Speaker 1: And now Audio Theater Central.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome to Audio Theater Central. This is the show
that explores family friendly audio drama through news, reviews and interviews.
I'm your host, JD. Setter. This is episode two fourteen. Well,
today I've got some feedback from Sarah, Jeremy and Blake,
and I've also got an interview with the creators of
the Road to Kayluma, a brand new fantasy audio drama
that is releasing today on podcast platforms. So I'm excited
to share this with you. I think this is a
show you're going to really really enjoy and I wanted
to dive into the process with these first time producers. Now,
there's no audio drama updates or monologue segment in today's episode,
but I did just want to give a couple of
quick little notes before we bring in our guests, and
that is of course, if you have any audio drama
updates that you want to let us know about so
we can share it with the community, please let us know.
Click the link in the sidebar on our website to
fill out the news submission form, or go directly to
it by typing in PFM dot link slash atc News
and the next item is about the Senica Awards. There
will be more details coming soon as soon as I
possibly can. However, I did just want to give you
a little update and say thank you to everybody who
filled out the survey about the future of the Seneca Awards.
I am working on things. I am trying my very
best to get things up and running again for this year.
That said, I'm not guaranteeing it at this point. I'm
trying to get all of the tech in place to
handle the changes that we're having to make, and also
I'm having to move the entire website, so those are
taking up my time right now on the Seneca Awards
side of things, and I'm hopeful to be able to
relaunch this year, but I will keep you informed on
the progress of that. Next up is I just wanted
to give you a quick reminder about the Making Great
Audio Drama camp that's coming up in Colorado this summer.
This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from some of
the top creatives in this industry if you are interested
at all in writing, sound design, the entire package of
creating Great Audio drama, So click the link in the
show notes or head over to Audiodrama Institute dot com
to learn more about that. And finally, before we bring
in our guests, I wanted to play the trailer for
the Road to Kailuma in case you hadn't heard it yet.
It was released a few weeks back, but if you
missed it, I wanted to share that with you so
you have a little bit of context for what we're
going to talk about here in the next segment.
Speaker 3: I'm Uric, son of Chief Yon. I'm a Kosan or
heir of Pahar. Nothing really happens here. I guarantee you
nothing of consequence will ever happen here.
Speaker 1: An event of great consequence has just a cut.
Speaker 2: I am Lord Shaffris.
Speaker 4: Saffron is bent on power. My kingdom's expansion is like
a wildfire. Saffron has gotten his hands on some Gando stone.
Speaker 5: Some sort of crystal or stone or a stone on.
Speaker 2: Rival value and power.
Speaker 5: Jesus Film Project and Famine Life present a full cast
audio production of an ancient tale reimagined.
Speaker 1: First, You're worse Nightma.
Speaker 4: You will make me proud one day, one day.
Speaker 5: There as much your father keeps from.
Speaker 4: Your young Corsa, that's a lot.
Speaker 3: Where is the Chief Janik of old.
Speaker 4: He probably told you it's just a common Yeah.
Speaker 2: You don't even know my father. You shouldn't be playing
with daddy's things. Work.
Speaker 5: The Road to kay Luba available June twenty twenty five
on all major podcast platforms.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, doesn't that just sound amazing? All right,
so let's go ahead and bring in our guests to
talk about this brand new audio drama from the Jesus
Film Project and Family Life, an epic fantasy five part
audio drama called The Road to kay Luma.
Speaker 4: Just say your name and the role you're playing in
this production. Please excuse me, excuse me, the local news
station would like to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Oh and here's a company play, right. I'm here to
ask you a couple of questions.
Speaker 2: Well, it is a great pleasure to have the creative
team behind the brand new audio drama, The Road to Keayluma,
Perry Wilson and Landon Holly. Thank you guys for coming
on Audio Theater Central. I'm excited to talk about the
show and tell the listeners about what you guys have
been working on.
Speaker 1: Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, we're excited too. Really, Yeah, I really appreciate
you taking the time to have us on.
Speaker 2: So you guys have sort of shared the responsibilities on
the creative side of this project. Landon, you were credited
in the show as the head writer, and you sort
of handled more the director responsibilities and Perry sort of
more the producer side. But you collaborated on the whole process.
I guess before we get started on all the details
of the project, was this the first time you guys
had collaborated in this manner before.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. I'm trying to think of other
projects we've worked. I mean, I'm sure we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in this manner I think is the key.
And I would say definitely to this degree we've collaborated.
You know, we've worked on some short film, you know,
on set for some different you know, maybe he's been
the ad and I've been the producer of something. But
but yeah, definitely start to finish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and also for context, so we actually met through
Cruse internship program and we roomed together two years. So
we've been friends for several years. And we like to
watch movies, critique movies, talk about audio, drama, all those
kinds of things together, So it feels like we've collaborated on.
Speaker 1: At least those might have just been conversations in the
living room, that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you know, it's it's always much
more enjoyable when you're working on a project with people
that you already like and know.
Speaker 4: Absolutely totally. Yeah, you kind of almost need that level
of trust because we've disagreed on so many things throughout
the project and you need something deeper to be like
a mutual respect, to be like, hey, we're both trying
to make this better, and so when we when we
butt heads, it and makes it better because of that trust.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so before we get into the project itself,
let's just clear up one thing first, because I found
this a little bit confusing myself, and I'm sure I'm
not alone. There's probably a listener who is kind of
curious about this. So tell us what is Crew? What
is Jesus Film, and what is family life? And how
do they all work together to make this project happen.
Speaker 1: That's a great question.
Speaker 4: I'll let the I'll let the Crew kid take that one.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, so Crew formerly knows Campus Crusade for Christ
is the parent ministry of both of our ministries that
are that are credited, as you know, as the production
companies so to speak. Behind the road de Queluma Jesus
Film Project is the ministry that we both work for.
It's a international media arm originally focused on translating the
Jesus Film into every language in the world, and now
it's kind of branched out into some other other types
of media, contextualized media for different countries, different languages. And
this is the first time they've ever done something like this.
And then Family Life is CRU's family ministry and we're
collaborating with them obviously because family is kind of our
target audience. It just made sense and so are like,
you know, Jesus Film might not be able to get
it to as many of our target audience really as
we as we're hoping that, you know, it can reach,
and so collaborating with Family Life just seemed like a
great fit.
Speaker 2: Okay, makes sense? And that now Family Life is this
the radio network Family Life Radio or.
Speaker 1: Is this Yeah, so you might be confusing it with
the one on the West coast. There is a Family
Life radio network that is not affiliated with KOREW. Yeah,
this one is so Family Life Today Radio. Yeah. Has
they have their flagship show and that's that's what this
ministry is.
Speaker 4: Got it got which yeah, which functions similarly to focus
on the family, you know another make sure it does
great work that obviously adventures came from, which was an
inspiration for us.
Speaker 1: And this is their first audio drama as well. So
new stones being turned on all sides.
Speaker 2: Covering new ground all around. That's awesome. So tell the
audience what is the road to Kailuma? What what is
this audio drama all about? Out give us the elevator pitch.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. This started with Perry and I really taking
a look at our relationships with our own parents and
kind of thinking about things we almost wish we'd be
able to teach our younger selves. And so as more
and more I've kind of grown in my faith and
talked about my testimony, I used the lens of the
Prodigal Son because I've resonated with both brothers at different times,
and so kind of combining those things with a lot
of inspiration from Tim Keller his book The Prodigal God,
we took that story and put it in an epic
fantasy world. So you've got all these different clans in
the West, and the Chief's son kind of runs away
from home to help save the day. He's got to
fight a lot of battles, mythical creatures, all that stuff
along the way, and then he kind of gets to
dive into a little bit deeper of his relationship with
his dad as he goes. So you know, we've got
evil lords and yeah, mythical creatures, like I said, and
big battle scenes, which was well love to talk about.
That was a challenge to do just pure audio and
you can't see anything, but we're pretty ambitious and it's
been a lot of fun. So yeah, yeah, classic, parable
high fantasy and that's your basics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love that you said that you related
to both brothers at different times, and it brings to mind.
I don't know if you're familiar with that old Avalon
song from I don't know, late nineties or early two
thousands that says, part of me is the prodigal, part
of me is the other brother and and I think
it says something like most days I'm somewhere in between
or something like that.
Speaker 1: But great song, buddy, to go listen to that song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very good. But I think that's something that's
very relatable for anybody who has been walking in the
Christian life for any length of time, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say, I mean, yeah, I mean I
could go season by season, even like you're talking about
this song, like day by day. Sometimes I'm like, oh,
the little heart check right here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I think a lot of kids you
grow up and you you hear out the Prodigal Sun,
and you immediately are like taught about the younger son.
And then like somewhere when you start getting a little
old enough to really like maybe dive a little deeper
with spiritual ideas and themes and stuff like that is
when it kind of smacks you in the face that
there's a whole nother side of the story of the
Prodigal Sun that you need to digest and see if
you relate to and find yourself in. And yeah, so
it's just interesting to explore it and from a new perspective,
you know, from the perspective of the Sun's sun. So
we get to see that kind of three layer, you know,
that we explore generational sin a little bit, and it's
been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun,
and honestly, I feel like I've grown in the process
of just kind of exploring the story vicariously through our characters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think as a kid, it's hard to understand
those things, and that's what we wanted to do, as like, man,
we're not for century Jews and we're missing so much
cultural context. So how can we take those things and
kind of go back and think about our younger selves
and like, man, I could learn from the story if
only I had something like this to listen to. And
oh yeah, let's throw in a big fight with a
giant bat to keep people entertained. So kind of kind
of a fine little balance at all that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's something that we've talked about here on
the show before. Is there are well, there's a lot
of different Biblical audio drama out there, and some of
them are just straight dramatizations of Bible stories. Yeah, but
sometimes you know, looking at a very familiar especially if
you've grown up in the church, a very familiar story
that you've heard since Sunday School from a completely different POV.
It really just like you're like, whoa, Okay, I see
this in a completely different way now, And so you know,
taking it out of that familiar context of the Holy
Land and that time period and just dropping it in
this unfamiliar world. It's it's very interesting. And so, you know,
you talked about this is a project for families. You know,
family life is that's kind of their thing, right, And
I'm assuming you're expecting or hoping that families will listen together.
But what exactly is the target age for this particular show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been saying, you know, eight to fourteen, but
you know, if I'm being honest with you, Phineas and
Ferb says eight to fourteen. And I love it and
I'm twenty eight. So that's kind of where I feel
like The Road to Kuluma Falls is like it's got
a little something for anyone who loves fun and playful storytelling.
If you're under the age of eight, you know, your
parents probably should screen it for you if they If
you're a little you know, if you can get a
little scared of some things, like there's definitely some more
intense moments. So that's why we do say, you know,
like eight to fourteen as like the sweet Spot, but
I think people older than that that love story are
gonna enjoy it just as much, if not more.
Speaker 2: So. What was the impetus for Jesus film to even
explore the idea of audio drama. Obviously the background is
in film, so why audio drama?
Speaker 4: I mean, honestly, credit to Perry. I feel like you
were kind of thumping on that door early on. So
this actually, this idea was incepted, if you will, when
we were at the Austin Film Festival back in what
was it twenty one, Yeah, Yeah, we were at a
coffee shop doing some writing and Perry was like, let's
just take a crack at an audio drama, and so
we tried writing it. We kind of tried to pull
from like imagination station type of thing, portal fantasy type
of stuff, and it just it didn't really work. And
then we kind of decided to go the more high
fantasy epic route. And then yeah, it was something where
we pitched it as a pilot. People really liked it
that like give us the whole thing, and so after
a lot of labor, they were just very on board.
We've had a lot of people who really just have
believed in us and willing to try new things, which
I just think as a creative makes me so happy,
whether that be here or you know, other guests you
have on or whatever that might look like. But just
innovative media is awesome, and so I'm really glad to
have some people believe in us as we've we've crafted
this for four years.
Speaker 2: Now, so well that's fantastic because I'm always excited to
see new people getting into to this space. I mean,
we said it even before we started recording. You know,
Odyssey is the big one that everybody knows, and not
just in you know, Christian audio drama, just overall clean
audio drama. There's still some of the highest quality stuff
that's being made in the world. And you know, they've
been going for thirty five, thirty six years now, and
so you know that's that's great. But when somebody else
is like, you know what, let's let's try to do
this too and do something really interesting, do something different,
I love seeing that because i mean, why not. Why not?
This is an amazing storytelling medium, So let's get more
people involved. So I'm so glad that the Ministry was
willing to take a chance on this project.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was gonna ask you, Jad, how have you seen
because you've been following this for a long time, how
have you have you seen trends change? In audio drama
since kind of back you were telling us how you
got into it, you know, around that time. Have you
seen there be kind of an evolving way it's done,
or trends or things that people are.
Speaker 1: Getting into it at a certain time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so it has really really grown in probably
the last ten years. Audio drama was almost dead in
the States since since the you know, the fifties. I
mean there were a few productions that were still going,
but in the UK that didn't happen. It just kept
right on going. It never stopped, and it's still a
huge part of their culture and other places in Europe.
In Germany, audio drama is a huge thing. A lot
of children go to bed every night listening to audio drama,
so it's still huge. But for some reason it sort
of died out over here. And in the last handful
of years, especially with the proliferation of podcasting as a
new technology, that has really caused a resurgence of intro
in this medium from both consumers and producers. And I
love it.
Speaker 1: That's cool. That's cool to hear.
Speaker 4: Have you gotten to listen to a lot of you know,
European audio dramas, does it does it feel different than ours. Yeah,
that's something I've tapped into very much.
Speaker 2: Well. The BBC in particular, they work with a lot
of different producers. There's there's not like a cohesive like BBC.
This is a BBC style. They're so varied across all
of their productions, but there is a sort of flavor
to most of their stuff. Sometimes it can be very
sparse on sound design or even music. So I find
that a lot of the ones, the really high quality
stuff here in the US, like Focus on the Family
Radio Theater or Lamplighter Theater or the Extraordinary Adventures of
g A Hint, those are all extremely immersive in terms
of the sound design and the original scores, and so
I love that aspect of it. There has been, like
I said, a big resurgence of interest in just the
secular world as well. And the problem is that many
of them this is a new medium to them, and
so they're not very good in terms of production values.
Just the writing. As you guys learned in this process,
writing for the ear is very very different from a
novel or for the screen or the stage. It's different
and you have to shift your mindset as you write
for audio, and a lot of them just they don't
get that, and so you know they're coming from a
visual medium and they forget. So there is some good
stuff out there, but much of it is a subpar
I think what Christians are doing in this medium is
the highest quality there is right now. So it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is. I mean I think of you
asked us about inspiration earlier. I mean, I think the
Chronicles of Narnia, which is another folkus one. I grew
up just eating that up, love Lewis, and I think
it's stuff like that that I mean, Perry, I feel
like you would agree with this, Like we wanted to
try and hit that bar as closely as we could
and it's hard to do. Like, we learned a lot
from John Thornoff. Perry, you could maybe speak more to
getting him on board, but I feel like we had
a lot of like, oh yeah, we have to learn
these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about foreorn Off here
in just a minute, but before we do that, you
talk about inspirations here and the title for episode one,
the Stone in the Sword. I love that sort of
a twist on an Arthurian legend sort of reference there,
And you mentioned Narnia. So were there any other authors
or works that you took inspiration from.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, totally. I think the biggest one that
has clearly made its way into the story is How
to Train Your Dragon, you know, with the father Son's story,
with the talking head at the beginning, even Or's character
a little bit is a a little hiccuppy, So I
think that one's a great one. I mean, I think
there's some some Princess bride elements in there. I think
there's some Rangers Apprentice, which is a book series we've
both really enjoyed, especially with our world building. I think
there's there's some of that in there as well. Landing
anything else that comes your mind right away, Yeah, you.
Speaker 4: Hit the big ones. I mean Narnia being just I think,
to me, the stories I find myself most gravitating towards
are ones that have something to say about something, and Lewis,
I think, does that so elegantly in a way that
kids are going to understand these pretty weighty things. I mean,
I think of Horse and His Boy in particular, just
the relationship between Shasta and Aslan. But anyway, all that
to say, to do that requires you know, a specific touch,
and I think we didn't get there. We're not, we're
not modern day Lewis, but we we wanted to try.
We wanted to try our darnist. So yeah, definitely inspired
inspired by him quite a bit.
Speaker 2: So what did the name Luma come from?
Speaker 1: Well, we were sitting down one day trying to figure
out what to name this thing, and uh with Google
Translate open, Yeah, at that time, we hadn't we hadn't
written the ending yet, so we didn't know where they
were necessarily going. We hadn't named the king We knew
they were going to the place where the kingdom was,
and we didn't know what to call it. And uh,
we we looked up some words and we liked it.
We did a lot of combining words in some of
these places, some of these people's names even, and we
we at one point we had a lot more made
up words in the script than we we paired some down.
But Klum is the Latin word for heaven, spelled with
a C. I believe mightbe C A l u M.
I'm not sure, Okay, So we decided to add a
K and an a at the end and the road
to Kluma. So it's kind of a double on Tandra
as you will.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that was That was a fun thing for
us to do. Is we kind of as we're building
we I mean, there's one kingdom in our world and
more different independent clans that have kind of different cultural
combinations maybe isn't the right word, but just inspiration for
multiple cultures, and so we were able to kind of
take words from different languages and kind of put a
little twist on them for some of the in world language.
And so that was one example of kind of that
Latin being that. But we had a ton of fun.
I mean, Perry came up with that name, and I
feel like we had a ton of fun naming characters.
There's nothing more satisfying than when I would get a
text at like two fifty seven on a random Thursday
with Perry's like I've got the name, and She's.
Speaker 1: Like, I mean, we're still we have so many, so
many times where we're just like, what do we name
this thing, this element, this person, this land, this tripe?
You know, we want them to be significant in some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's that's a really fun part of the
creative process. So last year I wrote and produced a
five minute fantasy story as a standalone. So the challenge
to do an entirely self contained story in five minutes
set in a fantasy world, and I also relied on Latin.
It just it lends itself to that, I think, and
he did the same thing, sort of combining words and
pulling from different meanings, and it's just it's so much fun. Yeah,
you're absolutely right about that, Jadi.
Speaker 4: What are as you were making that? What were some
of your inspirations or what kind of fantasy do you
find yourself gravitating towards in terms of other specific favorite stories, books, movies,
or like, I love worlds with good world building or
magic systems or whatever that might look like.
Speaker 2: So I'm primarily a character person. When I'm reading, I'm
going to have it a reader, and fantasy is something
that I've appreciated and enjoyed for years, but it was
never like my go to. I wouldn't say that I'm
a fantasy fan until just the last handful of years
where I sort of started reading more. Probably the first
fantasy I ever read was The Hobbit many years ago.
And I love Tolkien and I love Lewis, and there's
there's still sort of the gold standard to me, I
mean every every other story. I'm kind of like grading
them by those those, you know, but there are some
others that I've really enjoyed. And really, the characters have
to have to be relatable, have to be you know,
something about them. The world building is really important, of course,
but you know, it does come back to characters. Now.
Really immersive worlds can be fun, but they it's also
a little bit of a danger or a double edged sword,
because you can't go too crazy that that it's really
difficult for the consumer to understand what's going on unless
you want to write twelve hundred page tomes where you
explain every single little detail, and that can get a
little tedious. But so and especially in audio, you know,
it has to be understandable. The listener isn't seeing your script,
They're not seeing how that name is spelled, and so
how it comes across audibly has to make sense to
them as well well. And so it can be difficult.
But I sort of just built something that I thought
I would enjoy reading or hearing. And I've had several
people say we need to we need to expand this world,
and so I've already got some ideas that I'm working on,
but you know, Tolkien, Lewis. I liked some of Brandon
Sanderson's stuff, I even though it is much maligned. I
quite liked some of Christopher Paulini's Inheritance cycle series. Not
familiar with those, Yeah, he got he got some flack,
people saying that he was too derivative of other works,
But I thought it was extremely well done. The characters
were fantastic, the world was amazing, you know, because Tolkien
created entire languages. You know, we talk about deriving words
from existing languages, but he created an entire language. And
Paullini does a little bit of that as well, and
so all those little details can help immerse the reader
or listener in this. But again there's a fine line
between immersiveness and too much vagueness and and too too
hard to understand. So yeah, it's it's it can be tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, totally, Yeah, especially on audio, like you're talking
about that was. Yeah, we faced that a lot when
we we I think I was constantly bringing land in
a little little more down to earth than he wanted
to like Land, and I think was the one that
would maybe want to push it a little higher and
higher fantasy where I'd be like, we might want to
bring it back a little bit. We gotta you know,
we got to keep it a little bit grounded. You know,
let's let's go a little lighter on the magic or
you know, these kind of things that we conversations that
we had push and pull, but we bounced each.
Speaker 4: Other out really well because I think, yeah, one of
the things that was important to me to do was
to not talk down to the kids, because kids are
smarter than I think we sometimes give them credit for.
And so there were times like, yeah, I'm we're not
gonna write and now I'm going to unlock the jail cell.
Like you got to just trust that kids can pick
up the sounds and yeah, and so that was a
definite challenge. We wrote one of the episodes there's a
full kind of heist scene, and that was hard. It's like, man,
to what degree do we say, all right, I'm doing this?
And we kind of got to cheat a little bit
with having the main character talk to himself in a
way that didn't feel too too camp be at least
in my opinion. But yeah, it was so many challenges,
a lot of fun, and I think, yeah, Perry was
and I really just complimented each other well in terms
of like finding that delicate balance, but well, the joys
of a writing partnership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about relying on the sound, and that
is one thing that I see or hear I should
say a lot in new productions, and that is that
the writer is afraid to rely too much on the
sound and you can convey so much with the sound design.
And so, yeah, you don't have to call out everything.
I've talked about one just recently. I'm not going to
call them out right now, but there was a lot
of that going on, where the characters explaining exactly what
they're doing. That's not necessary. So yeah, I think you
guys did fairly well with that kind of stuff. Now
you've alluded to the fact that this is sort of
a new take on the story of the Prodigal Son,
but I really appreciated that you guys didn't do like
a one to one sort of translation of the story,
just pluck it from the Bible and just drop it
into a fantasy world. It's very different. The first half.
You don't even realize that, I mean I didn't, I
had no I mean I think I had heard at
some point in the discussion from somebody that it was
based on that, but it's not recognizable through the first
few episodes. And I really appreciated that because I think,
if you're gonna do a twist on a story, do
a twist, you know, go for it, go all in.
And so I really appreciated that. So how did you
land on that particular story from the Bible? I mean,
there's lots of different ones you could have done. So
why the Prodigal Son? I know Landon talked a little
bit about that at the top conversation.
Speaker 1: But well, you know, actually I think Landon was the
one Landon didn't weren't weren't you the one who brought
in the or maybe we had already decided I'm going
with the prodigal Son, and you brought in that video
that Tim Keller sermon just to give us a little
more perspective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't remember, you know, sort of chicken and
egg thing, which which came first. But yeah, just I
mean really realizing because oh man, I want to get
that quote right that Keller says, but the younger brother
tries to get the father's things by being very very bad,
and the older brother tries to get the father's things
by being very very good, and neither of them really
care about the father at one point or another. They
just want the father's things. And that was just I
mean kind of like I talked about it, just it
just hit us. And to your point, you know, Jda,
of what you were saying of we kind of need
to flesh out like those are lived in characters. And
I mean, no one can tell it better than Jesus.
So it's and he does it in you know what,
page and a half in your Bible or whatever, But
what would it look like like what would that character's
backstory be and why would he have made the decisions
that he did? And I think that was really interesting
to explore. And then Perry, I mean you really kind
of connected that to your own story, I think in
many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, well, I think first, like something that was important
to us was making a story that was good stand alone,
that it wasn't like even if you are a non believer,
even if you've never read the Bible before, that the
story would be good regardless. And so I think part
of that came with like trying to build some connection
to the characters before connecting it to a Bible story
so that the audience feels like it's a unique and
authentic with no you know, like it's totally original, which
you know, for the most part, it's original, but you know,
then we we kind of have that reimagining of how
these characters in the parable are in this in this world.
But I definitely, yeah, I grew up with a lot
of like I'm a missionaries kid, so and I kind
of grew up with that pressure of feeling like I
had to be the perfect kid, and you know, mostly
self inflicted pressure. But it's something that you can kind
of really see in the relationship with with Or and Yonick,
where you know, Oric feels like he's got this standard
he's got to live up to, and Yanick doesn't help
the situation because he doesn't really know what Oric needs.
He's he thinks, you know, Oric just needs to succeed
and that'll make that'll make Ork happy, that'll make Yanick proud.
You know, they're just not speaking the same language. And yeah,
so you can really see that play out and uh,
and then you can kind of make the connections between
how we're seeing this play out between Ork and Yonick.
But really they're some of the same exact things that
played out between Yanick and his father, So it all
comes full circle. But yeah, there's a lot of our
own a lot of our own stories are as any
good story is. You know, we put a lot of
our own a lot of our own heart and soul
into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I mean, if you work on a project
of this scale and you spend this this long with it.
You said four years you were working on this, a
significant amount of you ends up in it. I mean
it's it's it's impossible for that to not happen, so.
Speaker 1: Literally and figuratively.
Speaker 4: Yes, our voices were also and a lot of cameos.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of a lot of voices scattered throughout.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, so yeah, you talk about the actual production
side of things. So let's talk about John Fornoff here
for a minute. So he was the casting director for
the project and Landon. I believe you told me earlier
that he did some consulting on the on the project
helped you learn a little bit better how to write
for audio. How did John Fornoff get involved in the
project to begin with?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Perry got ahold of him. So I'll let you
kick us off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually, well it's actually a really weird story. We were
looking for composer at first, and John wasn't involved. This
was this would have been the last year, at the
beginning of the year where we were like, okay, we're
doing the math. We're like, okay, we need to get
a composer on contract pretty soon, and we're looking around,
we're contacting people, and I'm like, you know what, why
don't we just take a swing at John Campbell. You know,
we're inspired by Adventures in Odyssey. Why not just email him?
I found his email online and shot him an email
and he and we had a phone call and he
was on board. And he was actually the one that
was like, hey, since this is your first time doing this,
maybe you should reach out to John Fornoff, And he
he gave us the contact, and you know, John, being
the the ambassador of audio drama that he is, was
like on board right away, you know. So, yeah, we
got him involved as much as we could without you know,
totally like while still keeping the ownership because it's our baby,
you know. But yeah, he was super valuable and just
like helping us kind of avoid some of those beginner
mistakes that we probably would have inevitably not thought of,
or you know, things that we wouldn't have wrote into
the script that needed to be there for the actors
to be able to deliver a great performance. And then
connecting us with the cast was just huge doing being
our casting director.
Speaker 4: So I would say for me writing and editing was
he like, I didn't know audio drama format, and he
just taught me a lot of things that streamline the process.
And then he kind of showed you because you know
when you watch a movie. I don't know if you've
ever watched a fight scene, but they do certain things
to accentuate certain movements. So like they'll show the hit
and then the from like a wide and then they'll
come in and show it again or you know, close
to it wide or inverse, so you're seeing it twice,
but just your brain puts it all together as one thing.
So there's a lot of audio tricks that you know
movie people like. He kind of showed us how to
do that on the audio side with with sound because
you kind of have to boost some things and do
a little bit of trickery here and there, and I
think that was super helpful. And then he had a
Perry's point. I mean, the cast is stellar. We couldn't
have been really more pleased with the people that were
on board. And it's just been so much fun.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. And it was cool for me to hear
a lot of these actors that I'm familiar with. I've
met several of them in person. I'm gonna Carol O'Brien,
Andy Harvey, Beny Baldwin. I'm mean, I know these people
and they just all delivered fantastic performances. Joshua Nicholson's another one.
Just just great, great talent. And so I loved hearing
all of these actors come together. And I was curious,
from your perspective, the first time that you've tackled a
project like this, you get all of these actors in
the same room in a studio together, what was that
studio experience like for you guys?
Speaker 4: I thought it was a ton of fun. One of
the things they told us it was interesting. Specifically, let's
see Bethany and Ben Ben Little who played Oric. They
because they've done several before. It was Ian Lolam who
played Yanick. It was his first time doing audio drama,
if I remember correctly. Thanks, but they typically don't all
record locally, so a lot of audio dramas, you know,
there's people remote, which we had to have some of
our cast remote, but you could feel the energy in
the room from those three in particular, like playing off
of each other. We did run into problems with bleed
as a result, so we're learning for the future seasons
for listeners who may not know bleed being you know,
you have two actors in the same room. Actor b's
microphone might pick up what Actor A is saying if
they're talking at the same time.
Speaker 1: But this the listeners of Audio Theater Central know what bleed.
Speaker 4: Sure well, then.
Speaker 1: Cut their education.
Speaker 4: Sorry if I'm over explaining, No, that's great, but yeah,
but it was just it was so fun to have
them in it. I mean they were in for a
few days and we got to go out and get
food with them. I feel like we all really kind
of bonded, and so Lord Willing, if there's more seasons,
we'll bring them back out and get to hang out
more with them. I well, I just genuinely like spending
time with them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, and you're right about that, because there's
there's very few that might be a little bit of
a stretch. We'll just say there's there's not all that
many who record what what Focus calls family style, or
they might call it an ensemble cast recording. Over in
the UK, most of them are done that way still,
But over here the vast majority of audio dramas all
recorded remotely, and there are certain times, I mean, you
can still get a good result from that. Everything that
I've directed personally and produced has all been done that way.
But when you can get everybody in the same place
at the same time, at least your principal cast right,
and they can play off of each other, the energy
in the room, it's just it takes it to the
next level.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. I think we knew early on. We were,
you know, committed to getting Oric, Vera and Yanick whoever
they may be. You know, long before we had them casts,
we were like, these three need to be in studio together.
We have you know, we had access to a studio.
Family Life does a lot of podcasting, so they have
a great sound studio. But we just knew that like
the warmth of the chemistry, you know, Oric and Vera,
they play off each other a lot. They have a
lot of really funny witty relationship. And then and then
Oric and Yanick have some really emotional moments, and so
we just knew we needed them to be instu We
needed them to meet each other, to build that chemistry
early on, be together for a week so that you know,
they could really you could experience that. I feel like
we got that by the end. And then and then
John ending up as King Rosen was just kind of
like the icing on the cake. He we didn't know
we were hiring him when we uh as the as
king as the king when we hired him, and he's like,
oh that was me. I I uh sent my submission
in under a fake name, not just to not sway you.
Speaker 4: Was rankings on on everyone, and he very humbly put
himself second on his list of I would recommend these
top three.
Speaker 1: Jack Farthing, yes, yes, we've just Jack think of a
new name, John.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's interesting. Listeners will get that reference too.
Speaker 1: So if anybody listening has ever found some some audition
tape from Jack Farthing and and just ripped it to shreds,
you now know that you were ripping. Unless there's a
real Jack Farthing out there, that's I mean, that's also possible.
Speaker 4: Wait it was the reference. Is that an honesty character?
Speaker 2: No, that is a sky Ship dreamer reference.
Speaker 4: Over my head?
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. But yeah, he ended up coming down
for the recording as well, so we had those four
in studio the rest of the rest of our cast reverrsual.
But they honestly did an amazing job. Andy. I mean
you talked about Andy. I wrote a lot of Saffron's stuff,
and I had this picture in my mind of what
I wanted the voice to be, just very like a
smooth talker that could get really angry and scary when
he's angry, but also an eloquent speaker that would maybe
manipulate you into thinking that what he's saying is actually right,
but you know, you're not maybe seeing the whole picture.
And yeah, when he we ended up doing his monologue
on the first day of recording, and just his voice
doing it just absolutely blew me away. Yeah. I was like,
I was like, this is the voice that I heard
in my head. How is it even possible? So, yeah,
he's so which is not always.
Speaker 4: A luxury you have. I mean, there's so much happens
in the brain and even when you write a line,
you're like, oh, this is so good, and then really
talented actors do it like, oh wow, this was not
I pictured.
Speaker 1: News the whole way, the whole way through writing and
so we're making voices, we're reading lines a certain way,
and so you know, we did have to adjust a
lot to like these actors, these are who are playing it,
they're reading it differently. Their voice sounds a little different.
But like now, now afterwards, you know, after hundreds of
hours of listening to voices through the sound design and
editing process, we couldn't hear it any other way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's phenomenal. It was phenomenal to see them just yeah,
embody the characters so quickly.
Speaker 2: That's that's so cool. So, I mean, this has been
a massive undertaking for both of you. I'd love to
know as you look back it's done. You finally have
a completed full length audio drama. As you look back
on this, what was the most challenging part of bringing
this project together for each of you?
Speaker 1: I think writing it was tough, but that wasn't the
most challenging part, at least for me from the producer perspective.
I think I think the hardest part was the process
of trying to actually get this made at the quality
that we felt it deserved. I think, you know, we
talked a little bit earlier and Landon referred to how
some people have kind of bought into the project that
had no reason to. They just kind of believed in us.
But the reality is, like at the beginning, it was
more of like, we want to do this, Can we
do it as like an R and D kind of thing?
Can we just get a few thousand dollars maybe? And like,
you know, and so we got the permission to kind of,
you know, start writing it, and but then like we didn't,
you know, it's it really was a snowball effect that
took a long time before we actually started getting any
any buy in from you know, people outside of our
own team. Our own team bought in right away, but
then as we started getting a little more buy in,
you know, we get family life on board, and we
start getting a more connections within our ministry that allow
us to maybe access maybe a little more money or
or resources or and then I think sound design was
the biggest hurdle. We have some hurdles with music, but
you know, John's amazing. We just had to kind of
make sure that we adjusted all of our expectations for
the goals we were trying to hit. But in terms
of sound design, we had some definitely had some hurdles
that we had to leap through and and it really
wasn't until we got permission from an internal sound design
team that had been working on another project that had
been put on hold and for a indefinite length of
time where they've said, they said, all right, you can
work on Kai Luma, you know, as your full time
role right now. And so that was Joel Joel Boyder,
he was our sound designer, and it wasn't until he
got on board that this actually started becoming like the
high quality or at least I think is a high
quality product that you all are going to hear. Before that,
it was like, Okay, we think we have a good story,
we think we have good acting, but how's this all
going to come again? You know, we have John cam
We're gonna have good music. So if our sound design
isn't great, we'll we'll just kind of keep it quiet,
you know. But once Joel came on board and we
realized this guy is really talented, it just took it
to that next level.
Speaker 2: So that was all in house then that's right. Wow,
that's great, that's great. So what about for you Landon?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I was just gonna say, on that note,
I mean there's kind of that adage you can make
something quality, you can make it faster, you can make
it cheap. You can usually do two of those three things.
And we were really not willing to sacrifice quality. And
so the fact that and I think it did take
more time than we wanted, but I think, yeah, just
open doors truly of getting Joel on board, I think
I mean I would probably say all that is more
or less the same. So the challenge on that note
was we wrote the pilot episode episode one to kind
of say get people to buy intoy, Hey, like, what
do you think of this? Can we make this? Can
we make you know? A season? And so we had some.
Speaker 1: Ideas of where we were going and but not we
certainly had the crux of an outline.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had some tracks, but we didn't really have
a destination. So I think we hit a point when
we were like halfway through writing episode three, We're like where,
what where? Where are we going? And as a writer,
I'm like, I mean this to me is just like
I need to know I need to know this, and
so we actually get able to get you know, one
of our coworkers, her name is mel She came on
and story consulted for us, and she was so helpful
to us and kind of cracked a couple of things
wide open. But that's something I'm looking forward to again.
We're willing we get a season two. Is getting to
write the whole thing and then going back and making
edits that will make my writer's brain more happy.
Speaker 1: Well, and to give you some credit, Land and I
think one of the things that really helped kind of
get us moving towards the finished line was again I
don't want to spoil too much for people who are
listening to this, but still need to go listen. It's
live now check it out. It's it's that episode four,
just the way the method that we get to get
to explore Yani's past. And we battled with that a
lot because you know, we didn't want to go to cliche.
We didn't want to go too far out, but we
knew we wanted it to be intentional. We wanted to
really go a lot deeper than just than just Yani
reciting a story, because that's boring. That would end up.
You know, that's an audio book, not an audio drama,
you know, Like so it was I think Landing kind
of cracked the code for that episode. That kind of
sent us towards the finish line a little bit, and
we battled a little bit with the ending. How is
it going to end? You know, we knew, we knew
we needed something exciting and another kind of final clash,
but that was another kind of thing we had to job.
Speaker 4: I think episode four is probably the best example of
of magic impacting the story which it's supposed to do.
I'm always gonna be critical looking back, but I think
that is our strongest point, even maybe more than the finale,
I might.
Speaker 1: Say, emotionally certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really actually enjoyed that. And as
you said, I don't want to go too much into
detail because I don't want spoil anything for the listener,
but yeah, I thought that was that was handled very
very well.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, thank you. Gave credit to John as
well for the score that he made for for that
whole sequence is just amazing. I mean, he called me
one day and he's like, I don't know what I'm
gonna do. I'm gonna have to find a time to
get out here. I don't know, I just can't. I
can't just write music for this whole section, can I?
And then he called me the next morning He's like,
I wrote for the whole section. I had to do it.
It just needed it, and it's and it's better with it,
and I'm like, all right, I appreciate it. I appreciate
and it's it's awesome.
Speaker 4: He went above and beyond it.
Speaker 1: He consistently, he consistently went above and beyond.
Speaker 4: Yeah. If I was filling out a survey, I would
say consistently exceeds expert.
Speaker 2: And he's just a genuinely nice guy too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it was great working with him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, as we sort of bring this plane in for
landing here, you talked about some of the challenges here.
I'd also like to know from each of you what
was your personal favorite part of the process, because again,
you guys handled a lot of different aspects of this.
You know, most larger scale projects like this are very
broken down across the whole team, but you guys really
got in there and did a whole bunch of different things.
So you know, was it the writing, was it the directing,
what was your favorite part Landon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think those two were my favorite. There was
a phase when we had I could have written I
could still be writing Season one right now if Perry
didn't give me deadlines. I'm eternally grateful for him. But
when we were under deadline, like we're recording in a
week we wanted, or we're recording at the end of
the month or whatever we want to give the actress.
Speaker 1: We were not writing a week out. No, no, no, no,
maybe maybe two weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had the deadline that we had to meet,
but I was writing probably till ten or ten thirty
most nights, and I was just having so much fun.
Like I was like, I don't I don't care that
I'm working late, Like I just love this and I
have my you know, music in the background and just
locking it. I just oh, it was. It was awesome.
I'm a procrastinator a little bit, so feeling the heat
of the deadline anyway, just fond memories of that and
then just yeah, like getting to meet the talent, being
in studio with them, the time spent with them, and
just there's something so invigorating about seeing something you wrote
come to life from and have another human interact with
your words and relate to them differently, maybe than you intended,
but you get the shared experience. But also it's their
own unique story, and so Perry and I were infusing
parts of our story into it, but they connected with
Ian differently and John differently, and so I think that
was just magical to see and consistently they formed it
better than I could have imagined, and so it was
just that is one of the most fulfilling things to
see as a writer director.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's no other feeling in the world like
hearing an amazingly talented actor bring to life something that
you wrote. I mean, I just it's incomparable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I mean that's exactly what I'm saying with
the with with what Andy did for Saffron and some
other I mean some other moments, many other moments as well.
And if I were to answer that question, I you know,
I would hope to say that it's still to come
when we get to and hopefully experience a lot of
people that this impacts and and hear stories and you know,
get to see that for years to come. But I
doubt that that will top just I mean, maybe let's hope.
But I just had so much fun with the recording week.
I say that that was that was still the most
fun I've had, the most fun week of work I've
had in my life. It was it was so much fun.
I mean, I just love playing make believe and to
play make believe with a story that we came up
with and just live in that world.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I love doing dumb, goofy voices like my wife hates it,
so getting actually to do that like on purpose, it
was just so much fun. So yeah, nothing can top
recording week for me. And just end getting to hang
out and meet some new fun people getting to work
with them, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I do want to say one more story to
what you said about just impacting future people. We have
Our recording engineer has been sneaking episodes to his daughter
before release, and he came to me one day and
he's like, she's begging for episode five? Is it gonna
be done? And she's like, Dad, this is my favorite
audio drama ever.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I don't know that it's the best one ever,
but to just hear even secondhand, the joy that a
child was receiving from it, because I remember waking up
I had I had a three episode a day limit
of Adventures in Obviyssey growing up, except for Christmas morning
when I so my parents could sleep in, I would
wake up and I had gotten one for Christmas. Even
I'd listened to six episodes, remember that feeling, and so
to get to see that at another child was just
like full circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the art she drew as well, she drew some
fan art and you know, she had some some different
I think she drew like the Bad and she drew
the Deventive Great Consequences, just a cook scene and yeah,
it's just fun stuff, very sweet.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah you talk about we didn't even talk
about the art at all. We don't have time to
go into Yeah, my goodness, the artwork is so so good. Love.
You know, this is an audio medium, but good artwork
is still really important because that's that's the first thing
that the consumer will see, and so it has a
huge influence on whether or not they even check out
the show. And I think you guys nailed that as well,
So really really good job there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shout out Katie and Lydia who did that work.
They are phenomenal. We had I Drew nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Well, you talk about make believe. They're a moment Ago Perry,
and we've mentioned out several times throughout this conversation. But
this is a good question. I kind of I like
to ask every once in a while for a guest
who is familiar with AIO. Imagine you have stepped into
to WIT's End, which end is a real place here
we're going to make believe, and I would I would
love to hear from each of you what's the first
place in What's End that you're going to visit.
Speaker 4: I would go on Imagination station?
Speaker 1: Okay, I do not Yeah, I mean I mean after
I get, you know, like some ice cream that I got,
I go ice cream first, but then then imagination station.
Speaker 2: Okay, so.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's it. That's your order Landon or is
that yeah?
Speaker 1: Or no?
Speaker 4: I would I would go straight straight there, straight to
the imagination station. I don't know what. I guess that
he usually usually has something qu'ed up, right. You don't
necessarily get to choose your own adventure. Yeah, yeah, where,
but who knows? Maybe Kluma is somewhere out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you can queue that up, that'd be fun.
Speaker 4: The crossover you've all been waiting.
Speaker 3: For exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this has been a delightful conversation and I've
really enjoyed chatting with with you, gentlemen. You know you've
you've mentioned there is a possibility of more to come.
Tell us what's what's next for Jesus film and audio drama.
Is it more Bible stories in the world of kay Luma?
Is it is it a completely new show? What does
that look like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't tell you a whole lot, but I
can tell you this that I think our whole ministry
has been really excited and really impressed. And you know,
depending on how it's received, So you know, maybe that
puts the ball in the court of the listener a
little bit, But depending on how it's received, I think
there's definitely a lot of momentum to pursue more in Kluma.
I mean, we've certainly left the door open, and we
certainly have more stories to tell. I'll just put it
that way. And and and I think there's also the
possibility of different types of audio, whether it's audio drama.
I think there there's other different audio projects and the
works that are you know, kind of right on the
verge of being set into a full motion. So yeah,
I think we're right now just really hoping for just
a lot of good fun feedback, a lot of families
that are impacted by it, that it creates spaces for
growth and conversation and laughter and excitement, and even like
a lot of kids, I think exploring a new medium,
Like there's going to be a lot of parents that
are in there, you know, late twenties, thirties, forties, whatever,
that are showing their kids audio drama, probably not for
the first time if they grew up on Odyssey, but
you know, I think that there's the chance for kids
to really get engulfed in a new medium as well.
And so yeah, we're just we're just kind of excited
and giddy on the edge of our seat waiting for
the release to see how it's received.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So a listener, there's a link in the
show notes to head over to the website, and they're
on that website. On that page is a player and
also links to the podcast platforms. This is available as
a free podcast, so no subscription, no cost associated with
checking out this show, So encourage you to hit up
that link. Is there anything else that they need to
know that I forgot to cover or we should we
should let them know before they dive in.
Speaker 1: I would say just a thanks to Jesus Film Project
and Family Life. If you listen and enjoy, feel free
to send us an email at Kaluma at jesusfilm dot org.
Kayluma at Jesus film dot org. Send us an email
that actually will end up going to us, so well,
at some point we'll get to see it. So if
you want to send us a cool story of listening
to it, or you know, we just be encouraged. I
think just to know that you and your family enjoyed it,
or you know, hopefully you're not going to email us
telling us how much it how much you hated it,
but you know, teach your own.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And if you go to jesusfilm dot org slash Kayluma,
you can see some fun character bios. You can see
some Companion podcasts where Perry and I talk about the
themes of the episode codes and we have some downloadable
discussion guides that kind of unpack some of the themes
and they are good conversation starters for parents and kids
to have to kind of engage in those those themes together,
so go check that out. All of it's free coloring.
Speaker 1: Pages, theories where we almost forgot all that that supplemental material. Yeah,
there's a whole companion podcast where if you liked hearing
Landon I's voice on three year Speakers today, you can
hear us more talk about the themes of each episode.
So yeah, for sure, lots of extra extra goodies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for the audio drama super fan like me,
I love it when there's all kinds of extra bonus content.
So all of that great stuff is available now, so
go check it out. Perry Landon, thank you so much
for taking time to come and talk about this project
with us. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, j D really great to make us happy
to be on. Thanks for inviting us.
Speaker 2: Well. Thank you again to Landon and Perry for coming
on the show. Really appreciate them taking the time. I
thought it was important. You know, we have a new
player in this family friendly audio drama space. They are
doing something really high quality. I thought it was important
to let them come on and tell you about it
and sort of how they approached this journey, and so
I'm excited to hear what they've got coming in the future,
and I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of
the Road to Kluma as well. Now, a few little
thoughts to share post interview here if you are interested
in an initial reaction that I did of episode one
of The Road to Kayluma that is in Audio Theater
Central backstage. Now. The Avalon song that I referenced in
the conversation but forgot to give the title for is
called Always Have, Always Will, and it's from their record
called In a Different Light. I've got that linked up
in the show notes if you want to check it
out as well. Really great song. And also, I just
wanted to quickly clarify I did say something about not
having experienced directing actors in person. I don't know why
I said that. I think it's just because the very
first couple of Portlite Family Media audio dramas I did
were in person, using volunteers from my local church, and
that has been many years since we worked on those projects,
and I sort of just spaced them out, I think
is what happened. Because everything else that I've produced since then,
Greenhorn Tales, all of my micro audio drama projects, et cetera,
those have all been done remotely, so I guess it
just sort of slipped my mind that my earliest projects
were done in person, so I do have experience directing
actors live and in person. But anyway, I just wanted
to clarify that point and just give a few little
thoughts here. This is not going to be a full
fledged review. I want you to go and listen to
this production for yourself, and again, my initial reactions are
in ATC backstage, but I wanted to share a few thoughts.
The Road to Kuiluma is a really solid audio drama.
It's solid. It's not perfect. I did have a few
little nitpicky things with the writing here and there, but
overall I thought it was extremely well done. The production
values are top notch. The music, the sound design, it
sounds really really good. The acting was excellent. They've got
some really really great talent there. We named several of
them in the conversation, and so I think for a
first release, I am very impressed with what they were
able to accomplish. And of course they pulled in a
top notch composer in John Campbell from the industry, you know,
and consulting with John Fornoff. I'm sure that helped a lot,
but even then, embarking on a project of this scale,
you know, we're talking five episodes of about a half
an hour each. That's a long audio drama for your
first production. You've probably heard me tell people, and if
you've attended my classes at Sonic Con, I always tell
people start small, start with five minutes. I've been saying
that for years, even before I started producing my own
micro audio dramas. So to just jump in on the
deep end here and produce such a massive show, my
hat's off to these guys. They did a really, really
great job. They put a lot of thought and detail
into the world building and characters, and I think that
shines through. I think it makes the story that much
more immersive. And yeah, so I think this is a
really solid audio drama. I'm looking forward to what they
might come up with in the future. And I think
it's when you should check out and when we have
somebody new coming into the space and they're willing to
go all in on the podcast model just to try
to get the content out there. There's no barrier to
entry here, so go check it out. You know, if
you like it, let them know. They mentioned the email
address which is Kluma at jesusfilm dot org and that's
spelled ka e l Uma at jesusfilm dot org. And
of course the website is jesusfilm dot org slash kluma,
which has a little bit of behind the scenes information
all of that stuff that they talked about, And these
links are available in the show notes as well, of course,
and also in the show notes is a link to
the road to Queluma on Podchaser, which has links to
all the different podcast platforms. So if their website doesn't
link to the one that you prefer, you can go
to that link there in the show notes and subscribe
to wherever you want to listen. So all of that
is of course in the show notes, but I wanted
to just give a few post interview thoughts here and
I would love to hear what you think once you
have a chance to listen to it. All right, well,
speaking of what you think, let's jump into the feedback.
So what do you think of the show?
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Speaker 2: As always. If you'd like to get in touch with us,
feedback at Audio Theatercentral dot com is the way to
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the show notes at the website, or you can send
a text message or leave a voicemail at our feedback
line which is six two three six eight eight two
seven seven zero again six two three six eight eight
two seven seven zero. Well. First up is an email
from Sarah and this is in response to ATC one
ninety eight our review of Adventures Not to Sy album
seventy four Buckle up, and she said, Hi, I've been
listening to your AIO album reviews. I was just listening
to the album seventy four review. I know this is
a year late, but I remember the scene JD was
talking about where Katrina and Eugene said each other's names.
I believe it was the episode where Jimmy Barkley put
together at Kid's Radio Nativity Audio Drama. I think it's
at the end, the second to last scene where Eugene
ends it by saying I love you. I haven't heard
that one in a long time, but I remember the
clip from the Eugene Losing his Memory three parter. On
another note, love the podcast, great work, Sarah, Well, thank
you very much, Sarah. Glad you found the show. Glad
you're enjoying the AIO reviews. And I cannot remember for
the life of me what we were talking about in
that album seventy four review that made us bring up
this moment where Eugene and Katrina say each other's names.
But yes, it is in that episode. Unto us, a
child is born, which is it's just a fun, fun episode.
Longtime fans of AIO will know that one. You know
right away. It's a very meta story. Love the audio
drama inside of an audio drama sort of thing, kids
radio angle. It's fun and yeah, that is absolutely when
it does happen Eugene and Katrina say each other's names
at the same time, it's when they're exchanging Christmas gifts
towards the end of that episode. So yeah, thank you
Sarah for refreshing my memory on that. Next up is
an email from Jeremy and he is responding to ATC
to twelve our review of Odyssey. Again. This one album
seventy six, keep it together, and he said, Dear JD,
I really enjoyed the last podcast where you and Michael
talked about album seventy six of Adventures Odyssey. This was
a great episode. I really enjoyed Album seventy six. I'm
also really excited to hear about the Audio Drama Alliance
production of The Hardy Boys The Tower Treasure. I'm really
looking forward to hearing this when it's done. Yes, I
am excited about this production. It's it's been a ton
of work and we still have a long, long way
to go in this process. I had hoped to be
a little bit further along by this time in the
year than we are, but we're doing the best we can.
Head over to Audio Drama Alliance dot com for more
details on that project if you're just now hearing about it.
Lots of behind the scenes information is listed there. The
full cast and crew credits are there, everything like that.
So yeah, we're very excited about it too. So I'm
glad to hear that you're looking forward to hearing it, Jeremy.
He also said, I wanted to give you my answer
of things in Adventures of Odyssey. I wish were real.
This was a question I posed in that episode, and
he said, I really wish the Imagination Station was real.
I also agree with you about Lamplightder Theater. I am
a new listener to that show. Yeah, so in that
episode we talked about what were some things from audio
dramas that we wished were real, and yeah, Finian's Shop
and Lamplightder Theater great stuff. And of course how can
you go wrong with the Imagination Station as actually we
talked about in the conversation with Perry and Landon there.
So yeah, I think it's pretty unanimous among AIO fans
that everybody wishes the Imagination Station was a real thing.
Jeremy continues, Also, I really enjoy the different soundclips when
you switch between the different segments of the podcast. What
are the audio drama shows that you use for the
news segments? Well, that is a very good question, and
I will have to go into my notes and figure
that out because I made all of these quite some
time ago. I will try to put that list together
and I don't know, maybe I'll publish it on the
website somewhere. Because Jeremy, you may not be the only
one who has wondered that, so that would be a
good thing for me to put together, So I will
try to get that done as soon as possible. And
thank you for letting me know that you enjoy those.
I think this might be the first feedback I've ever
heard about those, and they took a long time, and
I know it was something that I thought was fun
to do, but I never really got much feedback on
whether people liked it or not. So I'm glad to
hear that you do, Jeremy. Now, you know, we've had
the feedback one for a very long time, and it's
only been within the last couple of years. I think
when I made the rest of them for the other segments,
when I sort of did a bit of a restructuring
of the show, and at that time I did reach
out to the Audio Drama Alliance members and just said, hey,
you know, this is what I'm planning to do with
the ATC show. What are some recommendations of clips that
I can use. So I may have gotten a bit
of feedback from the ADA members at that time, whether
you know they enjoyed having the feedback montage sort of thing,
but again, I haven't really heard much from the rest
of the ATC community about though. So anyway, long story short,
I enjoyed putting them together and I think they sound
pretty fun, and so I'm just glad to hear that
you enjoy them as well, Jeremy, and thanks for your feedback.
Always appreciate your emails and the fact that you continue
to listen. You've been listening for a very long time,
and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Another person
who has been listening for a long time and always
since in great feedback is Blake. And this episode, Blake
sent in an email in response to ATC two ten
where we talked about the breaking news from Adventures and
Odyssey about the future of the show going exclusive to
the club now. Blake is Canadian, and he mentions several
different Canadian towns here, and so I'm going to do
my best to pronounce them correctly. If I mispronounced anything,
you can always let me know. But I'm going to
do my best here, Blake says. Now, I fully understand
that doing CD releases for audio dramas can be costly. However,
as somebody who lives in the Pass Manitoba, which is
fairly near to communities here in northern Manitoba that due
to lack of infrastructure, did not have enough cell reception
or internet service to be able to stream. So by
the AIO team forcing people to have to join the
club to exclusively stream episodes, they are unintentionally shutting out
anybody who lives in a region that has poor internet access.
I was recently on a train trip from the Pass,
Manitoba to Churchill, Manitoba, which is about a thirty hour
train journey, and we passed through many communities that have
minimal receptions because of lack of towers. Oftentimes people would
go to a larger community such as Thompson, Gillem or
even the Pass to download stuff so they can keep
their kids busy. As like it or not, we live
in a digital age. I think it is important for
audio drama producers to always provide some sort of offline
option and not relying exclusively on streaming, because by making
your show a stream only show, you are limiting your
audience to those who have good internet access. I am
lucky that here in the past Manitoba, because we are
a large center relatively speaking, we have fairly decent internet.
But there are communities not too far from us that
do not, like Cormorant, snow Lake, and even communities north
of Thompson, which is Northern Manitoba's only city, like Ilford,
lack signal. What are your thoughts on this, Well, Blake,
That is a very interesting point to bring up, and
I think it's a very valid point. I'm sure this
region of Canada is not the only place that has
poor internet reception, and even places here in the rural
areas of the United States some lack strong internet access,
and some places where they have internet access, it can
be tough to get a plan that allows you to
download and stream a lot of content, so some places
it's very very basic. So I think it is a
good point to keep in mind. Now, of course, the
numbers of people who have this issue are going to
be small. It's going to be a very small minority
considering when you consider the full populations of English speaking countries,
which would be the ones who would likely be the
consumers of Adventures Odyssey if we're looking at them as
an isolated example here. So if you only look at
this by the numbers, I'm sure that it's very small
and it isn't going to make that much of an
impact on their overall consumption. So that's just looking at
it from the numbers or the business perspective. But when
you look at it from a ministry standpoint or just
a service to your audience standpoint, then yes, it does
get to be a point of well, do we want
to cut off these people who would be potential listeners?
And so yeah, I think it is something that is
worth considering. Now we should note here if we're going
to have this discussion, we do have to look at
both sides. And the club app does allow you to
download episodes and pin them to your device or or
I forget the terminology that it uses, but it does
allow you to save them so that when you go
to listen to them, you don't have to have an
active Internet connection at the time. But that is not
the most enjoyable way to consume the show. And if
that is the only way to access it, anytime you
want to listen to something you have to go download
it to your device and save it for later consumption.
It's a huge inconvenience, it's a headache, and it's not
the most enjoyable way. So all of that to say,
I sympathize with your point here. I totally get it.
And it's another reason which I don't think I really
talked about all that much in the previous episodes where
we discussed this issue, but it is another reason, another
valid reason for having digital downloads available, so that people
can go purchase them, save them to their devices, and
listen to them wherever and whenever they want. Now, I said,
you know a moment ago about these rural areas in
Canada and the US not being the only places you
know around the world. Internet access is even less ubiquitous
than it is here in North America, so this would
be an even bigger issue elsewhere. Now, as I pointed out,
you know, English speakers are going to be the ones
who aren't going to be listening to Adventures Odyssey. However,
there are missionaries from North America around the world world
in other countries who are fans of Adventures and Odyssey.
We've heard them even on the official podcast. Sometimes they've
interviewed missionaries who are fans of the show. So again,
I sympathize with your position. I understand exactly where you're
coming from, Blake, and I'm sure you are not alone
in this, And yeah, I totally get that point. So
I would say to your main overall point here about
exclusivity in streaming for producers in general, I do think
it is important to have that other option of accessing
your content. If you're wanting to build an audience and
a following and super fans of your content. That's the
way you need to be able to have your content
easily accessible to people. So it is something to consider
for sure. And again, as I've said in the previous
episodes where we talked about this issue relating to AIO
in particular, if this is a concern that you have,
if this is a problem that you're facing, you've got
to let them know. They will take feedback into consideration.
So definitely reach out to Focus and let them know
what you think about this. But I thought it was
important to include this message because we hadn't really talked
about that side of the issue, so to speak, so far.
So thank you, Blake. And also Blake sent in another
email a very lengthy and detailed one about celebrity casting
in audio drama, which I think is a great discussion
to have as well. And I think it's going to
take a bit of time, so I want to get
some thoughts together and address it thoroughly, So thank you
Blake for sending in that email. I will be talking
about that in a future episode, but just didn't have
the time in this one. Well, thank you again to
Blake and Jeremy and Sarah for the feedback. Always great
to hear from you in the ATC community. Fans of
family friendly audio drama are such great people and it's
always a joy when you reach out to share your
thoughts on a show or this podcast with me, So
thank you very much. Well, be sure to if you
haven't already, join our email newsletter, the ATC Insiders. We'll
email you about the cool stuff that we're up to
in between episodes when we have something important to share.
It's very infrequent, but it is a great way to
be sure to have that direct connection with you, and
so be sure to do that. And if you'd like
to get in touch with us, Audio Theatercentral dot com
slash contact has all the ways to do that. Love
to hear from you. As I said a moment ago,
and the show notes for this episode with the links
to everything we talked about with Perry and Landon and
in the feedback segment, all of it is linked up
there at audiotheatercentral dot com slash two fourteen. I will
see you next time. Thank you so much for listening.
Audio Theater Central is a production of por Rchlight Family Media.
Our theme music was composed by Sam Avandanio. The show
is produced and edited by Yours truly JD. Sutter, and
our website is audio Theatercentral dot com.
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