Learn Audio Fiction with Fred
HOLY MOLY IT’S THE LAST CLASS! We talk about the final touches on a distribution mix, the differences between mixing and mastering, how to package up your show for distribution, and some 101 on distribution and marketing a podcast.
Now go out and make some great audio fiction!!!
Week 4! We dig into the art of sound design and some more advanced dialogue editing/processing techniques
PRO TIP – NEVER NEVER plug/unplug a USB device while a recording is ‘hot.’ … you’ll see I almost blow up the whole class by trying to do that on this video, ha… the webcam was plugged into a USB hub, I thought it would be fun to show you how I dig through SFX on my libraries, which are all stored on a USB hard drive… well, my Mac didn’t like when I plugged in that new device and the webcam glitched and I nearly crashed the call. Luckily it managed to keep recording (whew!) and I was able to carry on via mobile, but I very easily could have ruined everything. So, see, I’m just trying to make all of these mistakes in realtime to remind you that everyone screws things up and to help you avoid some of the (just about all that are available for options) mistakes I’ve made over the years…
Ambient Reverb Bus chain tutorial (actually figured it out this time). This is the more advanced but EXTREMELY POWERFUL technique of sending dialogue and SFX submixes off to Ambient-Land to be acoustically treated as various locations.
Soapbox – setting up reverb chain – Reaper
Sound design tips using Reaper
Soapbox – Sound Design in Reaper – some tips
some useful websites as you start your SFX and music journey! the internet is FULL of lists and recommendations, so this is really just a starting place:
Week 3! We talk about directing and recording a show the basics of audio editing, an introduction to Reaper and Audacity, and what a dialogue edit looks.
Recording Session “The Bloody Mess”
Soapbox – Dialogue 102 with Fred, Part 1
Soapbox – Dialogue 102 with Fred, Part 2
Some Additional Recommended Listening:
This is not even a start at scratching the surface of stuff you should check out, but here are a few shows I’ve been thinking about recently that do some interesting mix-ups of the way story is told
HUNGRY EARTH – decadent single narrator program with SFX and music underscore, from real-world location in south of England
https://soundcloud.com/
TRACKS – a mind-bending, complex layered conspiracy thriller
https://www.bbc.co.uk/
JANUS DESCENDING – Nonlinear cosmic horror tale set in space. Oh yeah, it’s fun!
https://www.nosuchthingradio.
PASSENGER LIST – One of the break-out fiction hits of the last year, which does a lot of really interesting things in the way it unveils the narrative
https://passengerlist.org/
BRAIN CHEMISTRY – A cryogenically-frozen man is revived in the future, to a world that is not quite what he expected. THE TRUTH show is consistently awesome and changes up format a lot, this one does some really neat things with POV and tells a story in a way that you really only can do in audio…
http://www.thetruthpodcast.
More resources for the radio history junkies:
I sent some resources to someone who was interested in more of the academic track understanding the emergent audio fiction scene — honestly these all need a post 2015 update but for earlier background this is some good stuff… thought I’d share with y’all
Scriptwriting II, of casting calls, recording, and other fun stuff
You’ll learn:
Week 1! Intro to Audio Fiction, radio drama history, audio scriptwriting 101
Welcome to Audio Fiction with Fred!
In the first week’s course, we cover:
ALL OF THIS IS OPTIONAL. If you see something that jazzes you, go for it. No pressure. Most of these are picked for their relevance in the grand history of radio and illustrating production techniques over time.
Radio Drama Revival – The modern audio fiction scene is thriving! For some more contemporary examples of great work out there, surf RDR, with over 500 (!) episodes over 13 years, there’s something for everyone! – http://radiodramarevival.com/
Celtx – There are many ways to make a radio script. While various distributors have preferences, I don’t believe there is a ‘right’ format. The script is really just a blueprint, what matters is the thing you build out of the component parts.
I prefer to use a screenplay-style for my scripts, and I’ll discuss my philosophy about what to put in an audio script in my course.
While I use Final Draft software, Celtx offers a very similar suite of features with a Free basic plan, which is pretty great.
Springhole (Idea Generator) – https://www.springhole.net/
Sample Script – THE BLOODY MESS. This very silly story gives you a walkthrough of all of the elements of a short audio script and wraps up in 7-8 minutes, so it’s roughly the same scope of what I’m hoping students will be able to create with me in this course. In fact, as a learning process for myself I’ll be creating a new version of this show myself during our work together. The story structure of BLOODY MESS is pretty straightforward, but as we’ll discuss in the class, audio offers the ability to really mess with time, point of view, storyteller, and narrative structure.
Download “The Bloody Mess” (PDF)
Bloody Mess - FINAL-2020-4-28
Here are a sampling scripts from Fred’s early works that are available for use to record, produce, and release on the internet for educational and non-commercial use. The only requirement is that any productions you release publicly have a reference to my name (Fred Greenhalgh) and reference back to this website (www.finalrune.com).
My twitter handle is @finalrune and you can find me on other social media sites with the same handle. I would love to hear what you use and remix!
The War on PovertyIn a back back back door meeting in the White House, the President and his most trusted advisors discuss a new conflict which is unavoidable, absolutely essential to America (at least insofar as justifying the ballooning Department of Defense budget).
This new conflict, nay, War, will be a War fought against one of the most pervasive ills that has cursed civilization since the beginning. A War on… Poverty.
Created for the UMA Audio 319 class for the spring of 2010. Project page: The War on Poverty.
Download script “The War on Poverty” (PDF)
the war on poverty
Download script, “The Bloody Mess” (PDF)
Bloody Mess - FINAL-2020-4-28
Download script, “A Drink Before the Dark”
Drink_Before_The_Dark
Download script, “Santa, Inc.”
Santa_Inc
Download script, “Big Chief’s Stimulus”
The_Stimulus
Download script, “Jimmy Heart and the Story Girl”
Mystery-TheStoryGirl
A dark retelling of the myth of Orpheus inspired by the classic jazz tune “St James Infirmary.” A man in New Orleans is doomed to keep falling in love with the same woman and seducing her to her death.
Part of the 2009 Live Halloween Radio Drama with WMPG.
Download script, “Losing You is Hell” (PDF)
Leaving_you_is_hell_FORPROD
Two teenage friends start scaring each other on the drive to a dismal “haunted” house on the coast of Maine. But when their innocent fun starts to become all too real, they soon realize what true terror is. A nod to Stephen King in a tale inspired by a true story too haunting to forget.
Project page: Dark Passenger
Download script, “Dark Passenger” (PDF)
Dark Passenger
Sir Grace was the most valiant of all knights, decked in glorious armor that glowed in the sun and a record of dragon-slaying and maiden saving on par with none. But a battle with a renowned wizard with ambiguous ambitions forces Sir Grace to consider things he never imagined, and face his greatest enemy yet: himself.
Project page: Fall of the Hero
Download script, “Fall of the Hero” (PDF)
Fall of the Hero
Welcome to Williamsville, where tradition and routine dictate the ebb and flow of life. Yet, Williamsville is not without its stories… How do one repressed arsonist, a sexually-charged geriatric, a slimy drug dealer and a soccer mom on steroids combine in the most exciting thing to happen in Williamsville since 1936? Starring a cast of talented and twisted University of Southern Maine students.
Project page: Tales from Williamsville
Download script, “Tales from Williamsville” (PDF)
Tales from Williamsville
The unconventional Christmas story of a business man whose life is changed by a random encounter with a stranger. Narrated by the ineffable John Coons.
Project page: Drizzle
Download script, “Drizzle” (PDF)
Drizzle
A chilling audio horror story: A young man’s joyride one October night turns into a hell he could never imagine. Originally published in Blue Murder Magazine.
Project page: Blind Man’s Confession
Download script, “Blind Man’s Confession” (PDF)
Blind Man's Confession
Published in February of 2020, Of Fae & Fiends is my most personal work to-date, which is a bit odd to say given the fact that it’s a faerie tale.
The story evolved from various walks my daughter Nyana (7 at the time) and I would go on in the woods, and the prompt “Dada, tell me a story,” which at some point became hooked on a large, moss covered boulder behind our home, and the possibility that underneath it was a tunnel to a fantastic world beyond. It all kind of spiraled out from there.
When we got to the production process, we (longstanding collaborator Bill Dufris and I) decided to do it in our emerging “Studio-Location Hybrid Style” which we pioneered in The Dark Tome, Season 2.
All of the scenes in the realm of Fae were recorded in our world-class audio drama studio located at William Dufris’s Mind’s Eye Productions facilities in South Portland. This allows us to record everything clean and to polish it in post-production and have fun with weird creature voices and other effects.
All of the scenes in the “real” world were recorded at my friend Jeremy Kasten’s farmhouse in Berwick, Maine, which was as perfect a set as you could imagine for this show. We stopped short of trying to train one of Jeremy’s goats to work in the show, but otherwise our location was pretty much identical to what the script called for.
Some people may think it’s a tremendous amount of work to do it like this, especially when we have a perfectly good studio to work with, but there is nothing quite like the sound of — for example — speeding down a country road, twisting onto dirt, slamming a car into park and bursting out yelling into a great big field.
An audio drama is only as good as the sum of its component parts.
That starts with the script itself, which — while I’m biased — I think is very strong. I tried to harken back to works I love (Neil Gaiman’s memory that childhood is a terrifying place, and the sharpness with which 1800s faerie tales are told) while also subverting and adding to the fantasy genre. This is not a ‘black and white’ world, Faerie is multi-colored and vibrant, weird in the best way possible and the script remembers that monsters are always the hero in their version of the story.
And this cast – WOW! – we had an extraordinarily strong response to our first casting call and put together an incredible mix of talent, inclusive of returning close collaborators, as well as a number of performers we’d never worked with before.
One of the last projects I ever worked on with William Dufris. And it was a good one!
I could keep on going… The production itself has a strange magical energy to it in that the news was just breaking that Bill Dufris’s cancer had returned, and Bill had to limit his involvement due to physical restraints (like, his body couldn’t do it, not that we had to put Bill in a straight-jacket or anything). Bill makes a few brilliant cameo performances in the show, and when he’s in it, he’s IN – larger than life, the Bill Dufris that everyone know and loves, that steals fire from the gods, that has a consistent record of doing things that people tell him are impossible.
The final stage to this – MUSIC and SOUND EFFECTS. As of this writing, we’re still deep in this process, but we had the pleasure of working with Rory O’Shea, who did sound design for LOCKE & KEY and last year’s HOMEFRONT, and Peter Van Riet, the Belgian-based composer who has created music for our projects LOCKE & KEY, A JOURNEY WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, and THE DARK TOME. Finally! We committed to underscoring the entire show, and brought on Frank Schulmeyer (a friend of Bill’s from the London days).
All of this is a way of saying… Don’t miss this show!
Creative talent runs in the Greenhalgh family! The amazing cover art above was developed by my cousin Bethany. See her artwork on Instagram.
Lizzie (Marie Lane), 10, visits her family’s ancestral farmhouse in Maine, and discovers that the woods behind the house contain an amazing secret: a gateway into the mystical land of Faerie.
Yet, a dark cloud looms over the horizon of this fantastic land: Lizzie’s Great-Uncle Carlow (Peter Berkrot), has corrupted the goblin kingdom and plans to conquer all of Fae, and then move into our world unless Lizzie and some unlikely friends — a talking goat (Dustin Tucker) and a swordfighting weasel (Ella Mock) — friends can stop him.
Stitcher Premium exclusive – use code FIEND for free month, or code CARLOW for discount on a year’s subscription
Fred Greenhalgh surveys audio fiction mic technique – mono, stereo, binaural – at Podtales 2019 in Boston, MA.
It was an honor to have Dagaz Media be invited to the inaugural Podtales conference in Boston to offer a workshop on microphone technique. Our goal with the workshop was to bring some gear into the room and illustrate that microphone choices are the audio fiction equivalent of paint brushes, or camera lenses. Microphones all have unique properties and there rarely is a ‘wrong’ choice — just different choices that vary depending on the context, resources available to the creator, and subject matter / tone of their piece.
Too often, I see creators whose mic choices are limited to the most basic USB audio interfaces… And while that’s an OK way to get started, I would like to encourage us all to dream bigger, and also make the argument that it’s really not cost-prohibitive to try out some more interesting ways to record (e.g. YES while you can spend $2,500 on mics in a heartbeat, you can also record stereo and binaural with rigs that are well under $500, with incredible results).
I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with some extremely kind, generous, and amazingly talented mentors in the audio fiction space and seen that there is no wrong way to do any of this, just a myriad selection of RIGHT ways. You can record on location. You can record in the studio – with actors looking at each other… Or not. Or even, dare I say it, when actors aren’t in the same place at the same time (though I personally dislike this approach to recording, I think it’s possible to execute well especially if you put some work into ensuring there is some modicum of consistency across recording environments and record the actors in real-time together).
This piece is not intended to be an exhaustive breakdown of every kind of way that an audio drama can be recorded, but more to illustrate from how moving beyond basic functional recording setup allows us to think about mic technique as a creative tool to employ, rather than technical obstacle to overcome.
High-level, we explore three different ways to record a show:
“Bill and Freds Audio Adventures” was a term coined by the team at Audible Studios who we worked with on Locke & Key and The X-Files audio dramas!
You’ll see me jump around a lot between I/me and We/our in this piece. The workshop at Podtales was sponsored by Dagaz Media, which is the parent audio company formed by me and audio co-conspirator and dear friend, William (Bill) Dufris, as Dagaz Media. Bill was not able to make it to Boston for our workshop due to medical reasons, but he generously lent a bunch of microphones from his studio so that we could pull the workshop off, and also has been instrumental in iterating on the various recording methods over the years we’ve worked together — Locke & Key, The Dark Tome, The X-Files, Expeditionary Force: Homefront. When you see we/our I’m talking about the results of my professional collaboration with Bill / Dagaz Media, when you see I/me it’s a Fred Greenhalgh personal opinion… And if the two occasionally seem to bleed into each other, it’s only because Bill is such a close collaborator it’s hard to tell who is who and which is which sometimes!
There is quite a lot to dig into here beyond just a blog entry and some clips. We decided to ‘open source’ one of the original session files from Dark Tome as well as all providing the raw audio from Podtales, so you can really get a sense of how the cake is baked!
See this Dropbox folder to download the resource kit: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop
Including:
In-depth breakdown of the various mic’ing techniques and why I chose to illustrate them for PodTales:
Multi mic mono recording set-up in a professional studio
Perhaps the most obvious way to record a group of actors is to give each actor their own microphone and have them read their lines into it. Within this model there are still about a bazillion decisions to be made… e.g. shotgun vs. cardioid microphones, how do you orient the actors in the space with one another, or even do you try and break the actors apart entirely (e.g. Big Finish for all of their dramas records in a unique studio where actors have their own booths).
My personal take is that it’s really nice for actors to have sightline with one another so that they can see and respond to the other actors within a scene. We like to get the actors to physically act out a performance as much as possible – so even though movement is limited by this approach (e.g. if actors wander off-mic that’s generally a problem) we still want to see them express some of the physical aspects of their performance even when stationary so that the sense of movement is captured. We also generally instruct actors to continue to be ‘in the scene’ even when they don’t have lines… e.g. there will be little bits of reactions, overlaps, etc. when an actor is still in the scene and hearing another person’s lines, even if something isn’t scripted. These noises risk sounding campy so you also need to temper that with the direction ‘less is more.’
From a technical perspective, what you get are nice clean tracks which you can do a lot with in post. You can orient and re-orient actors in the stereo field using stereo panning or even binaural plugins. You can also much more easily splice together parts of takes, so if an actor fluffed their line in one take, you might be able to fix it with another take. Also, especially if you use a tight shotgun mic with limited room pickup pattern, you can endure slightly less ideal recording conditions since the mics may forgive a boxier or boomier room.
Anyhoo, here’s our cast running through this Dark Tome scene on multiple mono Mics:
Pros of Multi-Mic:
Cons of Multi-Mic:
This photo from the FinalRune ‘classic’ archives shows us on location with the RODE NT-4 during one of our early works (William Dufris playing a troll impacted by suburban sprawl). Our original ‘blimp’ set-up consisted of a pencil case, feather boa, and paint roller, held together with an ingenius series of rubber bands!!!
Another way of recording actors in studio, or on location, is to enter the world of stereo. Many BBC dramas are recorded this way, and… actually for masterful effect see this clip of Dirk Maggs producing a scene for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where you see both multi-mic and stereo mic technique used in a single clip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061m3yq
The advantage of Stereo is multi-fold.
First, you can start working with staging actors and action. i.e. a scene involves two actors grappling with one another, you can actually have them doing that. It also works really well when you have a whole crowd of voices and you want to convey that sense of breadth and depth in a scene. Actors coming in/off mic almost always sounds more convincing when recorded in stereo than when you try to achieve that effect in post.
Of course, to suggest that ‘stereo’ is a single thing, is completely incorrect. There are myriad ways to record stereo tracks and pros and cons for each respective technique. For purposes of this workshop, I chose to use the RODE NT-4 microphone, a rather unique microphone that offers X-Y stereo recording in a matched pair mounted onto a single body microphone.
The RODE NT-4 is a workhorse of a microphone… I’ve used it extensively mostly for location recording, going back to the very first we did (Dark Passenger) and then for Waiting for a Window and The Troll of Stony Brook before going on to use it for Seasons 1 and 2 of The Cleansed.
While a relatively bulky mic, the RODE NT-4 sounds delightful and can be utterly convincing on location. Its bulk, however, does make it a bit more clunky to carry around and more subject to handling noise than our current rig, the Sanken CSS-5. In studio, of course, this is not so much an issue!
There is a whole workshop just on effectively using stereo — e.g. mono compatibility, X-Y vs. M-S vs. ORTF vs. other methods, mic placement, etc. — but in short this can be a really interesting way to get convincing, life-like performances captured with an economy of effort IF you have great source material to begin with.
It should be noted that several common prosumer recorders– The Zoom H1n, H2n, H4n, H5, and H6 for example — ship with X-Y stereo recording built-in mics out of the box.
Pros of Stereo Recording:
Cons of stereo recording:
Binaural Mic (3Dio)
Binaural can work TERRIFICALLY well when recording crowd sounds and other weird vocal effects. Here’s Dagaz Media co-founder Bill Dufris leading a bunch of screaming children in a foray around the microphone.
Binaural recording is a specific method of stereo recording deserving of its own section because of its novelty and unique opportunities for creative expression.
A binaural recording is stereo – two mic capsules – but the unique part about it is that the mic capsules are omni-directional, and placed in a dummy head or similar housing that mimics the human ear canal. The magic trick accomplished by recording in this manner, is that recordings that are captured in binaural, when played back in stereo, using headphones, will sound 3-dimensional.
It’s a little hard to really convey what it means to hear in 3-dimensions using only two channels (Left and Right) so you best listen on to the following clips to see what I’m talking about. Or, to really freak yourself out, check out this production of STICKS by ZBS which was recorded in Binaural.
If the results of Binaural are so cool, why isn’t it more common?
Well, the trouble with this form of recording is that as soon as the mix is played back on loudspeakers (rather than headphones), the 3d effect is completely eliminated. Worse, because of the sonic phenomenon called ‘feathering,’ there is phase cancellation of the stereo playback which results in dialogue and other effects sounding kind of weird. So, what is a gorgeous, beautiful, and immersive mix on headphones, can end up sending like crap when played back on speakers. Bummer!
As mentioned above, there have been some really interesting experiments with 3d audio over the years (Stephen King’s THE MIST in 3d sound by ZBS is a classic!!!) but because of the desire for mixes to sound OK on speakers, and no practical way to offer separate mixes for separate contexts, it’s remained a fairly fringe recording technique… though it’s currently enjoying a bit of a resurgence. Check out works by The Truth and The Owl Field.
While the mic used in this demo is fairly price ($1,299) you can get more affordable earbud-style binaural mics if you just want to play around. What happens if you hang out in the subway with binaural mics in your ears instead of earbuds? What crazy weird things might you hear in the woods, or on the beach?
Pros of Binaural recording:
Cons of Binaural recording:
As a fun experiment, KC Wayland had us try spinning a binaural mic while chanting in Latin… It was hella creepy!
To speak to the ‘let’s try some weird stuff’ side of this all, let’s talk about how you do creative things with mic placement… as in this idea that KC Wayland had us try out at Podtales!
Here, we took the binaural mic, spun it around and around and around in circles while KC chanted in Latin. Ummmm yeah… you just gotta kinda hear it for yourself!
*** NOTE: As we said above, this effect only really works well on headphones, ideally high-quality ones in a quiet environment. This is NOT the average listening environment of today’s podcast listener, but dangit, can’t audiophiles get stuff made for them, too?!?! ***
Go forth, make cool stuff, and let me know how it pans out!!! And don’t miss the Dropbox full of goodies for digging deeper into this, link back at the top.
I even included the entire mix of the original Dark Tome episode, inclusive of sound design and music mix, which gives you an idea how one of my finished shows comes together (this one has a hybrid of field-recorded primary dialogue that dissolves into studio recordings when we transition from our world to hell through a demonic portal).
Don’t forget to jump over to Dropbox and grab the resource kit that goes with this, so you can hear all the differences in clips yourself, and even better, break apart the ProTools session and see how one of these shows is made!
Dropbox link: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop
In addition to ‘collections’ (See “Modern Radio Drama”) there is now a broad “Fiction” Category in Apple Podcasts — allowing shows to take themselves out of “Performing Arts” and be findable in a customized space for fiction shows.
It’s a fantastic day for audio fiction podcasts in Apple Podcasts (still far and away the most important discovery and listening platform for these shows).
See the new category listing here: ApplePodcasts.com/Fiction
For many years, a common complaint amongst fiction podcasts — spanning the range from full fledge radio drama/audio drama to narrative-based, single or multi-voiced productions — was that there wasn’t a sufficient ‘home’ for these shows.
Under the previous category structure in Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), most shows awkwardly listed themselves under “Performing Arts” or perhaps “TV/Film” — odd, because most shows in these categories were actually shows ABOUT these subjects (e.g. Game of Thrones recap podcasts) vs. original content in and of themselves.
There is a long and ongoing conversation about the importance of category labels vis-a-vis discoverability, but suffice to stay it’s still important. Many people use Apple Podcasts to find new shows — especially since it became a standalone app in 2012 — and so the choices that Apple makes are important. Further, since Apple still drives ~80% of podcast traffic, their choices set the tone for how other indexes work, and hopefully we’ll see other podcast listing services adopt a dedicated category for fiction podcasts soon.
Nearly all of the major podcasting services have introduced compatibility for the new categories [see: Apple’s take on podcast hosts], and it’s pretty intuitive on how to change the category of your show… which you should do immediately.
I personally use Spreaker, you’ll find this option under the ‘RSS Customization’ section. Just look for the new ‘Fiction’ category, and use one of the sub-categories — Drama, Comedy, or Science-Fiction — if relevant for your show:
These new categories have been spotted in the wild as of early August, 2019, so don’t delay!
This new update is a pretty quick ‘win’ for categorizing your show properly and making sure it is found (and competing for chart placement) in the correct location.
A few general best practices around marketing your show remain true: