The Future Is Now

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm excited to be writing our first blog post of 2010... for it is now The Future. And here in The Future, we humans may not have mastered the technology required for me to have that candy apple red hovercraft I've been wanting since age 8 -- but we have created a condenser microphone that looks a lot like a spaceship.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the best present I got for Christmas this year:


Is it not the most adorable thing you've ever seen? But since this is 2010, and therefore, The Future, I keep waiting for it to suddenly turn on and say something like: "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE."

Y'know... because if you flip it sideways, it kind of looks like this:


Which for you non-geeks out there who have no idea what I'm talking about, click here and put it on your Netflix queue. Or better yet, go to the library and get the book.

Anyhow, my good friend Eric knew that I wanted this microphone for the podcast, and he was sweet enough to get it for me. (Well, actually he got it for himself and is loaning it to me indefinitely. But that doesn't make it any less cool of a gift.) So thanks, Eric!

Jason and I got together for our first writing meeting of the new year last Sunday - and we christened the new microphone by recording a snippet of Episode 1 so I could start playing with adding sound effects and music. The result?

It wasn't as awful as it could have been.

I know, ringing endorsement, right? We're proving to be much better writers than actors... by a long shot. But we're definitely improving. And as I listen to other audio drama podcasts to hear what other folks in the podiosphere are doing, I have discovered that I am consistently willing to forgive a whole lot of bad acting if the story and production quality is really good. I hope our listeners are as generous. I've got a steep learning curve when it comes to putting the audio effects together - but I have access to some great resources and a whole lot of creative minds I can tap for help. What more could a girl ask for?

Maybe a recording studio in the basement? But barring that, I'm more than content with my adorable microphone that looks like a spaceship. All is right in my world.

Our first listener!

Against his will, Bob*, an unsuspecting patron at a Chicagoland Panera was subjected to the rough readthrough of Episode 2 last night. I watched Bob out of the corner of my eye as he craned his neck to see what crazy hijinks were happening two tables down. Bob tried a couple of times to put on his headphones, but decided against it and kept trying to hear what was going on. We weren't that loud. I wonder if his iPod had stopped working or something. Poor guy.

Three things are notable about Bob:
1. He seemed genuinely interested. Whether that interest was getting to hear the episode or trying to figure out a way to get us to shut up, I don't know.

2. Whatever his reasons, he did not run screaming from the restaurant. I'll consider that positive feedback.

3. He also didn't laugh at some seriously funny lines. I'm not sure what's wrong with Bob's sense of humor. Then again, he was a couple tables away. Maybe he really couldn't hear us. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What Bob might have heard, had he been really listening, was the readthrough we often do with a completed episode to check for timing. Episode 2 is a bit longer than some of the others, since we have to do quite a bit of setup in a short amount of time. (Jason has a little song that he sings when we write episodes like these... "Exposiiiiiiition!" That's really the only lyric, but he does jazz hands and everything. It's like he's looking for three other guys to join his barbershop quartet. It's cute in a sad sort of way.)

Bob would also have heard Jason reading Alex's lines, and me reading everyone else's... which in Episode 2 includes Viper, Olga, Klaus, Mags, and a brand-new character I just made up called Mr. Ranalli (who is named for my favorite pizza place.) Mr. Ranalli helps provide a little backstory and character development for Alex. "Exposiiiiition!" So Bob would have heard me having long conversations with myself, sometimes with a fake Russian accent and sometimes using the word "Dude!" excessively - and Jason interjecting a comment here and there.

I love it when we do readthroughs - particularly when I can get over my initial embarrassment about doing a silly Russian-ish accent in a public place. And you know? I think we're getting better not only at the writing, but the acting as well. Jason is going to rock at being Alex, and I'm not just saying that because I want him to finish up Epsiode 6. (Which I do, but that's beside the point.) It's really fun to listen to him "get" the character. We've known Alex for a while now. It stands to reason that his voice would become more and more familiar as we go.

Have I mentioned how much fun I'm having with this project? I totally am.

So thanks to Bob for being our first listener. Thanks to all seven of you readers for your patience as we work to complete this little hobby-project. And thanks to Panera for not kicking us out.


*Not his real name. Or maybe it is. I have no idea. I just think he looked like a guy who could easily have a name like Bob. His name could be Xerxes, for all I know.

Turkey, Rewrites, and a Donkey

What better way to climb out of a post-Thanksgiving turkey-coma than write a blog post? I hope all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a lovely one. I spent mine with about 40 of my closest relatives in Omaha. There were no Reubens present, but the food was still pretty fantastic, and I had a great time with the family. It's been a nice visit home.

In between waiting for pies to finish baking and turkeys to roast, I spent some time script-writing. Actually, if you want to get all technical about it, I was rewriting. And hoo boy... I guess one of the good things about taking so frickin' long to write the scripts for this show is that we were bound to improve as we went along. This is a good thing for the last half of the season, but it's almost embarrassing to read parts of the first couple of episodes. Part of it is that the story has shifted dramatically since we first started writing - in a good way, I think. But part of it was the fact that we didn't quite have the knack of this all-dialogue-all-the-time style yet.

I think we've managed to get the knack. Or at least borrow the knack from someone else who has it. Or maybe... never mind. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Suffice it to say that we get what we're doing now, and we're trying to get the first couple of scripts to reflect our new-found knowledge and experience.

Meanwhile, the search for recording equipment and sound effects continues. I think I have discovered the microphone brand I want to use, and I've been playing with sound editing a bit. Also, my nephew (who is four years old) told me today that he is excellent with sound effects. He demonstrated everything from a propeller plane to a donkey. The kid ain't bad. Makes me want to figure out how to include a donkey in Episode 6 just to be able to use him.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend everyone!

Wherein River admits she was wrong

Okay. I was wrong. I'll admit it. The podcast is funny.

Now that we're several scripts in and have a good chunk of the finale written, I have to admit - it's not nearly as serious as I thought it might be when I wrote this post. That's not to say that there aren't some poignant moments. We just wrote one this afternoon. But by-and-large, we're not taking ourselves all that seriously, and it's turning out to be... not a comedy, per se... but fun. Lots of fun.

At least for us. The jury is still out on the rest of you folks.

I'm also excited to report that we're nearing the home stretch with script-writing. We opted to jump ahead and write the finale, which is one of the best decisions I think we've made as a writing team. Having a stronger sense of how the story ends helps us make the rest of it better and more relevant. I'm finding myself much more motivated to finish editing Episode 2 now that I know where these original conversations and confrontations will ultimately lead.

We're also at a place where we can start weaving in other resources to help us make the show even better. I happen to live with an amateur-but-should-be-professional-because-he's-that-good composer, and he's agreed to start writing a soundtrack. (Yes!) Another good friend of mine is a former DJ and used to do a great radio sketch-comedy show a few years back. He's helping us with recording advice and equipment. It's good to have a well-rounded group of friends that we can exploit ... er... help them to express their creative gifts in new and interesting ways. That's it.

I have to admit, the last couple of writing sessions have really rekindled my excitement for this little project - and now that we're able to visualize the finish line, I'm totally psyched. More soon!


(Also, thank you for not mentioning the fact that our last blog post was in September. October was a rather busy month.)

Too wonderful not to post here...

I've been spreading this one around since I love it so much.

Rather than spend months trying to painstakingly work out a plot for the sequel to Season 1 of the podcast, I believe that Jason and I will just use the handy Electro-plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction 2000, described in Wondermark, one of my favorite web comics.

Besides, it will save us a few bucks on giant Post-it notes.

And just when I thought we couldn't get any lazier, a brilliant man named Liam Cooke designed an Automatic Fiction Generator.

So here's the plot for Season 2*:

“The Astrodroids”

In a leather-clad Japan, a young journeyman inventor stumbles across a magic diadem which spurs him into conflict with an army led by a sadist, with the help of a leather-clad female in shades and her discomfort in formal wear, culminating in a heroic sacrifice that no one will ever remember.

*(Hell, it might even be the plot to Season 1, if we don't get in gear and finish this sucker before 2017.)

Back to basics

As a writing team, River and I have a love-hate relationship with technology. Or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that technology has a love-hate relationship with us. Using Google Docs to share scripts and comments is pretty integral to our process, and certainly being able to look up an obscure fact about one of the Slavic gods in the middle of a writing meeting has allowed us to track down some very cool things about the story we're writing.

Of course, on the other hand...well. Let's just say that sometimes we can get hung up in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture. Like, y'know, the plot. So during a long car trip a few weeks ago, we decided that what we really needed was to put the plot down on paper without all the pretty flourishes (like the witty one-liners that we seem to excel at), so we could really see the gaps and what needed to be filled in. By mutual agreement, we vowed to leave the laptops out of this meeting, and to work with Post-It flip chart paper and markers instead, hoping to eventually end up with the whole story up on River's wall.

This conversation led me to a couple of observations:

1. It is probably rather telling that we hadn't done this already. That's not to say that we hadn't talked about the plot before, but the story has drifted quite a bit from our original discussions (mostly in good ways, I think) and we hadn't really updated our mutual expectations accordingly.
   
2. It says something about us that we were really excited by the idea of using the giant post-it notes and markers. I don't think this says anything particularly good about us, mind you, but it does say something.

So this meeting happened on Sunday afternoon, and armed only with giant our wits, giant paper and snacks, we accomplished quite a lot in 3 1/2 hours. In the next day or two, I'll post some photographic evidence. I have to say, my focus on this project is picking back up after a lot of happy distractions over the summer, and I'm feeling quite excited to get back to it!

Thunder and Cattle-Rustling

A few nights ago, Jason and I got together for our first writing meeting following our summer hiatus. Our break wasn't necessarily planned, but with Jason getting all married and stuff, it seemed like holding off on script-writing for a couple of months was a good idea. It felt great to get back in the swing of things... reacquainting ourselves with our characters while eating homemade pizza, doing a read-through for timing and remembering just how much we're going to have to practice before we record this sucker... I really enjoyed myself. It was enough to make me remember why I'm doing this in the first place - creative projects of any kind bring meaning to my life - and I've been blessed with several opportunities lately.

Enough of all that. It's time to talk about Slavic gods.

(Why yes, making smooth and relevant transitions is one of my primary talents. Thanks for noticing.)

We realized about halfway into the writing process that we needed to widen our scope a bit, and create more of an origin story for Alex, Uncle Fedyenka, Aunt Olga, and the rest of the characters that are tied up in this mess. Since our story centers around members of a Russian family and Jason and I both dig mythology - why not throw some old Slavic gods into the mix? Without going into too much detail about the plot, it just so happens that Russian myth sets us up very nicely for a battle between two warring factions.

Depending on who you ask, the head dude in Slavic mythology is generally agreed to be Perun. He's a thunder god, not unlike the Norse god Thor. Another striking similarity between Slavic and Norse mythology is the existence of a World Tree which holds all of the realms of reality in place. (The connection isn't all that surprising, considering the Russians and the Norse have similar roots.) Perun sits at the top of the tree as the ruler of the living world - sky and earth. He's often symbolized by an eagle that watches over everything.

Perun's enemy is Veles, a trickster god who is often symbolized by a dragon or serpent. He lives at the roots of the tree, aka, the underworld, and basically lives to piss Perun off. He loves to cause trouble by stealing Perun's cattle (you know, like you do), his children, or even his wife. Perun retaliates by trying to zap him with lightning bolts and thunder. I'm making light of what the Slavs saw as a big cosmic battle between two major forces - but that's basically how it went. When Christianity came to Russia, the battle between the Devil and God fit very nicely into this pre-made package.

The Wikipedia entries for Perun and Veles are a fun read - and there are plenty of other sources out there. If you're as much of a mythology geek as I am and want to read more, let me know, and I'll pass along a reading list.

As we did our research, it became more and more evident that this was the perfect backdrop for our story. We're working on weaving in elements of the battle between Perun and Veles, as well as this idea of a World Tree that holds reality in place. There are so many different cultures that identify with a World Tree, why does there have to be just one? What if reality was held in place by a sort of cosmic orchard of World Trees? What if you could get to one through that storage closet in your basement? And what if you suddenly found yourself in charge of keeping it safe and unsullied by mortal desires? You might see where this is going.

The story is getting really fun to write - particularly as we near the end and have to tie all the loose ends together. And seriously... Slavic gods? What could be more fun than that?