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So you haven't cracked Somalia, Turkmenistan, and North Korea. You need to get Dennis Rodman to pitch your show to the dictatorship of that peninsula.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
Seriously, though, what program do you use to monitor the downloads?
That map is from libsyn, but we have stats from feedburner too. Feedburner isn't as accurate any more and may have missed a good % of download statistics. We could be well over 20 million by now and not have known it due to days of it reporting no data or not the full # of downloads due to bandwidth concerns. It missed stats during peak times. Right now when we compare the two, we can see libsyn is generally about 10-20% higher for the exact same server.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellbringer
KC will you have more items in the website store? I like whats there already but just wondering.
Oh and your next project will be when? will we get info here on the website when your done with the show. Or will we have to follow the news elsewhere.
I can guarantee that the next project will be announced on here. The forum will continue after WA has ended.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
Ya, but I dont think I can wait that long, the freaking anticipation is killing me. And what the project is going to be about? who knows. Or do you have any hints.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
At this point in time, the only person who has any idea is KC himself. But truth be told, I like not knowing, as it adds to the surprise element.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
That's why every WA episode release is so soecial - because we have nothing but our own theories to guide us (which often tend to be waaay off)
:D
Yes, but we do that stuff slowly and methodically. Since we opperate on such a shoestring budget, buying a product in bulk or something that won't sell could potentially leave us with not enough $ to operate.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
Not sure of when. I've been working on it for a LONG time, actually two big stories. I have an idea of which one I'm going to do first, but it all depends on what medium I choose. Any and all news will be here as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
Yup. With the various other projects I have in store, the forum will live on in those other things. If anything the Burt book is still coming. It's just sitting in my box until I have enough time to devote to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
Patience... I work like crazy on this stuff and I don't think I'll rest for long after WA is done. I'd love to do another audio drama, but the workload for this one is a bit more than I can bare with it not being my full-time job.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
Yup, no previews, nothing. If it's a book, there may not even be a description on the back cover. How much curiosity would there be if you read the back cover and it said "You'll just have to read it to find out".Quote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
Hi Kc... I had a serious question about your perspective on storytelling through the medium of audio drama:
Context:
I've noticed that several times throughout the WA series, you've made use of this audio drama's 'non-visual' nature to purposefully withhold information for the sake of the story. Examples: the recent attack on Datu, the CJ-Scratch knife fight, the murder of Pippin, etc. Often times the listener doesn't fully understand what they just heard until the next episode or some time later. If this were a movie, I guess this technique would be somewhat analogous to the camera zooming in on the killer's gun yet not revealing the shooter's identity.
Questions:
In what ways do you think that working in a purely audio medium both helps and hurts your ability to tell a story?
Are their advantages audio drama provides storytelling that other art forms perhaps do not?
How do you think that the WA story would be different if told in a different medium? (e.g., film or literature)
These are guiding questions that you can answer in the aggregate, instead of point-by-point, if you'd like. To clarify, I'm mainly wondering about the storytelling aspect here, not practical issues like how a different medium would affect budget, casting, etc.
In what ways do you think that working in a purely audio medium both helps and hurts your ability to tell a story? & Are their advantages audio drama provides storytelling that other art forms perhaps do not?Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
Well, just the fact that you have to TELL rather than show. That aspect alone causes more problems and technical hurdles than anything else. Action scenes are VERY difficult to pull off without some sort of narration. It can also screw up the pacing because in the middle of an action scene, we butt in with a journal entry. In tactical situations the reality of the scene would have them just shut up and use hand signals, here, we have to "talk it out". Any time a character is in a scene, we have to introduce them with a line rather than them just being quiet and observing. We also have to be careful to also use the character's names in introductions and things. Casting is a pain because if two characters sound similar, then scenes get confusing. Also, we have to be VERY careful with just about every word and inflection used. There's no visual to re-enforce an emotion or thought-process, so we have to use dialogue only to have something come across. "Often times the listener doesn't fully understand what they just heard until the next episode or some time later." --- That's mostly why people complain about slower episodes, but don't realize that the slower episodes raise the stakes and set up the other episodes to have that action. Because it's audio only, we have to spend more time in setups and establish things than visual mediums that can do the same in seconds.
The pluses? Not having to SHOW anything. We can do pretty much anything we want in the story and not have to worry about settings. There's also some scenes that the "devil is in the details". If we were to show you thethen people would over-analyze everything to the point where anything and everything can be proven wrong. Same with Datu's matagun. The actual mechanics of it doesn't have to be shown, so we don't have to worry about the exact specs. So, we get to fudge some stuff.SPOILER
If it were film, I would do similar story-telling techniques, but not the same. I would rarely show what the zombies looked like. The focus would be on the characters and reactions, and not the special effects that go into making the monsters. I also would show little to no blood or gore. We do more in the audio drama because it can't be seen, so there's already a filter. As much as I write this stuff, I am not an advocate of visual violence.
I like the way the imagination takes over. I'm sure we all have different ideas about certain aspects of the story, such as What the Colony looks like, What the Little Ones look like, how fat Kalani is etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
Even when I listen to the show on the move, I still picture each scene in my mind - that kind of effect can only be achieved through not only giod story writing, but good story telling as well.
Using one's imagination to "see what's happening" is a great way for the listener to pay greater attention and get involved with the story. I believe that's one of the reasons why the show is so popular with the fans.
KC can you tell us all the different places it started? Or was it just the places the news mentioned?
I didnt know there was a Burt book where will I be able to get it when your done?
Aside from what Kimmet told you already, you won't get any new info out of me ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sin Angel
Not sure exactly. I hoped to get it done before season 4, but it just took a LOT longer than I hoped. In the end I didn't feel it was ready and so postponed it until I had more time.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexcadtek
ya can do it! come on man! well I would love to read it if yo get done with it, but if you say its not ready, well then its not ready. But it doesnt mean I wont wait for it! LOL!
Listening to "The Accidental Creative" podcast got me thinking about creative projects in general, and specifically audio drama and the aggregation of skills involved in its creation. It's not good enough simply to be a good writer. Or a good producer. Or a good director, or sound engineer. Creating a product of this magnitude involves being all those and more...
Not only that, but often as creative people, we discover that, by investing our focused effort into a creative project, we accumulate new skills and develop ourselves in ways that were perhaps unexpected at the outset of the project. Not only do we create the project, but the project creates us as well.
So Kc, I'm wondering: What skills, knowledge, and abilities have you acquired/developed in the five-odd years of 'We're Alive' that maybe were not so developed prior to the creation of this project?
Here I'm thinking of anything from writing techniques to sound design, software development, rights and legal aspects, casting procedure, session direction, public relations, interpersonal relations with cast & crew, social media, etc.
The short form of my basic question is this: In what ways has creating We're Alive helped you to grow?
Well, for me the biggest one so far is confidence. Good, or bad, I feel that I have the ability to make compelling stories and characters that people enjoy. The second part of that is characters. Before WA, my characters were very thin and not evolved, but now I feel that when you get to spend a lot more time with these people in your heard, you start to learn and develop the mechanics to what makes a character flushed out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
Pacing is something you just have to learn by doing. Letting the action sequences be complimented by setups, and the proper balance of what goes where even in terms of dialogue. Motivation is another. If the scene isn't motivated by a character and rather just a plot element, then it's sloppy. BUT if a character's motivation coincides with the plot direction, it'll be smooth and more accepted.
The worst thing I had to learn is the legal/paperwork production side of things. Contracts first, before anything. And protect IP.
Social media used to work well, but is becoming more of a broken system. Still works, but not as much as it used to. There gets to be a point where too many people are liking or "fanning" pages and there's too many pages, and things get lost.
Software and computer hardware? Computers get slower as the software versions increase, even though they still do just about the same damn thing they did before. We started in Pro Tools 8, and now they're at 11. Same computer that whole time. I use a similar number of tracks, but now the system constantly gets overwhelmed now.
The techniques in sound design have been many. I can't list them all, and who knows some of that stuff might be considered trade secrets now. Either way I am much more picky about the smallest things now because I've honed my craft. The poor stage one sound designers... I keep re-doing their footsteps.
In all, it's given me a direction and goal that is achievable and I think that perhaps this show might be able to let me do this sort of stuff for my day job.
There's been a lot of talk and discussion about the live finale event in LA, and a few of us have been discussing dates and plans etc. What time does the actual recording start, and is there a timetable for the actual day itself? Just to make sure that we arrive on time and get the opportunity to meet everyone involved :)
The timetable is still up in the air, same with the venue. We're still in the process of planning all that stuff out.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
There's just over 5 months until then - at least we have time on our hands. For now, I'll just keep looking forward to the day :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
[QUOTE=Sin Angel;71415]At the wayland roducts store the sell a map poster shows where everything went on I will be buying one. Not saying you have to I just think its coolQuote:
Originally Posted by Kc
Have you thought about pitching the podcast as a tv show .not saying its a good idea just wondering if you have thought about it.
Oh, he has. That's been one of the end games since the beginning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Yeti
Wasn't that the original idea, before the idea of the audio drama concept was finalised? Truth be told, I'm glad the audio drama format won in the end, as it's a unique experience we all enjoy and appreciate. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
Oh yea I totally agree. But I would love to see a showQuote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Yeti
Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
Yeah, that what the original outline was intended for and I adapted it for the audio drama. The idea of the tower made it perfect for a re-usable set. The future seasons went further out, but that would be after it caught on and had a bigger budget to work with. That intention might make it easier to launch the series in a visual medium in the future, but we'll have to wait and see.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonyhind86
Hi KC,
Can we get a better description of the Little One? Is it because of their height or frame? Or they are always lower to ground because they crawl or run on all fours?
They were much smaller earlier in the story, so that's where the name came from. Small in height and frame. Now they are still skinny, but taller. They can crawl and scramble, but not as often now that they are taller.Quote:
Originally Posted by UndeadSweeper
Personally, i would of loved to hear it aired on here, as it is, but then picked up by a producer (or something like that) who liked/loved it and wanted to visualise it, pretty much in the same way, without cutting anything/changing anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
I'm tall and skinny, and will probably look like the undead tomorrow morning. If I get a number tattooed on my arm, I'll audition for a part of a "Little One", should a TV show ever materialise :nik:
I'm still imagining LOTR Ents, only white with huge claws and fangs...Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
Almost like a hybrid cross of Ents and Orcs...Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
That seems to be the best path, some of the best programming has come from that or a similar model, fully planed out from start to finish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gooer
Babylon 5 did it, J. Michael Straczynski had the plot arc fully planned and set before the show even went in front of a camera for the first time. Even Fringe, another JJ Abrams production, had a more cohesive plan in mind and turned out to be a pretty decent show for it. Unlike, *ahem, you know.
*flips table*
Thanks KC.
Off the Topic, Does anyone notice if they look at the chat window when they visit the page one or all of the chatters are named gatekeeper? Is this normal or is there a ghost in the system?
That's a username that the system uses. It's not a ghost ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by UndeadSweeper
But Gatekeeper is a ghost now though :nik:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kc
Does We're Alive have a tumblr or a Instagram? Just wondering because lots of people look at Tumblr and Instagram. Also it would be fun if you could post pictures of when you record.
We just got on Tumblr. It's taking some time to figure it out and get it all nice and customized, and well, figure out how that social network works. We have lots of pictures to share, so I think that'd be a great place to do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burgerbros
This one came into my inbox. I sent Lit some SFX for the convoy drama he's putting together. Some of the SFX were from when we first started out.
"I don't know how many people are interested in this kind of technical detail, but I'd be really interested to find out what kind of system you've devised to keep all this shit straight. You start with the script, but then what is the specific process you use to bring it to life?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Litmaster
The script has a very basic outline of what happens in the scenes. Character location is given, as it's appropriate for the performers, but anything non-essential to that is mostly left out. What sort of surfaces they are walking on, atmosphere, most all that stuff is figured out after everything's recorded. When we're editing it after recorded, the script then only acts as a guide to keep everything on track, but what's more important to listen to is what's been recorded. Many times the foreground characters have lines, and there's characters doing things in the background that would be weird without them. One example is from the most recent episode, Chapter 43:
SPOILER
After the dialogue's in place, it's just a process of layering in the sound fx. I, personally prefer to have the ambiance go in first, the room tones. Some rooms have a bit more hum, or buzz, but it helps to put this layer in the bind the scene together with some over-arcing sfx. From there, footsteps are next. They help position the characters, and also pace the scene. I find that the most important foley is footsteps, and my editors can attest that it's what I'm most picky about. They connect the characters to our audio world. From there, the rest gets layered in piece by piece: doors, guns, backpacks, cloth, zombies... etc... Some of that comes from our library, and some created with foley. It's hard to really pick out "how many" we create for every new episode, especially when we listen back and sometimes record entire footstep tracks in one take. 4 minutes of one track of footsteps could get broken up into pieces as we sometimes cut over-exerted movement or cutting back the footsteps as we sometimes create too many on a first take of foley.
Where the sounds go, there's no guidebook, or any sort of "Rules". Many times I'll come out with a standard of doing things, but then also break that standard as well. For narration I say to have a few seconds buffer to help separate it from the scene, but then sometimes given the pace of the scene, that timing is cut down when it's not needed. One thing I've learned about this whole process is to trust my gut when it comes to editing. If something sounds off, it's off. It you think it feels rushed between two lines, it's rushed. Most of the time the changes aren't glaring, but just small internal reactions that I have to pay attention to.
If you were wondering how we organize all these SFX, we use a program called SoundMiner. It allows us to have our SFX libraries available with all the meta-tag information that will sort through everything for us. I just put in the keywords of what I want, and then proceed to sort through the sounds from there. In the past we didn't have this and had to just use the search tool on the computer and hope we have the right tag on the filename. We've gotten a bit better at that stuff now, but still there's the process of finding what you want and that perfect word used to describe a sound. Many times it's not the specific sound you're looking for, but just something that sounds like it. After doing this for a long time, I have come to know what specific sfx I'm looking for, and some of my favorites for certain actions like gun movement, and 50-cal mount movements, etc...
- Pro Tools does a pretty good job keeping all the tracks organized, but once again I'm very anal about where everything needs to go and in what order. There's:
- A master track on top for everything.
- 3 Aux Tracks below that all other tracks feed into. Voices, SFX, and Music. SFX is given a limiter, whereas Music and Voices are not. That way the guns don't go too crazy loud, but then I also have special tracks that bypass the auxes in those cases that I don't want audio cut down for whatever reason. Sometimes you want to have a gun shake you in your seat. (I tend to prefer louder guns for more realism). The aux tracks are also given the reverb automation. That way if I have 10 tracks of voices, only one track is responsible for adjusting the reverb (echo) in the environment. Of course the Music tracks don't have reverb applied. (Although I broke that rule once for a special scene).
- The voices tracks - Anywhere from 5 to 10 tracks filled with the character's voices and takes, and also muted versions of alternate takes. I used to have several dummy tracks where I put the alternate takes, just to keep it cleaner, but it was harder to then find the other takes if the primary choice didn't work out.
- The monoFX tracks - These are where the footsteps and all single track SFX are included. I tend to not try and group these tracks into "footsteps here" or other logical organization. It would make sense to do that, but often the # of footsteps in a session varies from scene to scene and then we'd waste timeline real estate between scenes. The more empty tracks left unused, the more time spent scrolling through trying to find something. We produce this stuff so fast that this is just one of the ways we cut on time.
- The stereoFX tracks - The same thing as the mono tracks, but these are reserved for sounds that are distinctly stereo and want to be kept in stereo. Trucks, engines, and things like that are usually reserved for these areas. There are far fewer stereo FX tracks, since we foley in mono. This lends much to my opinion on sound that forces stereo perspective in audiodramas is distracting. Many times I'll take a stereo sfx, and make it mono.
- The unclipped tracks - These are those sfx tracks that I don't want clipped down by the limiter. Anything in these spaces bypass that insert.
- The ambiance tracks (mono and stereo) - These are ambiance tracks that hold the room tones, wind, and atmospherics
- The music tracks - Seft explanatory
- And the narrator track.
In all, it's a lot of tracks, and a lot of organization, but really not too difficult. This system was refined from day one, and a lot of changes have come about since the beginning. Someone might think that I might be worried about this stuff being "trade secrets", but really it's not. I would love to take you all through a typical workflow for one episode, but it would take too long. I'll explain the process when you all come out, but we can't go into too much detail and show you all the steps as it really does take a long time. As for what episode was the hardest so far? Each one has it's own varying degree of difficulty. Emotional scenes are hard because they have to balance performance, music, and minimal sfx to have the heart come across, but don't go too far and become cheesy. Action scenes can be hard because they require a lot of precision sound fx to make sure the scene is clear and not muddled with too many sounds that just end up making it a mess. Normal talking scenes are hard because you have to do your best to accompany minimal action with enough sound effects to not make it dry or barren, while at the name time not over-doing it. Scenes with any music is hard because we tend to have to recycle what we have in our libraries, and hope that we can tailor it enough to make it feel new or fresh.
But, if I were to choose an episode, Chapter 36 was pretty damn hard. Whenever you edit an entire hour segment in one go, that's just a nightmare. You just have to take it one scene at a time.