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. Sutter, and this is episode two
zero five. This is a bonus episode because next episode
is going to be jam packed with some great reviews
and the Jake Muller Adventures is back in production, and
so I wanted to get this conversation out to you
as soon as possible so you can check out this
show if you haven't heard of it before, and if
you did hear Unidentified the first installment, then you've got
some stuff to be excited for and look forward to.
So we're going to be talking with the two main
guys behind the Jake Muller Adventures audio drama series in
this bonus episode. But before we do that, I do
have a few audio drama updates to share with you, know,
So here's what I'm thinking segment or feedback segment this
time around. But we'll get to that stuff in the
next episode. All right, Well, let's jump into these updates.
Speaker 3: We interr up this program to bring you a special report.
Speaker 4: And in other news tonight.
Speaker 5: A brief look at the headlines now.
Speaker 3: They want exciting, fast piece news that's relevant and entertaining
like this.
Speaker 2: First up, quick reminder, if you have any updates regarding
any shows that you are involved with, whether you're an actor, producer, writer,
whatever your role, however you are involved, we want to
share your information with this community, so let us know
about it. Click the button in our sidebar on our
homepage at audiotheatercentral dot com, or go directly to PFM
dot link slash ATC news and let us know. But
first off, I want to let you know that another
reason I wanted to get this episode out now now
is because World Audio Drama Day is coming up on
October thirtieth, that is Wednesday, October thirtieth, and to celebrate,
we're going to have an ATC community hangout. So I
haven't decided one hundred percent yet, but I'm pretty sure.
We're going to do it in Riverside, which is a
platform that we use to produce this show a lot
of times, and we're just going to hang out. It's
going to be an informal thing just to get to
know you a little bit more and talk with other
ATC community members. Just hang out, listen to maybe a
micro audio drama or two, talk about some of our
favorite releases of the year so far, what we're looking
forward to, that kind of stuff. Just hang out for
an hour or so. Again, that will be on October
thirtieth World Audio Drama Day at six pm Pacific, So
watch our site or join our email list the ATC
Insiders to get a link. We will send that out
very soon, so we would love to have you join
and just talk about great family friendly audio drama for
a little while. Also on our website, we've just published
the Ultimate List of Family Friendly Musical audio Dramas, and
it's a great list. If you enjoy musicals, maybe there's
someone there that you haven't heard of, or if you
go through it and you see some that we're missing,
be sure to let us know about it. So you
can find that at audiotheatercentral dot com slash musicals. It's
also in the navigation bar on our website there's a
tab that says themed audio Dramas. There's all kinds of
cool stuff in there. Besides this new one, this new
list of musicals, We've got Westerns, Christmas themed, Easter, themed history,
so there's all kinds of cool stuff, and for this
particular time of the year, there is a list of
some spooky or creepy stories that you might enjoy in
the autumn time. Well, this next item is a very
special one to me, and that is because I just
released my latest micro audio drama. It's called The Broken Hearted,
and it is free to stream at my website jdsutter
dot me and you can find it at jdsutter dot
me slash broken Hearted. And I would love it if
you would go check this out and leave a comment
there on that post. And in that post, I go
into the behind the scenes of the creation of this
micro audio drama, the inspiration for the script, and some
other little tidbits that I like to share, so be
sure to check that out. I was able to work
with a fantastic cast on this one. Just some amazing
talent that you've heard of from lots of projects, some
of the biggest shows in this space. Bethany Baldwin, you've
heard on Greenhorn Tales, Timetruck Chronicles, Heritage Ardeban and The
Quest for the King. I mean, she's just been all
over the place lately. That's just a few of them.
David M. Sanborn, you've probably heard him in Witnesses, the Adventum,
lamplightder Theater, Jonathan Park, John Tuttle, IID, you've heard him
in faith Filled Stories, and Senior Sawyer from the audio
drama Alliance. Craig Hart from LRT Media. I mean, he's
the producer behind their Sherlock Holmes series and The Titanic
Waif and all kinds of other amazing shows. And he
was also in my last micro audio drama, Loomi and
the Daffodils, so it was great to work with him again.
And then Dominic Trice from Saint Benedict Radio Theater. You've
probably heard him in Lamplighter Theater or The Most Important Passover.
I mean, just a fantastic cast. Super excited to work
with all these folks. So I would love it if
you would go give a listen to that show. It's
a micro audio drama. It won't take very much of
your time, and I think it has a message that
a lot of people can relate to, so check it out.
Jdsutter dot me slash broken Hearted. All Right, this next
one is really really exciting. It is a brand new
trailer for a brand new show from in Victim Digital.
This is called Morona Grant and the Lost Tomb of Golgotha.
This is a brand new series and the pilot episode
is coming on Thanksgiving Day this year, November twenty eighth,
So I've got the trailer here for you. I think
you're really going to enjoy this. By the way, if
you're not in atc backstage, you missed out hearing me
react to this trailer a while ago. So there's another
reason why you should join backstage to get access to
all this content that is not on the main show.
But anyway, let's go ahead and roll this trailer for
Marona Grant.
Speaker 3: As I was saying, you're going to pay. It's just
another day in the life of nineteen thirties adventurists.
Speaker 2: Marona Grant tell me, Grant golf tones is Shoby is
this one?
Speaker 3: It's not a tomb. O'Keefe tunes are where they keep
the dead people. When presented with the opportunity for adventure
and more importantly, cash, Marona takes up the offer to
follow a coded map to hunt down Judases Scariot's thirty
pieces of silver.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not exactly enough.
Speaker 3: It's more of a tapping the only caveat is grown
babysitting the expedition's financier, an elderly thrill seeking woman with
a propensity for attracting trouble.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're just how I pictured you would be.
Speaker 3: Sweat stains and all. An adaptation of the thrilling adventure
novel by Arthur Brino Williamson. This in Victim digital audio
drama production will immerse you in the action as our
ragtag team faces hales of bullets, ancient puzzles, and booby
traps swinging blades.
Speaker 4: Really, it's like all these places have the same.
Speaker 3: Architect But these terrors are the least of their worries.
As soon cultists, curses and undead hoards begin to rear
their ugly heads.
Speaker 4: Where one begins to wonder if you even think before
you act times up this scrunt.
Speaker 3: You're deluded if you think this ends here. With lush
sound design, magnificent voice actors, and a beautiful original score
by composer Christian Pousland, this is one adventure you don't
want to miss.
Speaker 6: The act it God Thanks join us for the pilot
premiere of Marono Grant and the Lost Tomb of golgofa
coming Thanksgiving Day November twenty eighth to your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 3: Visit in Victimdigital dot com.
Speaker 4: To learn more.
Speaker 2: So, as you heard there, this will be dropping as
a podcast, so episode one will come out on Thanksgiving
Day and then what they're going to do is launch
a Kickstarter campaign to fund the rest of this series.
So it is an adaptation of a book, and once
they secure the funding, it will all be coming out
on that same podcast feed. That's my understanding at least.
So more information at in Victim Digital as you heard
there in that trailer, but this sounds like an amazing,
amazing show gripping story and it sounds fantastic, so keep
an ear out for that and link is in the
show notes if you want to learn more. Now, our
last item before we move into the interview is the
trailer for Jake Muller Adventures Blood. The subject of this interview. Well,
we're going to talk about a lot more than that,
but this is one of the main topics and that
is the very next Jake Muller Adventure, the second installment.
This is a five minute teaser, so I'm only going
to play the first couple of minutes and then you
can go listen to the rest of it on the website,
but I wanted to give you a little taste of
what we're going to be covering here in just a
few minutes.
Speaker 7: In the interview, Hello, mister Muller, Oh you, How did
I know you'd be popping up in my life again?
Speaker 1: You remember me?
Speaker 3: That's odd.
Speaker 7: I don't forget a mug like yours, Klautu.
Speaker 4: How do you know i'd show up here again? Because
you need assis? Doctor Pete, Honey, what do you have?
Multiple stab wounds? Someone dumped him on the sidewalk, labored breathing.
He's lost a lot of blood.
Speaker 8: Maggie, give me a h need some haltrap freeze.
Speaker 5: Open absolutely, okay, Chula, cut his shirt away, get a
CBC keem set up.
Speaker 4: I'll get the line in, Maggie.
Speaker 5: Get two units of O NAG on the rapid infuser,
then type and match immediately.
Speaker 3: Don't look like knife and call the O R.
Speaker 6: Tell them to get ready.
Speaker 4: They look like do they look like those are fixed
and dilated.
Speaker 3: They look like bites.
Speaker 4: So this room was the last place and you saw
the baddie.
Speaker 3: This is where we worked on him.
Speaker 4: But he bled too much and you couldn't save.
Speaker 3: Him pretty much. He was covered in bites, yeah, he said,
but they uh looked more human than animal.
Speaker 4: Except for the enlarged canine teeth. Whoa, who are you Relax?
It's all right, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: Count Schock, you like, get your hands off me.
Speaker 4: You are in no danger. You've been chosen, I said,
Get off me. I was investigating herpranic energies. Yeah, that
doesn't sound good. I can't help what you don't understand. Well, okay,
tell me about it. My coven explores and shares pranic energy. Coven.
Speaker 1: Are you like witches?
Speaker 4: Then we're vampires. You guys are so lame. I uh,
I don't know. You're my first vampire.
Speaker 3: What about this guy sever.
Speaker 8: Sever's a flagling, hasn't been put of our house for
very long?
Speaker 4: Well, he told us that you had him following a
woman for him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I had him keeping an eye on a potential
potential what easy potential member of the coven. I saw
at the hospital a while back, and she seemed to
be strong psychically?
Speaker 4: What does that mean?
Speaker 8: I couldn't get any read on her at all. She
was totally blocking me.
Speaker 4: What do you need a psychic read on her?
Speaker 8: For anyway, it's what I do. I'm a cy vamp
sy vamp. I feed on psychic energy.
Speaker 4: Psychic energy.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, there is a little teaser for Jake
Adventures Blood. Now let's move into the conversation with the
producers and learn a little bit more about what is
coming up in this show and more.
Speaker 5: I have some very important information, and I thought i'd
be getting it into the hands of a real reporter. Sir, sir,
can I speak to a moment?
Speaker 4: Oh well, there's nothing to it.
Speaker 3: I just ask you the questions and you answered them
in the tape recorder.
Speaker 4: Here play the interview.
Speaker 2: Well, if you have listened to Audio Theater Central for
any length of time, you have heard about the Jake
Muller Adventures, and you have heard that we around here
are big fans of the Jake Muller Adventures. So it
is with great pleasure that I am welcoming to Audio
Theater Central Darby Kern, the writer and director and Mike Atouchet,
producer and sound designer of the upcoming new episodes productions.
Whatever what are we calling these things new New Adventures
with Jake Muller.
Speaker 1: What We've really not settled on anything for a long
time what we call them, but I've been saying albums lately. Okay,
it works, Mike, Is that okay with you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we've called them albums, we've called them collections of episodes,
we've called them seasons. But I don't know this, Yeah,
I don't know that. Probably shows is one that we
used the most. Maybe, but yeah, because season this year
we may have two. So is there two per season?
Is there one per season? We didn't have any for
several seasons.
Speaker 1: Well, let's just give JD the first exclusive. Now we're
going to call them albums from here and out.
Speaker 5: Okay, that works for me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, okay, Well, so Unidentified came out in
twenty nineteen, which we reviewed on ATC one four, So
if you're new around here, go back and check that
out and uh, get your copy of that. I mean,
it's fantastic. But we've just been so excited about this
show because it's it's filling a different niche in this space,
a family friendly for the older listeners, which was a
big gap in the space for a long time. I Mean,
there were few things here and there, but nothing that
was really targeting an older demographic with some really great
content that you know, was action packed and kept their attention,
and so this is one of the first ones that
really did that with Unidentified. And so I'm just so
excited that we have some new stuff from Jake Muller coming.
So Darby, can you briefly share some of the circumstances
that allowed you guys to head back into the studio
to record some new Jake Muller.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, we had the script for Blood, the second
album really was. It was ready to go when we
recorded Unidentified, with just a few changes since then, but
it was, you know, I hate to be crass about it,
but it was basically that we didn't sell enough. We
didn't make enough money to produce the next show at
the level that we wanted to do it. We didn't
want to do a show that was not going to
sound as good as Unidentified, and we were both really
happy with Unidentified, and we certainly were not going to
lower the bar. We only wanted to raise it higher
for ourselves and for the people listening. So we had
to wait and we sold as much as we could.
We went to different conventions to sell more and tried
some marketing ideas to promote it, and you helped me
with some things with the website and just other ideas
that you know, really didn't pan out, and it was
a difficult time for me. I think it was for
Micah too, but I don't want to speak for him.
But it got to a point where years had passed
and we had a great show that not enough people
had heard and hadn't made a big enough stir, and
I think we just kind of put a pin in
it and we had to say, Okay, this is this
is not what the Lord is leading us to right now,
which is interesting because based on that show, both Micah
and I got other work to do, and that part
of it worked out okay for us. But we again
I don't want to speak for you, Micah, but we
I think we kind of got to a point where
it was, Okay, it's it's probably not going to happen anymore.
I got to make peace with that, and I did,
and I was content to live my life again with
the possibility of not doing any more Jake Muller Adventures,
which was a hard pill to swallow, mainly because one
we did a good show too. I made some great
friends Micah included, and several of the actors, and it
was just such a good time. You know. It's like
it's like having a great experience and thinking, Okay, we're
going to be able to do this again and again
and again, and you never get too and so getting
to that point was really a difficult thing for me.
But it was in August of twenty twenty three when
we were having a problem with the website and didn't
even know it actually, and Mike ha sent me an
email he said, hey, somebody ordered a CD last week,
and we prided ourselves and getting them out quickly, you know,
within a couple of days. And this had been a
week and I hadn't even received a notification for it yet.
So I went downstairs, packaged it up, printed a label,
got it all set to go, and I put it
on my kitchen counter to go out with me to
the mailbox or to the post office, and then I
forgot it there for several days actually, so it was
almost that might have been actually a little over two
weeks since this gentleman ordered it and I hadn't sent
it up. I felt really bad, so I got it
already again, put it in my car, but then I thought,
I need I need a touch base with him and
apologize for this taking so long. So I just sent
him an email said I'm really sorry, just you know,
we had a problem with the website. I'm not trying
to make an excuse, but you know, i'm sorry. It's
going out today. And he responded to me pretty quickly.
He said, that's okay. One of the things that I
thought was great. He said, that's okay. I already own it,
he said, I bought my copy on audible, but I
wanted to get it for a friend. So I thought, oh, well,
this is good. We're expanding one more person. So we
talked a little. We just chatted through emails for a
little bit, and then he asked me, you know, I
was just wondering, I really really like the show. Are
you going to be doing any more of them? And
you know, it's one of those times where you have
to be careful what you say because you don't want
to say, well, you know, we're broke, or you know whatever.
You don't want to give too much information. But I
just said, you know, the fact of the matter is
we just didn't raise enough money selling these to be
able to produce more. And so he asked me a
couple more questions, you know, how much is something like
this cost? And you know what about some of the
financial information? And I think it was probably at that
point I started contacting you Micah, like, oh man, this
guy's asking these questions and you know how much? How
much should I even say?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 1: You know? What do I want to do? You know?
And it was funny because maybe a year and a
half before this, Micah and I had talked and sort
of tried to figure out a way to do just
a really cheap, I guess way of producing these these
next two shows that we sort of had planned out,
and it was a model that we didn't get paid
at all, Neither of us would get paid for doing
the work. And we didn't love that idea, but you know,
we kind of wanted to get it out. So I
told his name is David. I told David that, and
you know, kind of talked about what other other companies
are spending based on what little I know from the
puel that I'd worked with, and just kind of gave
him an idea. And at one point he said, he said, well,
maybe there's something I could do to help with the financing.
I thought, oh, he knows people with money. Great, that
always works out, right. So I kind of gently tried
to talk him out of this, and he persisted. He
was very persistent, and he was so polite too. He's
a very nice gentleman. And finally he said that he
was interested in possibly financing the show. And I again
told him, well, you know, you have to be willing
to lose all your money that you're putting into it.
And after a while he said, well, you're not going
to scare me off that way. And I remember it
was Labor Day weekend of twenty twenty three on Friday,
before I went to work, we just trading emails and
I answered some questions and I think we're probably texting
at this point actually, and he said, well, let me
take the weekend and pray about this, which, by the way,
is the best thing that I could have heard at
that point. If somebody was going to be involved, I
wanted them to be a praying person, a person who
would really bring this before the Lord and be led
by him. And so I said, okay, okay, you do that.
And I remember Monday morning, I work at a bank.
The bank was closed the course, because it was labor day.
I was laying in bed, I let myself sleep in,
so it was right around eight o'clock and I saw
my telephone light up, and I thought, who is bothering
me this early on a holiday Monday. And I looked
at it and it had his name on it, and
I remember kind of turning to my wife. I said,
I think I'm in trouble. And I pushed the button
and opened up the text, and he said, I've been
praying about this all weekend and I want to do this.
I really wanted to do that. And as we chatted
that day, and I think I before I responded to David,
I texted Micah and said, this guy's serious. You know,
we we better really keep praying about this. And when
I got back to David, I again I tried to
talk him out of it. You know, you're gonna you're
gonna lose all your money if you do this. I
don't want that to happen to you. And eventually he
just said, look, you're trying to scare me off, and
you're not gonna And so we started having the conversation
and before I knew it, we had studio space rented
at Gap Digital. Todd Busteed was hired to, you know,
help engineer. I was on the phone with everybody saying, hey,
you guys, you're not gonna believe this, but we're doing
it again. We're doing it again. And David insisted, insisted
that everybody not only got paid for it, but got
paid an appropriate rate for it, and he allowed us
to bring in actors and actresses really from around the
country and ultimately around the world, and everything just fell
into place. And there was a point, I know, I
said to Micah, I said to my wife, I said,
this is the Lord working because there's nothing I did
that justifies this and this level and everything going so smoothly,
and JD that was the case from that point on
all the way through the production, the recording sessions, and
from what I'm hearing, from what Mike has sent me
so far and what I've heard of the show, it
sounds great. It's it's so much better than we could
possibly have imagined. And there is not I was going
to say there hasn't been a moment of hardship, but
I was doing the scheduling and I'm not good at it,
So there were quite a few times I was beating
my head on the desk and I eventually ended up
turning it over to my daughter and she got everything
scheduled and she was my production assistant. But we had
such a fun time. Everything went so smoothly. We got
everything done on time, and we recorded two shows. We
recorded Blood and we recorded Undead. And the next step
is for everybody listening this to order it and listen
to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fantastic, And it seems like there were not
only was there the financial situation that you guys were
having to navigate, but it seemed like other things were
working against the project too because Dugan Shirbondi, who is
your lead character, Jake Muller, had a terrible, terrible accident
with his daughter, and I mean it was just terrible,
and you you thought at some point you might end
up having to recast your lead character. You didn't know
if he's going to be able to come back to
the show, and thankfully he was able to do that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, man was different after another. Yeah, he sacrificed
a bit to be there. And in fact, one night
we were the one night that he went out with us,
we were at Geno's East and down town Wheaton and
he had his phone out for a second and he
showed me a picture of his daughter, who he had
He spent the weekend at home. He lives a little
bit further north, and just before he left, he took
this picture of her and she gave him a smile,
which she's her smiles are a big deal, you know,
the response of nature there. And he showed me his
picture and he said, this is what I had to
leave to be here. And I felt it. I kind
of feel it now too, but you know, it was
it was a sacrifice for him to do it, but
he was willing to and he had I think he
had fun. I think he had fun, and he's amazing.
He's just there's there's nobody else that I ever want
to be. Jake Muller. We had an actor in mind
who could pick it up if they had to, but
we didn't have to do that. The Lord provided for
duging in for us so.
Speaker 2: Well. Talking about funny in the studio, Micha, why don't
you jump in? Tell us tell us some of the
fun A couple of fun anecdotes from the sessions. You
guys spent what was it a week there at Gap Digital?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was closer to two weeks. I think, yeah,
I think we were there two weeks something like that.
Over two weeks, yeah, a little over two weeks. Then, Yeah,
there were there's some a lot of fun moments. I mean,
all the actors are just you know, fantastic talent and
uh and just fun to be around. And one of
the things that happened this is I wouldn't say this
is fun or funny, but just kind of showing the
providence that that we Darby and I and the entire
you know, cast kind of felt during the sessions was
we had an actress lined up to play a pretty
pivotal important role in one of the shows and she's
really really good, just fantastic actress, and we met her
and just loved her work and wanted to put her
in the show. So about we were out eating supper,
probably nine thirty or so, and Darby gets text Yeah
on Saturday night and she had an accident at work
and I had a concussion. Wasn't going to be able
to play the role that we had for so that
time I messaged someone I've worked with on some abide
projects that actually lived in New Zealand and kind of
let her into the situation, and she messaged me back
right away and she said, we won't believe this, but
I'm actually headed to the airport. I'm flying to Vio
Atlanta for the conference there and staying with a voiceover
friend and I can use their studio. And she she
she was on board, you know, within thirty minutes, probably
had it recast and and she just blew blew it
out the water, the role. She was fantastic in it,
and Darby Nowery a little bit because this is kind
of an important character in the show and it had
to be played well in it, you know, so just
just that that thing was pretty awesome, just the way
it worked out. She was able to source connect in
from her studio and yeah, it really will.
Speaker 1: And to season that a little bit. We were in
the studio listening to her through the speakers as she
was sending it in. She was acting against Dugan in
like Mike I said, a pivotal, pivotal moment in the show.
And I just kind of looked around the control room.
Was there anybody who didn't have tears in their eyes?
It was I was just is almost sobbing. It was
so good, and the original actress would have been amazing.
It's been amazing, absolutely, but this was this was an
example of every thing that could have gone wrong led
to something better.
Speaker 5: Mhm. And I remember when I first read this script,
just kind of talking about the role a little bit
several years ago when Darby wrote Blood. I remember reading
the script and you know, you kind of see all
the moments that that make the story what it is.
There was a line, just one line that kind of
maybe sums up the entire script, and it's it's it's
delivered by this character. Uh and to me, it just
it is such a key, key line. I was like,
it has to be perfect because all the story sort
of hinges on this moment. And uh so reading I
remember the first time I read it, I remember hearing
her when she actually delivered it, and then you know,
cutting it together during the voice at it and the
sound design. It's it's like every time I hear the line,
it hits me the same way every time.
Speaker 1: It's like it it it.
Speaker 5: Maybe one of Darby's best lines ever.
Speaker 1: That's line too.
Speaker 5: It's simple, but it but it really really puts everything
about the story into into Yeah.
Speaker 1: It does sort of a nutshell. JD. You're very familiar
with Unidentified. I know that, but there's a very different
flavor with blood and uh, it's a it's a darker
story too. I mean, we didn't shy away from that,
but I didn't realize when I wrote it and when
I reread it that when these actors put themselves into it,
that it was going to be emotionally gripping. I mean,
that's I don't typically think that way when I write,
because I'm more action oriented in a lot of ways,
or humor oriented. But this amazing ensemble, most of whom
you know, there's going to blow you away with different
just different type performances, not exactly what you're used to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it seems like I know you said the
story is darker. It for sure is. It's it is
a very different it's more of a psychological story than
Unidentified was. But with that darkness, it feels like there's
even more light that shines through this story than probably
the original. It's it's a different type of stories. So
it's yeah, it's less action driven. And surprisingly, there are
no guns in this story. There are other than a
flashback scene.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but there's a lot The gospel isn't
it in a way that people will need to respond
for themselves and just say, Okay, I believe this or
I don't believe this, and it's my lines, which they
are what they are. I'm never impressed by myself, but
when these guys took over the characters, they made it amazing.
And I can only take a little bit of credit
for that because I got to cast him so well.
Speaker 2: I do want to touch a little bit more on
what is covered in these these two upcoming shows, but
before we do that, you mentioned the ensemble cast, So
let's toss out a few names that the listener is
going to know. We know, we know Dugan is returning
as Jake, is Sky's coming back.
Speaker 1: Is Arianna Sky's back? Yeah? Oh man. When you hear
her performance in this one, it's yeah, because nothing's going
to go the way you think it is, and she's
got some real she's got some real, heavy duty heavy
lifting in it.
Speaker 5: So and we have a couple names that I know
everybody recognized. Oh yeah, I f you're familiar with Jake
Muller or family friend audio drama in general, Jonathan Cook
and Carol O'Brien. Yes, they did some heavy lifting, uh
in fact, Jonathan Cook, he was the way the schedule worked.
He was there toward the beginning of the sessions, and
he played opposite for some actors that weren't in the
booth at the time. So I kind of made a
joke that said, we need to do like a recut
of Blood where Jonathan plays all the characters because he
read for nearly all the characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Kara Micah mentioned covers between the two shows.
She covers a good assortment of characters and is wonderful.
And it's funny too because and you can hear this
in the trailer that we put out too, when Micah
got the voice tracks edited. There's a scene towards the
beginning where Kara is in conversation with Kara and if
I hadn't told that, I don't. I don't know that
most people would even notice because she's she's just so
good and the characters are so different, but yeah, she's
she's wonderful. Jake Phillips. Phillips came up from Mississippi, Uh
brought great stuff to the characters.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's playing yeah with Christian Gil and Yeah and
Uh Duke and Shamani the kind of the three Musketeers. Yeah,
yea of noble Security.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And I'm just just terrific. I mean,
everybody was so good. You know. We got some of
the guys who came in and and just recorded for
a day and Unidentified it came back. David Shui was
one who I just like his voice and he's just
a fun guy to be around. He played one of
the men in Black and Unidentified, and he's playing a
couple of characters in this one. Jonathan Burke again is back.
Speaker 5: Charles. Ah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: He is in every episode or every bit of Unidentified
and so many different characters, and we use him quite
a bit in this one. Andy Harvey, Oh my goodness.
When you hear Andy Harvey in these two episodes are
these two albums, I should say he does quite a
few of the voices, but he plays some main characters
too in each of them that you're not gonna be like, oh,
there's Andy Harvey and that's Andy Harvey. He's just these
guys are so good. John Fornoff, we got Don Fornoff
into the studio with us to play a character that
I got to write kind of rewrite for him once
once I cast him, and you know, now he's living
in Georgia, and I thought he's not going to want
to come up to Chicago for a handful of lines.
And when I talked to him about it, he right
away he's like, yeah, absolutely, I want to be there
in the studio. So you know, John came up the
gap and we just had a great time. He stayed
for a couple of days and it just added so
much great value to the show. Just fantastic performances. But
you know, Mike have backed me up on this that
the fun was just being with these people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Do we have any cameos from our director and producer?
Speaker 5: So in Blood, I don't think Darby makes an appearance
other than in the Walla Sessions. You will hear him
a lot in the Walla Sessions. He plays vampire one, two, three, four,
and five.
Speaker 1: How appropriate our producer did did?
Speaker 5: I played a small character in Blood? What was his name?
It was the cop, Chicago cop. He's not named in
the show, but he had a name of the script.
I think Ben Wall Yeah, I think we opposite Lieutenant Burkele, Yeah,
who was played.
Speaker 1: By Jeremy Anderson. Yeah, who's another.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, identified we may have mentioned him, yeah, yeah
as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't mention him before, and I should have
because he's he's terrific and he was in the watch
with us as well.
Speaker 5: And also Phil Waller returned as Pastor Brian Omack.
Speaker 1: Yep, oh good good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and uh, playing opposite him.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we We're not going to out the
actor right now, but you know, she's got a very
distinctive voice, which we've been hearing for many, many years,
but she doesn't sound like we're used to hearing her.
She gives us some different flavor. So I'm really there's
other Easter eggs in there to that.
Speaker 5: Randy Strew Jonathan Yeah, we.
Speaker 1: Forget these guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he is actually in Blood too, is the Aura.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And Papa yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then he returns as Agent be Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Jonathan Bullock.
Speaker 5: Jonathan Bullock fantastic, so good, he's he's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Josh Murray, Josh Murray is.
Speaker 5: Just so good, it's so good. Plays the main villain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's gonna nail your heart to the wall.
Speaker 5: Goodness.
Speaker 2: And a lot of these names the listeners are gonna
be familiar with from like projects like Jonathan Park or
The Adventum. A lot of these people have worked on
those projects too, and so yeah, this is a This
is a huge cast, a lot of a lot of talent.
I can't imagine how much fun you guys had. Now,
you guys have both alluded to this being a little
bit darker. You've talked about zombies, and we know that
unidentified dealt with the idea of UFOs from a biblical
Christian perspective. So what are we tackling with blood and
with undead.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the idea of vampires. It's a little
bit different because unlike UFOs, which you know, people see
unidentified flying objects every day, there's fifty reported sightings every day.
Vampires you don't have fifty sightings every because, you know,
to just spoil a little bit, there's no such thing
as vampires. But there is an active vampire subculture, and
I know there's in Chicago, Mike I said New Orleans.
Speaker 5: I was a little surprised myself how big this was.
As I did research for some design and stuff, I
was like, wow, this is I know Darby had to
research it previously when he wrote the script, but yeah,
it's quite a big thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's out there, and it is I'm gonna say
it's demonic. A lot of it is. I mean some people,
you know, you think they're just out there role playing,
but then there's some people who are really into something
that is much deeper and darker, and that's We have
both kinds of those people in the show, and one
of them, Josh Murray's character, is absolutely demon possessed, manipulated
by demons. And there is scene fifty two, which we've
all wrestled with with this show, and Micah more than
any of us probably, but it is it is going
to be a powerful, powerful scene and really going to
show that, you know, display the power of God. I
don't want to say in a realistic way because I've
never been in a situation where this type of thing happened.
I've never witnessed it. But there is the name of
Jesus is going to carry a lot of weight in
this and there's gonna be a lot of surprises in
that scene.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 1: And a lot of seeds for future episodes too, by
the way, So nice nice albums albums, thank you. Sorry.
So that's Blood. What about undid Undead? Is we after Blood?
We want to do something. The idea right away when
Mike and I started talking about it was to do
it a little bit, a little bit lighter, a little
more fun. But then as he and I talked about it,
and Michael was a co writer on this, absolutely co writer,
we went a little darker than we planned.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it was supposed to be a little bit
of a palette cleanser after blood, you know, kind of
keep it from being too monotone, too dark, too dreadful.
It does have some dark moments, but it's a lot
more action driven. It's much more action driven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it takes place in Louisiana, so we had
to hire the same dialect coach that we got for
Unidentified to work on several actors in this one. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we actually hired six seven I think native So
it happens in Louisiana, but it happens in a specific
region of Louisiana which is known as Cajun Country, which
is more of a south part of Louisiana, and the
accent there is distinctly different than just Southern accent in general.
So we hired natives to that were from that area
to do the The majority of the Cajun lines, so
and you know, the sound design two has been for
that region has been recorded on location as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's gonna be fun.
Speaker 5: Specific like the ambiences and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't want to compare this series to Indiana Jones,
but there's kind of an element of that where the
first one is fun and action driven and and all
that second one is darker, and then the third one
is is lighter than the last one, but you know,
also action driven, serious at times, and deals with some
serious topics. Again, you know, we're talking about zombies. There's
no such thing as zombies, but there are there are
things that may make somebody appear like a zombie. And
it's funny because when we were doing this, Mike ha
sent sent us to me. I'd seen it already, but
he sent it to me where you know, there's a
drug that people are using, I think it was in
Philadelphia where they just kind of start acting like zombies there.
Whatever this drug does to them, it just takes away
all their I don't know. There's spars, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and there's kind of wander around. Well, there's there's a
kind of a deeper story here about some some people
who have been subjected to experiments and uh, and how
all that comes out. There's a purpose for it that
is definitely coming into the next well two of the
next three stories after this, And yeah, we have a
lot of that sort of in our heads already, but
there's there's something going on and it's just a fun
it's it's a fun story. It's the kind of story
I don't want to listen to. And trust me, I'm
the last person that's going to watch an episode of
The Walk Dead. You know, any of the old zombie
movies that were so popular in the eighties As I
was coming of age, I couldn't care less about any
of those. But this is a story that's really fun
that kind of talks about zombies and you know what,
with blood we talk about what does you know, what
does blood and what does blood sacrifice mean to a Christian?
Why why do we need to be aware of this
kind of thing? And then in undead what does death
mean to a Christian? You know what does what does
the Bible say about death? And what does it lead to?
And and you know what kind of deaths are there?
You know, we have a physical death, there's a spiritual
death too. That's every bit is real and it's it's eternal,
So start thinking about it because you know it's going
to happen when you know, eventually one of those is
going to happen to you.
Speaker 2: So why did you feel like it was so important
to tackle these sorts of issues through this medium of
audio drama?
Speaker 1: My thought was always what are the things that kids
are into? Not just kids, but like the older kids.
And I was I was a big X Files fan, so,
you know, the first one, before I really even planned
a series of anything, I was kind of working out
a story about you know, what what should a Christian
think about UFOs? You know, it's it's out there. What
should we think about it? And it's popular in you know,
pop culture, so what should we be thinking about it?
Speaker 2: Just look at Roswell, New Mexico. They've made an industry
out of that.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Yeah yeah, and not just not just there,
there are plenty of other places. But yeah, you're right,
you're right. And then when when I wrote Blood, it
may have been more in your face then, but you know,
like Twilight was a big deal, A bunch of vampire
shows on on HBO and some other pay channels, but
vampires were kind of a thing, and it got me thinking, Okay, what,
you know, what should a Christian think about vampires? Should
we you know, do we do we look in to
this uh sub genre of literature or entertainment, and if
we do, what should we come away with it? You know?
And that that brought the idea to me of blood
and what should a Christian? What does a Christian think
about blood sacrifice? What does it mean to us? And
then after we were you know, blood Blood was already written,
but Mike and I started talking about the next one,
and I think this actually helped rope him into the series.
Actually was the idea of undead you know, zombies in
Louisiana in his neighborhood, and you know, and and that was,
like I said, it was. It was in pop culture
at the time in a big way, and it's still
around walking dead and other stuff. But you know, what
do you think about it? What does it mean? So
so it just gave us opportunities to talk about that,
and we don't we don't you know, beat anyone over
the head with with the message. But it's there if
if you want to hear, there's going to be an
answer there for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I appreciate, ain't that because it's again, we're
going after a different demographic than Adventures Nadyssey or something
like that. For so long, the majority of content in
the family friendly audio drama space was aimed at that
same demographic or younger, and so I think it's perfectly
appropriate and expected to address these different issues that these
other shows can't really tackle. It's not in their their scope,
their realm.
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, right, And I know Darby and I are
both huge fans of the Father Gilbert series from Paul McCusker,
and you know, love the show and love the way
they tackle some some of the similar issues, not trying
to just bring it down Okay, this is what it
is and this is what you should believe about it,
but kind of presenting some information and giving you some
relevant biblical viewpoints on it so you can kind of
you can come to the conclusion without them having to say, Okay,
this is point A, this is point B you should
arrive at see. And that's kind of I guess in
some ways way Jake Muller approaches that, you know, to
kind of more or less start the conversation and not
necessarily tied up in a bow and say, you know,
here it is for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always You know, it's funny because I'm at
our church. We're studying revelation right now and I'm listening
to a book about revelation as well. And one of
the things that you really need to to remember as
you're reading prophetic books, the apocalyptic Christian books, biblical books,
is that we don't have all the information. God doesn't
tell us everything. And that's okay, you know, he doesn't
tell us something that we don't need to know. To
circle back a little bit, it's funny because you know,
you mentioned that the other shows aren't interested in covering
these things. I talked to somebody years ago about possibly
picking up the Jake Muller Adventures, somebody, somebody big in
the space, somebody we know. And the last time that
we talked, he said, you know, I just I'm not
sure how I can sell vampires and zombies to my audience,
to the people who are buying my other material. And
I said, you don't you create a new audience or
a broader audience. And maybe that was just me mouth
and off, but I think that's true, and it certainly
didn't move anything forward as far as you know him
picking up the Jake Muller Adventures and right now, I'm
really happy about that. But it is different from the
other shows, intentionally different. And it also you know, has
has more of a focus on on action. We you know,
with with MICA's sound design so good, it's it's more
of a cinematic adventure in a lot of ways, and
that's that's what we wanted to do. We really wanted
to just kind of be obnoxious and blow the doors
off Christian audio drama or any audio drama. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we haven't even mentioned yet that Jared Deepes
squal is coming back to score these again. So he
did a fantastic job with Unidentified, So I expect nothing
less than amazing on these. But if you want to
touch on that, we we can circle back to that.
But I want to turn a little bit of a
corner here, Micah, because you know you're doing all the
graphics and things like that for this series as well,
and as a graphic designer web developer, what are some
key elements of good cover art design in your opinion,
because this is something that I've talked about here on
the show. Before, and I know that we're making audio drama, right,
but the packaging that it comes in has a huge
influence on whether somebody's going to pick it up or
whether they're even going to take a glance. So what
are your thoughts on good cover art?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so kind of understanding what the story is about
and the genre it that it represents, and simplicity of design.
So when I say simplicity, I don't mean necessarily that
there's not a lot of elements, but that they work
in such a way that the overall idea and the
concept remains simple. So it can be a lot of
moving parts, it can be telling a lot of it
can be saying a lot of things, but it says
it in a very unified, cohesive way. Some ways to
kind of express that technically would be like a minimal
amount of fonts, so not like five different fonts for
the design, like everything being a different font. That's the
way that you kind of keep a cohesive message. You know,
you may use different weights, you may have two complimenting fonts,
but you know, sometimes they'll see designs that one parts
in script and others in a serif and this one's
in a slab and this one's in some wispy font
that can't be read at all at any size, making
sure that you know it's it's readable because you know,
on a mobile devices and stuff, the title is in
some super curly script defont and it's in your library.
You it's probably gonna just like a blob. So something
that's kind of you know, and that will work with
the title too. You know, lung titles can be a
little bit tougher.
Speaker 1: We haven't had any of those yet, but yeah, So.
Speaker 5: This is in sound design and writing acting. A lot
of times less is more. Don't try to do more
than your skill level. So if you can do everything
that up to your skill level, do it well. You're
better off than doing something you really aren't capable maybe yet.
And and that that's for I'm like with music, So
I'm a musician as well, and I know when I
was young, I was always trying to do more than
I really had in my arsenal. So I would overplay,
I would didn't understand dynamics very well, you know when
to pull back, when to play a little more. And
I was talking to a musician a couple of days ago,
and we were saying how you know, young guitar players
tend to do that. They you know, first verse, they've
already showed every lick they have and so by the
time you get to the second song, that's the third bridge,
there's nothing left in their repertoire. So, you know, hold
a little bit something back, and that could go for acting,
the sound design, whatever. Don't push it to a level
that you haven't really mastered or even grasped. Maybe you
know it's you need to push yourself to do better,
But that shouldn't be the stuff you're showing. That's stuff
you keep on your refrigerator maybe, like for example, like singing,
maybe maybe try out some new stuff in the shower
before you get a microphone in.
Speaker 2: Front of people, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: But the same thing with the design. You can't go
wrong by keeping it simple. If you do something simple
well Darby and I've talked about this with writing. I
prefer stories that have a simple concept and are well executed.
Then a high concept, fancy, super cool idea that's poorly produced.
It's it's never going to be as good as something
that was just expertly produced, even though it may be
a simple at home in Midford story you.
Speaker 2: Know, m Yeah, well, kind of building on that again,
because of your graphic design background, you understand visual aesthetics
and you know witch colors, shades or imagery or fonts
compliment each other. So how has that skill and sensibility
affected your creativity when working with an audio palette as
a sound designer or even as a voice actor. Has
has any of those skills crossed over for you?
Speaker 5: For sure? Yeah? So I've noticed as I've grown as
a musician and and the different things that I do, uh,
that the less is more. There's a a sound designer
that works in Hollywood full time and I kind of
I follow a lot of his stuff to kind of
he's a he's a really good teacher. And one thing
he says and I was like he had the the
issue where he felt like he always had the latest
and greatest plug ins and you know, he spent lots
of he caught it, I think the plug and Dragon
or whatever, and then you realized he was spending so
much time learning these plug ins and realizing that they
weren't really making his work better. So he essentially doesn't
use anything that's not stock. He has a couple of
plugins that he uses that aren't available at stock, but
like his eqes and compressors and reverbs just super simple.
He's like, these tools work and they're simple, and if
I know them, I can do better work than someone
who has nicer tools but don't even really know how
to use them, because there's there's so much if you
know your tool then and there's not a barrier between
the creativity and the technical as much as there is
when you have a tool that maybe have more bells
and whistles more. There's sliders for everything, there's perimeters for everything,
but you don't know what you know eighty percent of
them do, and so you aren't able to get the
result that that is in your mind onto the paper
or onto the speaker or the screen because there's that
Barrier's kind of like a language barrier. It'd be sort
of like trying to, I guess, tell a story to
someone that you barely know the language to and then
someone you know the language really well. If you're trying
to tell this really detailed story in a language you
don't really know that well, it's not going to translate
as well if you just keep it simple. And I'm
not sure if that's I'm not sure if I'm quite
expressing like like he has said, you know, just knowing
your tools allows the technology to be a lot more seamless.
So yeah, with sound design, this show is by far
much much better than Unidentified in probably every measure as
far as from a sound design perspective. You know, I
feel like it's a lot more layered, a lot more textured,
but yet there's probably being a it's less of an
action driven show. There's not going to be like a
lot of you know, there's no spaceship stacking off and
all these elaborate sort of scenes, but the emotion is
a lot higher. The quality of the sound design that
you know works with the dialogue has a lot more
emotion to it. So you know, the folio and the
sound design is going to be more of a cohesive
unit where it's just story. It's not like, oh that's
a cool sound design. Oh that's great folio, Oh this
is you know whatever. I feel like the show has
has been sound designed in a way that really supports
the story, the dialogue, the words that there Arby has written,
and it's more of a unit where it's it's not
going to be maybe as much as you notice these
super cool moments where in a way kind of pulls
you out of the story because it's so cool or
so unusual. So I think that probably, I know, my
sound design has matured in a way. I don't try
to do things that don't really support the story at
one time. You know, it's like, oh, I have a this,
this is a super cool sound effect. Where can I
put it? This is a super cool revert preset? How
can what? Where can I put it in? What scene
can I put it in? It's less about that and
just you know, more about what tip best tells the story.
One thing Darby and I have talked about, like I know,
when we first you know, did Unidentified, there was a
lot of conversations about how it should sound, how it
should feel, and we use references like the other audio
dramas or movies. And Darby is always talking about a hyperrealism.
That was kind of his word. And then you know,
so that kind of is where we are to some
degree with Jack Muller. But I guess a word that
I like better for sound design is believability. So for example,
like if you're in space, there's no sound, so it's
not realistic, it's not hyper realistics. It's none of those.
It's not in any way realistic. And for the most part,
sound design is never realistic, just like dialogue is not realistic.
And we don't hear background, we don't hear Jared's great
music as we walk around in our everyday life. So
there's none of this is really realistic. But to me,
the keyword is believability. Is you know, the folly may
not be really, but is it believable? Does it tell
the story? You know, this car door probably doesn't sound
realistic because it's made up of a couple of other
components that aren't even related to cars, But does it
tell the story? Is it believable for that story? And
so that's kind of how I approach the sound design process.
Does it tell the story in a believable way?
Speaker 1: Well, and that's I agree with you one hundred percent
on that, And that's I think. I don't know about you,
but I got that from Todd Busteed. You know, that's
his baseline for that is believability. Does it support the story?
If want, I just to clarify when I say something
hyper realistic, what I mean is it's not real life
exactly because for most of us. Real life is really
a tedious grind of boredom from you know, one minute
to the next. That does not make good drama. So
even from a writing stage, coming up with an idea
that is it's it's got to be realistic. It's got
to have at least one foot and a couple of
toes in the real world. But everything, as Mike is saying,
everything needs to support it. And that's that's why I
think he's one of the best people out there to
be working with and absolutely the guy I want to
be doing this with because he knows you don't need
every foot step on the floor. He knows that you know,
like you said, less is more. But I don't get
pulled out of any scene because I think, oh, this
needed that or it didn't need that. I think his
balance is perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're using the sounds to it may not be
an exact replication of what you would experience in real life,
but it's just conveying the idea for the listener to
help them picture what's happening in the scene. That's all
you really need to do, right for sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, I mean, for example, sometimes I use door
closing some effects, So sometimes they're just utilitarian, you know,
they're just door closing in the background. But most of
the time, you know, the scriptwriter will have a specific
reason for there being a door. You know, is how
the door's closed, how loud is it to the point
of view? Is there anger behind the door? Is there
stealth behind the door? Is there something creepy on the
other side where we need extra creaks in the door?
You know, what is this the door saying? Because sometimes
you know, it's not super important to the story, but
most of the time it is part of the story.
So it's kind of a character in itself. And it's
easy just to go to you know, free sound out
organ type and door opening and just you know, find
one that doesn't have hiss and and sometimes that works.
But most of the time the door is kind of
is setting you up for the next line. What is
what is the next line? What is the intent behind
the door? You know, how is it being opened? And
so that all changes the speed and the amount of
creaks in the door, the weight of the handle. There's
there's a lot of things that you think about when
you're thinking, how does this door opening or closing move
the story forward?
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of doors opening and closing in Blood,
there's a lot there is, But you know, we've been
talking about Blood, but Undead really is gonna is going
to have a really broad pet of sound design, which
I haven't heard what Micah's got lined ups yet, but
I know I'm gonna like it. I know it's going
to be great, so I'm really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: Well, well, speaking of that, here we are mid October,
can you give us a progress report? Where are we
with Blood and with Undead and when can we expect
to hear these and what are we looking for here?
Speaker 5: I believe probably have the airing of this podcast, that
Blood will probably be ready for download at Jakemuller dot com.
So the plan is, once it's ready for release, we'll
have an exclusive distribution from Jake Mullardventures dot com and
you'll be able to download the story from there. Then
probably about thirty days later, we'll have it on all
I think maybe thirty five thirty seven different distribution channels,
including Audible, Spotify, Bornsannoble dot com. There are some others
that I'm not thinking of right now, but pretty much
anywhere you can find audio books, you'll be able to
download Jake Muller Adventures Blood.
Speaker 2: All right, man, that's something to be excited about. So
as you're listening to this, head over to Jake Mullerdventures
dot com. If it's not available right now, it will
be very shortly. If it's not available at the moment,
go ahead and hit the pre order and you can
get it and be one of the first to get
your copy. And then we have Undead coming, which will
be early twenty five. Is that what we're looking at.
Speaker 5: We're still hoping for the end of this year, but
we'll see. If it's not available this year, should be
very early next year. And yeah, so we'll probably have
a trailer for that maybe a month or so hopefully.
And they can also find us on all the social
media platforms Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and x formulally known as Twitter.
Speaker 2: Man, oh man, I am so excited about these shows.
Speaker 1: That's not all.
Speaker 2: You've already got the couple of them planned out or
I don't know how far you are in the scripting.
But Derby tell us a little bit. It give us
a little teaser about Engineered and Shroud.
Speaker 1: All right. Engineered is a story that we decided to
drop in earlier this year. I just Shroud is something
that's been stewing for many, many years, and it's a
big story. It's a story that's going to answer a
lot of questions and it might even bring up a
few more, but don't worry about that. But I wanted
to kind of build up to Shroud a little bit better.
And there's an element of things that are going on
in society right now that I thought really needed to
be addressed in a big way. And I'm so thankful
that the Lord put that on my heart because it's
happening more and more and more now. And Engineered is
about how we are manipulated as a society. We're manipulated
and our thoughts are engineered by really a small group
of people. And you know in the Jake Muller Adventures
that there's a we just referred to them as a
cabal of people who are they have a plan. You're
going to find out more about that in the next
few episodes, next few albums, sorry, and you're going to
see where all that's, you know, building up to. And
those people in that story are the ones who are
engineering our thoughts for society. In the world of Jake Muller,
it wouldn't surprise me of something very similar as happening
in the real world here. But I think about how
we are manipulated to buy certain products. We're emotionally manipulated
by movies and songs and the.
Speaker 5: News, social media influencers.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all these things are out there. And you know what,
I say this a lot. The world hates us, the
world hates Christians, and the world hates our children. But
they are targeting them to put the thoughts in their head,
to engineer their thinking. And that's what this story is
about in a broad sense. There's there's a narrower focus
within it that I don't want to talk too much
about right now. I am about the stories are are
worked out for both of them. The script for Engineered
is about half done, and Mike is going to have
a hard time believing this because we both loved Undead,
but this is this is my favorite. Right now he's
read the pages. I hope he I hope he feels
the same. But it's got action, it's got a lot
of humor. You know, we were talking about the cast before.
I have Dugan Scherbandi, Christian Gill and Jake Phillips playing
the employees of Noble Security, Jake's business, and and Engineered.
So far, i've been able to write for those three
together when I wrote Undead, and there's a lot of
the three of them and Undead, I didn't know that
Jake was gonna be playing Kevin O'Hare at that time,
but you know, we cast someone great like him, and
and then the three of them together is just a
great dynamic. So I am. I'm going all in on
these three guys in this story, and I think you're
gonna love it. And I'm adding another character that so far,
I love what he's gonna bring. His name's Avi, and
that'll give you a little bit of a clue about him.
But he's gonna he's gonna add so much, and he's
gonna he's gonna be in Shroud as well. So to me,
so far, it's it's the perfect Jake Muller story and
it's up to me to mess it up to ruin
that and I'm not gonna do it, and Michael won't
let me, and that's the best part. But I'm writing
this stuff and I'm just thinking, oh, this is gonna
be awesome to be in a studio with these guys,
and you know, I don't I don't think we've really
put this out there anywhere. We have a studio date
set for March second and that week, so obviously I
needed to get a lot of writing done. But we're
all in on this. We're full speed ahead, and we're
determined to make it the absolute best we can. Micah
right now is probably up over his head and a
Jake Muller sense. Jake Muller is always in over his head.
But Mike has got so much work to do on
these first two, but he's also helping steer me through
these next two. And we're going to have some great
storytelling and just fair warning, they might go over the
twenty four minute, fifty five second episode length, so and
we're okay with that because we're not writing for the radio.
You know, no radio station is going to pick up
this show. We're writing for the fans, and this is
going to sound a little bit weird, JD. There are
times that I'm writing and I just think JD is
gonna like this, So I'm writing for you some of
the time too. I love that.
Speaker 2: That's a very high compliment.
Speaker 1: Well, you've earned it. You're the superman. We love that.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, i am. I'm so excited to hear these
and so a shroud, I'm I'm assuming we're going to
be touching on sacred relics or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Well, there, there's there's a certain sacred relic which is
which plays a part in this. Micah stopped me before
I say too much, because there's there's there's.
Speaker 2: More than hold on, let me mute Michael real quick.
Speaker 1: It is it's it's like the ultimate Jake Mullerstone.
Speaker 5: So shroud means more than one thing in this story.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it does. There's multiple meanings for that, but
it's also you know, there's there's questions and things people
have been saying, Oh wait a minute, what did that mean?
And unidentified Where are they going with that? Well, this
one is going to show where a lot of things
are going. There's there's things that are going to tie up,
but there's also plenty that is still ahead for Jake
Muller after that and surprises. Oh, we've got surprises. And
Jake is still learning, he's still growing, he still makes
mistakes both in his faith and his relationship and relationships
I should say, but you're going to see you'll be
able to as you go through. And this is a
big part of what I wanted to do with the
show is I want to chart his growth as a
person as essentially a new believer, because he probably would
tell you that he wasn't a believer before, but you know,
his crisis of faith that he faced in Unidentified and
much more in Blood have really pushed him very very
far into depending on God and like fully investing in
his relationship with Christ. And that's all going to be
building up. And he's, like everybody, he's gonna he's gonna
make mistakes. I still make plenty of mistakes. I'd say
dumb stuff and and uh say hurtful things to people.
I haven't made my daughters cry lately, but it happens sometimes.
But Jake is going to struggle with the same same
things that we all do. So and he's going to
learn too, as he's always got a teacher. We we've
we've been very careful to have mentor characters for him,
and Phil Loler has been great as Pastor Omack. For sure,
He's he's going to have more than just Pastor Omac
in some of these So because Jake is going international.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Shroud and Engineered are very much multi national.
Speaker 1: Yeah for the most part. Yeah, oh man. And you
can see that if if you go to the Jake
Muller Adventures Facebook page. I'm pretty sure we have it
on our on the Jake Muller Adventures dot com too.
But there's artwork for all four of them, and and
you can you can look at the artwork and uh
get a tease. You're not going to get a whole
story out of it, but you're going to get a
tease for what what you.
Speaker 5: Very specific locations. Yeah, and they are you know what
to look for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm super excited about it. And you know, it's
just a testament to the grace and goodness of God
and uh him bringing David into our lives and uh
in such a great ways. He's he's really a full
partner on all of this. You know, he's he's become
a good friend and I'm very grateful to him. He's
he's a quiet guy who wants to just stay in
the background, and uh, he trusts us. But he's he's
been very good to us and to the Jake Muller Adventures.
Mike and I think he's an angel. We're not sure.
We haven't met him yet face to face, so who
knows this This guy might be a messenger.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm pretty sure that he's he's listening to this
episode right now. So I want to say, personally from me, David,
thank you for stepping up and helping make this next
season of the Jake Muller Adventures. And I don't mean
season as in an album. I mean this season of
this this show and this part of Darby and Mike's life.
I mean this. You guys have put so many hours
into this project. And I know, Darby, this is your baby.
I mean you've you've had these just living in your
mind and on your whiteboards behind you there for years
and years, and so I'm just I'm just thrilled. And
so from me personally, David, thank you. Oh he's got Yeah,
there's the whiteboard. Yeah, too bad, you can't see it, listener.
Speaker 1: This is the outline for Shroud. You got it? Okay?
Speaker 2: That that is some very small writing, and it's full.
Speaker 1: The board is full. So but yeah, yeah, I'm I'm great.
My heart is full. And you know, Jad, we had
an experience together last November at Soniccon. Mike was there too,
and there was a night that we all First we
went out for Mexican food, which we do each time,
and the crowd that goes to this restaurant, we picked
the same restaurant that crowd has grown and it was wonderful.
I think they were about thirty of us there. And
then we went for ice cream. And this ice cream
shop is small, but we were all there and we
have pictures of it on our Facebook page. And we
had so much fun because these are our people. They say,
these are our tribe. This is our tribe. Yeah. And
this ice cream place closed. It was nine o'clock or
something like that, and we all went outside because they
wanted to clean up inside. They were so sweet to us.
There's great. But we went out on the sidewalk and
we still there in November, and we all talked for
about an hour or so and people just started drifting away,
and and then some of us were staying at the
same hotel. You and I were staying at the same hotel,
and we went back there and for the people that
were staying there, that same conversation kept going and it
was such a great feeling. It's you know, some people
said it was like going to summer camp and you
get to the end of it and you don't want
to leave. And that experience that we had in November
was very much like that, because these are our people.
These you know, I feel closer to a lot of
those people that I see every two years then you know,
some people that I work with or some people that
I you know, see often here and we had we
had something very remarkably similar with the Jake Muller recordings,
and you know, we're really excited to to get together
again to do it. Everybody's like, yeah, just tell me when,
tell me when. So we got the date set early
and people hopefully are asking off work or making plans already.
I just I love I love our community, and I
want to do the best show I can do for them.
So I'm committed.
Speaker 2: Well, you guys, you guys did not disappoint with with
Unidentified and I'm just super thrilled about this. And you know, Michael,
I know you've got a whole lot of other things
on your plate right now. You've got new Birth Audio productions,
You've got a bunch of projects that'll be coming soon.
So we're going to have to have you come back.
We'll talk about those programs. Yes, so much coming that
I'm excited to hear. I've actually had you on my
list to have you on the show for a long
time and so this was just like the perfect opportunity
to have you on. And we definitely want to have
you come.
Speaker 5: Back on and talk about a new birth.
Speaker 2: And you know, I know that aside from you guys
being creators in the space, we're all just big fans
of audio drama in general. So anytime we get together,
there's you know, there's the conversation. She could just go
on and on.
Speaker 1: They could, and it will. But you see how important
Micah is to me. Besides is incredible talent and skills
at this, he's he's a good friend of mine and
and I just appreciate the hard work he puts into us,
which in the end, you know, I think about it.
I write this stuff, I direct the stuff, and uh,
and then he takes it for about a year and
works on it and do does more on it than
I did. So yeah, it's I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Well, I appreciate your ear, you know, your belief in me,
in me and giving me the opportunity for sure.
Speaker 2: It's a huge team effort. I mean every single one
of these components. We talk about that here all the time.
Great audio drama is the coming together, the urging, the melding,
the meshing of all of these elements in a beautifully
cohesive way. And that's what makes great audio drama. And
so it takes everybody, and you guys, you guys do
it with every project guy's working on. So thank you
so much. I did not intend to take this much
of your time, but thank you for being so generous
and sharing with the community. And one more time, give
give the website, tell the listener where to go get
these shows.
Speaker 5: Jakemuller Adventures dot com and also on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram and yeah so you can you can follow us
in there keep up with the updates. The downloads will
be available at jakemulleradventures dot com and then also on Audible,
Spotifybornsandnoble dot com and about thirty five other audiobook distribution channels.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Thank you guys, Thank.
Speaker 5: You so much.
Speaker 1: D D, thank you, appreciate you brother well.
Speaker 2: Thanks again to Darby and Mike. If are coming on
the show. As you heard, these albums are coming very
soon with blood possibly even ready for you right now,
So head over to Jakemulleradventures dot com and either pre
order or go ahead and order it, whatever the status
is at the time of this release, and support this
high quality audio drama that's made for adults. And you
know you've heard me talk about that over the years.
I'm very excited that there are people focusing on the
older age demographic in family friendly audio drama. So this
may not be one for the very small children, but
that's okay. There's plenty of content out there for the
little kids. So again Jakemulleradventures dot com and you can
find out a lot more about this series. Well, we
would love to stay in touch with you, and one
of those ways you can do that is to join
our mailing list, the ATC Insiders, and we'll email you
about everything that we're up to. It's very, very infrequently,
but it is nice to be able to have a
direct connection to you in between episodes and posts on
the website. So there's a link right on our homepage
at Audio Theatercentral dot com to join, and of course
all the ways to get in touch with us are
listed at Audio Theatercentral dot com slash contact would love
to hear from you. Keep that feedback coming in always,
always a pleasure to hear from the ATC community, and
of course show notes with links to everything we talked
about at Audiotheatercentral dot com slash two zero five. There's
also some fun photos there of our guests today, so
be sure to check that out. I'll see you next time,
and hopefully I'll see you on World Audio Drama Day,
October thirtieth. Thanks for listening. Audio Theater Central is a
production of Portlite 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.
Speaker 3: Sporchlight Familymedia your source for family centered content. Scorchlightfamilymedia dot
com