Hi, listeners, Victoria here, Welcome back to another bonus episode of Crypted
Cape. We are here today to do a little bit of a series review,
a little series wrap up, not wrap up. We still have another
season, but we are very quickly approaching season five, and we thought it
would be pretty cool to talk about the show is a whole talk about some
of the behind the scenes stuff. And when I say we, I mean
my lovely partner in crime, Jen, who has been hanging out behind the
scenes and helping me make this for the last five years. And it's an
era. It's your Crypted Cape era. Oh my god, this is my
era's tour. No, just kidding, I only have one era. It's
just it's just the podcast. Um, but would you like to introduce yourself?
Yeah? Hello, I am Jen and been helping Vicky planned this story
over How many years has it been. It's been like five years. I
mean it's been being produced for five years. Yeah, but honestly kind of
six because it took a while to start it. It does, it does.
It feels it feels like you've or we've been with this story for a
long time, but it also doesn't feel like five years worth of time or
six years worth of time. It's it's like a weird thing, right because
like we have these like and we'll get into this, I guess with the
process kind of stuff. But like we do. We've I started this back
right after we graduated and um, and you know it was just kind of
an idea. Then you're very involved in the like the pre production like writing
and planning and stuff like that. Yeah, and then I go when I
record it, And for me, that's like two different sides of my brain,
right, It's like it's the there's the writing side, there's the recording
like directing side, and then there's the editing side, and like those are
very three, very different parts of the process. But all of that happens
at like different times of the year two So it feels like, yeah,
like it's been five or six years, but also like half of each of
those years kind of. And there was a point where we got where,
like you especially got to a point of like I need to know I didn't
have an end game yeah before I keep going yeah, and that's when I
was like, ten, I need help. But yeah, so we have
we wanted to do this little series review because it's yeah, it's getting towards
the end. Yeah, and it's the first time I've ever actually finished a
project. I say actually finished. It's not done yet, it will be
done. I shouldn't give myself that that award before it's finished. You've outlined
it, but it has to happen. You can have eighty percent of the
award. Now, Yeah, do you want to start where you got the
idea? I guess yeah, yeah, Where did you get get this idea?
I okay, okay, we're gonna go all the way back to high
school? Oh my goodness, yes, um, because it's not that like
I got the idea from there, but it is important where my like interest
in this kind of stuff came from. So um as far as Kryptos go,
I have always like thought that, like weird stuff like that is fun.
My father has always loved watching um like big Foot shows and like Finding
the YETI and the Locknest Monster. He wanted to take us up to Lake
Champlain to see Champlain. I think it is in New York, like upstate
New York. There's a lake where they're like, oh yeah, we have
a monster like the Locknest Monster, but we call him Champ because it's Lake
champagne or whatever, and my mom was like, that is an insane trip.
What else are we going to do besides try to find the locknest monster
in the lake? And he's like, I don't know, it might be
nice. We didn't go, but you know, all that kind of stuff
is always always fun to Meum. But in high school, like towards the
end of high school, my best friend Caroline had recommended me this show,
this podcast, and I was like, I've never even heard of what a
podcast is. And there was a little show though, Welcome to night Vale.
If y'all don't know what Welcome to night Ville is, it is a
gem of a creation. It's just this weird little show where the premise is
like there's a guy that his name is Cecil, that is the radio likes
news host of this town called night Vale, where everything weird is perfectly normal,
and like there's a cat named Cautionic that lives in the bathroom where he
works and floats five feet above the ground and has like multiple eyes and heads
and things like that, and that's totally normal. And like the sun is
loud in screams when it rises, and that's normal, and like all of
this weird stuff and it's just a very like weird surrealist kind of like comedic
sweet little thing and I love it so so much. And I started listening
to it in high school and that started my like love of podcast in general,
but also specifically like fictional podcasts, because like that was my introduction to
podcasts at all. Right, So I was like, oh, people do
this like with nonfiction things too, why And then I started listening to smother
ones in college. I found a few like Tannis and the Black Tapes and
Rabbits that are all really good, and I was like, I want to
make one of these. And I really wanted to make one after I made
a couple of movies in college and was like, wow, that was expensive.
You know, it's less expensive a single micro fun I had a lot
of iterations of like what a fictional podcast could be before Crypti Cape, but
the first one that looked at all like what it ended up being was and
I think I might have shown you this maybe I had like a small write
up of something. It was a woman that worked at a truck stop diner
in the middle of nowhere, yes, and I do vaguely remember, yeah,
yeah, And in the like, and her clientele was totally normal during
the day, and then at night the cryptids that lived in the area would
come because they knew it was a chill place to hang the things that go
bump into night cafe. Yeah, exactly, exactly, And that was the
first thing that looked like cryptid cape. And I liked that idea, but
I thought that the that being having it be tied to the diner was a
little limiting. And also, I like, I was very hung up on
this idea, which I guess this is something that also changed throughout the production
of the podcast. I was hung up on this idea of like, there
needs to be a reason that she's recording and besides like keeping yourself awake during
the night shifts at a diner, I don't know what other reason she was
recording for. Yeah, And I was like, well, what if what
if she was like a news she was some sort of journalist. And I
was like, well, then that doesn't really work if she's at a diner.
What if she is the journalist for a really small town. And then
and then it then it kept going, Yeah, do you think you'll revisit
the diner, because like, now I want to hear more about the Diner.
Yeah, I don't know, because it's the stories are very similar.
Yeah, right, I suppose I could it just it is like a very
limiting thing because like I had like a I don't know, krypto kipe turned
into this like very slice of life kind of thing. It did. I
don't think I ever really intended it to be that. I wanted it to
be a little bit spookier, a little bit weirder and stuff, but like
that's just not like where it ended up going. Yeah, it's not where
my writing really ended up going. The diner one would have been more like
that's also part of the problem and the other things that I've learned through podcasting,
but like it would have been a little bit more action kind of based.
Like the first episode. I think the plan was that like it was
a normal night at the diner when the cryptids came, and then one of
the cryptids had been like attacked or something, and she had to like run
out into the woods and help them or whatever, and it's like that's a
lot of fully effort. But I don't know, it could be a short
story or something, yeah, because I feel like that kind of conflict maybe
we had more plans for and then season one happened and you're like, this
is so many sound effects to find or make. Did you make any of
them? Oh? Yeah, I made a lot of them. Oh my
god, Oh Jesus Christ. Okay, so all of my sound effects either
come from the wonderful free YouTube library. If anyone's ever producing anything, go
to the YouTube library for sound and music and it's it's iconic. Yeah.
I made a lot of sounds that person that like saw, like the high
heels or the funky shoes on and walking on various surfaces. Oh yeah,
I used to do that in college. Yeah. I did that for my
movie. I did that for a couple other films. Yeah, I see
those videos to room myself around the fully room. We had a fully studio
in college. I wasn't able to use it for the podcast because I had
already graduated, but I used it for for some films. That's cool,
that's yeah. But yeah, some of the smaller sounds I'll make myself.
M season three, we were balling, and I am by balling. I
mean, we had a Kickstarter campaign and I was like, this is too
complicated, We're not doing that again. But we were able to pay my
friend Isaac to make some sound effects because he does he does music producing and
podcast producing, um and uh and fully in sound effects and stuff. So
he made me some fully which is very cool. Cool. But yeah,
the season one, that was another qu that was on like our little list
of like what are things that changed? Yeah, one of the big ones.
And I don't know if you've noticed, Jen, but a lot of
the conflict is now not fight fight it is argue. Yeah, well that
like it suits this medium because it's not visual and it's not like you're not
even like looking at like words on a page in a book where you can
see like where the pacing change or their paragraph breaks. This is it's all
things you hear, so it makes sense that it switched. But that was
something I think both of us had to like see play out and be like,
oh, yeah, this is do you want to do that again.
The specific thing we're referencing is obviously that if you haven't if you've been here
since the beginning and haven't listened back, which I wouldn't blame me. I
haven't either. Um, I don't either. Usually I can't. I haven't
listened to a single episode after I finish it. That's just a mean thing.
I don't watch anything that I've made once it's done. Once the final
like, I will watch the final cut to make sure that, like everything
looks good and stuff like that. I listened through to every final cut,
um, to make sure nothing weird happened that I didn't notice in editing.
And then I upload it and I never touch it again. I never listened
to it, I never look at it. I never ever ever like,
I can't I can't do it. It's done. Yeah, Unfortunately we lost
a little bit of audio here, um, So should we just move on
to the other thing that we were talking about is a story that we planned
this over skype calls that often changed. They're often a few hours long.
Oh yeah, very true. Yeah, Okay, well, I guess we
were kind of still talking about all learning because I was saying that the first
season was kind of like a I just made a thing, made a thing
and was like, hey, can you guys, like like I had asked
you and our other friend to um like line edit basically for me was like
hey, there's I think I only had like three episodes or something. You
had like, yeah, it wasn't a full season. Yet Oh it was
nowhere near a full season because I didn't even have a full season when I
started releasing them spoiler, which if season one feels a little disappointed, maybe
that's fine. Growing pains. Yeah, but I had only written the first
five episodes before the first episode came out. Um, and I think I
had. I guess I had given all five to you guys, and you
had given me notes on them when you could. But again, it was
like a line note kind of thing because we were going from having normally like
proofred each other's like short story stuff too. Then later obviously you came,
You became more involved our friend Kit Actually it was involved in their own way
in the podcast because they made my channel art channel art that's a YouTube channel
art. They made the speaker, they made the sticker, they made the
podcast cover art, and you kind of like fell into this rule of like
helping me out a little bit more with the story itself. Yeah. Yeah,
it must have been after season two where I was like, I have
no fucking clue what I'm doing with this. It's like, now you set
up all these rules, all these promises, and it's like where are they
going? Yeah, and we had to figure that out exactly. And I
had had so many characters that I was playing with two and it was just
such a different like and you had plans for characters still the Calm that hadn't
like shown up yet, but they knew who were going to be there,
or ones that had just shown up in season two and we're going to stay.
I mean, there are there are a few characters in season five that
I have had plans for for like over three years now, yeah, which
is kind of crazy. And obviously, like the big one of the season
whose name I'm not going to tell you. Oh wait, just kidding.
They listened to the last episode of season four, the High Council, you
guys know the f that is. That's fine, but like obviously the High
Council has been like in play for a long time and they will become a
character finally in this season. But there are a couple other characters that I've
had in mind that like have not entered the actual I mean that happened with
Caleb too. I had Caleb and Mine for a few years. You've had
Francy's backstory in mine for a long time, yes, since like early days,
Like I don't know, because I I love all the characters, but
I latched onto Francy specifically, I think because of the Jersey Devil myth and
because of just the way that Aubrey plays. Francy is so fun. And
had this idea of a backstory and I was like, oh, I want
to include a character in future seasons from that backstory. And then finally I
was able to bring well, I guess Caleb came in in season three.
Yeah, so yeah, it didn't take too long, but it was a
couple of years. Yeah, Caleb was mentioned earlier and then yeah, I
think I mentioned him the first time in the live episode that we did.
Hold in the live episode. Yeah, extra cannon. Yeah, we have
a little bit of extra cannon. We had a live episode. If you
guys weren't around for that, we had a live episode and in between season
two and three. Um as like a fun thing to do for people who
were donating to that Kickstarter campaign that we had, and it was fun,
it was stressful. I won't do it again. Um it was like an
online live episode two Oh yeah, because that would have been high COVID days,
I think so. Yeah. Um, A lot of this was produced
during high covid. Yeah, got this whole I just it. You did
a good thing. You made this whole thing I did. I did the
thing that needed to be done. I just needed something to do because I
like, we graduated college and like I had gotten a job that was dogshit,
and then I had left that job, and then I was working like
weirdly part time, which like at that time, because me and Becca were
living together in a house that was shockingly affordable. Shout out to Becca,
She's sitting on the couch right now, house cheers with Kingdom. That's great.
Oh so jealous. We were living in a house that was cheap and
in Tucson, which is also cheap, and I was able to do a
part time gig for a little while and like work on the podcast and stuff
too. I well, I mean, I guess I decided to start working
on the podcast then because I needed something creative because that old job had just
sapped all of the desire to make things out of my bout and I was
like, I need to get back to that or else I'm never going to
make anything ever again. It was like, how are you going to write
it? Who are you going to cast? Do you have funds to pay
actors right away? What who's going to host your podcast? Like all these
things. It's like there's so much that goes in to this, like and
then you're like, oh and then the editing, which you always seem to
like, oh yeah, editing, that'll be fine. Yeah, that's kind
of the Like it's funny because I'm like, oh yeah, editing, that's
definitely the thing that tastes the most time. Jenna would like you to guess
how many hours do you think I spend editing each episode? I'm gones.
Each episode is about what twenty two to twenty five minutes or so four hours
an episode? God, I wish more than If the episode is heavy on
fully work, it can be up to fifteen Oh my god. Typically they
hit around ten to twelve it. Yes, do I waste a lot of
my life doing this podcast? Yes do? I love it most of the
time of the Yeah. I feel like that describes like when you do something
creative because you don't love every every part of it. Oh yeah, okay,
then what's your favorite part of it? My? Okay. There there's
like a couple things that like very I mean, recording is exhausting, but
fun because especially if I'm recording, like in person with people, that's always
a really good time. So recording is fun. The writing is, the
writing is I think all of it is fun in its own way, but
is difficult if you are like either forcing yourself to do it or if it's
if you're on like a really crunched deadline, which I am often on.
Um, But like like, once you get into a groove with any of
this stuff, like I find it very enjoyable, you know. Um.
The thing that I hate the most, the thing that is the fucking worst
part occur in the past. Yes, I can Curt, I can do
whatever I want. It's my show, Curson, like people curse in the
show. It's fine. Um, that was my one thirteen. But the
worst part by far is that. Okay, So my editing process, if
anyone is interested in this, I in a psychopath and I edit in a
primer and yeah, and I edit in Adobe Premiere Pro because because I only
want to pay for one program, so I pay for a Premiere. I
also never bothered to learn Adobe Audition. I realized that would have been a
good idea. I've done this for five years, but it's been five years.
It's over. It's not gonna happen unless you make another podcast. I'm
not gonna do that. I've been told I can't do that by myself,
and then by Aiden when he reminds me, because I've asked him to remind
me, don't let me make into the podcast. You're going to get another
idea to be like, oh wait, really cool as a podcast, and
now you have all this experience. But anyway, so the editing process,
basically, we record everything. I tried to record as much stuff with people
like in together as possible, whether that's together in person or together like over
a zoom call. So at least like there was some sense of like timing,
but a lot of times that doesn't work. So then I have to
edit it together. So my process is first making an assembly, which is
I take all of the footage from the entire episode and throw it into a
timeline in premiere. Then this is how I edit everything. By the way,
if anyone was curious about a video editing process, this is what I
do. Then I go from there and I do a dialogue cut, and
for that one, I just go through every single clip, every single line,
and I pick out the lines that I like and get rid of the
ones that I don't. Then I do a sound effects and timing cut.
That's when I actually put things together, make sure the timing works. That
the timing doesn't work, I tweak it, especially with things where like we
recorded it synchronously. Then I have to artificially create all of the timing,
which can sometimes be a nightmare. But I've learned cadences where I can do
that. I can I can do that pretty quickly now, and then I
go through and I also add in the sound effects, because you can't really
do timing without sound effects, especially for something like this, because like in
film and TV, you have a little bit more leeway of having sound effects
when people are talking because you have the added benefit of there's a visual medium,
so people can like sometimes read lips. You also, like you can
have a sound effect to be quieter if you have something representing that sound effect
visually, so it doesn't have to be very clear what it is. But
usually in the show the sound effects are really important for conveying like what else
is happening, so sometimes they need to like take center stage for like half
a second or something, So that goes into timing as well, the last
step is the worst step because it is the audio balancing. Oh my god,
I go through the whole episode and I say, actually put this down
to descibols, Actually take this up to decipals, Actually do this, do
that, fade in, fade out, And it sucks so bad because it's
always like the last thing that I do, because it it only makes sense
to be the last thing that you do, because then everything's in and everything's
good to go. But like, oh my god, it sucks. That's
the one part and so like that's that's the part that I dread. How
long does that part take? Or like, do all these parts of it
take equal amounts of time? No? Assembly takes five minutes. That's my
favorite part assembly because I can check that off my to do list in five
minutes. The dialogue can sometimes take a while. Um, what do I
usually do? I say a budget, Like a budget half an hour for
assembly, this is per episode. Half an hour for assembly, three hours
for dialogue, three hours for timing. My four hours total is looking like
real hilarious. Now, it's okay, that's what people kind of expect um.
And then like two hours for audio balance, and then I usually round
it out with like an extra hour of Oh I forgot, I have to
gather the credits. Oh there's this other sound effect I need to go record.
Let me throw that in. Oh wait, I actually have to change
the beginning because we have an announcement. Let me add that, you know,
little little things like that that need to be added later. Um,
so it gets close to to like nine or ten hours typically, which again,
like I realized, that's a long time. But the more you say
it, the more I think you've told me how long it takes you per
episode before. So I was like, I should have known that. The
creative processing it does take a while. Yeah, but you know, joy,
like the writing part of it's gone quicker for you, is it?
Yes, And we kind of gone. We talked about this a little bit
when in the audio that was lost, but like us the lost files,
so we'll talk about it again because we were saying how my writing like process
has changed from season one to season five because like in the beginning, you
guys saw it, like I said, Um, you and Kit saw a
lot of different versions of those first few episodes, I think, and like
I even I could even pull up right now like season two, Um,
there were some episodes I name, I name episodes um, season episode number,
and then draft it's yeah draft letter, so I start with a yeah,
and then I go go down and there's like there were points in season
two where I had like E drafts, yeah, which is a lot um
because I had like things that kept changing. And right now season five,
all of them are B drafts. At least for these first four episodes.
I owe you fifth episode, but we're not recording it this weekend, so
it's fine. But all of them were B drafts. And I think that's
because, I mean, we did a different like outlining and revision process thing
this time because we're crunched for time. But also like I think I have
finally gotten their voices down that only took five years. But like I feel
more comfortable of writing for everybody that's like a season regular or like a series
regular. The main problem this season was figuring out when things happened. Yeah,
that's I remember in the outline, like you so all this happens over
Skype? Yeah, so for this season because unfortunately we don't live in the
same city anymore, horrible, although we're in the same place right now.
Hollywood, please give me my friend back, so you would like read me
your outline for each episode, and I was like making notes and as it
got to a point of it would be like, Okay, this needs to
happen before this does because this thing is going to inform this character's actions in
this scene. So there's a lot of like moving scenes around. Yeah,
sometimes between episodes. Yeah, there was a lot of that. I mean
I was after our conversation, I went and like shuffled stuff around. I
was pulling things from like episode seven to move it back into like four,
you know, because it was kind of it was a I knew that I
needed to get it done, and I knew what scenes I wanted, and
I didn't know where the fuck they were going to go. This is why
you tell someone because then it's like, oh, yeah, this clearly has
to go here exactly. There is one like moment, like we talked about
that I'm very excited for seeing like how it's going to play out. Which
one I'll believe it. It's fine, it's the one with Yeah, it's
gonna be good. I'm very exciting. What other stuff were we going to
talk about? Well, I just thought something as we were like talking,
like how you write them has gotten faster, and how I edit them has
gotten different. Well, yeah, because again it's like the kind of thing
where when I first gave you guys things, we were we had just gotten
out of the creative writing program. Kit still was in the creative writing program,
and we were still so focused on this like line edit kind of thing
that we were trained on, which like can be very helpful in a different
creative process. But like we realize very quickly that the way that the podcast
has made, if there are weird things when we're speaking, we will fix
them on the fly, yeah, like me and the actors, and we
can like rewrite as we do it. So it's like that stuff's not as
important obviously we want it good enough, where like that doesn't happen a lot
because like you know, and we want it, like the voices to be
consistent or at least like logically how they grow exactly. It is very different.
Yeah, I like to talk about editing this last time I did worry
about commas at all. Like I used to like be like, oh,
this comma should go here because the actor should pause here, and like this
will like give a better sense or like this sentence has some weird internal rhyme.
I don't know if you want your actors rhyming while they speak, but
like this last time, I didn't look at any of that. I actually
read a lot of it on my phone, and it would be like I
can hear their voices, like especially Francis, Like I can hear Aubrey's voice,
like when I'm reading his lines. I read for like like big things
like does this make sense plot wise, like does this character like go in
and like grow in a normal way, like these bigger picture things, and
like because you'll, you guys catch all the little like line level things or
cadence things. Yeah, so learned that too. That was different. Yeah.
You also didn't even like we had kind of figured out the continuity stuff
in the outlining too, so there wasn't even like watching out for that as
much, which I hope made a nicer process for you, because like the
continuity of like dates is very hard. Oh yeah, I used to catch
more of that in the beginning, Like that was a big part of the
lining too, to be like, oh you have of sybils, like you
have purple purple purple hair. Oh yeah, her hair changing colors? Yeah,
like oh, but it means this in one scene, but then it's
the same color and different scene, but it means something else, and it's
like, oh that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, power consistencies,
um, power powers consistencies have changed, yeah, or sure, And like
I think I've kept them relatively like relatively the same throughout the show. But
I have I have a binder of character descriptions. Yeah, you do that.
I sometimes go back to because I'm curious because I have their like their
last names written down and stuff, um, and those like I'll be like,
what's Roger's last name? And I just go to the binder and I'm
like, yeah, wait, Roger's supposed to what Wait, No, this
isn't correct. That's crazy. Yeah, things have changed, lots of things
have changed the entire um. I know we're getting to the end of time,
but I wanted to just scare everybody with the act that the entire ending
for Avara has changed. Yeah, that's changed. I knew what I wanted
for Avara's ending, at least I think I was. I've been pretty consistent
for the last couple of years. And then I was writing like a month
and a half ago, and I was like, Jen Oh no, I
remember that's like I need to betray myself. Yeah, but hopefully it'll be
good ending. I think it'll be good. I think it's a good ending,
I hope. So we'll see what y'all think. But speaking of endings,
Jen has to go to work. I do have to go to work.
So I think we're going to cap off our little discussion there. But
thank you guys for joining us for this little series series review. Thank you
Jen for hanging out. Should do this spoiler one after the whole seasons,
we could talk about like all of these things and we're like, here's all
the plot points that didn't happen. Oh yeah, I think there's definitely I
want to do. So while season five is coming out in when you guys
hear this a few weeks, I believe, and you'll be getting a trailer
in two weeks, I think. I think if my dates are right,
I think that'll that'll work. So you'll be the season comes out on June
lie seven. Yes, season five, we'll premiere on July seventh, and
we're gonna do our regular you know, five episodes, take a little break
in the middle. We're gonna have a bonus episode in there about cryptid Lore,
which will be fun. We intended to have that one earlier, but
because of scheduling stuff, we weren't able to. But that's going to happen
in between the seasons, and then we're gonna have our final five. We're
gonna end the show, oh my god, and then um but that will
not be the end of the Crypted Cape Feed. I want to do a
couple other bonus episodes. I'll have Jen back on and we'll chit chat about
the end. Maybe I'll cry. I don't have to get bleaved out this
time. Yeah, exactly, we can talk about spoil these. So thank
you Jen for you hanging out in chi Chen and for all of the work
you've done over years for the show. Of course, it's been so fun.
I'm glad I have the fun part. Well, you always say,
because I'm like, I'll always thank you at the end of our conversation.
I'm like, thank you so much, amazing, and you're like, hey,
I get to do the fun part. Like the fun part is talking
about the writing. I don't even have to do the writing. And I'm
like, true, yeah, I guess we'll see you guys next time.
Thank you for listening,