Hi Kc,

Should've asked some of these last night but I forgot and am not sure what 'general interest' these answers might have. As I'm currently slogging through my fan audio drama thing, these are more technical questions that have arisen in my mind:

The Script
So in preparation for each recording session, did you email the cast a copy of that chapter ahead of time so they could acquaint themselves with their lines? Or just hand out the script and ran it cold once they got to the studio?

Panning
Since everything is recorded on separate tracks, to what extent do you use panning to simulate space distribution in the audio field? (e.g., two characters talking face to face, one panned left, the other right, etc.)

Organizing Tracks
Ok, so when you're working with 50+ tracks of voices, background, foley, music, etc... how to you keep all that organized in Pro Tools? Color coding? You keep all the vocal tracks in one area, the music in another, etc? A specific system for labeling tracks (so you're not looking at a bit of audio and wondering what the hell this is...)

Foley
Boy, I can really relate to when you said it's often faster and easier just to record your own Foley than try to find something from a sound library. For example, just now I needed the sound of a character tossing a cloth to another character. Simple, right? Quick little 1 second bit of audio, but I needed it to simulate some movement in the scene. So I spent about 10 minutes rooting around in various libraries: tearing cloth, ripping cloth, flapping curtains, unfurling flag, rustling skirts, blah, blah, shit, shit, shit.... Ugh! I finally gave up and just grabbed a dishcloth and headed out to my car with my Zoom H2. Had the sound in about 2 minutes.

So my question is this: in recording We're Alive, did you try to front-load all the sounds you thought you would need ahead of time, shifting them in the right spot in post-production, or did you tackle each sound individually as it came up in the script? I imagine some of them, like the zip-line, you'd have to record ahead of time, but what about something like a chair creak or clinking glasses? Just did that on the spot?

Also, how much of the time did you have to add audio that you didn't realize you would need when you first wrote the script? (e.g., if you found that a scene was lacking in movement or tension).