Imagination Lane

Imagination Lane is a collaborative production that was created St. Patrick's Day, 2008 as a creative venue for Alexa Chipman and Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard. Since that time, Woodard has mostly moved on to her own production company Gypsy Audio but still remains as a voice actor. The main crew list has grown to include Michael Hudson and James Smagata in post production and voice acting and Antonia Gottesman who provides music as well as her own acting chops.
 IL by their own Mission Statement provides "original family friendly audio plays and short stories with a historical emphasis. It is run by very few rules and no pressured release deadlines" and includes among its offerings- Amarna- The Adventures of Sophie Roberts, H.M.S. Lydia, Night at the Ballet, Saxonboc, Single Audios (a collection of Audio Shorts), and Tom Crean- Sailor on Ice. 


Website
Imagination Lane has, hands down, my favorite looking website for any audio drama company out there. It is simply a beautifully, measured, web site that does not cram you with links, and yet provides you with exactly what you need. There are gorgeous pictures of various "lanes" in each section you turn to, and steady, masterfully design color schemes. The home page allows you between About, Shows, Join, and Actors. Despite their mission statement, Imagination Lane gives a link of  Tentative Release Schedule (Although I would have placed it under the "Shows" category instead of the "Actors" section that is a minor detail). All the shows are rated as per the new Audio Drama Rating System (which marks many of them as "Parental Guidance" making one wonder if the "family friendly" remarks in the Mission Statement section might need to be amended as well?)
All elements of the seasons are represented in IL in their website and for this clear and beautifully simply design which is not at all like the standard wordpress themes, IL's website is a complete experience. Rating 5/5


Audio Drama Type-Theater/Modern Audio Book
IL is centered around first character and then story. The theater seems to be a secondary consideration in many of the shows I've heard. Many of the episodes reflect an older kind of storytelling, as their mission statement says, and this can provide both a nostalgic look at where we've been and an education upon some interesting historical roots of words and terms.
My biggest complaint are to the stories they tell in audio book format.
Imagine watching a television show in which two characters are standing in the backyard. One is sawing away at a piece of wood while the other engages him in conversation. 
"I'm sawing this wood," the one person says.
The other continues the conversation.
"Look at me saw this wood," the man replies again.
And so it goes.
This is how annoying it is to have prose described through sound effects. It's a terrible practice and I'm not sure who began it. I know it is used in the industry primarily in children's audio books for the same reason as they would right a television scene to over-explain to a child what is going on.
Tee Morris has done it in his novels as have others in an attempt to engage their audience with all the audio tricks of the trade, and it must stop.
Nothing throws someone out of a story more quickly than having the narration of a story read:
She opened the door, and ran across the wooden floor in her heels
Only to have the exact same thing occur in sound effects just after or during the narration!
This occurs in all the fiction of Imagination Lane and it tramples on the story every single time. If you're going to produce an audio drama of a story, then please make it an audio drama. If you must tell the story as an audio short story or novel then go no further than adding in mood music and multiple voice actors- if you feel the compulsion to "add" to story.


Acting Types: Amateur
The acting is varied in Imagination Lane but is unfortunately usually varies from moderate to poor- part of this problem can certainly be through direction of the lines, and partly through production. Producer/Directors seem to be at a loss as to how to get the most from their actors in many companies, although thankfully in most of the shows I've listened to there are few "over emoting" actors. 
I get the feeling from listening however, that there are some words that have been underlined in the script and the actor, in trying to emphasize the word does so in the most unnatural of ways.
I have not listened to all the productions yet, and individual shows will have their own rating, but as a guideline I would give Imagination lane a Rating 2.5/5

Production Type- Minimal
The production sequences I've heard in Imagination Lane are not good. Actors have varying recording abilities and sound very clearly so. Hiss and echo plague the show like waspish imps. Sound effects sound mechanical and at some times poorly chosen. Sound effects need to be the illustration of an audio drama and they only provide in driving the listener from the story and the actions. Character voices often have that "ping-pong" effect where one person has the dialog than another. They do not overlap as natural conversation does. The voices remain clearly as uninterested or as divested in the story as we have become.
One of the shining spots in IL's production is its music however. While the Christmas party episode's use of music sounded artificial after a while, most shows find really effective music to bring out the emotion of a scene or the setting of the story. The Celtic ballads seem to especially work in the historical performances.
Rating 1.5/5

Writing
 IL's writing mostly comes from Alexa Chipman and is indicative of many of the differences between male and female preferences. The stories are usually character based with situations focusing on what characters would do if placed in one circumstance or another. There's a high proportion of romantic stories both in the classical nature and in a kind of sentimental attachment to what the past provided for romance. Men perform for the approval and attention of women (see the party seen in Gaia's Voyages by Elaine Barrett for a perfect example of this), and while this is infinitely more entertaining than the typical male version of this "woman falls for the man just cuz", it still tends to come across as more wish-fulfillment than gritty truth of characters.
The tempo of Imagination Lane's writing is different than other stories, and it's hard not to appreciate the attention to historical detail, Ms. Chapman provides.
Rating 2/5

Additional Notes
One thing that I think is direly needed by audio companies that Imagination Line provides is a single feed that provides all their shows. Broken Sea, Pendant Audio, and Darker Projects do not have this and I think it's a mistake. Separate feeds are good as a rule, but a single feed brings a bigger audience to all the shows. As a listener if I subscribe to a single feed that provides multiple stories it is like having my own network cable to that production company. What would be even better is if there were an introductory voice welcoming the listener. Something like, "Hi, I'm Alexa Chipman and you're listening to Imagination Backroads, this week we've got Saxon boc coming right up, and after that an episode of the Ballet." End off each episode telling folks what they can expect in the next episode, and separate portions with promos for other shows in your line up. If Broken Sea did this with all their Thursday release shows, they would certainly get more people listening to their new series and keeping up with favorite ones.


Over All Rating
Ms. Chipman appears in many different places. She has written for Misfits Audio and continues her series Maudelayne on Broken Sea Productions. She has appeared as an actress in at least a half dozen other companies and is a regular contributor to such shows like The Sonic Society. It bears mentioning that in the revitalization of Modern Audio Drama, Ms. Chapman has been a strong, leading voice. But perhaps she has let her enthusiasm overrun her abilities as many of us do. It would be so much more rewarding for the listening audience if Ms. Chipman focused her talents in Imagination Lane and took to producing the unique audio dramas that only IL provides. If she took the time to improve her production and took a strong editor's pen to her stories, as well as directed better acting bits, IL could end up being one of the top rated shows in the modern audio drama arena. Currently, its a fun collaboration and maybe that's all the Imagination Lane crew are shooting for.
Rating 2/5