that the initial bang in a real gunshot, a natural waveform, you just see a line. It just goes, bang! Pops every mic, and then there’s no other sound. So the way that you do audio gunshots, as an example, is, they’re not real. What you do is you compress the heck out of it, so you hear lots of the tail but the initial bang is quite quiet. But that’s the exactly kind of thing so for the Unknowing you just put a bunch of creepy music underneath. It’s the only time we’ve done scene transitions where the music swells and comes down, because it’s allowed. Because the Unknowing’s kind of theatrical.
Also, one thing was – it might have been you two told me this, but apparently when in films they’re filming people, like, being on fire, like in an action movie or something like that, they never direct them to act as if they’re being on fire, because it is categorically too disturbing. Because they scream like this. So they – what they tell them is, “Imagine you’ve got a swarm of bees on you.” gets the level we’re like oh my gosh somebody big on fire and be like oh they’re on fire without being like what someone with their arms down yeah yeah yeah running on fire would be just horrifying that makes sense yeah and actually I don’t you tighten up you really rapidly I mean like I don’t know getting out of my yeah I don’t I mean I’ve never stuck around to what I know how to although we learned a lot in your knowing the issue in 158 is they are all knowable spaces, so Season 5 is grand. It’s just like, “Ah, you know what I need? The sound of a thousand people screaming. Trivial! Come on.” And moving into spoiler territory, a good example okay hey go the the Anglerfish is a baby slowed down 60 times, I think, and then with reverb and and bass boost added to it. It’s just a baby going . Easy. No one knows what Anglerfish sounds like. No one cares! But the ultimate evil which I have been hating is transitions from one space to another. Someone is in the Archivist’s office, opens a door, steps out into a corridor. That’s hours of work. That is absolutely hours of work to get that right. And see, 158 is full of stuff like that.
yeah absolutely I know people love the phrase Chaka is shocker with stuff that sounds like oh cool and he’s like cool that door that that’s three hours of work. Oh, what happened? Someone dropped their gun! Clock in two more hours of post. It’s just because everything’s knowable, and whereas all of the finales up to then have been sufficiently way I was worried about the lone nails like, Alex, are you gonna be alone and you’re like, “Yeah, it’s, it’s just gonna be like a beach sound, and then I’m gonna do a bunch of audio effects on it. Yeah, it’ll be Lonely. Lonely was easy because I was just like, “Cool, it’s gonna be in one space, that’s the only rule. As long as it’s one space we can get this out real quick.”
Actually, question, and it’s not 158, so it’s 159. And it’s the only episode where we’ve got panning of audio.
Technically not true. There’s a small amount in the Unknowing.
Oh, is there?
And I was like, Oh, the rules that I have always had which has been unspoken and it’s a house-style rule but I’ve never had to teach anyone ‘cause did the soundscapes and people are gonna build theories on this if they know anything about it so the tape sounds are stereo. All of the vocals are mono. So they are not – an actual tape recorder would record in mono. Is that – Yeah, yeah, yeah. So an actual tape recorder recorder - we have things in mono, meaning that it doesn’t have any part, it’s just flat down the level, everything centered in… if you were wearing headphones, it’s centered in the middle of your head.
Yep, okay.
The tape recorder is in stereo. Deduce from that what you will. All of the effects are in mono as well, so like, someone’s dropping a gun so while going through a door whatever anything that’s full post. ritual so in like the Unknowing, that was full ritual style. All of the music because it’s semidigested meaning that so digesting Imagi attic diegetic means in-scene as in like it’s one’s listen to a radio in a car and it’s on the TV it’s cristo jet ik if it is non-diegetic it’s like a film score where the audience can’t hear the characters can’t hear it no I’m trying to think of like die rich it’s pretty bad so semi-diegetic is the one where it’s like a character is driving down the road listening to the radio and then the music swells until it’s the sound. Right, okay. So the Unknowing has semi-diegetic, where they’re hearing music but it’s actually stereo, and it’s done the way that Magnus is. And the Magnus music has always been non-diegetic, so that one bled there this is on the sort directorial warm thing for 160. Because of that I started to mess around with making it become panned, because they’re in a post-ritual scenario so it should have been beginning to pan a little bit at the start of the episode and then towards the end, all have gone full, like, panning and stereo.
Alright, so we mentioned in passing that Ben and Alasdair were not in the room together to record their lines. What are the challenges that come with directing a scene like that?
Honestly, directing is not as bad as you might think. What it just consists of is having an idea for what the scene is in your head, and making extra effort to make things match that. So you are the meeting place between these two recordings. If you have all the time in the world, what you do is you play that recording for the next person who comes in so they have a sense of pacing, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We did do that, in fairness, for one of the pairings but we couldn’t fill the other because the turnaround was too tight. I can’t remember who it was. I think it might have been the Gertrude been one, where they have to do it in complete isolation from one another. So in that one, what you have to do is go tell one person, “Okay, this is the way the scene should be,” and then get the other person to home in on that. However, I am gonna be honest and say that the art isn’t in the directing in that. It’s just not. It’s in the editing – is in the vocal edit specifically. The directing is just, “Again. Could you do that better?” “Better how?” “Better in this specific way.” I’ll try rinse repeat sure in vocal edit is one where it’s taking something there’s a little bit broken and making it not. I think what you’re really hoping when you get the files is that the energy between them is the same, because I think when you’ve got someone beside you, you are feeding about that.
yes same amount of energy they have. The one scene which I’ve edited where I was like, “God, this is completely mismatched,” was when Mel is – she’s angry at Jonny, and this is after the surgery. And I was like , because, like, you were yeah much low energy and she is like you know yeah like she’s really really high and so it was difficult over this one I think tonight did I record this first order che this is end of 157. it’s around that you will be free pre-therapy Melanie yeah oh sorry I thought you were talking about I’m sorry because that was a thing I was really pressed again with you and I remember looking at the script and sometimes you do it with the script, so when I get they eat it so I’ll download the script and I get some editing notes from Alex which will have some time codes for when things happen very good notes all are well depends whether you’re on a scene or not that’s really true it’s so obviously I go by the script I look for if there’s gonna be any noises that I’m not expecting because sometimes you listen through a demonstration yeah and the editor Thank you for that problem.
It’s fine, Elizabeth will take care of it.
ELIZABETH
I can only laugh so much about that.
I know you know you so you’re looking for maybe unexpected things that if you’re just listening to people talking you might just not expect that they’re there unless there’s a specific reaction to it and you’re like, “Oh, it’s a gun. Okay.” so you got to you got to know oh no those are a nightmare but sometimes what you do need to do is in that case I played with the timing of your lines so what you’d scripted I’ve moved it so that was more spread out with her so you’re trying to interrupt her but more rather than and also add in a bit more like of your arms and hours from other bits so that you really came out became a sounding good you know just to give you that sort of sense like you’re you’re trying to get to her while she’s in the middle of the you know I’ll say arraigned but while she’s in the middle yeah came out really really well because that’s what we call them as light as a arbitrary phrase it’s not a real thing like Franken-voicing. Yeah, so, yeah, like, Franken-voicing is where you take something that someone said mean like this doesn’t work. We’ll chop it up and make it work and put it back together like a Frankenstein. oh yeah well a Frankenstein’s monster before anyone…
His name was Adam Frankenstein. yes I mean you know it was the son of Victor Frankenstein. It works. He’s still Frankenstein.
We will come back to the thing but I’ve got one last question for Alex from the directing phone how many takes we needed for the Elias laughs to admit this he got it on the first take. Just in case he doesn’t quite look as he did he did a really good laugh but I remember quite distinctly that there wasn’t any relief in the laugh, it was all amusement. And so, like, once we explained what the laugh was, because he didn’t – because he didn’t actually know what was going to happen in 160. So we had to explain, “No, this is – you’ve just nailed this. You have – this is the laugh of, ‘My plan is now actually basically complete.’” Then it kind of all were to know like as soon as we explained to him what the laugh actually was. He just did it. It’s really annoying, by the way, his ego doesn’t need that. And it’s also annoying cause Elias just won an award. Okay yeah I know I know
Villain laughs, traditionally, are terrible. Like, no one can do villain laughs. Everyone thinks they can, that’s what it is – everyone thinks they’ve got the villain laugh, and no one does. And he happens to have it. Oh, yeah, yeah. In fairness Lowri’s mom has a fabulous cackle and was still disappointed because the one that made it into bloopers isn’t full cackle. That was a little, like a little side-cackle teaser. And that was that wasn’t a 15-seconder which I am heard oh yeah oh yeah a 15-second around the end of it, you’re not bored. you know they’re gonna ask for that now I don’t have it it’s not recorded oh there is no recording a 15-second cackle which I know that your mummys Kate’s fine you’re overselling out I disagree I mean bring her back for Season 5. I want it. I’m just saying we could record the cackle, if we slowed it down like 50 times, put some bass in, that’s a hellscape. Turn it into an EDM. I think so
Moving on to the editing, we’ve, we’ve touched on this throughout, but a lot of the comments from the fans have been – how good the editing in the soundscape and on this episode were which obviously starts with the vocal card you’ve touched on a bit about the editing notes that Alex has given you. What were your thoughts when you saw though who sir I remember I did have a glance back and I remember there was a piece and read which is like just ignore this bit it’s just here for safety which I’d really ignored in the editing notes and the words strap and was also at one point is because it was like wasn’t that one version that was like so this is take 16 and there was one way just went on and on and I think that was when me when the hunters burst in. Yeah. Lot of takes of them, a lot of different – because that was what we did have everyone in the room, so there were five people in the room and, like, there were just a lot of takes. A lot, a lot of different energy levels. low trying it different ways it was amazing like especially because that was both Ian and Fay, who are two of the harder ones to coordinate with travel. I mean, that was probably more luck than anything. So basically I was I just come back from a really great hole I was able to listen to some edits that I hadn’t been involved in which, you know, I jealously want to do all the work so it does give me a little bit of joy to be able to also then listen to it it’s I don’t know what’s happening before for any of it right I just wait until I get it oh yes like it’s interesting sometimes you like yours is the first audience reaction know what’s going on Alex knows and then you’re getting you’ll be like oh so this happened dinner I remember 160 I like Jonny. I have to tell all my friends to listen to this demerit it drops cuz it’s like yeah yeah my brother is still like why don’t you just end it season 4 cuz he was like it’s the perfect ending. this is how harsh it will be honest there is like that was something weird but at the same time I, I’m really interested in what happens after.
Yeah yeah no I saw my so yeah normally I just listen to it as it comes in although obviously first script like this you with so many scenes you have to read it and understand what’s going on you can’t just like with the statements you can just start playing it and editing it but it was pretty intense and I just went at it and then normally what I do is if I if these little sections of things where I don’t know because I’m not doing the sound scraping I have to assume that Alex will need some more time and spots to allow for the soundscaping and also, like, pulling out little bits that you might want to reuse. So that’s because you’re not happy with fabulous habit to have the one that I’ve chosen so that’s kind of how I approach it but it was it was a big innit I think overall it took me like 25 hours saying since you’ve been doing vocal cuts or at least as long as I am you been doing the vocal cuts I haven’t actually had to go back to raw which is quite rare so normally in mastering because again because the tide turnarounds and something what’ll happen is that we’ll have the vocal cut and then we’ll add in the soundscape never allowed in the music over the top and then mastering, you kind of make sure that all levels are correct. And I’ll be like, “Damn it, that was a good vocal cut, but I need to swap that out because of this other thing.” I don’t actually think I’ve ever had to go back to raw with a vocal that you’ve done, now I think about it. Which is really rough, but it’s because you provide those options.
Yeah, yeah. I’m the massive enormous difference for me. Exactly. So if there’s been multiple screams I will edit those really so that he can just go oh character and didn’t like that scream that she you know that Elizabeth picked or I need to it’s not working for some other reason because of the actual soundscaping. I like your notes that come with them so if you like “Okay, I’ve included this scream ‘cause I think the timings right frankly I preferred Demented Three, ones and apparently Demented Three’s probably not gonna work with the timing. So I’m very including it just in case, but if you can fit in Demented Three or maybe Apocalypse Five, that’s a good attitude I like that I just like the little nightie yeah that’s like we always say Elizabeth is the best. Unless you’re another podcast company listening to this, in which case Elizabeth is – I wouldn’t even approach her.
Where there any other challenges that come with the very piecemeal nature of this episode and so many calf being involved
I think that, you know, as mentioned, the big thing is actually so it will take longer to eat it because you need to go through just more footage so to speak. And then whether or not the energy is right between the actors, I think you know to be honest I think it’s mostly covered it’s just that energy it will take longer because you’re having to go through more folders.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve got much more to add, unfortunately it’s not really any shortcuts you can say “And then we did this shot good because we already take all of the shortcuts. We make a lot of stuff. Like it’s not really if there’s no more shortcuts we can make without massively compromising quality. Oh, you should be cutting scenes like at that point if you like called scenes three and six are having sorry there were a few ones where we were like, “Look, this scene we could drop. It, it will make the story worse, it will make the episode worse, but if we literally cannot do the scene, it would function without it.” we can’t draw a good example the Sarah and Daisy are in three scenes in 158. The recording in scene two originally had Daisy saying a bunch of lines. That recording was one of the ones that broke, so as a result we had to do an emergency rewrite and basically redo the scene in such a way that Daisy was listening to hear what was going on and we need you - Shh so technically that counts as another appearance by Hannah as someone else’s character. I thought we thought we mash to go she loved being one of the Hannah she’s I believe a knife sense Ernie was one of the hamsters yeah yeah no it was like there’s the same it’s someone else doing that yeah yes Daisy shush was actually these all her breathing though I believe because we have that big breath library I think it’s no no that’s from there because I don’t use this I don’t I’ve got my own brief life we collect breath yes store there’s not many of them though not a big breather I’m not in studio very often barely breathe rally blinks and the times have been in studio I haven’t been on my girl actually when you’ve got list characters in you can just grab a breath. what right it’s only one or two characters you just grab it from earlier it becomes problematic when you’ve got like four characters and you’re like okay I need to you know Alex is gone everyone do a lot of Brits didn’t like Alex it sounds like an have too many than too few see where were all shouting so much for so long that we all got dizzy because there wasn’t enough oxygen and it was one of the last ones involving Mike. Yeah, that probably would have been back in the Unknowing. I think it was actually
No, it was when everyone was freaking out because the Unknowing happened. We did, like, five takes, so give too many gas with with five takes or more of like the Unknowing starting to happen and everyone was, like, freaking out, and yet by the end we were like, we need to go out yeah coming towards the end of season three there was a lot of breathing. A lot.
So Alex, you were doing most of the soundscape in – for Season 4. Were there any specific issues that the soundscape in – for MAG 158 raised?
Uh, what happened in 158 corridor by the way, has done these things where they’ve read the questions ahead of time, they prepare the not-Sasha was release yeah okay not Sasha releasing let’s go through that they’re not Sasha releasing was astonishingly easy because Yves just on it. She’s another one who can just do villain, straight out the gate. Yeah, Yves – very much a one-take wonder, where she’ll do it look like actually it needs to be this just like oh I didn’t realize banging it starts so Yves Yves lovely to work for for that I know the the tunnels are okay because we have a lot of pre-made templates –
Yeah.
– that we can bring in for like three verbs, and so on. So it’s just like, add that in, that’s fine. It’s Helen in 158. Helen’s –
No, no, it’s not. So the Helen/Michael ones are annoying because you have to manually add a bunch of extra stuff in for the laughs and so on. That takes a while. So the initial scenes are fine it’s basically just FA ok we did do a redraft because originally was somebody like a subtler than that but not by much it was a bit like I’m going in full Season Finale Mode. I did take the opportunity to be like, no no corpses stumble into that no because it was a lot of that background fighting between with Trevor and Julia. So yeah, you had a lot of those fight scenes going on because I think you meant you and your notes you’re like if you want to do the fight scenes you can and then I thought no response I would say actually here’s a hidden interesting challenge although we try to make it like very similar to deenis and you know it all holds together and feels quite realistic normally the violence is fine for me I don’t get affected by horror I don’t get affected by the sound of violence cuz it’s hard to stay like oh that sounds like a heartbreak when a piece of celery has just gone mushed and you’ve seen the salary go mush you know I mean also you like kill so many people some point why quad you care but I found it quite difficult doing the sounds of removed hunters and the fighting and so on. and I’m happy to like publicly say what it is which is it felt when I was editing it had a certain school shooter vibe.
Not me making light of it at all. I was editing it and because we were going for – we haven’t really done that kind of combat, you know, the quite modern with the gunfights is normally quite punchy and nitrogen which isn’t London honestly it’s not as loud as you think and where is like with that it was the sound of all of disturbs and then gunshots then dissing, people running, blah blah blah. It really hit the other school shooter situation stiff suits a situation and I found that really difficult, which is unusual. from here like divine where like writing it I don’t think I realized quite how much of them it would carry I was like oh obviously we’ll do that content warming’s and things like but for that one that’s the first one with me like really needs this yeah we remember you really thing liebe for it before it dropped unfunny yeah it’s just it’s because it was muffled and so on it just it worked in a way they didn’t like but um I don’t think that’s in the script per se there that’s like them with guns you know they do have guns in the like because for all I’m like oh yeah it’s not something I wanted to elicit I did want it to drive home the monstrousness of the hunter mentality, the, like, the fact that’s like, ya know, these are people who, like, attack civilians because they have decided that they are arbitrarily monstrous. I was gonna say though a bit because they had to be distant as well. I think they also would limit you to things that make loud noises right guns and bombs. And they’re just, like, beating the crap out of people. You’re not going to hear that as a distance noise, right. so you have to make that kind of decision it’s well the other audio le states one of the strengths that audio has is when it’s doing something that’s like distant and overheard audio works better because people are you paying attention people are normally listening if you’re in your car 90% of this has been lost on you anyway. If you’re listening with headphones, though, you can hear those two things that you’re not gonna hear when you watch TV or film. That’s because how many people watch TV and film with headphones? I recommend that you do it and try it. It’s a completely different experience because the sound is normally done full-surround for everything that you’re watching these days. It’s just that you’re not getting the experience, ‘cause you’re pumping out through stereo speakers at the other end of the room or your phone. that I was finding very tricky.
The Panopticon was quite easy, with one caveat. So the Panopticon is just, it’s a big echoey room. There’s some fun effects in there. There is whispering at the lowest end that humans can discern via electric equipment, so maybe 50% of people won’t even be able to hear it. Like, that they can’t pick it up. That’s nice. So that’s in there. It swells at certain points in, blah, blah, blah. The footsteps – they’re a nightmare. They’re walking along metal grating. That takes ages, and the reason being, you can’t just take the sound of one person doing a footstep and then reuse it because what that sounds like it is hopping. Doesn’t work. so what’s that that took a bit of wire it’s like I’ve got to do this and I got to each individual footstep he’s right up there with the bloody chains in the prison on Elias. I was like oh oh Cheng’s otherwise it’s just weird there are at least 80 separate chain cues per tiny little scene because I couldn’t find a or do simple it was good to go so I had to do it all manually I did all right in the Train I feel I feel like you put in the chase like I’m probably not gonna put chains in there it might be a bit much. first steps are difficult they’re just time-consuming chains or handcuffs Listeners who are early access patrons will know that we have problems come early release so much so that he was delayed by about 19 hours, which is the longest delay that we’ve ever had on that I should sleep and I was like, no and then you like no sleep that added at least five hours self-care we insist on that. But what were the challenges are bring that all together into the cohesive obviously some of that we’ve talked about but was it just a perfect storm situation that we ran into. or so he’s a perfectionist perfect slum situation combined with the fact he’s a big perfectionist. two things that I’m not a bad thing Jonny’s whose things that I’m gonna share which I haven’t before which is number one I have a personal preference which is my secret shame that I don’t like to talk about. I still master in Audacity, which is the free open-source editing suite. It’s not the best one out there, but the reason I like it is you know when people talk about like driving an old car and you can feel the engine in the, in the wheel and, blah, blah, blah, that’s kind of how Audacity feels for me. Because you can’t do anything in it, but you have to go all the way down to, like, core principles, and build it up yourself. you can’t just go process this for me, click a button, and it’s done. But what that means is it teaches you a lot, but it gives you complete control. So that’s why I like it. it cannot handle that many layers 1/5 a all in I had to start using certain workarounds, because it just crashes once, once you pass a measly 85 separate layers of audio. It just starts to break, which is nonsense. So the issue that I was running into towards the end is that – in the nicest way, I, I had transcended beyond day in editing equipment channel that was you see I needed to Norrell interface was really the only way to get the nuance now just kept breaking so we have to do that I have to do a few workarounds. And also, audio density is a problem in mp3, which is that you have to remember that we have vocals. Okay, cool. We then have music. Okay, cool. Technically within the music there are subtle layers and alterations that get lost in the compression. And then on top of that, we have the soundscapes. Then on top of that, we have what we call “incidental effects.” So that is like stomping so we’re not dropping footsteps or whatever which isn’t your ambience and so on then you got your transitions on top of that blah blah blah basically the equipment couldn’t really handle it I have as good a laptop as you can really get for editing and even if I swap across to other programs. Magnus occasionally breaks things but part of that is because I am not leaning into the strengths of them I’m not going hey could you please process this I’m going no I will process it myself kazoo but it also takes so long yeah and time that you didn’t have because of the production issues we’d had early down the line as well so honestly 90% of the delay was literally the equipment started breaking and it’s that simple so we had to work around that and that was one where it broke once and I was like no we can still hit this it broke a second time went there might be a minor delay then there was a third time where it lost like two hours work and I save I once every ten minutes because it didn’t just lose two hours work is because it actively corrupted save files that I had. and I lost three separate save files that corrupted and I just like we had a meeting on the Wednesday yeah and by this point Magnus 158 was about four hours late and I’d been running firefighting on social media too but I was people in for okay yeah it’s fine second and no Alex told me it will be done by midnight yeah and then I said okay can you guarantee that he was a bit arming and her exact phrase was, as long as it doesn’t break again we’ll be fine so I sent out the message and said okay and we’ll building a little bit of leeway it should be here by the morning didn’t quite hit them on because I did insist, or we all insisted, that Alex actually get some rest.
Yeah.
Fans were mostly happy to say that we were practicing self-care.
It was annoying for me because we would have met – despite everything, we would have met deadlines, even if it had broken once. But we had a bit of a catastrophic, like, software collapse.
Yeah.
Which is why it’s like, it came out 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Which, not ideal, and we do apologize for, but sometimes the equipment just can’t quite take what Jonny has written. Before everyone says I brought this on myself, I did attempt to work in a different suite. That suite collapsed. We’re all very sad. But also it’s like, you know, so we’re doing 40 episodes generally in one year, so that’s 12 weeks off. There’s going to be sometimes a bullets coming up to my holiday I was like, Alex you realize I’m going on holiday highlighting this to you you don’t know why I like something his wedding and then August it’s a perfect storm of events this isn’t happening in isolation no we’re recording the other let’s all each you what would you say with your highlight of actually working on my wallpaper all on the finished product when I was finished and swiftly in there I enjoyed the big recording where we were all shouting and violence occurring I was fun I enjoyed the feeling when it was done I mean actually having everyone in the same room I think for that big scene with six people having them all over five all in the same room that was a nice it feeling and listening real istening to it on the way here actually I don’t real issen to anything ever so we make they literally have to it’s weird to me yeah yeah so I guess you know being involved in such a big project it’s always nice when you deliver something and it feels really good but to be honest the real highlight for me was hearing Martin disappear I mean we all have money needed booting into oblivion for a while okay like for me I have to have a villain for why am I doing this in my house I’m like it’s always Alex Martin get sick because Martin’s great especially when he doesn’t deserve it interesting so so from a psychological point of view that you are placing a lot of your own criticisms of yourself on to Martin and externalizing Martin will always be as someone that I’ve already progressed beyond so it’s okay for me to think less of interesting how does that make you feel wonderful I always like the moments when I get the audio files and you know you’re coming to record particularly maybe season 2 season 3 but it’s like just before you start going to Martin you’re like pathetic well I think just and before we have to spend an exorbitant amount on therapy bills, I think we will grow this episode to a close. Thank you very much for joining us. Anil, what was your favorite part was it?
Midnight on the day of release, actually. I will say that firefighting and keeping people informed with not my favorite task of just having to get running updates from giving you on that unfortunate jobs there yeah um but in terms of what was my favorite actually seeing the fan reaction for how much effort had gone into it the I was getting the running update of the difficulties behind the episode. Actually seeing the finished product and seeing everybody’s amazing reactions to a how dense it was how much plot there was how much emotion went into that episode, and I think it came out fantastically. And it also helped be a cap on – well not so much cap because 160 is the real cap, but in terms of an emotional high for going into the Lonely on 159 and then the end of the world on 160, for everything that had come today because we were getting a few complaints about – or not complaints per se, but we were getting a few comments about how the beginning of season 4, it’s a weird one. Because actually if you look at the amount of plot that happens and the amount of stuff that happens in season 4, it’s actually almost late it’s like twice as dense as season 3 like if there’s loads of actual plot stuff happening, all the time. It’s just that because emotionally it’s dealing with loneliness and isolation and, like, these very quite low-energy but intense emotions, it feels slow. It feels yeah you know if you actually like map out the plot points, it’s just boom, boom, boom, boom. But, yeah, how they come across. yeah it comes but then 115 to the end is a massive ramped up in terms of feeling. ok so yeah the fan reaction was is basically our highlight so thank you very much for joining me thank you very much for listening I hope you have found this somewhat enlightening we will see the debrief yeah into exactly what you do so that I can hopefully make your lives easier. We are a coordinated company, honest. about one episode not funny for anyone listening or me so just stop Okay, thank you, everyone, bye
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