Speaker 1: Hello, AGC community, It's JD. I am here at the
Making Great Audio Drama event with the Audio Drama Institute,
and I'm here with Austin Peachee. Hello. Hello, And we
are on day four.
Speaker 2: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, fifth day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, technically the fifth day. There wasn't anything going
on on Sunday night, but that was technically the day
when everybody arrived. So yeah, so here we are. We
had initially planned to do some recaps a little bit
more frequently, little updates, but the schedule, although it's not
been super tight, there is just I don't know the
logistics of this particular place, and coupled with the conversations
that keep happening, the spontaneous part of this event has
made it a little bit difficult to schedule some time
to actually sit down and record. So I want to
say at the top, apologies for that, but we are
trying our best, and this is going to go out unscripted, unedited,
so we're doing our best to give you some, you know,
a little taste of what being at this event is like.
And we're just recording it on the fly here and
dropping it down the feed and if you are new
to Audio Theater Central, this is not a normal episode.
We don't normally do this, and the audio quality is
usually much better than this, So if this is your
first time around, you might want to check out a
previous episode in the feed. All right, well, Austin, this
has been an incredible week so far. I've seen so
many and this is probably the biggest takeaway, as it
usually is with an event like this. I've seen so
many people making connections. We have writers, actors, sound designers, composers,
We've got all of these different people here all collaborating together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's been incredible. It's definitely a smaller event
than Sonic Con, but also it's a more intimate kind
of setting with that because it's a smaller group, but
you're you're all eating you know, meals together. You're eating
meals you know, next to or at the same table with,
you know, like Kay Lee or Phil Luller, John Thornoff
and other people in the ledger industry and people that
are wanting to get into it and fans of Odyssey
and things like that. It's just, yeah, that's one of
the one of the biggest and the best thing about
being here is just hanging out with a lot of
like minded people, meeting new friends and seeing old ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, we're just recording this live here. So
if you hear somebody walking by or hear some voices
in the background, that's what's going on. We are actually
sitting in a little library here on the bear Trap
Ranch campus, and right outside there's some some people talking
audio drama. So that's just a vibe of this whole place, right.
I mean, everywhere you go there's people having coms and
we all have this this shared interest, shared passion for
making great audio drama. And I'm just just having a
great time, you know. And so you know, you mentioned
some of the people who are here, some of the
teachers we've got, you know, Kathy Buchanan, Phil Lawler, John Fornoff,
Katie Lee, Todd Busteed, John Campbell. Did I say that?
And so they're all, you know, focusing on their individual discipline,
but they're also a lot of them multi talented. They
have different sort of skills, and they've got a lot
of experience in this industry and a lot of experience
in life in general, and so they're able to chime
in on the different sessions, even if it's not one
that they're teaching and it's a it is formal in
that we have an official itinerary, there's a schedule we're
trying to follow, but in the sessions, a lot of
times we're able to just have open conversations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really nice, like it's you know, it's your
Audi druma institute, but it's not as formal as you know,
your your college days, and it's about subjects that you
really all of them that you want to hear about
and hearing like different comments from people or some witty
comments from Katie or something like that. But like we're
learning from the teachers, but even the teachers we've seen
it happened so many times where like I think today
Katie talked about how she wanted to like back before
or even she started voice acting, is she wanted to
be an audio audio engineer, so so fascinating to her
to see how Tabasti did sound design and editing and
things like that. So she learned some things, like she
does some audio editing on her own, but seeing you know,
the sound design process and that kind of stuff a
little bit more and different things that we're learning from
each other, even the teachers, I'm sure, from the students
different experiences or tools or websites or something that could
be beneficial to them as well. So it's for everybody.
It's a very mutual, mutually beneficial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah yeah. And so we have
different classes. Of course, this is a making audio drama, right,
So this is not a fan event, and so we
recognize that our audience is primarily made up of audio
drama fans, and there are a lot of industry folks
and professionals in the space who listen as well, and
so we're trying to you know, straddle that divide there
and make sure we're covering both of these communities. And
I also do know that there are a lot of
fans who like getting that sort of behind the scenes
and a little bit of seeing how things come together.
So we'll just talk real briefly about some of the
events or some of the sessions that have been covered.
So we've had acting classes, we've had directing classes, we've
had music composition and just how a composer works and
interfaces with the director, how that relationship works a little bit.
And so those have just been great and I'm just
you know, touching on a couple of things of really
deep into story structure and things like that. So on
the writing side, just throw out like one the big
take ways for you, Austin, of any of the classes.
I mean, because you and I are both multi I
started say multi talented. That sounds a little bit wrong.
We were both multi instrumentalists there, for lack of a
better term, I'm hey, I'm running around trades. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm running on low sleep here, so my brain's not
functioning at full capacity. But I think you know what
I mean. But we've we've dabbled in all different aspects
of the process. So is there anything that has stood
out to you overall from one of the classes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think one of my favorite classes was the
one that Kathy did on Monday on the personality puzzle,
where she gave out handouts on the ennegram.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the enneagram, which I think I've.
Speaker 2: Heard of that before, but gives an idea of kind
of like a personality of these kind of personalities where
it could it's not necessarily all one, but you have
a core one for that. And then I don't think
i've ever heard of this before, but interviewing your characters.
It's a question that you would ask your care character
to get to know the characters before you even start writing,
or even before you start an outline. I think probably
even too so, like you know what is your like
where do you see yourself in ten years? Or like
you know what's what's your favorite food? And and then
some go even deeper, like you know what's your greatest wound,
like what's what's your backstory on that? And then interview
questions with God about these people like what is what
is their purpose in life? Or what is what is
your end goal with her life? Or something that like
it was at first it was sounding like kind of
a difficult thing to do, but she had a practice
it in a really fun way like breakout sessions, which
this felt like college a little bit, where different groups
like get together and create a character using some of
that information. I got paired up with Ezra and kay
Lee and created character. Enough people did as well, and
then Kathy had uh some of each of the group
and she had I think four females and one male
and they had basically a dating show where using that
information that we created those characters into this actors were
kind of like improfit the things. She wanted an actor
in each group, and then after that it was a
news she was like news anchor interviewing somebody about this
different event. And that's gonna help me so much of
my writing, which I kept the papers. These are gonna
be really helpful for me when I'm writing, because knowing
motivations for characters and personalities even before you write the story,
Like we have a general basis of the idea for
the story, but this is going to really inform a
lot of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really interesting too. I've seen those those
character questionnaires before, but never framed in that same way,
and that's what I found really interesting. So yeah, that
was a great session. And there's there's just so many,
so many I'm just gonna flip through the schedule here
real quickly just to jog the old nog in here.
But I think one of my favorites so far was
just listening to Todd Bustyed kind of break down his
process and talk a little bit about his studio and
his story even which is extremely inspiring. Yeah, and yeah,
and you know, anybody who's ever interacted with him knows
he's just an all around great guy anyway, and so
it's just great to hear from him. But one of
the highlights and one of the essential components about this
whole event is how it's not just writers going to
the writing classes, and it's not just sound designers going
to the sound design classes. It's everybody's going to all
the classes. So we're all learning a little bit, at
least a rudimentary level about each of the elements of
good audio drama or great audio drama, as the event
is called, and so it makes us all better at
what we focus on, and so I love that. But
as part of that, one of the coolest things about
this event is how we have been working. We, as
in all of the attendees and teachers, have been working
on a single audio drama throughout the whole week. And
it is a script that John Thornoff drafted many years ago,
and it was never produced, and so we've taken through
the process of editing the script and then auditioning, and
then casting, and then recording, and then sound design and
then music composition, and then at the end of this
whole event, that finished short audio drama will be released
for everybody here and everybody listening to this podcast to
listen to for free, and so I think that's really cool.
It's gonna be posted on the Audio Drama Institute website.
Of course, we'll let you know when that goes live
because we're still in the process of it. So any
comments on that process. We started with the voice or
I'm sorry, we started with the edit process, the editing
and other scripts. So John wrote it and then he
let Phil Lawler and Kathy Buchanan give him notes and
then he would make those edits. So anything that stood
out to you so far about this whole process. They're
calling it a car wash audio drama because John likened
it to the process where there's a more modern auditor. Boy,
the brain is really not working those more modern car
washes where you go and pull up your car and
then you get out and watch it as it just
goes through the whole process of being cleaned and then
you know, dried and all that. So that's kind of
what we're doing, an assembly line audio drama here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I liked hearing the notes, but I've the script that
John hughes. I've been in some of his and Katie's
classes where that was used before. But seeing the changes
that were made and the back and forth on why
this works of what doesn't work or whatever. But yeah,
I think the most film was probably just the recording
for me the walla or the crowd recordings there with
the sheep, like the sheep bleeding, and then also seeing.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify it, that's bleeding, not bleeding.
Speaker 2: Bleeding. Yes, yes, a lot less violent, but yeah, and
then seeing Betsy Nicholson fellow Audreum Alliance member, she got
to do hands on foley making like the sound of
the sheep and the sheep getting ready to jump, and
then kay Lee actually I think the first time she
ever done foley make it sound like the hoofs as well,
and seeing that process and the camaraderie between the teachers
and the students. Yeah, it's been amazing so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that was really fun getting to record. That's
my first crowd session in a like a studio environment,
a pseudo studio environment. We're in a sort of a
little chapel here on the grounds. But you know, I've
done I've participated in walla recordings for other audio drums
over the years, but it's always been recorded in isolation.
A bunch of different pieces and then people put them
all together. So this is a the way they do
it in the in the real big productions like Odyssey
and things like that. So, yeah, that was a lot
of fun. And this script is hilarious. And we know
John can write humor. He's he's done it for years
and everything like that. But seeing the as you said,
the alterations that they suggested and just seeing the process
of you know, they're giving him notes, these are suggestions,
these are things we think can make it better. But
he can then go back as he's redrafting, editing, he
can make the decision whether to incorporate those things or not.
And maybe as he's incorporating one of those suggestions, he
might come up with another idea that goes along with it.
And so he comes up with at the end a
much better script. Right, And that's the whole point. We're
making great audio drama, not good or okay audio drama,
and we're doing it together exactly. Yeah, so I know
you're gonna love that. This is a it's a very
very funny script, Phil and even Oh so that was
the other thing too, the collaboration in the recording and
the directing. There were things that weren't necessarily in the script,
even though it had been revised and we had a
new draft and it was much better. There were things
that happened just organically in the recording that just enhanced
it even more.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, for sure. It was a lot of fun
and some running jokes and things like that that happened
that just led to even outside of the recording, that
some jokes that we were making outside of the recording.
I guess we're in the camp, but yeah, it was
It was a lot of fun to see that happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So obviously we've we've barely scratched the surface of
everything that has happened in these four fold days and
a partial fifth one. So we're gonna we're gonna reconvene
and we're gonna share a little bit more. An amazing
thing happened on Wednesday night, and that was a world
premiere of a brand new audio drama from Heart Matters.
We're not gonna tell you anywhere about it right now
because we want to get into it a little deeper,
and so we'll pick that up in our next recap,
and then we also want to tell you a little
bit about some of the interactions that we've had with
some the teachers and with some of our other attendees,
because it's been so rich in that regard.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's it's been absolutely worth the time and
effort and money to get here, and I'm glad it's
not over yet and looking forward to more great things happening.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So we will check back in with you soon.
It's just about time for dinner anyway, so we're gonna
have to wrap this up, but we're looking forward to
sharing a little bit more about this event with you
in the next recap. So stick around, and again, if
you've made it this far and you haven't checked out
previous episodes of the show, please dive into our back catalog.
Austin is a frequent guest on the show and shares
a lot of great well I mean, he's done reviews
with us over the years and just general conversations. Have
you ever done news updates, settlement or if you've done that,
Yeah that's right, yep, yep. So he's been a co
host frequently on here. So go check out something in
the back catalog and hopefully there'll be something there that
you enjoy. And hey, if you're an attendee from the
Audio Drama Institute making great Audio Drama event, checking out
ATC for the first time. Welcome, Please hit that subscribe button. Yep,
we'll talk to you next time.