This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, More What You
Here, Weekday Afternoon's On the Drive. He's an actor, director, and
writer. Sarah Wayne Callus, most recently seen in The Company You Keep,
NBC's The Council of Dance and The Walking Dead, is now expanding her foray
into something near and dear to my heart storytelling with sound. Sarah is the
creator, writer and director and voice of the science fiction podcast after Shock,
now in its second season. Hello Sarah, glad to have you a long
good morning, sir, thank you for having me. Let's start about the
Let's just remind everybody what Aftershock is, and then we'll get into the differences
of the first season in the second season. All right, So Aftershock is
it's an audio drama, which is a television show that you watch with your
eyes closed. Right this, we're going all the way back to the sort
of Twilight Zone radio drama, kind of roots of American storytelling here. And
the story the first season is that that earthquake everybody's always been talking about finally
comes and it levels La thirteen miles off the coast in international waters. A
new island rises up out of the sea. So then it kind of becomes
the story of westward expansion and there's new land, it's to the west,
who goes there and why? But I was curious about exploring some of those
stories from the perspective of maybe writing in some women and some people of color
and sort of seeing how those dynamics would all work out. So a bunch
of people get to the island. Our hero played by me because I wrote
it, is looking for a young woman who we think is her daughter.
And they get to the island, and people keep coming, and then people
keep dying, and the body's sort of pile up, and by the end
of the first season almost everybody has a fair amount of blood on their hands.
And so in season two, what we're really kind of exploring is atonement
and forgiveness. When you have done the unforgivable, what do you do then?
Who do you become? And how do you make it right? How
do you ask for forgiveness? How do you give forgiveness? That seemed like
something at this moment in our culture in North America, that seemed like something
worth talking about. Aftershocks Season two is the podcast available on the iHeartRadio app
and everywhere you get podcasts. Have you been personally through any earthquake or earthquakes.
I've been through a couple, none serious. Mercifully, I was you
know, my John Burnthall as a close friend of mine, and years ago
I was staying with him and his wife and there at the time new baby,
and we were in Venice and John was somewhere else. He wasn't in
the house. His wife was cleaning up the dishes and I felt the wall
start to shake, so I ran upstairs. I grabbed the baby. I
run to the middle of the street. I'm waiting for everybody to come out
so we can all be safe, and maybe ten minutes go by it I'm
alone. His wife comes out and she goes, what the hell are you
doing? I said, I'm saving the baby. It's not that better an
earthquake. Get back inside and put my kid back to sleep. I'm so
sorry. So that was my failed hero moment, but thankfully it was not
any kind of a serious earthquake. I have been through several here in Oklahoma.
People don't realize it, but we're very seismically active, and in the
last several years especially so. And I guess the biggest one I went through
it. Yes. So the biggest one I went through was about a three
point four, and I was more fascinated than fearful. I heard it coming
in almost a Doppler effect. At first, I thought, why is there
a helicopter landing in the backyard, because that's what it sounded like. It
was. It was a wobble wabble wobble wappa sound. And then the whole
house was vibrating with that wabble wobble wappa sound. And my wife was in
the shower. She came running out, what the hell is going on?
I said, it's an earthquake. And about the time I said that,
you felt it doppler to the south and to the east, and I went
out the front yard and I heard. I didn't realize it would make a
sound, but I heard it. I heard the effect of it leaving,
and I guess the whole experience was maybe thirty seconds, and we didn't sustain
any damage, but it was. It was fascinating to me, not unnerving
like many people were rattling. Yeah, well, and you know it was
interesting to me. Was exactly that audio question is going through this right?
You know? So I write this script, we get it to Jeff Schmidt,
who is I think the best audio engineer in the business, and he
goes, right, so all of this is audio, What does this sound
like to you? And I was like, I don't know, buddy,
I I think I'm going to make that your problem. And that was kind
of our partnership because I would write these things and I would write a tsunami,
I'd write a kayak flipping over. I'd you know, write someone falling
off the cliff, and Jeff would go, okay, well, and you
know, he'll send me three options and I go, oh, b is
great, but let's bring up the base here and let's make it rattle a
little more. And that has been in a really exciting part of this kind
of audio journey is how do you take a natural master and land it fully
in someone's ears in an immersive way. And this season, actually he's done
something really cool. He's done three D sound. So you know, if
you can take a second and you know, put your beats on or your
bows or whatever your giant headphones are, then it'll the sound will actually move
around you and it's cool. A few times while I was editing, I
couldn't help myself I'd look behind me because I'd hear the footsteps of somebody coming
up in a scene, and I was like, oh, this is so
cool. Yeah, that's the part that I love. Sarah Wayne Callous is
with us Aftershock Season two is the podcast that she produced, and it's it's
it's going back to old school radio drama. But and I'm sure you've done
this, Sarah, gone back and listen to some of the old dramas and
listen to how they had to improvise to make various sound effects, whether it's
a shaking a piece of ten to simulate thunder or a war of the world.
I still have no idea how they how they made the sound of the
artillery because I can't tell what it is. It sounds like a like a
almost like a fire extinguisher going off, but I don't know what they used.
I think they put a mason jar down in a toilet when the spaceships
were you know, we're unscrewing the lids of the spaceships and they were coming
to But but that was my point. We have so many more resources available
to us now in the digital age. We do we do, and you
know what it allows us to do I think is tell more vibrant stories.
And even you know, look, I'm recording this with actors who were all
over the place. I mean we shot We recorded Dave Harbor I think in
a closet in rural England somewhere. I think he was out there shooting something.
You know. We record Jeffrey Dean Morgan in his garage in between cigarette
which is always amazing. I've always ended up. His wife is Hillary Bird
Morgan, who's an absolutely brilliant actor and writer, and I've always got to
call her and be like, hey, Hale, would you set your husband
up because he's swearing at his TV screen and this tech is pissing him off.
But we can do these things remotely in a very different way, and
then send the tracks over, yeah, to our audio engineer who pieces it
all together. Whereas like back, you know, during the first season of
prison Break, they asked me to do a couple episodes of the Twilight Zone
radio dramas they were redoing it all with Stacy Keach as the host, and
even then we were all in the same room. Fully, artist was right
there. There were a lot of after effects too, but it was limited
by who you could get into the room and who was available that day.
And now we don't have that, you know, we record things over riverside
or squadcast, and it gives us access to brilliant actors wherever they are in
the world. Sarah Wayne Cally's the podcast is after Shock. It's in season
two. What is it about podcasting? I think it's because people want to
have more going on when they're cutting the grass or going for a jog.
My brother in law no longer reads the newspaper. Every morning. He gets
up, gets his cup of coffee and he listens to a couple of podcast
You know, it's an interesting question. I mean, on the scripted side
with what I'm doing. What I think is really great for people is I
don't care how big your special effects budget is. In a movie, it's
coming out of the minds of the director and the producers and the writers and
the special effects team. When you listen to a podcast, those special effects
are coming right out of your brain. Whatever it is that scares you the
most when you hear that door creak open, that's what you're imagining. Whatever
it is that makes the most beautiful sunset to you. Wherever you've been your
brain's pulling that image up and flooding it. When we talk about I'm on
a boat in the middle of the ocean and the sun's coming up, And
I think there's something extraordinary that allows people's imaginations to tailor the story to them
in a way that's not available in any other medium. So I'm gonna be
fall in love with the medium at a young age. That's why I got
into radio, because I wanted to do that kind of thing. And I
was like, I was about five years old listening to a radio draw and
I thought, Wow, this is great. I love this. I see
something different than what my sister sees when we listen to this, and to
me, it is magic. Yeah, it's exactly right. It's exactly right.
And you know, it also allows us as actors to play I think,
a wider range of characters, right, because you can manipulate your voice
in ways that you can't quickly manipulate your body. And then that's just it.
It's a ton of fun. You get to play and play and play
and play. I do think it's interesting that so much of our world is
migrating to podcasts. You know, when you talk about your brother in law
and not wanting to read the paper, but to listen to it. To
me, what I think is well, that allows him to listen and sit
with a cup of tea and watch the sunrise and actually engage with the beauty
around him and the piece around him at the same time that he's engaging with
the cast and the news, and maybe that makes it a little easier to
swallow. Give it how challenging these times stuff for everyone. Sarah Wayne Kelly's
the name of the podcast Aftershock season two. I thank you for the conversation
and for the podcast. We look forward to talking to you again. Thank
you so much for having me be well. Thanks for listening to Later with
Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
weekday afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts Media Presentation