Audio Drama Review

The Importance of Spaces

2011-06-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

With the weather much nicer in Spring I've been walking and listening a whole lot more often. At the behest of Ms. Julie Hoverson, I've been working on going through the back catalog of 19 Nocturne Blvd of and on for over a year now, and I expect at some point to have an initial review of that company.
But one thing that I have noticed 19 Nocturne and many other shows are bad about, is silence or rather spaces.

I'm not speaking about the silence within a scene. Those are difficult judgments and often change the tempo and tone of an audio drama.
Instead I'm speaking about a very simple fix of placing 2-3 seconds of silence as a space before commercial breaks.
We've all watched a particular compelling television show or movie on the TV only to be jarred by an abrupt cut to a television commercial. This not only slaps the viewer in the face of "remember this is just a story" but it also makes it much more difficult to set one's attention back into the story when the promo is over.

Some companies, (19 Nocturne and Icebox Radio come to mind) provide promos in between the acts of their plays. What makes the difference as to how effective they are is how they work their transitions. Icebox, for example often drops in a simple notifier "Icebox Radio will be right back..." reminder to help set expectations. Other companies fade the scene to silence for a couple of seconds to allow a smoother transition. Either way is much more preferable than launching into a completely different topic without any transitory splices.
Remember, your job is to keep your listeners hooked, not sell them products. If your promos take time out of the impact of your play by being just as brassy, you'll probably lose listeners as a result.
Use silence, and more importantly, spaces to your advantage. Leave a good two-three second silence between acts and a three to four second silence at the end of a particularly poignant show. Give listeners time to process your amazing works!

The Best of All Awards

2011-06-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

This reviewer's "Bleeding Ear" Award for the worst Audio Drama of the Year has certainly brought a lot of mixed reviews itself. While I have, unfortunately, another winner this year for the BEA, I'm most excited to proclaim, that a previous winner Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind, is no longer even a contender.
When I heard this gem coming up on the Sonic Society's stealthily marketed 250th Episode, I admit to being more than a little reticent. Even after the Review on Radio Drama Revival by the mysterious Captain Radio, I wasn't sure what I was in for.
What I discovered was a fantastic tale in The Swamp! This feature is 44 minutes (just the right length in my opinion for an "hour long" episode) and displays a mature Director's hand. Tanja Milojevic has almost instantly with this one feature moved from being talented actress to a triple threat that would make any production earn a gold star for working with her. Ms. Milojevic's instincts in horror and the youth come together in this well crafted tale. The writing moves the plot at a perfect pace and provides just enough characters to tell the story without losing the audience. Ms. Milojevic's use of theme and mythic allusion is startlingly rich and the ending resounds leaving the listener impacted and thoughtful well beyond the credits.

Ms. Milojevic's acting is perhaps the most natural in modern audio amateur acting today. Her scream is terrifyingly real. Her voice is magnetic (She could read the phone book and entrance you) and her instincts to move through differing emotions are effortless. Ms. Milojevic doesn't perform the role of Rachel- she inhabits the character. A real treat!
The rest of the cast are equally good and varied. Richard plays a believable young attractive man and the demon switching emotional cues smoothly. Cary Ayers is a perfect choice for both the detective and Rachel's uncle and provides a counterpoint of maturity in the cast of voices but everyone comes across at just the right tempo to bring this horror to a boil.
The production is measured and even as well, and the music comes across as an inspired choice of mostly ambient tunes to provide deeply moody contrasts.

I went to the Lightning Bolt website and found it vastly improved and revamped. So much so that I didn't recognize it from it's earlier incarnations.
The transformation of Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind is breathtaking. If this episode is any example of their new sound, move over everyone LBT is quickly rising to the heights of best new modern audio company out there.
My personal congratulations to Ms. Tanja Milojevic and all who are involved. This Most Improved Award belongs to you!

Too Clever By Half

2011-06-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Too Clever By Half is the term we use when we speak about someone using their intelligence as a weapon.
It's especially hard to manage in a story and painful to listen in an Audio Drama.
Too many writers- who are for all intents and purposes very intelligent beings- wield their intelligence like a sledge hammer when they should be dicing small vegetables of wisdom with a paring knife.

I'm pointing this out today because in the last month of listening to audio drama I find that there's been several audio shows that have overworked their cleverness. Here is a brief list of how smarts can get you smarting.
A. Language- Inappropriate use of four dollar words.
Some writers write very complex and ultimately deleterious dialog for their characters that comes across unrealistic and counter to the character's personality and background. I'm not suggesting a writer lowers their writing abilities. Rather I would recommend that writers spend some time in coffee shops listening to how people speak, and vary those styles based upon the elements they create for their characters.
B. Plots- Overwriting a plot can hurt you in two different ways- losing your plot in the mud and over-explaining your reveals.
The mud soaked plot sees the characters track so much in the story that everything sticks to them. There are a thousand unanswered riddles, side plots, and tangents that the writer has included to try to keep the listeners guessing. This only confuses them completely to the point of giving up.
A writer who over-explains their plot suffers the opposite. Let the listener put two and two together, or at least give them the opportunity to go the last 25% of the way. Hint the solution, or state it simply but do not spend a long time explaining anything that becomes instantly clear when it is revealed.
C. Superfluous Exposition- Stifle the inner professor.
This has been the most egregious of sins in the Two Clever by Half book of wrongs. Too many stories have what feels to be an adjunct to the plot. A character will state an archaic term, or a political representation, and then proceed (unnecessarily so) to explain the entire details to anyone else listening, including the audience. This stalls the plot and makes the story more didactic than enjoyable. Introduce terms if you like or words that people are not familiar with, but instead of lengthy explanations, take the time to illustrate what the word would mean through the natural actions of the play. Obviously some exposition is appropriate in a story, and helpful to the audience. Most is not.

Look for the traps in your writing and put away your hard won university degree with a major in history and a minor in politics. Assume folks would like the color of what you can add to a story, but assume they have a decent idea of what you're introducing. If not, let them look it up, rather than take the time teaching it to them.
You'll win more respect from not talking down to your listeners.

Broken Pendant

2011-06-22T05:39:00.000-07:00

Despite what people may believe (and people believe what they may), it takes a lot for me to turn off an audio drama in which I am listening.
Once I make the decision to listen to a series, I'm as loyal as they come. But, there are some things that I find unforgivable.

Gross overwriting to the point that I have lost what is going on in lue of the "catchy dialog" (I'm thinking of a particular show recently reviewed).
Production levels so abysmal that I can't hear what is going on or I'm annoyed that no attempt was made to make characters sound like they are even on the same planet let alone in the same room.
The "Too Clever by Half" writer/producer who is more interested in showcasing their vast knowledge, expertise, or experience than telling a good story.
Taking a beloved icon or franchise and making a mockery of it.

Pendant Audio has hit the last "sin" too many times in the last couple of years for me and with tears running down my cheeks, I find myself unsubscribing to many of their comic-based shows. I'm loyal to a company, but enough's enough.
"All right, James," you might very well ask. "What's your particular beef this time?"

After pointing out your undying patience with my frustration, I would answer that an audio drama based on a comic- let alone an iconic hero comic like Superman or Batman, has an expectation of adventures in that same genre- the fantasy action hero.
D.C. Comics typically set up their graphic stories with a little characterization each issue, but focused primarily on driving the plot into an inevitable action climax of hero against villain.

Pendant's "The Last Son of Krypton" and "The Ace of Detectives" feel more akin to "As the Daily Planet Turns" and "Gotham Nights"; soap operatic stories that have little to do with the title heroes and more with the relationships and sexual escapades of minor characters in the various mytho-landscapes.
Dear Pendant, when your characters make comments "Don't you think they make a cute couple?" more often than they throw fists and or eye-beams at an antagonist, you've dropped all pretense of a superhero comic and entered the realm of bad high school anime soaps.

I've long stopped caring about multiple episodes embroiled in such dire story lines as how the Kent's deal with sharing parenting time with their cantankerous grandparents- the Lanes or how Red Hood's love life is progressing.
Neither of these nor the many other threads were ever designed to be major story threads in an action adventure series.

What happened to my beloved Pendant comic series? It seems that through the years they have turned into Mary/Barry Sue parody of shipping wish fulfillment and it just hurts too much to keep listening and hoping that things will change..

For those good people who write these shows, all the best to you. I'm sure there's an audience for what you're doing, and goodness knows I sit in awe at the sheer volume of work Pendant has done through the years.
But, I'd rather see them produce less, and give me more action. So bring me back with some real action stories. I'd like to see Domino Pizza moment from Jeffrey Bridges in which there's a rededication to quality work again. Goodness knows, if I have to go through the love life of Robin one more time, I think I'll put on a green speedo and leap off a cliff...

Edict Zero

2011-06-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

Edict Zero is the name of a new audio drama science fiction crime drama series by Jack Kincaid and focuses on a fictional governmental group FIS in a near future or parallel universe Earth. According to the About page, EZ has been "compared to Bladerunner, The X Files, Fringe, Hill Street Blues , Lexx, and a diversity of [other] shows."

Edict Zero is a Slipgate Nine production. Episodes tend to run at AD-PG13 ratings.

Website
The Edict Zero website is slickly designed with easy access and a simple white on black template. The graphic for the series at the top easily meshes with the over all theme and provides a focus point for the reader. The top menu includes Home, About, Contact, Glossary, and Series Extras.
The About section gives a nice short form about how their listeners describe the show, and how many episodes were released in Seasons 1 and 2 and the release schedule (nice!).
Happily they also include a section on "The Story" to give a bit of the background on the background of the "world" of Edict Zero, although none of the characters are mentioned. This is strange since the characters are absolutely the focus of the series.
The Contact section briefly outlines that all music should be contacted at the source and provides the Slipgate Email address for those who are interested.
The Glossary is a fantastic opportunity to fill in more of the blanks in the universe that the listeners may not have caught, or haven't been explicitly detailed in the series. While mostly containing the four Edicts, the glossary could be improved by including the character names and a little background for the listeners as there are a lot of moving scenes in the story.
The Series Extras section is of special benefit. The Prologue read by Jack Kincaid provides a needed backdrop to where Edict Zero takes place. Having the soundtrack attached also is a great bonus and I've found myself playing the tracks for fun at various points of my day.
The website is easy to access and full of little gems. It's missing a few elements that would provide some more clarification into the story, and I'd like to see the glossary grow more than the few entries now that we've gotten into Season 2, but still a joy to revisit!
Rating: 4.5/5

Audio Drama Style- Modern
Edict Zero provides music from Nine Inch Nails and other orchestral ambient music throughout each episode. The scenes are tight and there is minimal narration only at the beginning. Along with developed sound effects, these are all hallmarks of the modern audio drama style. Episodes tend to vary in length but usually are slightly longer than an hour in length. The intensity of the performances create a compelling listen from the get-go and the production levels are tight and and professionally offered.

Acting- Amateur
While technically, the acting is from the amateur class of non-payed performers, producer and writer Jack Kincaid gets stellar performances from his cast. Voices are expertly selected to stand out and contrast in a scene. Stand out performances are Phil Rossi and Kincaid himself who provide excellent depth and fingerprint like clarity to their voices; Tanja Milojevic, who is fast becoming my favorite female actor in the modern era (she has a voice that could melt butter in Alaska), and Russell Gold who has become synonymous with, tight, well-controlled and expert craft.
It would be hard pressed to find better actors in any current series running for free in the modern audio theater set. These folks are a delight in which to listen.
Rating: 5/5

Production- Detailed
Jack Kincaid knows how to produce.
There's little more to be detailed beyond the fact that Edict Zero has the perfect blend of sound effects, panning, and sound that is rare in an freely distributed production. Kincaid has obviously spent a lot of time getting solid recordings, powerhouse performances, and mixed them with just the right amount of music to provide tone, mood, and a deeply compelling world.
The best compliment for any producer is saying that the sound goes nearly unnoticeable, in that it flows easily around the scene and the listener is lost in the depth of the soundscape created. Kincaid does this in spades. And yes, that rhymed.
Rating: 5/5

Writing
The writing of Edict Zero is it's Achilles heel. It's overwritten to a point of sometimes losing the audience entirely. Characters bicker pointlessly when there's a plot waiting in the wings to be fed. I listened to an episode where two characters were involved in a testosterone excretion battle for who would pay for a cheque. While funny for the first five seconds, I was with the women in the scene thinking this was pointless and distracting.
Many of the scenes end up this way. There are whole scenes where great background exposition is discovered about the new Earth (Edict Zero), but it doesn't drive the plot forward or do anything to reveal more depth to the characters. There are arguments that go no place and last precious minutes, gut ripping decisions that really last far longer than they ever need. For example, in one episode a character bemoans the fact that he has chosen his job before his relationship with his wife. This is good dramatic fare, and yet the wife is entirely supportive of his choices and encourages him to get back to the plot. The character continues navel gazing for such a long time that he comes across as weak and needy instead of introspective and thoughtful. The wife has created a solution for his angst, and the plot should move on, or the wife should agree that he is being neglectful and an actual fight can ensue.
An hour long audio drama needs to be kept at a strong pace, or it will lose listeners. Edict Zero would do much better if Kincaid took out his editors pen and cut the scripts to half the size. Certainly this would cut out much of the back and forth of characters but it would provide for a clearer path into the story which gets lost from time to time.
Rating: 2/5

Over All
Despite the near perfect acting and production, the writing of Edict Zero is a wound to the side of the production that sadly made me put the show down more than once. I want to love Edict Zero. It has all the great elements of what could become a modern science fiction classic series. It's got a deep mythology and really compelling characters I want to know more about, but more importantly a plot that I wish Kincaid would focus better. I feel as a listener that the series is too stretched out. There are points in the story where some "clever" information is dropped in and the characters spends unnecessary exposition explaining how smart the author was for sharing it with the listener. I beg folks to drop educating ham-fistedly in their audio dramas and instead clear away the debris of a story to keep it moving. Most scenes that have characters walk or travel by elevator from one site to another can be cut as superfluous. Bring Edict Zero stories down to a manageable half hour and make those 30 minutes compelling listening. I'm not suggesting that all characterization be removed, I'm asking characterization to relevant to the plot and meaningful to the story.
Until those badly needed edits occur, Edict Zero will be the show I sample, put down, sample, put down, and sample again. All because I want so much more from it.
Rating: 2/5

Redline Theatre

2011-01-13T01:46:00.000-08:00

Redline Theatre is the name of a new audio drama theater company hosted and written by Jim Bultas, Eric Schulte and Justin Warner. With the use of "re" again instead of "er", I'm hereby giving the world notice that American Audio Drama has caved to pressure from England to maintain its antique roots.
The episodes offered in this podcast are promised to be eclectic without any particular order or schedule but can range from horror to off-beat humor. Redline's shows tend to mature themes, with sex being a prominent and occasional focus. Episodes tend to run at AD-PG13 or AD-R ratings.

Website
The Redline Theatre website is really a standard blog. Very little is offered so far in content, and very little is provided for people to explore, if so inclined. Even the header (cut from above) doesn't offer much in design. With the promise of Redline, I was expecting some chrome accents, high speed flame decals, or some dashboard graphics with the audio drama hitting the red zone "awesome" on the dial. Standard left column presents the latest posts with the right hand side providing all the different ways that Redline fans can get a hold of them, through Twitter and their Facebook page.
The About Us page gives a little more information about the trio but ends with their enthusiasm and philosophy of trying to continue to be immature in their approach (more on that later) and provide no information about the creators of the company. They end with reiterating that they can be found on all the usual social networking sites.
I'd like to write more about the website, but that's all there is. I'm hoping it will develop in the future, but for now as a site it only gives passing interest.
Rating: 1.5/5

Audio Drama Style- Modern/Experimental
Redline is unabashedly sophomoric in their tastes. This isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. There's not enough B-Rated genre audio drama out there. The first time I heard the characters references a woman's breasts, I was a little startled. Overt sexuality is something that isn't heard often in audio drama today, but looking back is something I should expect from a company that calls itself "Redline Theatre". Sound effects are modern and production levels represent the consistency one has come to expect with audio drama today. Running time for most shows are also variable as set by the open ended format of a podcast. All the shows are introduced by the hosts and tend to come off as a podcast containing Audio Drama rather than an audio drama podcast. There's something about the energy of the hosts that provide a genuine amateur nature that is endearing as they set the listeners up for the next installment of their series. There is no apparent set release date for their shows, and that would absolutely help provide with a steady track of subscribed followers.

Acting- Amateur
As expressed by the hosts/creators, they provide most of the acting themselves and even include their spouses in some of the performances. That being said, they have better tonal quality for voice acting than many others who enjoy the genre and appear in their own shows. The pacing is good and the characters do a decent job of selling each show they are in. The female actors tend to be over the top with their sexuality taking each line as a breathless precursor to foreplay. As a listener, I am conflicted as to whether this is far too much or simply not enough since the stories are unabashedly B-Flick in style.
Misty Myrick works her character in "Blood Moon" with such indominable sexuality that one wonders if cigarettes were provided after the recording session.
The trick here, is the same as in the writing. Redline is finding its wings and to be successful they should not straddle the line so much and either gleefully enter into the realm of cheesy grindhouse acting or scrub clean the sophomoric stories and go straight. Personally, I'd like to see more of the former than the latter.
Rating: 3/5

Production- Detailed
Following the modern audio drama rules, Redline's production contains music, effective sound effects, and clear recording levels for the actors. Good attention is paid to space in the shows and the stories drive the narrative, not the sound effects. While I was confused at several points in "Less than Super Friends", the horror episode "Blood Moon" was clearly cut together. Having a small cast is always a benefit, especially for a fledgling audio drama company and Redline clearly bites off just enough to chew in this fashion. While there's room for deeper sound levels, more subtle changes and some even smoother transitions, out of the gate, Redline has a decent and consistent sound.
Rating: 4/5

Writing
Redline's writing is almost painful at times- not because it isn't good, but rather because it could be even better. As I mentioned above, Redline's sophomoric and immature pride provides an opportunity rarely seen in audio drama- The proud over-the-top B-Flick show. Some audio dramas who try to provide B-flick stories, do so only to recapture the feel of movies that were B-flick in the audio drama realm. Most audio drama companies take themselves far too seriously to just create silly and sexy audio drama for the masses. Redline has no governor in their brains, and the pedal is pushed ahead; but, not to the metal.
Redline could take its sexual content further without becoming porn. "Blood Moon" was a perfect example of timidness that still brought some suggestiveness of what could become. The eye-rolling sexuality of the character of "Lucy" could have another scene where the characters could barely keep their hands off each other getting us ready for the climax (pun intended) when she takes the narrator to bed.
If "Blood Moon" was a lead up, the story "Less than Super Friends" felt like a let down. The plot felt like it was all over the place, and I wasn't sure if I was listening to a character trying to escape his sexually aggressive boss, or involved in some kind of strange wish fulfillment of the adventures of "Laundry Man" whose super ability is folding a good load of laundry once a week.

Another complaint I have with Redline is the format of their stories. Strong narration always has a deleterious effect in getting the audience involved. "Blood Moon" comes across more as a multi-cast audio short story than an actual audio drama at times. The narration is so thick the immediacy of the story can get lost.
That being said, the writing of "Blood Moon" while lacking a surprise twist takes the audience on a voyage they want in a cheesy horror. Keep writing!
Rating: 3.5/5

Additional Notes
The promo for Redline Theatre is a kick. It's everything you want the website to be, and maintains a kind of professional level you hope that Redline achieves in short order. Pass the promo around and let people know that they are out there!

Over All
I'm looking forward to listening to more of Redline Theatre in the future. All new companies need to find their voice, and if they can decide where they want to be and what part of the audio world territory they want to inhabit, that's going to be good for their listener base. I get nervous when I see companies say in their own words "We are not limiting our content to a specific genre." because that has, in the past, been code for, "We're flying by the seat of our pants" and that can end up being burn out, boredom, or simply a random series of shows that will always leave the audience wanting to go back to more proven and popular original stories already performed. I can appreciate the desire to have fun and create whatever comes into the creator's of Redline's mind. As long as they continue to release regularly and give respect to their viewers and find that audience that will appreciate the sophomoric touches, then they will continue to build a following, as they should!
Rating: 3/5

Transcontinental Terror

2010-11-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

No review for this six hour series brought to you on Halloween night by Icebox Radio's Jeffrey Adams on his Sound Stages Internet Radio Station. Just a plea that it goes on next year with a little more promotion and a little more planning. I enjoyed the couple of hours I caught of it, but I have a love/hate relationship with radio based on the simple fact that I've gotten spoiled with podcasts.

Some days its fun to just pop on Sound Stages and hear what's playing, but most times I'm listening to Audio Drama in the car and so until Internet Radio can get its own satellite like XM it's not going to have the same impact in my listening schedule. There was a good mix of shows on this schedule. Horror audio drama seems like a staple for people and Halloween is an opportunity to capitalize on that popularity.
If you haven't had a chance to listen, most of the shows are available on their own company's websites now. Next year, I'd like to see the theme explored even more tightly, with maybe a weaving central host that has a tighter connection to all the stories.
Maybe I'm just a man sitting at an empty train station though...waiting for a ghost. But I hope the terror locomotive makes annual runs.

Audio-rotica

2010-06-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

One of the problems of Audio drama being so very intimate is the use of intimate relations. Sex in audio drama is a problem to be portrayed tastefully. Eroticism in film utilizes very little noise from those embraced in coitus. Instead cut shots and romantic and "sexy" music are provided giving a more artistic representation of lovemaking.
The reason is often the unwritten code. Imagery and careful visuals are erotic. Sounds of two or more people making "the beast with two backs" is pornographic.
Kissing in audio drama is an art to sound realistic without sounding vulgar or cartoonish. Lovemaking is even more so.
For these reasons, it's best to try to keep the imagination to the adults. Employ techniques such as fading out of a lovemaking scene before it gets too robust. Use music in your fades to help paint the picture. Cut to the "after glow" of the moment and let your actors express their post-coital ease with each other.
Unless your purpose is pornography or comedy (some would consider that the same thing), think twice about how much you expose.

Adaptation Types

2010-05-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Some of the best productions have come from adaptations of other works- usually from novels or movies. Adaptations allow for familiarity among listeners. Familiarity can be one of the greatest assets because it draws up a favorite childhood memory, or a family novel, a cherished story from school days, or a shared remembrance between friends. Familiar stories some how reach in to a collective time and bind people together generationally and through the veil of culture.

Consider the following adaptation types when you're looking to bring your own to the theater of the mind.

Faithful- A Faithful adaptation attempts not just to present the spirit of the original work but as close to "word for word" as the author can make it. Faithful adaptations do not attempt to repurpose or modify the meaning or the characters or the plot in any way. Instead they present the work on whole to stand as it is. The benefits of a Faithful adaptation include a marked preference by the listeners to return to those dialog bits, characters and pictures that they most love. Faithful adaptations take words on a page and bring them as closely as possible to life. The deficits of a Faithful adaptation include bringing the exact words, characters, and pictures to life. This may include out of mode language, archaic customs, and out and out prejudice and racism. Be warned, those who create Faithful adaptations, often wear the choices by their critics, for good or for ill.

Traditional- Closely aligned with Faithful adaptations; Traditional works tend to take what is most common in a generational perspective. This may or may not be faithful to the original intent. For example, what is traditional Star Wars Audio for those who are young enough to remember the NPR Playhouse presentation in 1981-1983 will indeed be different from those who have grown up with the many Star Wars Fan audio drama shows available today. Similarly the very sound of Audio Drama itself is different from traditional Old Time Radio and some day "traditional audio drama" may be expanded to include the works being developed in this new theater. This practice occurred as well with some of the great masters like Shakespeare. King Lear was edited after the Restoration for most performances "by theatre practitioners who disliked its dark and depressing tone..." and for generations its original concept was not the Traditional take on Shakespeare by most of its observers. Thankfully, the original text has been restored and we have reverted "traditional" to mean the original intent in this case. Both the benefits and deficits for Traditional adaptations are similar to that of Faithful as the adaptation is "stuck in time" and representative of a popular form.

Modern- A far more nebulous term is the Modern adaptation, that usually includes updating dialog and often setting or dress to reconnect with modern audiences. A Modern adaptation may also include the following sub-genres and allows new experiences with a powerful tale or character. The problem with modern adaptations is it may distance itself too far from the author's intent, miss an important theme, ridicule an important character or motive, or make a plot appear ridiculous in modern terms. A great deal of thought needs to be considered as to what needs to be modernized beyond language and what should remain fairly faithful to the text. Some options are:

Reverse Gender- In which one or more, and in some cases all the genders are flipped so that traditional male roles are played by females and female roles are performed by men. This is sometimes done through sheer availability of cast members, and other times to help break stereotypical or gender boundaries. Because this can cause powerful ripples in the original intent, a producer/writer should take special care considering the ramifications and audience involved to make such a choice.
Reverse Culture- The great Orson Welles never failed to innovate in his adaptations. One of his more brave choices at the time was casting his all black cast of Macbeth. This also has the benefit of empowering a community by either reversing traditional roles set to skin color or racial bias. The same considerations should be kept in mind before making bold choices in audio drama as cultural reversals often mean accents and that can provide some difficult acting and potentially worse stereotypes.
Socio-political- Modifying certain elements of classic stories to highlight socio-political issues of the day can provide extra insight and new interest by listeners. However, beware that such actions may brand your writing as a particular political stripe or paint an unfair picture to the original work. For example, reimagining Erewhon into a satire of the Obama Presidency might strain credulity and hurt your listenership as much as it might gain critical acclaim. In the end, knowledge of your listener base and familiarization with the material is the key.
Original- An original adaptation takes either the base form of the story or characters and plot and goes further than the first author's work. Original adaptations like Broken Sea's Planet of the Apes have worked with the movie plot but added in a longer story line including original side plots and characterizations. Using the power of serialized storytelling in audio drama allows for great expansions of traditional works to involve original additions. Again, a deeper understanding of the source material is necessary to do justice in the expansion or the continuation of stories. Fan Fiction tends to not operate from source story plots but instead use the setting and often the source characters to create new fiction (unlicensed) for fans to hear.

Whether you are planning to present a Faithful telling of a great work of art or a Modern adaptation, take the time to understand the source material beyond the text. Read about the author, the time the author was writing in, and some words they have (if possible) as to meaning and themes. Being informed as to original intent may not sway you from your own take on the story, but it will help defend you against the critics should you stagger too far from the original vision.

Peaks and Other Acting Emotions

2010-05-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

Coming back to listening to Audio Drama after a nice vacation is like coming home again. It's good to give the eyes a break and the ears a chance to just relax in listening and the mind a chance to explore.

Acting in audio drama must be the most intimate of all the performance arts. The smallest yawn or even a smile changes the shape of the face and can be heard through the microphone adding context to a line that the actor may not have been aware.

Similarly one of the great problems in long distance or "satellite" acting has been the piecemeal way certain lines are put together. In an ensemble run through where (at the very least) a scene is run through with the cast, context is instant. Feedback between the actors is immediate and natural. Listening to someone recording in absentia of the others in the show can create some strange emotional low and high points. In some rare and disturbing cases, I've heard actors hit one line coolly and the very next line with startling energy and excitement only to go back to a duller reading in a third line.

Unless you want the audience to believe your character is bi-polar or manically swinging from one emotional point to another, it's important to develop a crescendo and decrescendo to your actor's performance in a show. Certainly there may be multiple moments where high or low points are needed, but these should be picked with utter care, even for comic effect.

As an actor in a major part, consider the following:
• Always read through the entire script given you. Although it is understandable that you wish to work only with your character, reading the story will give you tone, setting, relationships and even some extra details to which you will need to create your character.
• Write down notes describing what you think your character is. What he/she represents. What is their point in the story and who they interact with as friends, enemies or neutrals. Where do they stand philosophically in the plot of the story? If they are antagonists as "Why" and get as much detail as you can from the script. Does this character need an accent? An affectation?
• Go through the lines carefully with multi-colored highlighters. Pens or pencils. Circle or highlight low emotional lines- cold or emotionally distant tones in blue. Circle or highlight high emotional lines- hot, angry or emotionally expressive and passionate tones in red. Underline or highlight neutral or slight emotions- like gentle playfulness or slight sarcasm in green. Underline or highlight director’s notes to the character in yellow. Read them out loud to be certain before marking.
• Write down notes about your lines. As you circle, underline or highlight the lines consider ambiguity in the speech. Write down notes of questions about uncertain lines.
• Discover the Peak Emotion of the scene/play. Each major character has an emotional peak. This doesn't mean that every scene has a "yelling" or "angry" moment. But there is a point in the play where a character reaches a crossroads, a choice (forced or otherwise) and a catharsis. Find the spots where your character needs to draw especially meaningful lines and pick them careful. Make notes of any questions you might have about those moments.
• Connect with the Writer/Director/Producer. Take out your notes and ask for some direct time with the W/D/P. Whether it’s through Instant Messaging, the phone, or face-to-face ask as many questions as you can to get the right tenor and beat of the character. Unless really pressed for time the W/D/P will appreciate your exactness and detail to the script. Make certain you're clear as to what you want.

The old adage "Don't use it all up at once" is especially important in audio drama acting. Find the sweet spots for your character and use them to the best of your advantage and you'll be wanted for more and more parts. Skimp and guess and you may find yourself rerecording your part- or worse- being recast to someone with more experience and professionalism.

On Vacation

2010-05-13T03:50:00.000-07:00

After several concerned emails as to my absence, I thought it might be prudent to tell folks I'm on vacation.
This has nothing to do with apparently the little interest I've received by the Audio Drama community (my thanks for the bump in subscribers) for my reviews, and everything to do with the end of the fiscal year and my accounting firm always letting their employees take vacations after the tax rush. So, when I'm back to work next week, I'll continue with more reviews then. Warmly,
~J. Snowe

Electric Vicuña Productions

2010-05-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

Electric Vicuña Productions is a production company out of Nova Scotia, Canada and represents all the original audio drama written and produced by Jack Ward, Shannon Hilchie and with music composed and produced by Sharon Bee.
Electric Vicuña has a number of different offerings from dark fantasy, science fiction, horror and suspense and some comedy. They also created a fan-fiction based on Joss Whedon's Firefly. Mr. Ward and Ms. Hilchie also produce a weekly series called The Sonic Society which showcases their audio drama as well as nearly everyone else in the amateur audio drama world. They have another fiction podcast which appears to have podfaded called The Library of Jack and Shannon and have completed the first "season" of Sonic Gold which showcases professional audio drama companies. EVP is a newer name and includes the last six years of production of audio drama from previous companies/series called Shadowlands Theatre and Sonic Cinema Productions neither of which has a link. EVP episodes can vary widely from AD-G to AD-R ratings.

Website
The purple theme is different, albeit somewhat oppressively so. I'm not certain why people decide to go so far away from a readable white or off-white sheet for text. The About section has some detailed information on the main people in EVP. There is a lot of background information, and little about the current projects written and produced in Electric Vicuña. But perhaps one of the most glaring errors is not even a whiff of the acting that Ward and Hilchie do. Outside of their own productions, both have amassed a rather impressive "guest starring" role in one production or another. One added benefit however, was a link to Sharon Bee's music page where if you're a Firefly fan like I am, you can purchase her CD she created based on the music from "Old Wounds".
The link Catalogue of Plays is confusing (and I mean beyond the strange spelling of the word "Catalog") as it mentions selling their two anthologies series- The Dead Line and The Dead Line Shorts both of which are available for free in their Audio Downloads section. Are these paid versions a higher quality? Do they come with special tracks or a CD liner? More details should be provided.
The Actors Section is perhaps one of the other big problems with the website as there is a year old audition call, and only four actor links provided. Clicking on the link provides more detail, but it would be nice to have the information better formatted right in the document and a smaller headshot available or a quick browse.
The Services section is equally bereft of content and detail. There seems to be some basic information about recording services, but it provides no costs, no specific service packages available, and no contact information directly.
The design is a little flimsy but the largest problem is the content is not updated and as clear as it could be. A page on the Sonic Society, Sonic Gold and other projects that EVP has started would be welcome.
Rating: 2/5

Audio Drama Style- "Mostly" Modern
Mr. Ward has expressed many times in the Sonic Society his admiration for OTR and there are examples of that influence in the production of the shows. His anthology series to date- "Shadowlands Theatre", "The Dead Line Anthology", and "Wave Front" all reflect the older sensibility of a narrator character to introduce the shows. Similarly the series "The Jack and Shannon Show" is set much like the old fashioned Jack Benny and George and Gracie shows of radio's yesteryear. Despite all that, the productions have all the trappings of modern audio theater. They are produced with sound effects added later, music in most of the productions, and many of them have varying time frames from five minutes to well over an hour and some times multi-part series.

Acting- Amateur
Most of the roles are performed by Mr. Ward and Shannon Hilchie although many of their productions come from actors in their local area. The odd occasion I have noticed some of the Internet "stars" of the Audio Drama world in their recordings. Gate has both Stevie Farnaby as a guest villain, and Bill Hollwege as well as J.T. Shea from The Gig Cast. John Bell guest starred recently in Blue Defender as did David Ault as the narrator in Any Man. But these were names I knew already and picked out of the shows as I relistened. The actual actors in the EVP Company are incompletely listed on the website, and the shows themselves do not have a complete listing of the actors performing. In the future, I hope to review specific shows and will attempt not to slaughter names there. As for Mr. Ward's roles he can do a passing performance, but seems best suited to some of the more character roles than a main one. Like many producers of audio drama, he doesn't have the same rich voice as a Gregg Taylor or John Bell, or even a Cayenne Chris Conroy.
Shannon Hilchie on the other hand seems almost under-utilized as she's shown herself to have a great range in roles from Faith to her quirky characters in Gate. Like many modern audio drama, the rest of the casts have a varied effect. Ken who plays in a lot of the shows has a great dynamic voice from Dead Line episodes to The Jack and Shannon Show. Most of the actors in The Jack and Shannon Show from Jake to Showell (excuse the spelling) to Kristin and Eric all showcase very well in other series.
Part of the problem in developing a local acting troop is being able to stick with a strong group of actors and work together to get stronger. There have been many voices in the EVP shows through the years, it would be best if they stuck to a solid team like the Decoder Ring Theatre folks and work on building skills.
Rating: 3.5/5

Production- Mostly Detailed
One of the genuine delights is hearing the evolution of the sound in EVP. If you don't believe me, go search the Sonic Society feed for The Jack and Shannon Show and listen to the growth from the first episode to the last. Better miking of the actors, less blaring, better pacing, clearer sound effects, panning, and good use of music. 2009 was a much better year for improvement, and much of that goes to Jack Ward and his work at trying to improve the sound. Some Dead Line shows have been farmed out to different companies and for the most part the sound is fairly even, but Mr. Ward needs to make certain that a consistency is pressed across all of his shows. Gate as well shows improvement, and Mr. Ward has expressed on the Sonic Society that he is remastering the original series for a release on Podiobooks. That was nearly two years ago, we can but sit and wait. Listening now, Gate sounds a little slow and needing some cleaning up. Some of the worst sounding shows were in the early years with what appears to be changing producers. Phil Morris is uneven and not as clear as it should be, Muse of Madness is better but missing some better direction.
The productions are improving vastly though, and some have professional production sound.
Rating: 4/5

Writing
This is where I feel Electric Vicuña shines. I find it hard pressed to find another writer who has produced as many different original works from such a wide variety of genres with such over all effect. Mr. Ward's writing resume includes horrors like his Shadowlands Theatre series which includes the mystical Completion, Soul Survivor and And Lo, Thou I Walk, as well as thrillers like Right Number, Wrong Party and The Hitchhiker, or horrors like Muse of Madness and Bravery. He's created Comedies like The Jack and Shannon Show, Phil Morris, Spin, Spin, Spin and Hill Manors (the unabashed tribute to Fawlty Towers). He's written original science fiction/fantasy like Ghosts of the Present, Gate, and the Wave Front Anthology Series. He's delved into adventure with Comics Consortium shows about super heroes (although only two so far), the sci-fi pulp adventure Biff Straker, and crime drama and suspense with The Dead Line Anthologies as well as Grave's Shift the stories of his female detective Phillipa Graves.
A detailed analysis of which scripts works well and which did not would be unfair to Mr. Ward at this time as a cursory reading shows that he alone has written and produced over 50 scripts available for download on their site. That's quite an accomplishment for any writer.
A brief note about Shannon Hilchie as a writer. She has only produced two shows that I can think of- Pony Tales which is not available on the downloads section and Time Enough which is. Time Enough is a powerful hour long slow draw into fear. A fan favorite, it has been played on other venues. Pony Tales, which was written as an April Fool's joke backfired for Ms. Hilchie and has been mentioned on SFF Audio as a possible mid-season replacement for a Disney show (tongues placed firmly in cheek no doubt).
Rating: 4.5/5

Additional Notes
It needs to be noted here that Jack Ward and Shannon Hilchie have spent much of their time working on many projects that are aimed to help the audio drama community. The Sonic Society has been the bedrock showcase for five years of new and old modern audio theater. They have interviewed and featured many new podcasters and acted as cheerleaders for the entire milieu. It was through their podcast that a fan launched Audio Drama Talk which is considered to be the vibrant community of new audio actors, writers, and producers. In another episode another fan created The Audio Drama Directory after Jack and Shannon bemoaned that there needed to be one directory to find new shows. Mr. Ward created in concert with some others the new Audio Drama Ratings System which is being implimented in audio drama shows everywhere. They created the first subscription podcast paid content in Sonic Gold. Each year they present the Uni Awards in which the listeners get to vote on their favorite shows of the season and that has become another end of year celebration for all things Audio Drama.
No where in the Electric Vicuña Productions site are any of these mentioned. Nor is there a list of where Jack and Shannon can be heard in other shows. My biggest complaint is that the EVP site should bring together all the things Jack Ward, Shannon Hilchie, Sharon Bee and their production company is involved in so that everyone can see. The only reason I'm aware of these accomplishments is that I follow the Sonic Society regularly (and read the website notes).

Over All
The biggest problem with EVP is overwork of the producers. While there are others who work just as hard putting out steady content, most of them work strictly with one show at a time. With all the various projects Jack Ward and Shannon Hilchie are involved in, it is little wonder the unnamed Pirate adventure and the western shows continue to be put off later and later. I for one would be happier if they took on less, and produced more. They are obviously concerned about continually improving their productions and we would see them more often. That being said, I would hate to see The Sonic Society canceled any time soon. I believe it and Radio Drama Revival have been key in aiding in the revitalization of Audio Drama.
Speaking of their involvement. Exactly what IS the deal with Jack and Shannon anyway?
Rating: 4/5

Accidents made of Accents

2010-05-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Veronica Lee of the UK Guardian recently suggested that the stage get rid of all accents. Her argument was that it is better to have no accent on stage than a bad accent.
Snowe's First Law of Audio Drama certainly applies here, and that law is "If it distracts from the experience, it needs to go." That includes whether it is too little or too much production, scripts that are over or under written, and acting which is too heavy or too light.
The moment I ask myself about the structure of the production, is the moment I've been pulled from being involved in the story.

The one thing that makes audio drama a little more unique than stage however, is in the aural medium voice IS your costume. Characters that sound too much alike also throw the listener out of the experience as they try to understand who is speaking.

So what does this mean? If you're going to attempt an accent as an actor, get it right. If you have trouble with specific accents, but the Director needs you to play a regional or national identity go broad.
It's much better for an actor to focus on the cadence and pacing of an accent, than of the actual clipping, drawls, or dropped "h's". Different regions attack words and phrases in different ways. Try to go broad with your depiction. If you're attempting a Mexican accent, go for one who was educated in America but still has the simplest of accents from his homeland. Give people the flavor without getting yourself pigeon-holed into a specific location.
And in the worst case scenario, don't even try it at all. Some actors focus so hard on the accent, the central truth is lost in the words. The characterization must always be true to the story.
Of course, if you're going for a roughly-hewn comedy, all bets are off. The goofier the better.
If not, consider not!

Deus Ex Machina Award 2010

2010-05-02T04:43:00.000-07:00

Our second award for 2010 is the Deus Ex Machina award for the show that utilizes the least free will and most out of nowhere divine help to save a plot.
Since its the first one, I feel safe enough go back to a show from 2006, already reviewed Space Casey.

****WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD****

For a show that reveals that The Old Ones are not gods, Space Casey sure shows a divine hand in everything.
Plot devices that included Deus Ex Machina devices were:
-Casey's spit being a drug for one of her captors
- Casey convincing a guard that he couldn't stop her escape because he might hurt her and she was ordered not to be injured (The intervention against common sense arrived here)
- Casey hearing the entire plan of the hustlers called "The Old Ones" because... well she asked. (Once again, God's intervention is to make everyone dumber than Casey)
- A man comes to save the day with a fleet of warships that appear literally out of nowhere because throughout the whole time they had the entire situation of time excursions under control.

This brings us to the problem that Space Casey is perhaps the weakest female character created in modern audio drama. She is a confidence hustler who was incapable of hustling nearly anyone without tears. She is painted as someone who does not care about anyone but herself but balks at the idea of saving herself and the ship if this means erasing the personality of the ship's A.I. (Why?)
And not only is she saved by a man at the end of the series. She actually swoons for him (especially because of his xeno-physiological differences from her own species).
Now I ask you. If a man wrote the story of Space Casey. Wouldn't there be a moral outrage from women everywhere?
And rightly so.
Here's hoping Space Casey 2 (and I do hope for that), shows some smarts from the heroine as well as a whole lot more action instead of passivity to her fate.

Planet Retcon

2010-04-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Planet Retcon is a now defunct audio drama company by Wesley Clifford that produced a number of original audio drama comedy series including Stargate Cafe and Tales of the Crimson Lien as well as a few individual one-shot shows. The shows all tend to have a "sit-com" meets "sci-fi" tone of light humor. There are some suggestive situations but for the most part, the shows are AD-PG. Many of the cast are reoccuring in a variety of the episodes. The last of the show feeds was in February 4th, 2008, however there was a blog post from Mr. Clifford suggesting that an unwritten novelized version of Crimson Lien may be forthcoming. Mr. Clifford was the host of a series called Volcanicast which is now also defunct.

Website
The website of Planet Retcon is very rudimentary. Kudos for an attempt at a "planet" theme however the circles and black background reminds me more of the early days of pre-Internet Bulliten Board Systems instead of a website that had even entered the end of the 21st century. There is some rudimentary art as well, and kind of mismatched embedded shows to listen. While I recognize that having links on a website and embedded widgets is still a requirement for most people, I have to question how many people still use them as opposed to the rest of us who at the very least download the files and place them on some kind of portable device. However, if I am sitting in front of a computer to listen to an audio drama, I would expect a whole lot more content to help feed my eyes. This website has precious little.
A look even through the feed gives no credits at all to the actors or anyone involved in the production.
The "Contact" circle sends a direct email without any information as to people involved either. The News link presents us with the "Planet Retcon Blog" which at least has a familiar scrolling feature going through the past entries.
All the other "moon" circle icons also reference the blog, so one has to ask. "Why not just use the blog as the homepage?"
I can appreciate if your skill do not go towards website development, or even an interest in creating a website- this site here is nothing to write home by- however this is all the more reason to pick any of the free templates from wordpress and keep to functionality and passable interfaces instead of primitivism.
It's doesn't come across as retro. My advice is to please retcon the website.
Rating: 1/5

Audio Drama Style- Modern with a nod to the OTR
Mr. Clifford is arguably one of the first folks who have experimented with a regular comedy series with an in-house group of actors. His original schedule was maybe gruelling for most people and often fell behind, but the concepts that we all take for granted in an audio drama production for podcasts are there. Music introductions, simple comedic set ups, and easily portable stories are indicative of early comedies on radio as well as the format made popular in television sitcoms.

Acting- Amateur
With the relative "newness" of the "Stargate Cafe" series and the actors involved the acting is startlingly good at times. There are weaker characters, but even they are stronger than some of the weaker acting in other shows. Without a written copy of the central players in Planet Retcon, I'm going to refer to them by their character names. I would say of the regular actors, Emma is the weakest. Her lines come across more like reading with inflection at times, although she does improve as the series goes on. The best characters are John and Katie. I haven't heard either actor in performances since Planet Retcon, and that's a real shame. They exude warmth, likeability, and uniqueness. Uniqueness of voice is something that cannot be emphasized enough. There are too many voices with similar timbre and inflection, but Mr. Clifford has done a great job of balancing the voices in Stargate Cafe. Even Pete who isn't super different tonally from John has his own way of attacking lines that make him endearing to the audience.
As for the alternate shows, the acting is still passable for most, but nothing beats the kind of instant interaction that Stargate Cafe brings. Even the Log of the Crimsin Lien which has its own same kind off-beat likeable characters just doesn't have enough time to develop itself with the three scant episodes compared to SC.
Rating: 4/5

Production: Minimalist
The earliest Stargate Cafe's had some pretty terrible voice recording with microphone peaks and popping sounds. This got better as time went by, and it was only because of the strength of the shows that you could learn to ignore them. As for sound effects, they are sparse and that works well, especially for SC. After all, you don't really need a lot of sound effects for inside a dirty bar in the middle of the void. I could hear some background bar sounds, and that helped set the tone as did the clinking of the glasses. Footsteps were rare, and most sound effects are placed for very specific script-driven reasons. This is takes a controlled hand, and kudos to Mr. Clifford for his emphasis on telling the story, as opposed to showcasing the sound effects. Another rare element is his use of the teaser at the beginning of the shows that lead into the familiar Stargate Cafe theme music. A good strategy as it sets up the rest of the show and breaks the dialog up with the musical interlude setting the listeners on their edge if you have an appropriate cliffhanger to start. Top marks for improvement!
Rating: 4/5

Writing
Once again, Mr. Clifford proves my theory that a good story told at least somewhat ably with decent actors can push through even the simplest of production values. Some OTR shows never bothered with theme music or stings and let the dialog tell the story. Mr. Clifford recognizes that in Stargate Cafe as well as Log of the Crimson Lien, his greatest assets are his colorful characters. The wackiness of the stories nearly write themselves when the characters are faced with a problem. Antagonism, general good ribbing, and old rivalries all encompassed by sexual tension and/or the frustration of goals are the life ink at the end of Mr. Clifford's quill. The plots are not unique, but they don't have to be. Good comedy relies on classic set ups with great timing and fun characters. All of these Mr. Clifford knows and does well.
Similarly with some of his one-shot shows (which were hard to dig for in the archives) showcased some of his other skills. Anthology stories tend to be more plot than character driven and Mr. Clifford does a good job in taking an idea and exploring what that could mean. For my money, I selected U.M.P.I.R.E. as my favorite in his original extra shows, with The Hoff coming up close behind. Great stories and good opportunities to stretch outside of the series. Ideally, I believe any good long running series should also have an anthology series to allow the writer/producer to play outside of the lines once in a while. It sharpens his wits to go back into the circle and fight again.
Rating: 5/5

Additional Notes
Mr. Clifford is extremely talented in Planet Retcon. He writes and produces the shows. His direction is very apparent in getting the best from his actors, having them hit their marks, and holding the same level of professionalism to himself. When listening to his voice recently in Space Casey, I was reminded of how much we had lost when he let Planet Retcon die. While there was hope from a single blog entry in February, it looks like its going to be an audio book. This is disappointing. While I enjoy audio books, they are never as much fun as good audio drama and a whole lot easier to produce. I've also got to say, that when producers leave audio drama to make regular spoken word podcasts, I die a little inside.
Spoken word podcasts, for me, tend to be little more than background noise. There's a thousand of them out there now because they are cheap and easy to produce. Unfortunately, the amount of time they remain in collective memory ends up being just as short.
Years from now what will people talk about most- The Tyra Banks Show or LOST?
We may have guilty pleasures to listen to DJ's and podcast jockeys, but its stories that really captivate us.
That's the end of my personal plea to Mr. Clifford to get back up on the horse and reopen his audio drama production company again.

Over All
Planet Retcon was a beacon in the slowly burgeoning world of modern Audio Drama. It set new records for interest in the early podcasts for a mixture of science fiction and humor, and its absence even to this day is sorely lacking.
Planet Retcon is not Shakespeare or Twin Peaks. It's not intended to be dark or even extraordinarily deep most of the time. It was a company with a couple of series that were made for fun.
Would that we all could learn a little of that.
Rating: 4/5

The Zombie Astronaut's Frequency of Fear

2010-04-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Zombie Astronaut's Frequency Lite is an offshoot of the Zombie Astronaut's Frequency of Fear - "all of the audio drama with none of the OTR". Beginning as a themed series hosted by the Zombie Astronaut, AKA W. Ralph Walters, who is a commercial artist who spends his time delving into old radio shows and co-writes new. The Frequency Lite series are the new shows that began simply as introductory sketches to themes on his regular shows but have grown into full length episodes using comedy and mock horror elements to create a world of interesting characters and mythology.
Although not technically a series in and of itself, Frequency Lite frequently (half-pun intended) has two-part shows that use the Zombie Astronaut as the main protagonist but also introduces a bevy of other professors.
FL has some adult humor of a sexual nature and strong language at times and should be considered AD-PG-13.

Website
While Mr. Walters runs several sites based on the Zombie Astronaut, I recommend beginning with zombieastronaut.net. Here one gets the full scope of Mr. Walter's talents in the visual arts. One-part detailed pulpish drawings, two-parts unabashed geekery, the website is deliciously layered with old-fashioned comic book-style advertisement set in for some of Zombie's favorite companies- Broken Sea, Taliesin, The Sonic Society, SFF Audio, Schlock Audio, and The Snarky Avenger. There are links in the main page of Zombie's main offerings including a great name in the Odious Audifacarum which shows off a complete listing of shows however a cursory run through the list finds only A through to D with unbrokened links. The Zombie Astronaut's Blog is a typical LiveJournal blog but has not been updated for a year. However the Frequency of Fear and Frequency Lite are set in a straight forward manner with episodes and notes well fit color and graphics in the overlying theme. While the website could be more complete with deeper information about Mr. Walter's himself and the other people in his audio drama, there is everything you need to know in a very professional format.
Rating: 4/5

Audio Drama Style- Modern
While the main FOF show is mostly a showcase of OTR, the original works in FL are very much in the modern audio drama conventional format. A wide variety of music, some racier jokes and a sometimes large group of guest stars in plots that tend to wind sometimes through multiple stories. Modern audio drama has a more freedom as to format, time constraints, and story scenes. The Frequency Lite tales vary greatly from the earlier shows to the latter.

Acting- Amateur
Unlike many leaders in the audio drama realm, Mr. Walters has a commanding voice as both narrator of FOF casts and FL. He shows excellent control leading the plots and guest stars about on the "fun and games" madcappery. His main guests are equally strong in their roles, chief among them is Brent Hinks works as Doctor Wilheim Von Martinez who's insanity in the role plays the "Id" to Zombie's "Ego". Hinks is so delightfully child-like in his buffoonery, that you can't help but feel sorry for the Zombie Astronaut just trying to put up with him. If Von Martinez is the "Id", then Doctor Despicable (Who remains unnamed) is most certainly the "Super-ego" of the Zombie acting entirely with ruthless efficacy. The three together are a magic collection of distinct voices, and equally distinct characters that are my pick for the "Modern Audio's Three Stoogies Award".
The rest of the guest stars sound like a who's who of the Audio Drama world- Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard, Bill Hollweg, Mark Kalita, Paul Mannering, Elie Hirschman, KC Locke, and many others. Some of which have become near regulars. Jack Ward's character Professor Peter P. Picklepepper has had many return engagements, and from my opinion is one of his strongest roles to date.
While the acting is certainly a collection of folks who have an affinity with what Mr. Walters is doing, the sense of fun tends to brighten up even the clunkiest of actors.
Rating: 4/5

Production- Detailed
Walters work at editing is perhaps some of the best comedic editing around. He seamlessly draws in humorous musical cues and engaging sound effects. He also has a strong sense of timing. His pauses between responses of characters are near sound-second perfect and he has a solid idea of what parts of the story needs to be told through sound, and where effects can get in the way of the laughter.
You can hear the growth from his earliest examples of FL in his FOF show to the full episode length shows he puts on now. Despite using actors from around the world, he works very hard to sift their voices into the same vocal space, and melt them into a place in time. This becomes almost exponentially harder to do the more characters who send in their lines, but his editing has always made it sound nearly effortless.
Pure comedy and drama are always the hardest productions to stage whether it is in audio drama or through live theater. Genre drama has the ability to couch itself in some of the more familiar trappings, and Mr. Walters uses his knowledge of horror archetypes to help paint the pictures of the characters and scenes he produces.
Rating: 5/5

Writing
Mr. Walters and his writing team of K.C. Locke, Victor Gates, and some others like Mindy Rast present an interesting benefit of the Internet age. Like several other production companies, they work together on projects and present incredibly coherent and well-thought out productions for their works. That is not to say that FL is always coherent. There are times when I get lost in the plot thread- usually when there's six or more Professors running around- but for the most part the stories are well written and just fun as a listener. I look forward to being able to give a more detailed example of one of his new shows in the future, but for now, I would say that if you're a fan of zany horror-comedy, this writing will produce at least some snickers if not a few confused looks followed by belly laughs.
Rating: 4/5

Additional Notes:
Mr. Walters is one of those precious few individuals who seems endlessly talented. He makes his money as a commercial artist and has solid drawing skills. He has a commanding voice as a narrator. One of the three best in modern audio drama today. He plays Zombie Astronaut well, writes well, and produces all the shows with a professional flare that leaves many green with audio-envy.
Mr. Walters is a quadruple-threat in a world that is cheering over podcasters who can only write or speak well. It's startling that he has not received more accolades for his work, and once again proof positive that I have little faith in awards.

Over All
The Frequency of Fear and Frequency Lite is a series that should be at the front of everyone's ipods. It is one of the first shows I give to people who doubt the power of modern Audio Drama. Frequency Lite has broad appeal, although I do pick my episodes carefully for language and mature situations can some times turn off a new listener. Still, for my money, The Zombie Astronaut's Frequency offerings is what I hope many more companies will aspire to. Professionalism in an amateur arena.
Rating: 5/5

Curious Echo Radio Theater

2010-04-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

Curious Echo Radio Theater is an audio production company created in 2002 by Louis Gutierrez and Sharon Moskowitz after listening to a live performance of ARTC. Their only available offering I can find is the completed series of "Beware the Moon Wraith- The Orb of Phoebe" which runs in about 10 minute installments to a total of ten episodes. The Moon Wraith is written in the old radio drama style of mysterious powerful detective in the same vein as The Shadow and the modern day Red Panda. Episodes are family friendly with scenes of action and mild violence, but contain mystical and spiritual themes including the dead walking the night and possession. Probably operating as an AD-PG in the Audio Drama Rating System.

Website
The Curious Echo website is very basic. It operates as a fairly boring wordpress format with no pictures. It is not very well maintained as the last post on the main page is December 31st, 2008.
The colors are an uninspiring off-white and computer blue with a header that is kind of a maroon-grey block. There are categories and links down the left-hand side to check out friends, other Audio Drama Companies, and ways to find them on various different websites.
The About section has a few details on the origin of the group which is nice, but it doesn't mention anyone beyond the founding two members. There is a spot for new members to Get Involved but if I were an actor I would be a little reluctant. There's no mention of who plays what characters anywhere on the website! Actors need name recognition. They need a headshot to connect with the name so people know what they look like and where else they can be found. Please put some information about your actors in. They deserve it! Ditto for the production staff. Writers? Editors? Directors? None can be found.
There's a tantalizing mention of "Elizabethan Radio" but no description of what it is nor episode to listen. The last performance seems to have been 2004 at Necronomicon.
There's some good information in here, but the site needs a thorough reboot.
Rating: 1/5

Audio Drama Type- OTR Recreation
While poking fun at the medium at times, Curious Echo continues with a fairly loyal recreation of the Old Time Radio standard mystery adventure story. The music fits excellently with the age. The story is written in the same "exciting chapter" style and is left at a cliffhanger. The characters are stock and familiar, and the villains are appropriately over the top in their villainy.

Acting- Amateur
The acting in the "Moon Wraith" series is surprisingly good. Forgive my misspellings as I can't find either the names of the characters or actors. Virgil Cain played by Sam Atwell does a passing job, but doesn't have that resounding power one is used to with such a roll. He seems to still be feeling out the character. Sandra Ashton, his love interest and cohort is played by Peggy West who sounds too old for the typical younger woman role that provides. Similarly the "plucky newsboy" Crabby Jones played by Dustin Hearn does not sound anything like a young boy.
Ed Bell as the narrator hits all the marks of a good Old Time Radio announcer of such shows and feels the most comfortable on the audio stage. Sharon Moscowitz plays the role of Detective Kendall handily though with a rich believable presence, and Susie Lee puts on a sparkling performance as Kay Trescott, especially near the end.
The acting is certainly better than many audio drama shows out there, but the main roles still feel like they are trying to get a strong handle on their characters. The direction is solid, and there's an absolute understanding of the age. My thought is that if there is another series of "The Moon Wraith" the actors will feel more comfortable in their roles.
Rating: 4/5

Production: Measured
I'm very impressed with the work on the production. Dave Murphy handled the editing and Andrew Davis was one of the folks involved in sound effects. Keeping the sounds conservative, the Moon Wraith produces a soundscape that you'd hear in an old time radio show. Only what is needed to tell the story. Vocal effects are used for the "other worldly" elements of characters who speak as apparitions of some sort, and the music is spot on. This series is a great example of how good editing can raise a production's quality even more.
Rating: 5/5

Writing
The writing by Louis Gutierrez is tight and well-paced. He understands the old-style format in which a lot of dialog keeps the story moving and develops the romantic interest between the main characters while never failing to end off on a high-point at the end of each episode. Without giving away the story, I like that he also uses the orb to change the nature of the Moon Wraith for further adventures. One gets the feeling that we're at the beginning of the evolution of this hero as opposed to showing up in the middle as with most heroes in this genre. The characters are all used well, and the story works especially well in the audio format.
If there is one complaint that I have it is this. Most of the comedic quips fall flat. I tried to understand why, and realized that the Moon Wraith has the same problem that Red Panda had. It is initially a parody of a genre wanting to be taken seriously on it's own. Gregg Taylor reinvented the Red Panda and tossed his first series into an "alternate universe" where Moon Wraith continues with serious adventuring only to have the forward momentum nearly drop dead when a character makes an out of place pun or a gag during an intense moment.
Parody humour no matter its original intent is never really flattering. It tends to inflate and remove the fourth wall for the listening audience and remove all suspension of disbelief.
So my advice to Mr. Gutierrez is to either stop writing compelling and interesting adventure plots and embrace the silliness completely as is done by "The Voice" in Two Minute Danger Theater or drop the humour completely unless it is in character and appropriate for the story.
Rating: 4/5

Additional Notes
Words can not express how frustrated I was to discover the Moon Wraith is a couple of years old and only ten episodes long. Certain shows require a long term commitment. As disappointed as I am in the end of Two Minute Danger Theater, there are something in the order of 200 episodes. "The Orbe of Phoebe" is ten episodes of something less than ten minutes in length. I cannot believe that such a compelling story is the only one Mr. Gutierrez's pen has ink for. So it is my personal opinion that the Moon Wraith has to stop hiding in the shadows and take on the Red Panda as a serious regular audio drama hero. I know there would be a large following if that were to happen.

Over All
I'm not sure if Curious Echo Radio Theater has any more cards in their deck but "The Moon Wraith" is the kind of OTR recreation most of us fans of the old time style love, and is better written than most. It has excitement, an interesting concept in the MW character, and possibilities for more in the future. If you love the heroes of old, you should really give this short serial adventure a try.
Rating: 4/5

Searcher & Stallion

2010-04-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

Searcher & Stallion is one of the oldest running "modern" audio drama science fiction series. The original series began back in the pre-Internet days of the early 1990's. The series is created and headlined by Scott Howard who admits that he came up with the idea in his teens while driving his car around and listening to Tangerine Dream. Some years later at a radio station in Salt Lake City he began narrating the story of "Searcher & Stallion"- a lonely traveler through space with his mechanical steed. The series was a hit locally and only ceased production as it became too difficult to continue without any income supporting the project. S&S is a science fiction series with a small cast, a little blood and violence but basically rated AD-PG-13 (based on the new Audio Drama Ratings System).

Website
The Searcher & Stallion website fits the theme and the mood of the series. S&S does a great job of having the listener the kind of loneliness it must feel like in the vacuum of space. The website is a little dark therefore in color with all of space as the background, and of course that fits just about perfectly.
Functionally I like the format. The two column look provides easy access to updates about news and links including donations and a widget for listening to the series "Dreams and Wings". I like the paragraph at the very top "What is Searcher & Stallion?" It very quickly identifies the universe the story plays in and explains the central conceit surrounding Searcher. Information on the Original Series, Contacts, Links, and Fan Forum are all standard fare, but I want to point out that the About Us is a section that gets good detail here and not nearly as much shrift in other websites as I've said before. Getting the history of this project makes you feel like you're part of a long voyage of the creative process and not just a listener. But there's no information about the actors outside of Scott Howard who make the voices in S&S. Am I missing a link?
Similarly, the S&S Insider which links you to a blog that provides more information about the process of audio drama creation has two entries and the last post made four years ago.
If I have one criticism is that audio drama producers do not tend to update their websites and blogs nearly enough. Even once a month would be a nice change.
Rating: 4/5

Audio Drama Type- Audio Book
I'm going to go out on the limb and say that while Searcher & Stallion claims to be an audio drama, really it is at best a hybrid of an audio book. The story is told mostly from an unseeing omniscient narrator (Scott Howard) and the use of a narrator places us into a "story time" environment instead of the "real time" mode of audio drama. Pure audio drama for the most part tends to shave off narration to keep the story in the moment. This doesn't diminish the story of S&S, but it does try to clarify exactly what kind of audio work it is.

Acting Types- Amateur
The actors who play the characters on the show are great. Since I can not find the spelling of their names on the website, I'm going to avoid butchering them and simply name them as the blog does- Suit, Searcher, Stallion, etc...
I have little to say but that the casting is excellent. The direction is spot on. For the first couple episodes Searcher's dialog may consist mostly of grunts, groans, and gasps of pain, but they are realistic. You feel everything being described. The actor playing Searcher gives a spot on performance of frustration, loneliness, and confusion. His voice is middle-ranged enough to come across as an effective Everyman and it is clearly different enough from the narrator that people realize they are two different folks.
The woman who plays the voice of the suit is controlled and focused. She comes across clearly as an artificially intelligent entity without the Robby the Robot clankiness. If I were stuck in space. Her voice would certainly be a comfort to me. Stallion's voice is different yet again, and this too is excellent decisions on casting, and style.
Scott Howard's rich voice of the narrator is smooth enough to relax by. The only danger is, Searcher & Stallion episodes one and two of "Dreams and Wings" might settle you out too much. Be careful if operating heavy machinery or driving.
Rating: 5/5

Production: Detailed
The blog at the website expresses the concern that episode one of "Dreams and Wings" took five months to complete, and that their hope is to complete each episode in a month. This is a pretty slow schedule by most production means. The issue I believe is that the team of S&S are trying to make professional productions on their own time. That usually means a significant time investment, and when it's your hobby, those time investments can run over a long scale.
S&S delivers on the production end. The episodes are immaculately miked as Kendall Jackman's Insider will tell you. Jackman produces the music for Searcher & Stallion which has a dreamy quality to it that reminds me of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack. The music is powerful next to Scott Howard's dulcet tones and the sound effects are just enough to tell the tale.
But once again, my biggest problem is this- conservation.
If a production is ostensibly an audio book, then do away with sound effects and actor reactions since they are already indicated in the narrative. If the story is an audio drama, then remove any narration that would tell the story instead of telling it through the sound effects and dialog. Using both is over kill.
"..the bone reset..." (cue sound effect of a bone resetting).
The author just told us twice what was happening. Once is only necessary.
Rating: 4.5/5

Writing
Scott Howard wrote the series of S&S and you can tell there's a lot of love about the characters and the setting. The writing itself is compelling enough but only after about episode 3. I'm not sure if it's exciting or frustrating yet to realize that each episode is a "page" of the story and not a "chapter". After listening to the long, sometimes painfully so, descriptions of Searcher's awakening in the world and slow realization to the elements of the suit I began to panic that I might very well listen to 20 or so more "pages" of episodes before anything really happened.
But take heart. Around episode three is when actual audio drama interactions of dialog with Stallion begin and there's a cool battle scene that occurs.
There is always a tug and pull between description and dialog with writers. How much is too much description? How little is too little?
One of the great truisms is this. Dialog generally slows down the story in fiction and description speeds it up.
What most people do not realize is the exact opposite is true in Audio Drama. Description slows down a story to a crawl in a radio play and dialog keeps the story interesting and the characters engaged (assuming that all things being equal, dialog and description are equally good).
Howard knows Science Fiction and he understands the conventions of the universe that S&S live in. His details are not without merit. But greater merit would include more trimming.
Rating: 4/5

Additional Notes
I did not go about to listen to the original Searcher & Stallion episodes. The scope of this blog is to focus on things first time listeners would hear. In the future, I may indeed listen to the originals, as I am curious as to how far they have come in their production. My guess is that the production values of the original shows still outstrips some of the current producers of audio drama today. Howard and his team strike me as folks who take very seriously Searcher & Stallion, and that's a very good thing.

Over All
If you are one of those folks who does not mind listening to an audio book presentation of audio drama, then Searcher & Stallion is something you'll appreciate.
While I loved all the elements, the production, the actors, the music, and even at times the writing, and even though it comes together in a very unique way, in my heart of hearts I feel that the show would do much better pushing the narration into the rear view mirror, or simply cutting out all pretenses of audio drama conventions and making the story an audio book with multi-cast recording.
While it took me three episodes of the four to really get hooked into "Dreams & Wings", it was worth it to me, and I hope they will make many more to come in this new age of Audio Drama revival.
Rating 4/5

Space Casey

2010-04-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Space Casey is written and produced by Christiana Ellis. Ms. Ellis is also famous for writing the podcast novel Nina Kimberly the Merciless and podcasting "Christiana's Shallow Thoughts", "Hey, Wanna Watch a Movie?"and "Talking about Survivor". Ms. Ellis is also one of those early adopter folks who got in under the wire along with J.C. Hutchins, Scott Sigler, and Tee Morris as some of the first folks to create fiction content for podcasts- some of who still make fiction, others do not. From everything that I can tell, Ms. Ellis has not made any fiction since 2008.

And why should she? Her novel NKTM is now in hard copy by Dragon Moon Press and "Casey" won the Gold Mark Time Award in 2007.

But this is part of my criticism about Awards. Looking at the list of past winners, I'm a little surprised at the Mark Time Awards. I can stand by their choices for the Ogle Awards in the past, there's a solid crop of shows including productions made by Crazy Dog Audio, Ollin Productions, Colonial Radio Theatre and Chatterbox Theater. I've heard most of these shows, but recognize all of these companies for high production standards and great acting. Perhaps it is the nature of "too many fish in the sea to choose from" when it comes to Horror audio drama productions but far less when it comes to Science Fiction? Or maybe the companies just didn't pony up the 25 dollar entry fee needed to have their works adjudicated? Perhaps it is the judges who appear not to have a whole lot of experience with modern audio drama. Great Northern Audio certainly appears to sell their wares, but outside of an early episode of The Sonic Society with a strange show called "Martian Trombones" I can't find their other works. Certainly everyone in America has heard of Firesign Theatre but they would hardly qualify as modern audio drama practitioners, and The Society of Audio Addicts has neither been updated since 2008, nor appears to be strictly interested in audio drama at all but rather podcasting.
So you can understand why I feel a little underwhelmed when I listened to "Space Casey" and discovered it was a gold winner. Not that "Casey" is a bad series. It is even a fairly decent audio drama, but certainly not a great one.
Production
Considering that I'm reviewing this as a winner, I would have to say that the production is fairly weak for gold place. Looking at shows like "After Hell" which create rich and detailed sound landscapes, multiple tracks and sound effects with a clear understanding towards "space" and panning. "Casey" on the other hand provides almost no panning (there was maybe one moment with the spider in the vent but I wasn't sure if I imagined it) and almost all of its story takes place in a single spaceship with little interaction with the environment. Even the voice of the computer has no effects on it to let us know it's anything but another person. I can appreciate how effective A.I. can be in the future, but with audio drama even the slightest voice modification helps set the tenor for a character that's not human and needs to be seriously considered.
Now, I enjoy minimalist sound effects approaches as much as anyone. But in a judgement for the best produced audio with powerhouse production companies like CDT and CRT, I expect an elevated criteria. "Space Casey" comes across as a well produced podcast audio play, but nothing more.

Acting
The acting is passable with the weakest link being Ms. Ellis herself. Not everyone who writes should consider being an actor, just as the reverse is true. As "Space Casey", Ms. Ellis' portrayal of the character sounds more like a reading from "Nina Kimberly" than an actual performance. While her voice is unique, as a casting choice it doesn't captivate my expectation of the character of "Casey". The Computer voice on the other hand is an excellent pick. Wesley Clifford most lamentably from the late Planet Retcon series has an excellent sense of comic timing. Some direction choices which bewilder me as a listener are taken, but that is more of a problem with the writing. Good audio drama shouldn't have too many characters, but using no more than two for entire episodes alone would seem - in this reviewers' mind at least- would not make it in the running for a Best Science Fiction of the Year award. Once imagines more involved characterization for that honor.

Writing
"Casey" comes across like a modern podcasters sci-fi manifesto. It contains cliched popular culture memes that virge on "Don't go there" style phrases at times that make it almost painful. If you can get past the "chic-geek" lingo the characters have some fun quips and interesting banter. But that is one of its fatal flaws. From the first of the ten episodes, "Casey" comes out with a strong plot.
Space Casey is a confidence hustler.
Space Casey goes on the wrong ship.
Space Casey has been discovered and will probably die.
After that, the series takes all kinds of slowdowns and turns and the straight forward plot starts looping into conversations about fashion with the computer, spiders on the ship that will kill you if you scream, and transsexual xenomorphic masturbation. No, that was not a typo. Episode number four ends with the spine tingling cliffhanger of Casey needing "private" time once she finds out the computer has transformed her for a short time into an alien "he". A "he" with tentacles, face sensors and who knows what else. I just kept shaking my head, and thinking "No, no, no. This is not entertaining."
And in case you think that was an "off" ending, the episode before ends with Space Casey the great criminal mastermind stuck in the ship's duct work, and unfortunately it wasn't played for ironic effect. And the next episode? She uses her incredible con abilities to do- Cry like a woman. That's right. Casey cries like a woman to get the spaceship to change it's mind and programming. Again, not for ironic effect. This is a plan for her.
I apologize for the continual use of "that's right", but it's important to understand I'm deadly serious about these plot points.
So, what exactly is Space Casey about anyway? As a hustler she's not doing a lot of hustling stuck on a ship. The way she steals money from a passing couple of bugs who are salvaging a wreck comes across as uninspired and unbelievable, but that being said, the plot is not entirely uninteresting, and the characters are engaging enough for a podcast. I just can't imagine this series ever being known as anything more than a sidestep from Ms. Ellis' writing prose. But it's a gold Mark Time winner. Not to bring up Mr. Clifford again, but his Stargate Cafe was far better written, far funnier in its best episodes, and had more characters involved and developed.

Rating: 3/5
So, what happened? How did Mark Time award a good but not great show as a "gold" entry?
One has to wonder if the cult of personality that has followed Ms. Ellis from her early successes with "Nina Kimberly" and somehow influenced the results?
I've noticed a decided "cold shouldering" of many audio drama production companies by those who produce regular podcast fiction or simple podcast talk shows. Perhaps I'm wrong, but consider how many times some of those previously mentioned early podshow hosts have cross-promoted their own works compared to how many times they have mentioned someone like "Gregg Taylor" from Decoder Ring Theatre, Jeffrey Adams from Icebox Radio or Jack Ward from The Sonic Society all of which have been at this certainly as long as they and have made as much of a lasting impact. But perhaps Audio Drama isn't a brand that crackles geekery as much as "podcast", "podnovel", "Web 2.0" and "Social Media".
Maybe it's true. The geek really will inherit the Earth.

Dick Dynamo

2010-04-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Dick Dynamo- the 5th Dimensional Man is a continuing series put together by Jon Baker, Eldon Cowgur, Jacey Dalton, Anthony Myers and Grant Cottrell. DD is a parody of 1950's science fiction pulp detective style stories. The show is absolutely rated Restricted and is not work safe.

Website
I originally went to www.dickdynamo.com to see the website, but it disappeared. I don't know what happened, but now the links have to do Warcraft guides and some wrestler who calls himself Dick Dynamo. I found their Myspace Page and a link at the somewhat defunct Echo Fiction site. There are rumors of a Facebook page although I don't partake in social media to know if that's true or not.
The original webpage was amazing. It was like flipping through an original comic book (as the above graphic can attest.)
But without a clear website or even a RSS feed to point to (all I had was the i-tunes store to nab it) I'm going to have to give it a null.
Rating: 0/5

Audio Drama Type- Mock Old Time
Dick Dynamo tries to fashion around old time themes and well-worn plot devices like an heir to a fortune, baby left at a doorstep, and the amnesia game. But expect each of these tales to take a decidedly different Science Fiction/Dick Dynamo twist. Music through out the show is a mix of old and new, and there's enough intentional production interference to mimic old time theater. Even the tries to mimic the style with the fast-talking, flim-flamerisms found back in the era of the Golden Age.

Acting Types- Amateur
The DD team are obviously friends that have known each other and these characters for some time. I could not begin to pick out who plays what characters with the exception of Jacey Dalton and Eldon Cowgur who voices Dick, but they all know their parts well. They mimic old-style stock characters and very nicely mock them. Their "Tech Man" series has even more ridiculously drawn characters that mock their own writing itself. Lines are delivered in TM with halting dullness which adds new depths in its shallowness, if that makes any sense. Finally, their depictions as their out of character selves come across as painfully funny and the listener feels guilty at times listening in to what appears to be an extremely bad and amateurish production but is obviously well-orchestrated and produced. The only criticism I have is that the characters are so cartoonish that there's little requirement for from strong performances to engage the audience.
Rating: 4/5

Production Type- Detailed
Jon Baker's production is detailed and incredibly well-planned. Each sound effect is provided for comic effect or to tell the story. While it make at times appear chaotic, do not thing that the chaos is not in fact incredibly controlled. Even Tech-Man is painful to listen to on purpose. The recordings peak, the hiss grows and cuts out as if badly microphoned. Sound effects are horribly placed and artificial. But after hearing the fine design of Dick Dynamo you can tell that these are production choices.
All of these are underscored by the music. The music of Dick Dynamo sets the tone of the series, the frantic pace, and creates appropriate high points for scene stings and openers. While most shows begin with a theme music (and usually the shorter the better to get to the story) Dick Dynamo begins a teaser. Honestly, I'd prefer more audio drama series to consider this option. Beginning with a taste of a story and then cutting to a longer theme has the ability to connect with your listeners early.
Because Dick Dynamo is kind of science-fiction/fantasy, there are a pile of worlds and ideas that the show opens up. Naturally, audio drama does this better than any medium. In fact, I challenge Jenette Kahn who used to say that comics were the ultimate medium because they could destroy a universe and bring it back in a few frames. Audio Drama can do it with even less effort, sometimes with a single sound effect.
Dick Dynamo's production is one of those rare moments where the entire scope of possibility for this form is shown. As silly and fun as the content, DD's imagination just shines.
Rating: 5+/5

Writing
Perhaps one of the most successful collaborations of the modern age, Dick Dynamo is written by the same folk who act in it. One can imagine the stories evolve over a series of meetings (and probably beers) and go down to the smallest joke. There's real snappy dialog and hilarity.
One of my favorite lines is from an early episode when Dick is rebuffing a woman he has recently discovered has a child. "There's no 'we' in 'unwed'" Dick says, without a trace of a smile. That's brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Dick is a thoroughly chauvinistic and ignorant character, who's not at all likable, yet he's compelling to listen to in this comedy. That's not easy to do. Sometimes the audience is waiting to find out just what stupid thing will come out of his mouth next.
What makes Dick so palatable as a character is despite his chiseled features and brain, he still ends up stopping many of the evils that occur around him. In short, the lesson is, to make a hero, a hero, no matter how bad he is, make his opponents worse.
The humor is sometimes puerile stooping to lots of comments about urination and scatology. I never find it funny when the Angry Video Game Nerd does it, I don't here. But that's a matter of taste (or lacking there of). To be fair, DD doesn't pull its punches anywhere. The writers often play to stereotypes, so if you don't mind the sometimes misogynistic humor either, you'll enjoy the show as I do.
Rating: 4/5

Additional Notes
In thinking over this review, I was trying to come up with a way to describe Dick Dynamo for a new listener. I could crib Gregg Taylor of Decoder Ring Theatre who wrote:
"If you put Matt Helm and Roger Ramjet into the same teleporter and sent them through together, thus melding them into a single, slightly confused but cool being, then poured him into a sci-fi movie with a lot of heaving bosoms and fed everybody in sight as much 'Captain Crunch' as they could eat until they were buzzing like a hummingbird... That gives you a vague idea of where this one seems to be heading."

But instead I'm going to say this.
I don't know who comes up with the most ideas, or who is writing most of the works, but either singularly or collectively the creative brain of Dick Dynamo represents the Andy Kaufman of Audio Drama.
They seem interested in annoying as much as entertaining. They create purposefully bad stories because they think its hilarious to the point of even laughing at their listeners for liking bad audio drama. I get it. The DD team are working on a very "meta" level of how they approach audio drama. One wonders at times if they are having fun producing these shows or producing these shows for fun. My guess is it's more the former and not the latter.

Over All
Dick Dynamo is the kind of audio drama that really defies easy description. It's a comedic experience. One that you will either instantly appreciate or hate depending upon your depth of knowledge in the field. Despite its silly exterior, DD is extremely smart in their choices, and I just can't think of another show out there that does what it does. Sometimes I love it, some points I hate it, and always I keep coming back to it.
Put back your website, let people know that you plan to stay. Put out a monthly or bi-monthly schedule. Set out your tent pegs and let people know you're planning to stay (if you are), because this show is one of those shows that if it lasts will bring Audio Drama back to the quirky minds of the cyber-folk.
Rating: 4.5/5

Bell-Bottoms are Out

2010-04-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Going through a few more audio dramas and I'm dealing with a heavy case of "hipsteritise" or what I'm going to call "Bell-bottoms Dialog". Too many folks of the modern day persuasion fall into social media references and phrases that are instantly familiar to most podcast listeners.
These are geekisms and pop culture references that will be here today and eye-rolling tomorrow.
Don't in the name of heaven, fall into that trap unless you're purposefully epoxy-fitting your audio drama into a particular decade.
Like watching seventies cop shows with wide lapels, gaudy gold medalions, platform shoes and the like, these phrases and terms will be here today and painful to listen to tomorrow.
So if your dialog has:
"Don't go there" or "Oh-em-Gee!" or "He's such a Mary Sue" or any other such blog, tech, or pop related items- tear them out.
A rule of thumb is, if its a quarter of a decade old and it's been consistently popular, you're probably safe.
Maybe not even then.

The Uniting Power of Stereotypes

2010-04-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

The term stereotype has a well-earned negative perception. But outside of social and business relations and in the sphere of writing, stereotypes are crucial.
Stereotypes can have a strong influence in good writing in three main ways:
1. Minor/Brief Characters
As I've written before, scripts and productions should be extremely conservative in their development. The more cluttered a story, the more likely the audience will get lost, the metaphor will go astray, or the theme will be strained. Characters that are used- like the elevator operator, the cabby, the waitress- for only a few short lines would serve the story to be more typified. I'm not speaking of offensive stereotypes but certainly "types". Audience members want to have familiarity with the surroundings even for brief exchanges with minor characters.
2. Developed from a Stereotype
Creating a major or main character who begins as a stereotype but develops through the course of the story is what has created some of the most compelling character narratives seen on the silver screen. Even racists like Archie Bunker and Andy Sipowicz- each considered repugnant by most people, also represent the ignorance that many people have deep within them. Their growth from a stereotypical character to a definitively flawed but loveable human being is important for everyone from writers, actors, producers, and the audience to experience.
3. Turning a Stereotype Upside-Down
Perhaps the most difficult of the three and should be attempted only by the most skillful of writers. Taking a very recognizable stereotype only to actually show that in the end, that other characters (and by proxy the audience) are the one's making the judgement is a tricky juggling act. One of the most powerful examples of turning the stereotype on its head is with the Peter Seller's masterpiece "Being There"in which Chance the Gardner who remains very basic and simple as a character is given depth and is entirely misunderstood by all around him. So deeply is Chance reinvented that he walks on water at the end of the movie.

Taking the time to consider how stereotypes, particularly the use of creating typified minor characters, in your scripts can really improve the delivery of your audio play.

Kung Fu Action Theatre

2010-04-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

Kung Fu Action Theatre is the brain child of Robyn Paterson, yet another Canadian (counting Decoder Ring Theatre and The Sonic Society this makes an inordinant number from a very thinly populated country.) out of London, Ontario. It contains exactly what the title promises- action stories mostly centred in ancient China although the show "Team Iron Angel" seems to be more akin to Japanese animation style of storytelling, as does "D-Ranger". "Twin Stars" is a more straight forward space opera. Mr. Paterson also reads translation of chinese action romance novels in between long stretches of breaks in his audio drama.
Most shows would be considered Parental Guidance rating with some mature subject matter discussed, but mostly the episodes are family friendly and work safe. More suggestive themes than actual blatant sexuality or violence.

Website
When I first went to the KFAT website, it was very roughly put together. I really like the new update. The scheme gives a bold background reddish hue with greyed boxes and easy to read text. There's super graphics depicting some of the best shows, and what would be the title bar flashes some of the more popular series.
The smaller navigation bar at the top gives the options of - "Our Shows" which has the main shows lined down the left side, all except "D-Ranger" who seems to be placed beside "Team Iron Angel" (I'm not sure why). A click on each of the shows gives a listing of all the listed shows. I picked "The Adventures of Little Gou" and was pleasantly surprised to find all the shows I listened with a small caption describing each. I would also place the feed links below the listings if I had my druthers, as they seem a little smashed up on the right side as well. I like the "FAQ" page as a first time listener should always know what they are getting into. This is my chief complaint to the website though, is that while I get a sentence here and there explaining the shows, I know even after I have listened to the series I would love a little more detailed background information. Where and when does Little Gou take place? What do we need to know about "Team Iron Angel" just walking into it? What's the universe like where "Twin Stars" takes place?
Mr. Paterson writes indepth and well developed worlds, I want to know more so I don't get lost before I get started.
The links on the side seem a little redundant at the top. The "Now Playing" caption reiterates what's already showing in the main page. Of course, as KFAT grows that will probably change. The friend's links are a good idea, as for new users it represents another jumping off point for more audio drama.
Too many websites neglect or hide their "Contact" information. Mr. Paterson does not, thank goodness, and he follows up with Audio Drama Talk links, a facebook page, and his personal blog to find out more about the author. New and loyal listeners like to know about the authors and producers of their favorite audio drama.
This is an excellent upgrade and part of my decision for the Award below. A couple of formatting changes will improve the new look.
Rating: 4.5/5

Audio Drama Theater (re) Type- Modern
Kung Fu Action Theatre (the "re" Mr. Paterson assures us is how it is written with "style", a catchy catch-phrase if I ever heard one) uses all the trappings of modern podcast audio drama, including what he calls "satellite actors" (a term I had heard before but I think I will use more definitively after listening to his post on production), sound effects, and music. Stories are often told in serial form with the exception of "Little Gou" in which each episode ties up the plot by the end.

Acting Types- Amateur
Mr. Paterson casts many of his parts from the Voice Acting Alliance and other actors from different audio drama companies. After listening to the early shows of KFAT, I fear that shows such as Sailor Moon have ruined a generation of female voice actors. The squeaky anime style of voice acting heard in many shows is like nails on a chalkboard. While it may work in the visual medium (I admit to not watching a great deal of anime through the years, the animation style bothers me), it is near death for voice acting in an audio drama. Anime acting is ham-fisted, over-the-top emotionalism of squeals and bi-polar turn-arounds. Audio Drama acting that's not meant to be funny needs to have a lot lighter touch. For the most part however, KFAT is the exception to the rule as the content of the stories is supposed to make the listener harken to some of the broad "acting" that's found in so many kung fu action movies.
Without getting into too much detail, there are four actors that stand out for me in several different productions.
Robyn Paterson himself as Little Gou. At first I did not like Mr. Paterson's portrayal, but as he grew into the part, I was highly disappointed when Little Gou was played by another actor. Paterson alone seems to understand the mischievious nature that Gou provides. Gou is Robyn Paterson and should never be portrayed by another actor, as far as I'm concerned.
Fiona Thraille as Cat. Her performance is a little more uneven. She carries the weight of being the more serious character in the "Little Gou" adventures, but her action sequences need more energy and oomph. She has a good sense of the emotional scenes but better direction is needed when the Sister is kicking ass.
David Ault. I have never heard Mr. Ault make a bad performance. His presence because of his accent sometimes feels out of place, but simply being there his voice can elevate a scene. Good casting choice.
Chris Gumprich. This actor I haven't heard enough of. He has a good sense of presence in the roles I've listened to, a deep understanding of the medium and genre, and he presents voices that frankly I don't immediately recognize. I'd like to see his turn in a major continuing role.
The acting in the first few episodes of KFAT were actually quite poor, but this was not helped by the awful production levels. Thank goodness things have changed and continue to grow.
Rating: 3.5/5

Production Type- Minimal to Detailed
The earliest KFAT shows are the worst produced. Obviously Mr. Paterson was just learning as he went along. I recommend you skip the first "Little Gou" shows until you listen to the most recent and become a fan, then go back and listen to the rest. The problems were wide and varied. The first shows had terrible microphoned actors where no more different sounding microphones could be heard in almost any other released show I've heard. Dialog was stilted. Spaces between voices you could drive trucks through and the music shocked you out of the story entering and leaving as stings, but really leaving the listener with something that smarted.
That's the old Kung Fu Action Theatre. Mr. Paterson has done what some producers refuse to do. He's learned from his mistakes. The acting has improved. The direction has been nearly spot on and the production levels grow and grow almost exponentially. Mr. Paterson has expressed in his feed his reluctance to use music that's not licensed (understandably) and his concern that mixing in music is not his forte. I would agree with his assessment, but he is getting better. The theme musics from "Team Iron Angel" set the tone of the series and help draw tension in the action. The stings are getting tighter, and all the actors sound like they are in the same room which keeps the listener more engaged.
Well done. An overall rating here would be unfair as the older shows diminish the expansion of his editing capabilities. In future show reviews, I will review each.

Writing
What kept me listening through the terrible production values of the early shows and the poor acting at times was Mr. Paterson's writing. He has an innate understanding of Chinese culture. He has an even deeper understanding of good plotting. He has a good sense of meaningful and effective dialog and he has a good feel for the character types found in action stories of the time. He draws westerners unfamiliar with the cultural motifs of the East in with ease. He knows that using "Little Gou" as a kind of underdog every man, he gains sympathy and thus attention from his listeners. He knows that by making the choice for "D-Ranger" an outsider he devises another method for people to enter the story and want to be a part of the growth of the characters.
Peril is one of the more difficult elements of good action writing. Most writers avoid creating traps in which their characters need to think their way out, Mr. Paterson is a master of these in "Little Gou". Gou uses his brains to win the day more often than not, no matter how tightly the noose is around his throat. This is echoed in the space opera "Twin Stars" and to a smaller extent in "Team Iron Angel" and "D-Ranger" which are more animated series put to sound and therefore more about the action.
While some of the humor may fall flat at times, the characters make it work in the story, and this is the sparkling pen of Paterson.
Rating: 5/5

Additional Notes
I wanted to listen to "Twin Stars" as it has a lot more buzz in the community. But when I downloaded everything off the feed there was only one episode and that was "Episode 8 of Book 1" to go back to. I didn't feel right beginning "Book 2" without having the slightest idea what I was going into. So when I have more time, I will go to the website to pull down the entire series. I'm not sure why "Twin Stars" is missing on the feed. There is also a series of audio book chapters, but I skipped those to listen instead to the actual audio drama. When I have time, or a long trip however, I will take the time to listen to the chapters themselves.

Over All Rating

Kung Fu Action Theatre wins my "Most Improved" Audio Drama Award. They have successfully knit closed the holes in the series and have grown in leaps and bounds. Paterson took a rather long hiatus in the past, and has been known to take more. As a listener I recommend more of a schedule posted so we can get an idea what to look forward to and where those hiatus may take place. While it's understandable that life sometimes does not give us advanced warning on personal emergencies, it is important to get a good sense of how long things may take.
Give KFAT a try if you are a fan of action series, and even if you aren't, Paterson's writing is instructive and an example of how any story can be adapted to make a great audio tale.
Rating: 4/5

Shoe-horned, Slammed, or Slid- Music in Audio Drama

2010-04-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Music in Audio Drama is a delicate fit.
Some feel music is a requirement or a necessity. But the wrong kind of music is worse than having no music at all.
Music must fit the theme of the story. Of all the elements of drama production, music is the most typified.
Do not consider telling an epic mythic story with a single squeeze box organ. Also, do not consider a cyber-punk science fiction tale with a wood flute. The use of instrument, the genre, and the placement all make a huge difference in an audio theater performance.
Instruments- Consider a couple of elements here. The instruments that are used will bring out various moods. Blaring trumpets rarely signify sad stories. Single violins rarely signify joy. In combination with an orchistra however they compliment each other quite well. Full orchistra productions are usually the most coveted musical scores and are often the most costly. They present entire kingdoms of sound. When looking as to what instruments are helpful, have an ear for what has been done in movies and television. There's a reason why so many early family sitcoms have sung themes- they produce a kind of familiarity that people attribute to the families they invite into their living room each week. The classic All in the Family theme introduced the mood of the characters and their reluctance to be involved in the changing times. Where as Growing Pains "Show me that smile" was a catch phrase much like Family Ties' "What would we do Baby, without us?" were both there to remind people how families stick together through all kinds of hardship. And of course the iconic theme from Firefly continues the frontier western tone while the lyrics talk about "take the sky from me". Whether its lyrics and the human instrument, electronic compilations or quintets, the intruments matter.
Genre- While instruments alone help identify genre, they don't isolate the genre entirely. The instrumentation from Kingdom of Heaven and that of Star Wars are nearly identical and yet as adventure tales they couldn't be more different. Rent a fistful of popular horror movies, science fiction action adventures, dramatic period pieces, and sophomoric comedies. You'll discover themes that seem to run through each genre. Listen to them and get an idea of what works. If you open a comedy up with a horror theme, you set your listeners up for a parody. They will expect it coming. If you do the reverse, you're setting your listening audience for at best a black comedy or comedy-horror. Genre music sets your characters into the mood of a play far more effectively than a title, or even a well composed introductory narration.
Placement- Perhaps the greatest of sins in music beyond poor choice, is poor placement of a choice. Old time movies by modern standards come across as melo-dramas even if that was not their intent because the music scores are so intrusive. They drown out the story in a torrent of flowery theme. Recognizable themes of music should seep in like a leaky house so that the listeners are not quite aware of the music initially, but become wedded to reoccuring phrases with characters and moments first on a subconscious level. Most people could not tell you when the Vader March enters in Star Wars, but know that it heralds the approach of the dark Lord of the Sith. The romantic themes are similarly not memorized but are recognized in the scenes when they appear. When played outside of the movie itself, they present memories of the characters themselves more so than the scenes in which they represent.

Finally, the use of music has really three main purposes: Themes, Stings, Mood and Arias. Each has their own purpose. Themes help tie a tone to a play or series and create a fingerprint sound for listeners. They can, as the Firefly theme become an anthem for the fans. Stings help punctuate and differentiate between scene changes. They can be more effective than fading the noise of a scene or dropping in seconds of silence, because they keep the plot moving. Mood music is the hardest to properly pull off because it is the least intrusive. Mood music works best as very simplified tones, usually one or two notes, or slight underscored music pieces without melodies that would draw attention away from the scene. The best mood music creates an emotional moment without drawing attention to itself. Arias (or Arie) is my term for those songs that appear in the middle of a scene. Used really effectively in visual mediums and poorly in audio dramas, the job of an aria is to give depth to a scene through a parallel musical message. In movies this is done while showing some kind of montage.

I added Aria to the list because I've heard far too many of those in audio drama recently. While there are exceptions, an aria in an audio drama is a clue that the author/producers do not understand the medium. They are trying to shoe-horn in music where it doesn't belong. Worse still are those audio dramas that have little or no story in an attempt to slam music in instead. Those are signifiers that the author/producers would rather be making music videos instead of audio drama.

Contrary to some popular opinion, Audio Drama does not need music. Good audio drama can be made better with the right application of music, but great audio drama can be made trash by the wrong application of music. Considering the danger of making mistakes, be certain you know how, where and when to put music into your show before you do.

Two Minute Danger Theater

2010-04-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Two-Minute Danger Theater comes from Twisted Mojo productions and is hosted and distributed through Outcast Multimedia. TMDT is a series of two minute long comedy adventures featuring one of three possible shows:

Blake Diamond- the Jungle Adventurer who is almost never in the jungle.

Blast Off Patrol- Starring Captain Ranger and Cadet Nancy in the far-flung future of 1999.

The Voice- with the newspaper man who learned how to throw his Voice and scare criminals with his ability.

Each show has some adult themes but are mostly designed as safe enough to play for all ages as the flavor is set as tight parodies of 1940's melodramatic adventure serials although there is a rather erotic exchange in one of the "Blast Off" episodes so pre-listen to episodes before sharing with kids or at a work environment. The series completed last year in July and has no plans to return.

Website
The website for Danger Theater is nearly vacant. It is more of an offshoot of Twisted Mojo productions. While there are links for the podcast and itunes, there is little else but the shows themselves to be found. It is true at least that a small link takes you to a listing of the cast and about the series in which the site describes Danger Theater as "what old-time radio might have sounded like had modern-day pharmaceutical drugs been available."
The white text on blue background while easy to read has very little to delight the eye. There's some nice little old style pictures of all three shows and the Two Minute Danger Theater title graphic, but the page looks very plain.
Rating: 1.5/5

Theater Type: OTR Knock-off
Danger Theater successfully uses the Old Time Radio style by presenting iconic genre styles of the fortune hunter, pulp futuristic rocket jockey, and Shadow-esque super hero. The characters are broadly drawn. The casts are small. The plots are straight forward. The sound effects sparse and could be for the most part performed live were it an old time radio show. The dialogue is fast paced. Only the sharply placed music and the satirical wit puts the show as a modern offering.

Acting Types- Professional
A perusal of the cast list shows the actors have many more credits to their names and while mostly considered in productions that may not be Hollywood, the still present strong voices in both character, delivery, and variety.
Curtis Eames is the anchor on which all other characters raise their skills towards. Playing so many iconic characters from "The Voice", to Commander Ranger, the villaini Doctor Lambert and Prince Marcada as well as the announcer and others. Eames' machine gun delivery and perfect timing are the reason for the humor coming off as pitch-perfect. As hilarious the writing is, without the proper pacing and characterization even the best gags would come off as flat. Eames hits every note. Similarly Ryan Thomas Johnson acts as the perfect comedic partner as Cadet Nancy in Blast Off Patrol. He's less on with his characterization of Blake Diamond, but only slightly when compared to Eames' razer abilities. Tori McPetrie stands up well against Eames as Sarah in "The Voice" as playing the "straight man" in that show is always harder than the wacky detective. She also does a superb job as Lt. Dale, the potential although often mismatched love hopeful for Commander Ranger in Blast Off Patrol. McPetrie keeps the pace up to both press Eames' characters and challenge his chops. But the voice of Queen Zantabia played by Dawn Westlake captivated my ear as the best iconic villainess. Slowing her responses slightly and including an accent to differentiate herself, Westlake does a marvelous job in Blast Off Patrol. Perhaps the weakest of the group is George Barker Barrett III with his various minor characters. But describing his portrayals as "weaker" is akin to looking at the Baseball Hall of Fame and picking "the poorer players". His acting only comes off as slightly flatter when compared with the other fellows. He does much better than many actors in modern audio drama today, and I would love to hear his take in a lead role.
While it is sad to note that Danger Theater no longer exists, considering the caliber of the acting, it's understandable that the actors have moved on to other projects.
Rating: 5+/5

Production Type: Minimalists
In favor of the Old-Time Radio feel, MJ Butler has kept the production minimalist. Keeping to sound effects that identify setting, dramatic tension, and comedic effect, Butler does away with all extraineous sounds. The only time you will hear footsteps in the show is if they add to the story or comedy. Instead, Butler uses music stings, themes, and voice effects with great impact. The stings cut the edges of the scenes, bend time, and announce the tenor of the genre. Utilizing music in the place of massive sound effects speed the pace of the script to a raucus measure even faster than the delivery of the actors' words.
Butler knows exactly how to challenge the OTR show format through the honesty of the direction of the actors and the purity of the production.
Rating: 5+/5

Writing
If there is one thing that could be said sparkles above all things- above the sharp witted acting, above the tightly structured production values, above the perfect musical stings and themes, it is the power of the scripts. Butler pokes fun at the square-jawed hero stereotype and continues the depictions with powerful jabs at the one-dimensional villains from the genres. He understands very accurately what draws in listeners, knows how to create fast-pitched scenes that fire the listener through the plot at super-sonic speeds without feeling rished and leaves each episode at a climax, albeit an always highly contrived climax (but that is part of the humour). Butler's sense of humor is spot on, and works effortlessly from the page through actors lips and into the final production. While some episodes are funnier than others, taken as whole each series will never cease to provide laughter. Butler uses prejudices of the past as grand grist for his pen. Stereotypes of the inequality of women, or the innocence of youth. In the series of "The Voice" called "The Evil Weed", Butler pokes fun at 1950 beliefs about how weed would corrupt and destroy society all while drinking liquor and smoking good "wholesome" tobacco cigarettes. Any better scripts for these series, I could not imagine. It is a rare show that I can not point to changes I would make.
Rating: 5+/5

Additional Notes
Two minutes. It is startling to see how much Danger Theater packs in a two minute show. Each episode feels like a pregnant idea that many writers could not fulfill in 30 minutes let alone ten. Danger Theater is the highest watermark when it comes to a standard for conservation of resources. One can only imagine the amount of drafts Mr. Butler works through to keep boiling down and boiling down each episode so that credits, introductions and music are all included in the script. It is mind boggling how Butler and his team has done it. I've heard shortened scripts that never quite gain this level of prominance. My critical hat off to their skills.

Over All
Two Minute Danger Theater has but one fatal flaw that I can see. It is that the series ended. While listening to so many audio dramas, very seldomly do I find myself listening without end to episode after episode after episode, but with Danger Theater I listened almost entirely in one "sitting". I was involved utterly from the first episode to the last. This is simply the best series I've ever found in short form audio drama.
Please return.
Rating: 5+/5

Texas Radio Theatre

2010-04-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

Texas Radio Theatre is a podcast and live showcase of classic and modern audio drama out of Arlington, Fort Worth, and Dallas, Texas for nearly ten years now. Richard Frolich seems to be the driving force behind TRT's live performances as well as the libsyn podcast. While most of their shows are work safe and family friendly, some shows have subject matter that should be considered PG. TRT appears to be mostly "off-the-air" currently with their podcast's last show marked in May of 2008.

Website
The website for Texas Radio at first glance appears to be formal and contains the basic information. When trying to navigate however it leaves more questions than it answers. Who are the people in Texas Radio? The Contact Us page has no name attached, only a form to fill out or a mailing address for the company. Rich Frohlich can be found on the Our History page with a nice detail as to the background of the company. There is a page for Donations but that frustrates the reader more simply because there are NO scheduled shows!
The Home page explains that "In May and August we recorded 'The Time Machine' and 'Syndrome Johnny', our latest productions. Both of them will soon be available on our podcast." - neither of which have ever materialized on the podcast feed. The News page goes back to March 19th, 2009! And if you travel through the online calendar there appears to be no productions even on the horizon for the next three months.
So my question is, why would anyone donate to an abandoned series? Give us something to hope for. Give us a reason to donate. Please update your page! I don't mind if a page news lapses even a month, but almost a year turns your listeners away.
Rating: 3/5 (For out of date material)

Audio Drama Theater Type- OTR Knock Offs/Theater Shows
Texas Radio seems to present recreations of old time radio, parodies of old time radio and new audio shows all in the live format. Shows tend to fit the format of a half hour, hour, or two hour long play. Audience participation is certainly part of "the flavor" of the show much like the live performances by Icebox Radio.

Acting Types- Amateur
Most of the acting in TRT is done by what sounds to be "Little Theater" or rather small town part-time amateur actors. The acting varies a great deal depending upon the years and who is available. Some shows have some incredibly good acting "The Bride Comes to Yellowsky". Some are uninteresting, and some characters you want to never hear again like the robot in the early "Cliff Proton" shows who sounds like Marvin the Robot but instead of bored circuits he has been outfitted with whiny and annoying. Some of the best acting have been by the supporting characters, although "The Shots" series with Annie Oakley had decent acting from all around.
It's more difficult trying to compare stage acting audio drama with studio acting. Live Audio Theater tends to struggle with itself for relevance. Audio Drama is perhaps the most intimate of forms and Stage is far less so. Distance is the killer. The moment the microphones are placed by the audience, the distance is heard in the audio drama and listeners are well aware that they are no longer involved in an experience, but rather watching a play. Actors play larger on stage than needed in studio, and if the show is too intimate this can make characters come across too "over the top".
Despite all these challenges, the emotions are felt in most of the shows, and the actors do carry the stories well by hitting their marks in the live performance.
Rating: 3.5/5

Production Type: Live
Live audio production must be a nightmare to coordinate. In studio panning, subtle sound effects, and even the loud blaring variety can be carefully measured to affect the power of the performance. Even actors being properly covered with a microphone could be a logistic nightmare especially if the director requires blocking and movement on the stage. Good live performances make their actors work harder, and try to take the pressure off the live sound effects foley artist.
Here TRT does alright. Some sound effects feel artificial, but that's the nature of the live production. Some will work better than others, and what becomes more important is timing. Timing is key. Play a footstep out of sinc or get the wrong timing for a knock on the door and the entire performance has just lost credibility with the audience. Anything less than perfect can spell a disaster.
TRT does a fairly good job, which means they are working extremely hard to get these right. I've heard more actor messes on stage than production errors and that says a lot. There are times when actor voices fade somewhat and are not properly miked, but again that is the danger of the live show.
Rating: 4/5 (For relative difficulty in a live performance)

Writing
The writing in Texas Radio Theatre is understandably uneven. Works by the creator Rich Frolich have a hit and miss quality. Works by guest writers tend to be more solid, but that's presumably because they have been vetted before being chosen. Cliff Proton makes my teeth ache more often than not because I usually do not like parodies. A parody is usually a cheap shot at an original production, even if its done with restraint, and I'd much rather see an original story with in tribute than a parody. Cliff Proton is a thinly veiled Buck Rogers tale including the cheesy commercials, and nonsensical plots. The biggest problem between a parody of Cliff Proton and the original Buck is that Buck took itself seriously. All of Cliff''s stories tend to be shown as a "wink" to the audience with the understanding "isn't this all just silly stuff?" That kills investment of the audience. It may play for good laughs, but it does not honor the old, but rather tries to make it seem all buffoonery. Where this does work at timnes is in their production of Schlock Audio Theater. Once again, the key is whether the writers take the parody seriously, or are simply along for the ride.
Rating: 2.5/5

Additional Notes
This bears repeating. There needs to be more information in the web site about new shows. There needs to be more information about the continuing shows like Cliff Proton. A company with the long history of Texas Radio Theatre needs to spend more time promoting their shows, explaining plots, and pointing to specific episodes in the feed. Yes there's good detail in the feed, but its really not easy to find there either. Set up a Flash Gordon page. Set up a Mystery section. A drama section. Take some lessons from Wireless Radio Theatre Company and give us even a couple of lines for each available episode. I would much rather find something on the main page than go searching for anything on the libsyn feed.

Over All
As you can tell my main frustration is how Texas Radio has let their online presence lapse. Perhaps they are going like gangbusters off the Internet, but its hard to gather strong fans, of which I call myself, if they do not try to maintain any kind of communication. Texas Radio is a leader in live production of Audio Drama. Of that, there is no question. Whether they want to build the live shows into a loyal group of fans or not, is entirely in their hands. Leaving us in the dark for almost a year, is not the way to do it.
Please give us more work to enjoy!
Rating: 2.5/5

Sound Advice

2010-04-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned in a previous post the importance of "space" in an audio drama. What needs to be underlined, is the importance of volume in sound. I forget which old time radio character noted that "why are everyone on stage walking in wooden shoes"? But he emphasizes a point. Many times sound volume levels are terribly mixed and that can emphasize that you're listening to an audio drama instead of being involved in a story.

Too Heavy Sound Effects- Examples like the shoes, wind, and the rain can provide distractions to a story. I would rather have footsteps cut out of an audio drama than have them come in too heavily. They sound unnatural and out of place.
Too Soft Sound Effects- Battle scenes. Crowd scenes. Mass confusion. These are sound effects that need to battle for attention from the actors. I've heard actors calling to each other from one building to another during a firefight and there was no reason for them to yell, the sound effects were so far off in a distance, that the battle was nowhere near them.

It's important to keep in mind that sounds must inform the story. They must create a sense of realism for what is going on. If actors need to shout in a scene, you'd better make sure they shout loud enough that their voices have to battle to be heard over the competing noises around them.
Similarly, don't give us an image that all characters are wearing high heels walking on metal sheeted floors if that's not the case either.
Use good judgment when producing and great sound advice when writing!

Wireless Radio Theatre Company

2010-03-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

Wireless Radio Theatre Company is a collection of audio plays produced in England, the content of which are mostly comedy and drama. The size of plays vary from sketches to full length productions. And they've been extremely prolific. In two years of existence, Wireless has produced over 65 audio productions with four producers, ten directors, and well over 70 actors as their About page attests.
The shows I have heard are mostly requiring parental guidance with swears and sexual situations so beware it may not be family friendly or work safe.

Website
The Wireless web site is very professional looking. Smart black frames with a large red curtained icon and microphone against the white gives a perspective of a fancy playbill in a fine theater.
Straight three columned support sandwiches the main text between a right column of information on their shop, patron, and live performances with a left column that specifies links, donations, and most downloaded shows (a great feature!). Links a long the top take the visitor to A list of the series of Plays- nicely divided into categories, a Who's Who list of Actors and mug shots, a listing of Writers and the production Crew, some delightful photos of productions, and some Listener and Press feedback.
Even the shows have a tiny description and picture to go with them giving the listeners more of a clue of what they could directly download.
Excellent value and easy to traverse!
Rating 5/5

Audio Drama Theater Type- Modern
Following the time worn BBC style radio play, Wireless puts just enough sound effects in many of their productions to tell the story. Music is often limited to themes and transitions. The BBC has always made the interaction of characters their first choice in radio scripts and Wireless does the same. There are no set time limits to shows. Episodes span from well over an hour to just over ten minutes in length. The freedom of the form allows more plays to experience the story without padding or cutting it remorselessly.

Acting Types- Mixed Amateur and Professional
While not familiar with the entire acting roster, I am aware of famous actors such as Prunella Scales lending their voices and credibility to Wireless. The acting, whether from professionals or amateurs is almost universally spectacular. Powerful dramatic performances by Scales in "On Three" bring a kind of poignancy to the loss of a child by an older couple. Similarly, the symbolic, yet powerfully acted "Cormorant" mixes absurd dream-like personalities with the sometimes equally absurd elements of reality. "Turning the Tide" is one of my all time favorite shows from the Wireless because of the powerful acting of the father character in dealing with his own fears of being bullied from past, present, and even through that of his son. The biggest problem I had with "Tide" however was the miscasting of the "boys" in the play who did not sound anything like they were in public school. While casting children can often be a great risk, realism in this play would have helped continue the motif of powerless far better. Still it is a minor objection against a sea of steady, stellar, performances.
Rating: 5/5

Production Type: Measured
Mariele Runacre Temple who spearheaded the Wireless seems to have made great choices in bringing talented producers together for the series. Between "Minimal" and "Detailed" production types, is a third middle option I would call "Measured".
Measured productions focus almost entirely on the dialog and how to best tell the story without interrupting the flow. The sound effects neither scream at you, "HERE ARE SOUND EFFECTS ADDED" nor do they keep things so quiet that the listeners is left scratching their heads as to how active participants in a scene have so little interaction with the world around them.
I don't want to get into details about specific shows except that "Seasons" moved me nearly to tears with how measured the production was, as did "On Three" which kept you guessing every step of the way as to just where the characters were and what they were attempting to do. The resolution was not jarring however, and made perfect sense in the story.
Rating: 5+/5

Writing
The writing in Wireless is as crisp and as compelling as any of the best nights of "theater" I've been out to see. The pacing of the stories are more akin to stage plays in America than the audio drama we've come to know. Scripts have no problem spending long portions talking with characters by keeping the dialog engaging and interesting. Scene changes can be symbolic or actual. There are strong connections to personal mythic structures that are built within some scripts like "Cormorant" while others like "Leaves in August"- a brilliant tale about two old souls coming back together after so many years are told in a series of flashbacks with great acting to keep the audience concretely involved in the characters.
Audio Drama has the unique ability to use a variety of Point of View opportunities that don't work nearly as well in other mediums by not relying on visual images. This gives the writers all of time and space as their scenery.
It is the "stage" sensibility that creates smart, thinking, audio plays, instead of simply entertaining yarns of which we're more used to in our North American diet.
Be prepared to be challenged as a listener. If you're up for the challenge. These plays will transform you.
Rating: 5+/5

Additional Notes
Each Wireless story is self contained and perfect for a download either separately or through their newer podcast. You might want to savor their shows though. They are not easy to listen to one after another- especially the dramas- as they can be almost emotionally exhausting. Wireless shows stay with you, and you'll want to dine on each dish for a long time considering the themes, and their meanings for some time. I'm quite serious about how serious these shows are. They will make you think. They will make you reconsider your life, and they will provide good opportunity to pass on to friends and family to show them exactly what Audio Drama can be as a method of storytelling.

Over All Rating
My personal guarantee is this. If you like good theater, if you like powerful acting, and great drama, the Wireless will be one your number one podcast audio drama companies. Their comedies are very funny too, but perhaps it is the cultural divide, I didn't find them nearly as funny as they could might have been, but I haven't listened to them all yet.
Wireless Theatre Company provides a great partnership between those in the creative community and the modern audio theater audience. They simply make fantastic audio that must be heard.
Rating: 5+/5

The Paranormalists

2010-03-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Paranormalists has been called "Britains First Podcast Drama" and is a comedy-adventure series from Crocanapple Productions about a group of paranormal investigators set in West Somerset in the western portion of England. The series so far is a collection of two mini-series "Minehead Elvis" and "Brown Willy". The series hasn't been updated in a few years now and many wonder if the Paranormalists have "Podfaded" from existence although there is a promise of a third series "The Holy Grail".

Website
The Paranormalist web site is about as bare bones as you can get it. It looks like the last time it was properly updated was in 2006. The color scheme is "alien" green with some white pages to bring out the text. Along the left hand side are a smattering of X-File styled pictures that can be clicked to discover the paranormal elements. Scrolling at the top is a decent but short interview link with the creators and BBC4. I almost missed the other links as they were inside the white page with the other text. I had expected them to be outside in the green expanse.
The link to "Paranormalist Files" is a link to the history of how the show was created and not what I thought would actually be an "inside" conversation of what the show is about.
Which is a shame since the show could use some deeper explanation on the main page for those who do not know what it is. The Cast and Crew page is very detailed and it's awe inspiring to see the pedigree for the players on this show. While most everything is there, I find myself aching for more information and details about the upcoming shows than "Coming Soon". We'd like some tentative release dates and some more detailed background information on the rich backdrop of the characters and information on the West Country. Maps. Character details. Even some suggestive mythological creatures and their habits would do well here.
Rating 3/5

Audio Drama Theater Type- Modern
The Paranormalists utilize modern production techniques similar to that of the BBC. A strong theme song with introductory notes from the main characters to get the story started and sound effects. As opposed to many of the Old Time Radio series, the Paranormalists do not rely on voice overs beyond the introduction with the exception of the old sea captain who usually bookends every episode to draw people into the next, and instead chooses tend to tell a straight forward scene by scene story (sometimes operating with a secondary subplot as in the case of "Minehead Elvis" in bringing in Linda Fortune and her brother Pete to the team.

Acting Types- Mixed Amateur and Professional
The acting in the paranormalists is top notch. Even a cursory look at the impressive resumes of the actors involved shows that care has been taken in getting the right voices. There is a strong mix of voice variations which is needed to provide the listener with enough cues to understand who is talking. Both Neil Edmond (Hitchard Screening) and Rob Crouch (Murray Black) have fantastic comic timing. Good comedic lines have to be leveled with exceeding honesty and innocent miscommunication. Both have a way of on one hand of coming across as experts in the air of extra-phonemena and still portray themselves as bumbling fools and misfits. There is a kind of controlled chaos in their performances that draw the listeners in just waiting to see what will happen to them in the next scene.
Vanessa Morley (Linda Fortune) has a marvelous voice and a stunning delivery. Her portrayal of a smart and unappreciated talent in this field is compelling and each crisp consonent she rips off of the dialog sounds like one step further to her slapping someone upside the head. Ms. Morley has a rich voice that makes you want to sit down with a martini at a smoky bar and listen to her read the phone book to you.
Without going more deeply into the stable of actors and characters from Cyril to Professor Webb these folks are wonderful. One could easily cast the lot into entirely different circumstances and characters and watch them entertain and engage.
Rating: 5+/5

Production Type: Detailed
Joanne Churchman and Andrew Wilks are credited for production of these tales and their work could not be better. The recordings are all sharp and realistic. The cutting of the dialog is fast paced and thoughtful. The sound effects melt into the backdrop of the script as if the show were all recorded "on location" in one take.
The use of the adventurous theme while the characters introduce themselves at the beginning of each episode is a touch of genius. It sets the pace for the episode, and provides a series of reminders for the listeners exactly who is involved, what the stakes are for each show, and who are involved.
Later in the second series, these individual introductions are melded seamlessly to reintroduce the whole group. The series is layered and produced with respect to the podcasting community, and with the highest quality I've seen on any free show.
Rating: 5+/5

Writing
The writing is credited by Crocanapple which includes Rob Crouch, Mike Davis and Simon Whalley and lends creedance to the theory of "many hands make little work" with an addendum of "and much fun." Strong collaborations have been extremely productive in shows like Wormwood and The Paranormalists. The writing is tight and the characterizations are extremely well put together. Anyone coming from a small town anywhere knows these people. That being said, the writers do not make fun of rural life but rather poke gentle fun at the things they love about it.
There is a gentleness in characters as ridiculous as the "Minehead Elvis" and that creates a sympathy for the listeners to rally around.
Struggles of the characters in a fantasy need to be grounded in reality or the suspension of disbelief threatens to be lost. While dramas can have nearly outrageous motivations, fantastic shows need simpler desires. The need for acceptance being the most popular. That need for acceptance among their community and peers is what drives the Paranormalists as every episode sees them nearly falling apart as a group.
If there is one criticism it is that the larger plots sometimes get confusing and lost in the interaction of the characters. There is a sense that the writers aren't exactly certain where to take the plot, and how to drop good clues and red herrings until the final act is reached. Perhaps that is simply because many of the people involved have more experience with comedy than mystery.
I would like to see a little more focus placed upon keeping people in suspense with the twists and turns of the plot for future shows.
Rating: 4/5

Additional Notes
The British invasion of audio drama still stymies American audiences. Britain has embraced audio drama in a way that modern US audiences just don't understand. This is why so many of the Commonwealth have a keener understanding of how a good audio drama is put together. Even with accents removed, the structure and production level of a British audio drama always seems to raise to the top- amateur or professional. It can frustrate North Americans, but I prefer to see England as a beacon we can all guide our way by.

Over All Rating
The Paranormalists is as professional as an amateur audio drama production can get. They suffer the "minimal output" syndrome that so many British productions do, but that is a hold over from how they run their television series as well. The idea in Britain is to do six episodes well as opposed to doing 24 and be pleased with only three or four. It is hard to argue with that logic, except when we sit and wait for the "next installment" to arrive. Podcast listeners have a short-termed memory, and we're always looking for the next story to capture our imagination. That the Paranormalists is still on everyone's lips even after a few years absence speaks to the strength of the show and the strength of the performers and creators.
Rating: 5/5

Reviews and Expectations

2010-03-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

I would take a moment to talk about my reviews and expectations. I do this, not in frustration, but rather to help clarify what this blog is about and what critical analysis is of form.
First, I would like to thank all of those people who have joined as followers, and the many more who follow through the RSS feed. I did not realize there was as much interest in reviewing Audio Drama as there is. That gives me great hope for this form of plays, and bodes well for the future!

For a while now (usually after bad reviews) I get messages from creators, co-creators, and friends of the company/shows I've reviewed often times angry that I've given a review; sometimes questioning my own credentials to make such a review.
Frankly, these kinds of responses confuse me more than they strike a point with me.

I have not attempted to present myself as anything but an interested and enthusiastic listener of audio drama. I've listened to shows for decades and feel I have a good idea of what works and what does not. There are some audio drama companies out there I can say for certain do neither. They have little understanding of the scope of audio drama through the years, nor have they really considered exactly what works and what doesn't in an audio drama. So, making audio drama does not make you a specialist in good audio drama by default.

The argument seems to go however, that I have no right to review something when I have not seen how many hours go into the process of making the product.
Again, my confusion. Does one audio drama automatically sound better because it has taken longer to produce than another? I would argue that some people who struggle with the skills could take much longer than someone who is an expert at the field. There is no guarantee that length of time working on an audio drama makes it better.

Finally, people have asked me to take into account the inexperience of a company. What defines inexperience? Length of time in the field? Amount produced? I've heard companies that have been on and off making audio dramas for five years and have not improved their sound. And I've heard people who produce new shows only once in a blue moon but are excellent. So experience is a hard thing to judge. It requires an intimate knowledge of all the people behind the wheel, and not something I have the resources to do.

In the end, there is only one thing, and one thing alone I can judge- The Product.
If your final product misses the mark in one way or another, an honest reviewer must report it as so, and explain where and why it does so.
A good reviewer is not there to write, "The get a 100% for effort" because frankly they don't know how much effort went into the play, nor should they. Their job is to simply listen to the product with integrity and give their best critical response to that product.
I've discovered that there are all kinds of purposes and roles for audio drama. Here are some:
Those Who Make Audio Drama for the Fun of It- Best of luck to you. My reviews should not and will not matter. If audience development is not your goal then focus on having fun and ignoring reviewers.
Those Who Make Audio Drama for the Audience- Then this blog is of central importance to you. While I'm not in any way the definitive voice for audio drama listeners. I am a voice. There's not a lot of us out there (Thanks to Dex for making me aware of his site The Listening Post please go there and read) and every bit of critical feedback for you will help on your quest for a larger audience.
Those Who Make Audio Drama to Hone Their Skills- I hope this blog will provide you with some information and critical knowledge on how you can improve. You will have to be the judge of that in the end.

So, please, before you ask me to "take into consideration" something about a review remember that while I am interested in all kinds of background information, my job is to inform the listener as to the products of audio drama out there. If I don't give them an idea of what to expect when they listen, they have every right to call me out for not being honest enough. In the end, it is the product that matters. The good news is, I'll keep listening to new products that people send me, and if they are good, I'll post about them as such.

But getting good is not a final destination either. Even big names like Joss Whedon let some turds out once in a while. No one can strike gold with every shovel full. Good innovators will fail more often than they succeed, because they take chances. Blaming your audience for their honest feedback is like claiming the dog farted while eating at the table. Either you take your lumps and move on, or you ignore what is written and you go on.
The suggestion that I should stop bad reviews because it might drive people to stop making audio drama is something I simply will not own. Anyone who puts anything out for public consumption and thinks they will not receive any bad reviews for their work, no matter how beloved it is says far more about those producers of audio dramas, than the reviewers.

Whenever I write a review, I put myself in the perspective of someone who has never heard audio drama before or has a poor understanding of what's available. My writing is for the listener and not for the audio drama producer.
That being written, I have one last urging for that audio producer, writer, director, actor. Take what points I make that are true. Take what points you think are unwarranted and ignore them.

And keep writing. I do enjoy comments even negative ones. But as I've pointed out in earlier comments, for all those who think I need to be more positive, notice how many responses I've gotten to negative reviews, how few I've gotten to positive, and the complete absence of comments to those posts I make about the pieces that make good audio drama.
Maybe the proof is in the pudding itself and the expectations you set.

Improb(v)

2010-03-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

There is an old adage that says, "The best improv's are scripted" and that is true. Improvisational Theater is mostly bad even when its "good".
And before you point out to me, Whose Line Is It Anyways let me point out that in every episode there are still entire segments that completely fall flat and portions where one or more performers do poorly. Then consider that each of the episodes you see on television are recorded live THREE times so the producers can pick the best from those segments. And they are professionals who have been doing Improv for years.
Improv is painful to watch, and thankfully not as painful to listen to when in small doses.
But it is important to consider that many producers love when their actors throw in improvisational lines to their scripts.
I submit to you that the love of improvisational lines are really only effective if:
a. The script lacks humor
b. The actors lack a sense of honesty in their performance.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the odd improved line would not be effective, but good improv is never improvisational. It is thought about, considered and almost never invented on the spot as so many "improv" lines are. I refer you to the classic Kitty Got Wet story from Nolan North at the 2009 Comic Con panel. Without even playing Uncharted 2, I can smell a winner "improvisation".
So, this is not a plea for actors to stop giving improvisational lines if they feel the urge. This is a plea for Producers to stop using them simply because you find them funny. Chances are the longer they go on, the more they sidetrack the story, and hijack the plot.
I've heard some entirely painful improvisations that were even more painfully obvious that the actors never intended the ramblings to be placed into the script unedited.

As a listener, I can just imagine the rest of the characters in a story seeing one character blow off on an unrelated tangent stop everything they are doing, stare at the character like they had suddenly taken the appearance of an earthworm with a fisherman's hat and a shot of cognac waiting for the nonsense to finish. Once it does, we all roll our eyes and try to remember where we last let off in the story.

Remember, in all things. Conservation is key.

One Brush

2010-03-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Just a little note amidst the mass reviews I'm pumping out.
I would like to thank everyone for their responses, comments, and emails.
It's been very overwhelming the interest, support, and criticism.

I don't really make apologies for bad critiques of works, like I wouldn't make apologies for good ones. I'm simply an engaged listener who would like to give recommendations to other listeners.

That being said, I plan to review all the audio companies I listen to before I delve into specific reviews for series and shows. Even still, I'm sure that can come across as tarring good series with bad ones, and I ask your patience until I go through separate series.
I may, in the future, make a single week devoted to a particular site. So for example, go through ALL of Misfits Audio's work in a week (would I have the time) and take a day for each series to review.
That would certainly be more fair in the long run.
In the meantime, please read the rest of the company reviews as an overview- and like all overviews- not entirely and completely fair or accurate.
But the best that can be done under the circumstances.
Thanks for Reading,
Warmly,
~J. Snowe

Misfits Audio

2010-03-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Misfits Audio Productions is another collective audio company headed up by Capt. John Tadrzak and includes a number of audio drama personalities who show up in other places like Imagination Lane and Broken Sea. Writers/Actors/Producers like Alexa Chipman, Michael Hudson, Stevie K. Farnaby, April Sadowski, Jim Smagata and Mike Murphy have their fingers in many other audio "pies." Misfits showcases a number of serials, mini-series, and one shot shows and delves both into original drama as well as fan fiction. There are also some parodies, and more than a few seasonal shows. Misfits is careful to label their shows based on the new Audio Drama Rating System now, but had their own system in place for some time now.

Website

The Misfits website is simple and clean with a light color scheme that fits with their attitude they have established. According Captain Tadrzak's message in the About section the goal for Misfits is to "...to make people laugh", and there are enough light hearted shows listed, but there are also a fair amount of serious adult fare too.
There is a section on "Visuals" which is an interesting take for an audio drama company. There have been some audio dramas turned into animation in the past, but it seems that Misfits is using the visuals as a main function and a selling point of their website.
The left hand side of the page is set for links, and Capt. Tadrzak seems to be a consumate promoter of their new releases.
Over all, the site gets you what you need, no more, no less.
Rating 4/5

Audio Drama Type-Theater/OTR/Modern Audio Book
Much like many of the collaborative audio drama websites, Misfits provides a variety of modern styles. The Audio Book format is left mostly for their seasonal episodes, while opting for a more Old Time Radio vibe with many of their shows. Misfits heart is family friendly fare but they branch outwards into a more modern format, sometimes with mixed results.

Acting Types: Amateur
Misfits acting is uneven and at times even painful. Newer productions have continued to improve. Actors over all feel stiff and wooden. Interaction between characters sounds artificial, and there's little investment into the moment. There are notable exceptions and I will leave that for specific reviews. But comedic series like Hogan's Heroes and George and Gracie are so badly acted as to wake the departed and have a zombie army race down to the copyright office demanding swift action be taken.
Better shows include many of their Christmas stories and there are some strong performances in Jim Nolan, P.I. Unlike many of his contemporaries who produce and direct shows, Capt. Tadrzak himself has a good voice, but is hamstrung with bad scripts and poor editing.
Rating: 1/5

Production Type: Varied
The productions go from minimal to detailed, but all suffer from the same basic problems- poor quality voice recordings, poor integration of sound effects, and the greatest sin of all- uninteresting editing of dialog.
Almost every show has places where you could drive a truck through the silence. A strong emphasis needs to be placed on intelapping of dialog. Screwball Comedies (of which Misfits has many) should always be fast paced with pulse pounding speed. I mentioned Hogan's Heroes because I just recently listened to this series. Bob Crane and Werner Klemperer and even John Banner and Richard Dawson had impecable timing. Anyone who wishes to take on that level of comedic ability needs to at least make an attempt. Weaving dialog, creating fast paced tension. All these things are sorely lacking in the comedies in Misfits.
The adventure shows like Nolan and Horatio Hornblower are much better paced. Perhaps John Bell and Cayenne Chris Conroy has set an impossible bar for good timing in modern audio drama, but it is a bar every other show needs to heed carefully.
Rating 1.5/5

Writing
The writing comes from so many different authors, I feel that I'd be doing a grave injustice making a general description here. I am also caught wondering if the scripts are poor and that drags the production and actors down, or if the acting and production has pulled down the level of the writing.
Either way, I'll attempt to listen through separate shows and series and provide better detailed notes on the writing in the future.

Additional Notes
Misfits takes its turn trying pop science fiction and fantasy fan fictions perhaps more than any other collective audio drama company. Currently they have a Firefly series Miranda, two Harry Potter series Snape's Diaries and Tom Riddle's Diary, as well as a Doctor Who series Leela, a fantasy Star Trek parody Star Rabbit Tracks and some Torchwood shows. There seems no rhyme or reason as to the choices made for Misfit Audio. This is not a criticism, but rather an amazement that such a varied group of stories can come from a single group. More often than not, each audio drama company takes on a kind of production identity through time that drives their shows and informs their listeners. For Misfit, absolutely anything could and does arrive for listening.

Over All Rating
Misfit Audio has a lot of problems in its fundamentals that I would like to see get ironed out. I get the feeling that it has maybe taken on too much in trying to pump out works on nearly a weekly schedule, when they could focus on strong production, good tight acting, and better script revisions. A monthly production schedule of powerful audio drama is always more preferable to weekly releases of shows that don't quite hit the level that is expected by a listener in the 21st century.
Despite their vision, I would steer away from Misfits comedy if you're looking for choice. Their adventure stories are much stronger at this point. Hopefully, for the future though, we can see improvement across the board.
Rating 1.5/5

Investment

2010-03-25T02:17:00.000-07:00

One highly overlooked element of writing any story but is especially important in audio drama is investment.
Investment is what lifts your play from good to great. The more investment the audience, the more they will need to tune in each and every week. Remember that people are trading a half hour, hour, or longer of their lives every time they listen to your audio drama. As a producer your job is to give them the best value you can for that investment.
We have all said after watching a particularly bad movie, "Well there's two hours of my life I will never get back again." There's a reason for that. People need to feel that they haven't wasted their moments on poor story.
In short they need to be entertained in a way that will have them aching for more.
How do you get an audience invested in your story?
While there are many tricks in the trade, beyond all the points I've made in producing audio drama in the past, I'm going to focus on three:

1. Be Passionate About the Subject
The writer/producer/actors/sound engineers need to get excited about the project they are in. If you don't care really about the show, then that will go through. Professional actors sleepwalk through their lines in boring movies. Writers phone it in some times, and producers get lazy. Make sure the project you have signed on for gives you passion. Or at the very least, you can generate passion in getting involved.

2. Start Early
To get your characters beloved by an audience you need to start early. This means in the first scene one of two things (or preferably both) needs to happen if you want your listeners to be invested in the outcome of your characters:
a. The Characters Need to be Identifiable
This means the audience have to be able to look at the characters no matter how interesting and quirky you can make them and say, "That person is just like me" or "I know that person really well". They need to connect with the character in a personal way. This is often achieved with a connection to every day occurrences. Even Harry Potter has problems with the people in his family. Luke Skywalker just wants to do something with his life instead of staying on his Uncle's farm. Thomas A. Anderson (Neo) dreams of having a life and not being the loser drifting in and out of jobs.
Main characters need to be associated with you in some way.
b. Begin Sympathy from the Get Go
Characters who have it hard, have our love. Nobody wants to see someone go through difficulties, and yet that is exactly why we watch movies. Investment means getting your characters in a world of unfair early on. Your character may work too much and it's hurting her family life or your character may love someone who is not interested in them. Your character may have said something stupid that has hurt his friendships. Your character may get dumped, fired, or ridiculed at a family gathering. Whatever the situation, creating sympathy creates investment.

3. Goals and Desires
Characters have goals and desires. As a short form, action and epic characters have goals (tasks to complete) and dramatic characters have desires (relationships to form).
Great writing always combines the two but both need to be articulated in a simple way for the audience.
Ask yourself this about your main character. "What does ____ want?"
If you are unable to answer it in a simple phrase, you need to go retool the character and probably the plot.
What does Indiana Jones want in The Last Crusade?
He wants to save his father.
Yes, he wants to find the cup of Christ, but its never been the driving force in the movie for him. Some people argue that Indy III is the same structure as Indy I and that's why its successful. I disagree. In Raiders of the Lost Ark Indy is clearly searching for the Ark. It even takes precedent over saving Marion in one point. But in The Last Crusade, Indiana is in it right to the end to save his father. We're invested because he has a goal we can understand beyond fortune and glory. He wants to rescue his father, but he wants to rescue his relationship with him too. Magic.
Similarly, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't work for us because we're not sure of Indy's motivation. Is it because of the mystery? Because the Russians have it? Because of his son? Because of Marion? Fortune and glory? To prove he still can? All these motivations show up. None are king and the story is diluted because of it.

Create investment in your series and you'll have an audience lining up at the door to your RSS feed. Have no investment and watch the numbers die off like Browncoats through the years.

Gypsy Audio

2010-03-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

Gypsy Audio is a collective audio drama company headed by Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard but populated by a lot of other folks (who have some unique titles "Defender of the Gypsys", "Fanboy", "Guy that shows up to eat all the donuts?"). There are quite a lot of cross pollination of actors and crew from Imagination Lane and for good reason. Like IL, Gypsy focuses somewhat on the feminine side of audio drama and storytelling. Among others, their offerings include "TamLynn: P.I.", "Lara Bond 0012", "Stargazers", "Twisted Tales", "Tomorrow People" and "The Wandering Minstrel". Scope of shows go from general audience to more mature fare.

Website
The website uses a kind of taupe color that permeates the entire scheme and while gives the basic information, is uninteresting to view. The most color goes to the bright tie-dyed image of a "magical mystery tour" Gypsy wagon on the front.
The information describes Gypsy as a kind of eclectic group of people who are just interested in making fun audio drama. The text also encourages people to sign up for their "forum" but there's no link I can glean on the page to get to it?
Another interesting word is "Chivani" which in the "Wandering Minstrel" is described to be a term for "wise woman". But a cursory look on Google and then Wikipedia finds no reference of such a word other than Gypsy audio's use of it?
The right hand side of the website includes links for the rest of the Gypsy pages as well as links to their shows with entry numbers so you can see quickly how many shows each series has produced. Twisted Tales is the current winner with 9 episodes but those are most audio stories than actual audio drama.
The website over all is uninteresting to look at, but still gets you where you want to go.
Rating 2.5/5

Audio Drama Type-Theater/Modern Audio Book
While some audio companies treat their productions like a business, Gypsy's audio dramas feel like a hobby and as such becomes a labor of love more than detailed professional quality. The general mood of Gypsy is a bunch of folks pulling up in a wagon, taking a few moments to set up an outdoor stage and presenting their wares. After listening to a number of "Wandering Minstrel" shows I felt like I just spent a weekend at a Renaissance Fair. The focus is on the old trappings of theater and audio storytelling one might get sitting around a roaring fire.

Acting Types: Amateur
While there are very good acting elements in some of Gypsy's productions, whether hampered by meager production values or little direction, much of the acting would be categorized as "fair". Some of the better productions are through the "Lara Bond" shows which show greater attention to detail and their singular shows "Earnest" and "Dracula" have also some stellar performances. MJ Cogburn puts in a steady performance as well as "TamLynn". I've not listened to all the productions however, but a strong hand in guidance and choice of actors would raise the level of all acting in the shows.
Rating 2/5

Production Type- Minimal
Once again, this rating varies along the lines of the series, but over all the production of some of the core shows needs revamping. Trade offs are made when a production is considered "for our fun" as opposed to "for the listeners" and I think its a poor trade indeed. I do not believe that it is necessary to exchange the intimacy that Gypsy provides simply by raising the bar on the productions. Better sound effects are needed in more appropriate places, and perhaps the greatest sin of all is the differing hisses on many actors. Getting a consistent sound is perhaps one of the most difficult elements of basic production, but it is still a basic requirement for a good production. Nothing drops a listener out of the "magic" of the moment more quickly than hearing actors in two different sound environments pretending they are in the same room.
One bright element is the music. Kevin McLeod is one of the endlessly creative music resources for modern audio drama, and a series of fun Celtic songs are also included on various broadcasts which continue the mood of the simple fun of Gypsy Audio.
Please take the time to standardize your sound across the board. Jim Smagata does a fine job when he's given the best tools to work with and there are others that will help work with you.
Rating 1.5/5

Writing
The writing of Gypsy Audio comes from a number of different sources. Some of the best works come from Alexa Chipman in her take on Lara Bond, and Laura Frechette's poetry is mythic and timeless in Twisted Tales but doesn't fit in to the audio drama world. As I've written before, multi-cast recordings of a poem is still a poem put to audio. Audio drama has its own trappings and requirements. Stargazers has yet to find its footing but TamLynn: PI seems to be one of the strongest ideas out of the Gypsy minds.
Dialog tends to ramble at times and the plots slip and fall from a true course. Strong editing is required in many scripts and the ever present question "Why?" should be asked at every turn.
"Why do I care about this character?"
"Why is this character doing this?"
"Why aren't they just doing this the easy way?"
A back to basics approach is necessary to act as a backbone for the rest of each production. If the script is flawed from the beginning, no amount of acting or production will correct it.
Rating 2/5

Additional Notes
Beyond their semi-regular offerings, Gypsy also has taken its turn at the wheel of recreating some classics. "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "Dracula" along with "War of the Worlds" and "Frankenstein" are some of the most overly repeated shows in audio history. No one can deny their fascination, but as a reviewer, I would love to see some other classics brought to the ear. How about some lesser known plays to draw in new listeners?

Over All
Despite the sometimes maddening production quality and wandering plots, Gypsy provides something that few other audio companies does for me. It's that ephemeral quality that makes me feel good listening to them. I'm not sure what exactly it is they do. I suspect somehow they drug their RSS feed with the kind of innocent joy they have in making their productions. Gypsy audio in the end is much like being given a hand-made craft. It's been lovingly crafted. It's kind of crude and there's flaws all around it, but it's also reflective that you feel like one of a community in gaining the gift- that you've been welcomed in- instead of being given a product off an assembly line. If that's what they were shooting for, then mission accomplished Lara Bond. My hope is they improve on their craft before handing out their wares.
Rating 2/5

Audio-wha? A Number of Terms

2010-03-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of people tossing around different terms and mixing and matching audio drama with audio books. So what are the difference?
Following are my takes on the different descriptors:
Audio Book- A faithful reproduction or adaptation of a short story, series of poems, essays, novel, or novella in which the original text is used. A single reader may dramatize dialog by mimicking different voices, but action and character are entirely described by the story. While sound effects and music may appear, they are unnecessary to tell the story.
Audio Cinema- A modern term that tries to marry audio with moving pictures of the mind. Controversial as some people believe the very idea of using images is against what audio drama does. However it does make an effective metaphor.
Audio Drama- Any story that is original or adapted from another source but remains entirely in a script format that uses sound effects and multiple actors to tell a dramatic story. Audio Dramas require a respect for the audio medium as they are simply not plays or television without visuals.
Audio Play- Similar to audio drama but tends towards being more "theatrical" in that the show sounds like (and may well be) it is performed live on a stage at the time of recording.
Audio Series- A continuing series of Audio Drama shows either all based on the same characters, plots, worlds, or theme.

Audio Story- A generic term that encompasses all forms of storytelling in an audio form from narrative, poem, fish tail, to play.
Audio Theater- A generic name title often interchangeable with "Audio Drama" but like Audio Play, suggests a more theatrical show in scope and release.
Described Audio- An outside narrator describes all visual events in an audio performance, used to instantly translate the audio track of a movie into something more viceral for the listener. This can reduce the movie into more of an audio drama with audio book narration if used excessively. Good Described Audio is sparse in its descriptions.
Multi-Cast Audio Book- Same as an Audio Book except that there are a number of actors that read dialog and narrative portions. Some actors represent characters, others represent narrative points of view.
Pulp Audio- A new term to express genre-styled audio dramas.
Sonic...- A new word that replaces "Audio" in almost all variations, but essentially means the same thing. (Sonic Play, Sonic Series, Sonic Theater, Sonic Cinema)

Broken Sea

2010-03-21T14:44:00.000-07:00

Broken Sea Productions just reached its third year milestone as a production company. Considering themselves Audio Hooligans, Broken Sea produces a number of fan fiction, adaptations, and original audio drama. Their main features include the ongoing adaptation of Planet of the Apes called Simian Sagas, Jake Sampson, Monster Hunter, Doctor Who, Feedback, Maudelayne and many others. Most of the shows are written by CEO Paul Mannering, Bill Hollweg who also acts as one of the main audio producers, with David Sobkowiak, Stevie K. Farnaby, Mark Kalita, Alexa Chipman and Elaine Barrett, among others who work on their own productions and help out with others. Broken Sea produces new audio weekly for their "Audio Thursdays" of a variety of shows including a new series called Twilight Theatre.The shows are rated from General and Children friendly to Mature.

Website
The website uses the background image of a rolling sea, and that automatically makes the site hard to read. The color scheme works fine, but dark backdrops with light lettering never works as well as the other way around. All the information is available with links down the right side, and news on the left. For some reason there is a "navigation bar" down the center column and this makes navigation itself difficult.
Ideally a navigation bar should be on the edge of a screen- usually off the top or left most said, and always highlighted in such a way that it doesn't blend with the rest of the web page.
Broken Sea produces a lot of shows and the long list of links is so prodigious as one can easily get lost who is not new to the show. Why not set their shows out in categories along the top?
Adaptations, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, History, Kids, Drama, Comedy or something like that? With drop down menus to help us get an idea what kind of show to listen?
Single links were fine when Broken Sea had less than ten offerings, but they need to rethink how to have the website reflect their works today.
Ideally, a web page will show everything someone needs to know at a glance without scrolling down. Scrolling should only be necessary for further or deeper information.
Rating 3/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater, Fan Fiction, Experimental, OTR Recreations
Broken Sea's focus has been entirely modern. They operate with production and creative team in different locations (and continents as Mr. Mannering is in New Zealand). Broken Sea boasts a full serve audio production with rich sound and very layered special effects. Like Pendant and Darker Projects, Broken Sea appears to have grown from a series of friends who love telling stories and have decided to use the audio drama medium to tell their stories (sometimes to the detriment). One exception of this is The OTR Swag Cast which is a showcase of old time radio that's been cleaned up for presentation with a new introduction by Mr. Hollweg as a host.

Acting Type- Long Distance Amateurs
Much like the other collaborative projects in Audio Drama the acting ranges wildly. There are certainly some very good performances and equally some very poor. To be fair, performances have steadily gotten better in the last year as it seems there is a real attempt to continue to improve all aspects of the Broken Sea's Productions. Mark Kalita leads the crew in his portrayal of "the Doctor" and "Jake Sampson", Elie Hirschman and Sarah Blevins also do a great job. While Mr. Hollweg does a decent Taylor from Planet of the Apes and his Texan accent makes him a nature for "Texas Holdem", neither he nor Mr. Mannering or Mr. Sobkowiak are the strongest actors in the crew. More detail for Broken Sea's acting will need to wait for specific reviews of series.
Rating 3.5/5

Production Types- Detail Oriented
Like Darker Projects, Broken Sea takes careful aim at creating a "moment" in their production scenes. Most of their shows (with the exception of some series like Maudelayne) have a rich tapestry of sound, sound images that leap out of the earphones and paint vividly the scene. If there is a criticism to be made, it is that the sound is sometimes too full, too rich. Creating a setting is important to tell the story. Putting in sound effects are import to tell the story. Blending in music is important to tell the story. Sometimes this is forgotten. A fight scene in audio drama is perhaps one of the hardest to engineer and a pile of sounds can overwhelm the listener and make them wondering just what is going on. Music that may be appropriate in tone can be lost on the listener if it overwhelms the story. Like editing out purple prose, the urge to create "purpled" sound effects need to be restrained. While Darker Projects knows where to draw the line with sounds, Broken Sea is still not quite there. But that being said, this is a minor criticism that varies depending upon the production. Some productions have relatively little sound effects. Deeper investigation as to which will require a "series" review.
Rating 4.5/5

Writing
Writing in Broken Sea varies wildly from exciting and engaging to mystifying. Once again deeper notes will depend upon the series, but briefly, the adaptations from Logon's Run to Escape from New York to Planet of the Apes are masterful, simply masterful. Broken Sea has created a new opportunity for Audio Drama- the extended adaptation. Mr. Hollweg seems to have capitalized on this especially with his extended serial. From Planet of the Apes to Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Hollweg has included extra material on his own that neatly threads some of the missing story. This is something more folks should consider tackling in the audio drama world. Some of the greatest stories and movies can be recreated in an extended form in audio drama.
One of the other great shining (albeit brief) spots in Broken Sea's line up is their Conan series. Although removed by the draconian actions of one CPI Paradox Entertainment (feel free to email them a nasty letter, I did), Conan was a rare attempt to reproduce some of the public domain stories of Robert E. Howard. Other series aren't nearly as well developed. The Greenpond stories are unfortunately uninteresting (and there's very few children's tales out there), the Grog & Gryphon is uneven with far too many characters to keep track of, Maudelayne is fun, but often times the dialog comes off as wooden and the less said the better of Ulysses Galactic Guides and Bounties, Inc. which feels like a drug addled dream of music and, well, drugs.
More detail on these series later.

Additional Notes: Multiple Shows
Broken Sea's biggest problem is one of its strengths- too many shows. While having a number of shows give listeners plenty of options, whether your favorite show is being updated regularly or not is about as easy to figure out as the queen in a Three Card Monty game. Broken Sea trumpets up and coming shows in some of their promos in other shows, but they do a terrible job at getting the word out for releases, delays, and podfades of series and shows. Let's be clear. While they may suffer from DPS (Darker Project Syndrome), it is a mild case, and we hope that some clearer news even on their website will help the listeners.

Over All Rating

Broken Sea represents my hopes in a new amateur audio drama company. They've got piles of energy and enthusiasm for the genre. They produce a number of different series from a pile of genres. They develop excellent production levels and for the most part decent scripts. Their acting is improving and they have fun, serious fun. This is a group that loves what they do and it shows.
Let's see what else these audio hooligans can come up with.
Rating 4/5

Battle of the Showcases

2010-03-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't have taken as long as I have to mention the two big shows that connected me with so many audio drama companies out there- The Sonic Society hosted by Jack Ward and Shannon Hilchie and Radio Drama Revival hosted by Fred Greenhalgh. The Sonic Society has been around for a little longer (in fact I remember when they showcased Fred's show Day of the Dead a couple of seasons ago, but RDR has done a good job of finding its own audience. Still, it is fun to compare the two shows, especially if people are unaware of what they offer.
Format
The Society is a weekly show and is a little less than an hour in length. They usually fill the time with a feature that can range from twenty minutes to the whole hour length and sometimes continue as a two-parter. When they have a shorter feature they usually fill the time with a short or a short serial. They began with The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd, but have continued with a number of different shows through out the years. The rest of the time is filled with feedback and banter between the hosts. In the early seasons there were more interviews, but that is usually reserved for what they call their Sonic Summer season that occurs during the summer months.. and The format is fairly tight as podcasts go, but more ranging as radio shows go. They can waiver anywhere within five minutes of the 55 minute time frame, I've noticed.
RDR is another weekly show which is a half hour in length. Fred will sometimes break large shows up and showcase them as a series. He will also take the entire half an hour to interview some of his favorite writers, producers, and personalities in the field. Mr. Greenhalgh keeps a fairly tight gauge on the length of his broadcast and podcast.

Hosts
The Society has been one of the bedrock elements in the return of modern audio drama. Jack Ward has showcased a number of companies and produced a great deal of shows himself. He's very knowledgeable and an extremely enthusiastic supporter of production companies. That being said, he is not the more dynamic of the duo. Shannon Hilchie rescued Mr. Ward from a pretty straight-laced presentation of audio cinema. Listening back to season one was like listening to one of the older presentations of the BBC, without an accent. Attempting to be pitch-perfect, Mr. Ward delivered the shows with enthusiasm, but not with the kind of wry and goofy humor that Miss Hilchie seems to wring out of him at every turn. Make no mistake, the great charm and enduring success in this series has been the on going relationship on microphone (and off?) with Ward and Hilchie. Shannon Hilchie also works as an actress and edits together the weekly show. While Ward can be stodgy, Hilchie can sometimes be shrill. Both together are certainly a draw for the series.

RDR has quickly built up a kind of professionalism by Mr. Greenhalgh that sets a different tone. Fred Greenhalgh presents another enthused voice that tries to step away from personality and let the stories do their talking. Always ready to provide his own insights, Greenhalgh presents his own analysis on the show that the listeners are about to listen. He focuses on gaining listeners for his radio station as well, and spends more time out of the conversational limelight when in an interview with others. There is a certainty when listening to RDR that Greenhalgh knows what he likes in an audio drama and is excited to see it grow in the community. His collaborations recently with the stage theater company Mad Horse have included some ink in the Wall Street Journal online. His deep commitment to authentic "theater" styled audio drama is certainly one of the great draws for the series.

Content
The Society's content quality has been all over the map. From the outset, Ward declared that the Society would be "eclectic" and include nearly anyone and everyone who could send him shows. Whether he and Hilchie have fine-tuned their requirements or the nature of medium has gotten better, productions have improved in quality. But still there is a wide variety and that includes poor among great.
RDR has stuck with a very specific style of "smart" or "theatrical" audio drama. His choices have appeared to be deliberate for the most part. Greenhalgh's tried to pick what he considers to be the cream of the crop of erudite radio plays. Many of them have mythological themes or are classical or famous stage plays put to audio. His choices may be deliberate, and it shows in quality.

Website
The Society's web site is a standard word press format. Stereotypically this means the format is fairly well known, and the content remains pretty straight-forward and useful. The stereotype continues to hold true in this case. Shows and news are in the center of the page. Audio drama link sites on the right and a variety of links on the left. The page is fairly hum drum but it gets you most of what you are looking for.
RDR's website on the other hand actually has nicer elements of color. It too seems to follow the word press format and continues with stories down the middle but with specific "friends" of Radio Drama Revival in more interesting clip art. What exactly does it take to be a friend of RDR anyway? Are these folks who have given donations or just Greenhalgh's favorites? We get a picture of Greenhalgh on the right and icons for the feeds. This page is more interesting and has handy links to previous shows below the contact information.

Original Audio Drama
It's important to note that both sets of hosts produce their own audio drama. RDR has Final Rune Productions and Society has Electric Vicuña Productions. I will be reviewing both companies separately in future posts.

The Upshot
So which is a better show? It really depends on what you're looking for. The Sonic Society has a huge backlog of shows and it has become a kind of endurance test of audio geekery by some call-in fans to have "listened to all the episodes". They also provide a wider variety and many people tune in just to hear "Jack and Shannon" banter with each other. Radio Drama Revival on the other hand often has superior quality stories in a shorter, sometimes easier and clearer time frame. If you're interested in consistent quality of shows and you like a more theatrical approach to audio drama it would be your choice.

As for me. I'm just glad both of them are there giving me an opportunity to locate shows and companies I never knew existed.

Imagination Lane

2010-03-18T04:07:00.000-07:00

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

Blocking

2010-03-16T03:27:00.001-07:00

Blocking in Audio Drama is working out the physicality of a scene- where things are. Many consider this as panning and that is partly true. But a recognition of blocking operates across the spectrum of writing, acting/directing and production.

Blocking in Writing
The better the writer understands the setting of his story, the more clearly the listening audience can picture where the action is taking place. Make certain you give "production notes" to your producers in whatever tool you use for script writing. Be sure to include any kind of voice notes for a line to actors in the dialog line before the line (or word) is spoken.
Ideally Production Notes are heavily indented, in capitals and surrounded by square brackets, like this:

[MARY SUE IS SPEAKING FROM THE BOTTOM OF A 30 FOOT PIT]
The actor's note would go something like this:

MARY SUE: (SHOUTING) Hey Brainiac! Down here!

Also include in the Sound Effects notes, ideas about how the producer can create the mood and the setting. One way is by identifying the Ambiance. Creating good notes in a script is an art by itself, and depends upon who you're working with. Some people prefer wide brush strokes, others really detailed.
Example 1:
SFX: Morning rural meadow ambiance.

Example 2:
SFX: 6 AM sunrise in a farming community. Robins and crows are singing back and forth. A light wind blows across several trees. The sky in growing brighter and the grass is covered in dew.

Have conversations between your writers and producers regularly about the way you format your works. Clarity is key for everyone.

Blocking in Acting
This is the most overlooked element for an actor. Many actors perform their lines as if they are always in the same place. They don't realize that often speak a little louder when they walk than when you are standing still. You have one tone of voice when you're calling than when you're next to someone. It's not just a matter of loudness, but includes a respect for setting and tone. (Tone being the emotion an author puts into a piece. Mood being the emotion a listen takes from a piece.)
As an actor ask yourself, "Where am I standing in this scene?" Are you even standing? Your posture makes a difference. If you're running that makes a difference. Are you slightly out of breath while you're running? Is there no variance? Consider blocking to find the truth in the scene.

Blocking in Production
A good Producer in Audio Drama knows how to capture the notes of a writer perfectly and only adds if it adds to the notes. Producers who assume different sounds and effects and blocking without following the writer's notes run the risk of contradicting a later scene, getting a character wrong, or just throwing the pacing off. Of course, a good producer "gets" what the author was intending and helps to clarify the writing.
That bears repeating.
A good Producer does not layer more into a production but rather clarifies the writing for the listener.
Panning naturally helps define blocking in a scene better than almost anything else, as a listener who is using their headphones can get a full feel of exactly where the characters are standing. It is better to pan characters further out than too close together if you want to develop space. I'm not suggesting you pan them all the way on opposite sides as that suggests great distance, but a mere 15 points between two characters may not be enough.

In the end, blocking is a crucial item that all the production team needs to consider carefully. How much does your writer talk to their actors about it? How much does your Producer speak to the writer about their words?

Teknikal Diffikulties

2010-03-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Tekinikal Diffikulties or Tek Diff is a one-man comedy podcast show by Cayenne Chris Conroy. He has just recently completed his fifth anniversary show and has what he considers a "small cult following" of subscribers.Thanks to John Bell of The Batfry podcast who gave me this site.

Website
The Tek Diff website is truly bare bones. It has what you need (that being the shows) but it doesn't offer anything else. There's no way that I can see to get a hold of Mr. Conroy on his site. The only picture I see is a self portrait you have to click on the "Artwork" category to get (and its at the bottom) and there's nothing to bring the entire theme of the series together. It's not confusing, but its share thin on the details. Rating 2/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern/Experimental
Tek Diff is recorded in Mr. Conroy's home in Minneapolis, Minnesota and utilizes all the techniques of modern audio drama. It is somewhat experimental as it encapsulates a lot of existentialism and zen experiential audio drama. Some of his more coherent plot lines include deep introspective scenes that Mr. Conroy has confirmed are more about his own personal zeitgeist. This is not just a show that is only zany comedy. There are depths within it, including sometimes, painful realizations.

Acting Type- Solo Amateur
I'm going to put the acting of Mr. Conroy down as "amateur" but only in the best possible of ways, and only because I don't see any evidence that he's done this for cash. His delivery is anything but amateur. His timing is picture perfect, and he provides a wide range of characters that a "one man" show requires. My only complaint would be that many of his characters still sound fundamentally like his regular voice, and with so many incidental characters, it's sometimes difficult to tell the differences. John Bell is far better at creating distinct voices as a one man show, but my suspicion is that Mr. Conroy's gig is not so much in creating unique voices, but rather in focusing on what they "say". Rating 4/5

Production Type- Detailed
Tek Diff includes a wide variety of sound effects, musical themes, stings, and a solid recording base to give a very professional product. Sometimes it is a little too edited, in that during particularly long monologues or rants, it becomes clear that Mr. Conroy either has his breaths edited out, or he needs to be in the Guinness World Book for breath control. While it is a good idea to edit out distracting breathing, it is not a good idea to edit out all breaths together, unless it is for effect (and effect is by its nature an unusual thing, or it is not... effective) or it is a signature of the entire speaker as in Zero Punctuation. It is a nitpickery point however, as Tek Diff moves so incredibly fast, most of the time you are unaware of any missed oxygen breaks. One thing I appreciate most about Tek Diff is how it uses the medium of audio so very well in its production and especially in the writing. Rating 5/5

Writing
Mr. Conroy's pen must be filled with magical ink. At least it would be, if he actually created these episodes with pen, or keyboard or put any of it down in a written form. What flabbergasts me, if I understood his recent episode and that of an interview of John Bell is that both men do NOT write scripts for their comedy. They simply arrive at the microphone armed with their wits, a vague concept of what they want to do, and have at it............
.
.
Now let that sink in for a moment.
The madcap stories. The poignant and adept perceptions of humanity. The fast-talking, often double-talking back and forth from the characters is created, ad hoc in front of the microphone.
If there is a better example of genius, I've yet to hear it.
Perhaps there is writing that occurs in his often occurring "Account" series in which he has a strong throughput plot and a well-defined characters. While John Bell focuses strictly on the comedy of his "Batfry" theme, Conroy is like walking into a white room with a box of multicolored crayons. He will create incredibly touching and moving images in one corner, and then draw caricatures with over-sized sex organs and asses in another. His pacing is frenetic, because his mind moves more quickly than that of his audience. There's an old story that there are only three decent comedy writers living on the world at the same time. I'm not sure how Mr. Conroy would do in the strictures of a full time writing position for a comedy show, but somebody needs to give this one of the three his shot. Rating 5+/5

Additional Notes
While Mr. Bell draws from Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, certainly Jonathan Winters and the vocal talents of Mel Blanc, I would guess that Mr. Conroy's influences would strike more in the direction of Monty Python, Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and George Carlin. I would highlight Carlin especially because Mr. Cayenne Chris Conroy is a Foole in the same grand tradition. He's a philosopher, who through his self-deprecating comedy at times pokes holes in the pomposity of our own dreams. The main theme of his much of his self-discovery has been that "It's okay to be you". This runs headlong into our American idealism of "Be the Best", and it is something we all struggle with. Conroy substitutes as our Everyman and presents a possible alternative dream to success.
To be creative for the purpose of being happy.

Over All Rating
Without a question Tek Diff is one of the top tier comedy audio dramas out there let alone one of the top one-man acts. His quality puts to shame more popular podcasts, and makes one wonder just exactly what is it that he's missing that hasn't made him an incredibly well-known property across the Internet.
I'm going to go out on the limb and say this.
He's smart. While his humor can certainly be NOT WORK SAFE or not appropriate for children at times because of flagrant F-bombs and sexual content, it is honest, and it is in-depth work he accomplishes, and it just might at times go over the head of the average listening audience member.
I for one, hope he never dumbs down his work. That would certainly run against everything he has grown to believe. Rating 4.5/5

Tension

2010-03-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, Tension is the most important factor in creating compelling Audio Drama that bridges all functions of creation. It is also the easiest way for any production to fail to grip a listener if tension is missing in a scene.
Tension in Writing- Scripts need tension. Tension does not mean necessarily stress though. Tension is put simply "unfulfilled action, promise, or need". Writers need to create interactions between characters that are not comfortable. Characters need to be insensitive, angry, emotional, uncertain, anxious, and uncomfortable with each other. Lines need to be skirted if not crossed and the more dangerous a situation, the better. This doesn't mean necessarily threat of life or limb, but being ostracized out of a relationship, circle of friends or society as well.
In short, characters need to be committed and there must be something to lose for tension to exist.
Tension in Acting- Actors without tension read lines. Actors without tension vary their voices but do not vary their reaction to the lines. Actors without tension come across as flat, uninteresting, or narrators of their parts instead of active participants. As an actor, ask yourself exactly what your character feels about the other character you're interacting with. What is your history with that character? What is your response to the line being said to you? Are you annoyed? Are you being judged? Are you being ignored? Is your ethics being tested? Your devotion? Your vision for your future?
Actors create tension by considering the lines given them and responding appropiately and sometimes with multiple takes to allow the producer to pick something that fits.
It has been said that Tom Hanks has done bad movies, but has never made a bad performance, because each of his responses have been real reactions of the character that betray more of what's going on than just the words.
Does the way you say your line create a mood to your scene? Does it clarify the character? Don't add emotion just to emote. Create a scene with your emotions within the scene. Decide where the highest emotional point is and work towards it. And always... always.. always... tell the truth of that emotional scene.
Tension in Production- Productions create tension through a few elements.
a. Tight Dialog
b. Painful Silence
c. Mood Music
d. Sound Effects
a. Tight Dialog means making sure that the lines run tight together, overlapping at times. A good editor will cut what appears on the page to be good dialog but turns out to slow a moment or a scene. They will be ruthless storytellers in getting to the heart of the scene even if it means making broad cuts.
b. Painful Silence occurs when a character is faced with a truth they do not want to reveal. If someone asks another character "Did you kill him?" and there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, a three second pause may be enough to force the character to admit it. Just slightly longer than you think people can stand is often where the "painful" comes in. Silence and pauses give the audience a moment to catch up and feel the tension of the scene and realize how hard or awkward the next moment of reveal may be.
c. Mood Music can be one of the chief elements of setting tension. Music should not be recognizable, and preferably be low enough that it in no way interferes with the rest of the scene. Do not let mood music raise to the level of a character itself. It needs to set the scene. It needs to be closer to setting, like the wind or the hum of a reactor. It needs to hit people on almost an unconscious level instead of running like a freight train through the moment.
d. Sound Effects can create tension. There is nothing like the echo of gun fire without any dialog to give it context to create images of tension and concern for the listeners. Answer their questions after you use the sound effects to paint the scene. Give context eventually, but don't be afraid to let the sound effects build or punctuate tension.

Tension is what invests the listener in the production. Without it, the story falls apart no matter how great the voices are, how brilliant the script is, or how innovative the production may be.
Tension is king.

Pendant Audio

2010-03-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Pendant Audio Productions is the "other" long running audio drama company (along with Darker Projects) that began with fan fiction and grew outwards into much more fan fiction and original tales. Pendant has been operating since 2005 with another Star Trek fanfic series called Star Trek: Defiant and then expanded outwards with a mass of shows based on DC Heroes. Many of the shows are written by Jeffrey Bridges who acts as Executive Producer over the entire prodigious production company. They have currently one hundred and sixty-three episodes released all told. Themes go from general rating to mature.

Website
Initially the website looks confusing, but in actual fact it is easy to navigate, and contains a pile of interesting information. The many shows are listed down the left side with original podcasts first. Top right hand corner of the page includes the main credits, and this is consistent if you click to the different shows. On the main page down the center are news items and release dates. This is really handy, and other productions should take note. If there's one thing I'd like to know from my favorite audio drama series is when the next episode is coming out. What makes this especially compelling is to my memory they've almost always hit their deadline- an impossible task for most other companies.
The website is built for a community. There are casting calls, information about awards presented and a link to a chat site. Everything about this site says Pendant is serious about their productions and their shows. The design is arty, but doesn't come across as too amateur.
Rating 4/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater, Fan Fiction
Pendant follows all the structures of modern podcasting and in fact has a history of innovating them. While I'm certain to be corrected, Pendant is one of the first shows I know of, which used multiple podcast streams. They use sound effects and music, both theme and mood in their productions. They appear, again like Darker Projects, to have grown from a series of friends who wanted to write and produce together. These are some of the best kinds of collaboration opportunities around.

Acting Type- Long Distance Amateurs
The quality of acting ranges from okay to poor. While I'm only going to give a brief overview now (I'll do more detailed reviews of shows when I get through the companies), it's important to provide some examples. There are some excellent exceptions. In Superman, Last Son of Krypton, Kathryn Pryde as Wonder Girl has a stellar range, and Ryan H. Nelson does an able job as the Man of Steel. Jerry Scullion does an incredibly Harrison Ford impression, and that usually is phenomenal to hear. But sometimes the urge to sound like the actor can overpower the actual performance of "Indiana" and it's important that the integrity of the character takes precedent over "sound-a-likes". The biggest concern I have however is the lack of tension in much of the acting. That could be a fault of the Direction though.
Rating 2/5

Production Types- A Little Minimal But Not By Design
This is one of my biggest complaints and the cause of my love/hate relationship with Pendant. After five years of steady production, you'd think they would be further ahead in their sound. While Darker Projects, Wormwood, and Broken Sea have created compelling and sometimes entrancing sound worlds with their productions that draw you in, Pendant remains tinny and still sounding artificial. They have improved since their first episodes, but they still seem to be plagued with a very amateur sound. Their original shows, especially Dixie Stenberg with its older sound and their anthology Seminar certainly are better than many of their superhero fiction which I've been listening more too right now. Again, I'm certainly lumping many shows together in saying this, but this is an overview of what I've heard.
When it comes to dialog, the voice recordings are also uneven and very clearly recorded in different places. The actors at times do not sound like they have any idea where to go with their next line, and that's not their fault. Acting in long distance is kind of like playing poker in the dark, you only hope you've got a better hand and you have no idea what the other person's face looks or what he's holding till the final hand is laid.
But the lack of intimacy in the lines could be mitigated if the lines overlapped a little. I just finished the latest Superman, and many of the characters simply wait until the other actor finishes all their lines before responding. This is ping-pong dialog, and doesn't sound at all like natural speech where people interrupt, cut off, and yell over top of someone else when things get tense.
And that too is a major problem. There's little tension in the production. The sound effects sound like they just appear, instead of produced by the scene. I listened to a fight scene between Lobo and Supergirl, expecting massive punches between these two near god-like individuals only to hear standard fight sounds, that reminded me of belly slaps instead of haymakers. If Supergirl gets hit by Lobo, I'm expecting there to be buildings she gets pounded through, or earthquake like shockwaves.
Not that this isn't easy to do with superheroes. Combat is one of the hardest type of scenes to get right, and I've only heard Kung Fu Action Theatre do an extremely good job at times letting me know what's going on. The pinnacle of superhero fights, for me at least, was Dirk Maggs Batman adventure Knightfall, but while that makes good inspiration, it is hardly expected.
What I do enjoy in the production is the music. Mr. Bridges has a good sense not only of what theme music works well, but also what works extremely well for mood music. That's a rare gift, and one that raises the audio drama.
Rating 2.5/5

Writing
The largest things missing in the writing I've heard, is tension. There are many scenes with characters that feel like padding. There is simply a lack of a strong through point to many of the plots. Superman seems plagued with many Mary and Barry Sue lines like, "Lois Lane is one of the world's greatest reporters". Perry White seems to tell Lois how great she is in every episode I've heard of Superman. My experience in a paper illuminated this praise from my Editor, "Well that didn't suck much."
Editors don't like to pat their reporters too hard on the back because they'll be looking for a raise if they do. Better to keep them hungry.
Keep the audience hungry. Add realistic tension between the characters. Make sure they don't get along well. Clark moons over Lois and Lois has only eyes for Superman, and even then she doesn't like to admit that to the general public. Drive your characters and plots like you're whipping a race horse to the finish. We've all read those comic books that spent much of the comic setting up a story. They were boring. I listened to an episode of Superman, that only brought Lobo out as a threat at the very end. Get tension out early and keep us wondering what's going to happen next. Revolve between groups of characters less, and focus on telling one story well in each episode. Too many subplots can have us lost. Again, this would be unfair to give an overall rating for the writing. But it needs some solid work in some places.

Additional Notes: The Eternal Dilemma
Pendant seems to have the opposite problems of Darker Projects. They produce far more shows on time, and presumably on budget, but their quality suffers. Which forces me to ask myself which I prefer more? Quality or Quantity?
It really is a hard choice because I really want to enjoy all the titles Pendant does. But in the end I choose quality. I'd rather Pendant took twice as long in their schedule to produce better quality scripts, acting, and production. I'd wait by my feed to ravenously devour those shows, instead of losing Pendant and coming back every once in a while with puppy dog hopefulness.

Over All Rating
Pendant Audio is an example where the sum of the parts make a greater whole. With all my stark criticisms and concerns about the productions, I love this company. I love it because I feel like I've grown up in Audio Drama with them. I just wish they'd mature faster with their tastes as I have. But they have fun making their shows, and I will continue to listen in hope.
Rating 3/5

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Seven Top Errors in Production

2010-03-09T01:37:00.000-08:00

There's a world of production tricks of the trade that can really help your Audio Drama. Understanding gating and compressing, as well as buying really state of the art equipment will certainly provide better options, it's also not in the budget of many people. So, I'm going to stick with the basics that everyone should consider.
1. Poor Microphone Recording
Much of the worst audio drama is not about using a really bad microphone, but even a good mic poorly. Make sure the actors keep an appropriate distance from the mic to give a clear recording. Use pop screens to cut sharp sounds. You can build your own.
2. Terrible Echo
Often times the recording is done in a room or rooms that have poor acoustics. The sound bounces back and forth, and unless your audio drama is situated in a room. You don't want that. Take the time to hang blankets, on the wall to baffle the sound. Consider recording in your walk in closet if you can make it especially quiet. You can always add in reverb later as you need it. Removing echo is something that is nearly impossible.
3. Inappropriate Music
Perhaps it is being brought up in a generation where music is ubiquitous but not all music in a show is good music. Consider music as an extra character in the show. If the music is taking all the attention away from the actors and the plot, or worse still the setting, remove it. I listened to an audio drama recently where two gentlemen were in a garden outside on a private estate and there was some kind of almost circus music playing in the background. Movies use music a lot for mood and that works well. Music in movies can be even more obtrusive than audio because the images help distance you from it. Music is so dangerous in audio drama that everything from a distracting mood music in the background to an inappropriate sting at the end of the scene can ruin the experience.
4. Actor's Takes
While officially this may be the director's job- that is making sure the actor provides multiple takes- it is especially important for a good producer to have an ear of what "sounds" natural. This is especially important if your actors come from all around the world. You need to make sure that the characters sound like they are in the same room. Too many audio dramas have actors reacting inappropriately to each other. Believability has to be your key.
5. Timing
This is so very important and often missed. Layering conversations so they run on top of each other. Cutting the space between lines, and just as importantly adding pause creates the illusion of a real conversation. A strong pause allows two things. It allows the audience to catch up with the information and process new events at the same time as the character and it creates an emotional statement of what the character is feeling. A long pause after some stunning news can set up anger, tears, and disbelief. A semi-regular pause can express thoughtfulness or deliberation. Good timing creates tension in a scene. Bad timing feels like bad high school theater.
6. Sound Beds
Recording in different locations creates a different "sound bed" in which your story is told. If some of your actors record at different times or different places you may have a problem of a different sounding "hiss" in your show. While I think a completely hiss-less recording sounds unnatural and kind of creepy, not having a unified sound to each of your scenes is equally problematic. You can hear voices pop-in and cut-out, and that is death to a believable radio play. Consider using electronic software to process out your hiss as much as possible and then record the hiss in your favorite recording room to layer over top of your production and give it a single sound. Be sure you don't over-produce your hiss out of your production though, as that often creates weird vocal effects to the character as part of the natural voice is filtered out.
7. Over Production
Knowing when to edit and when to leave alone is one of the hardest skills to maintain. Keeping a little imperfections in the acting can add authenticity. That is what most folks are listening for, an authentic experience.

Darker Projects

2010-03-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

Darker Projects Productions is one of the longest running audio drama companies in modern times. Although their copyright notice is set for 2008, I have been listening to their audio dramas for upwards of five years now. DP began with mostly fan fiction, Doctor Who and Star Trek, but branched out to a series of original audio dramas, mostly with a mature theme.

Website

The Darker Projects website is very nicely designed. It has easy links to their original shows, some of their fan fiction they call "devoted drama" and some behind the scenes links. In the middle column they present more detailed information on what DP is and what shows are currently released. On the right hand side is a widget that plays snippets of introduction from various cast members of DP as you first go to the show. This I find a detriment, as there's little more annoying for a regular peruser of a website than having to listen to another 20 second sound bite of welcome every time you come to a site. I recommend having it turned off, unless people want to click on it and play it. I went to Darker Projects once at work to see if a new Byron's Chronicles was released and my co-workers all had a great laugh at my expense.

Along the top is also the usual suspects of forums, contributions, about, and a complete listing of their projects. This presents another issue I have. Their listing isn't complete. I know, for example they did have a great series called "Section 31", but it's no longer featured. Rating 4/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater, Fan Fiction

Darker Projects uses all the facets that have become modern theater for podcasts- a distributed network of writers, actors, and producers. Legend has it, that Darker Projects grew out of a group of friends who loved writing Star Trek fan fiction and decided to start making their own.

Acting Type- Long Distance Amateurs

While they have some of the more familiar names like Mark Kalita, David Ault and Mark Bruzee as regulars, the cast appear to be all amateur actors of varying talents. Darker Projects tends to get the best out of their actors, but sometimes those actors don't have a lot to give. For the most part, they are well cast, and give interesting reads. The most challenging issue is getting long distance actors to be able to sound like they are playing off of each other realistically. One can not fault DP for not being able to pull this off consistently. Professional actors who rarely sit in the studio at the same time for animated shows also react poorly. This is a limitation of the style. The shows all vary in acting quality, but as a general indicator I give DP a Rating 4/5 here.

Production Types- Detail Oriented

Production is one of DP's great strengths. Their shows have rich sound effects and music that is not only effective but inspiring. Detail includes layered background sounds that enhance the setting. Enhanced setting creates mood. Deeply developed production sound can often translate the tone of the author as well, and DP does this with many of its productions. I'm going to go ahead and credit Chris Snyder for setting what I consider to be the bar for some of the best audio production of amateur production features on the Internet. While there are a growing group of people who have emerged to match his prowess, there are few that seem to surpass it in the amateur realm. Rating 5/5

Writing

The writing in Darker Projects depends mostly upon the series. There are some very gripping episodes of The Falcon Banner by Christopher Patrick Lydon and some wince-worthy writing from a few shows in the anthology series Five Minute Fears. It would be unfair to give an over all writing rating here. So look for future reviews of series, and then eventually (hopefully) individual releases.

Additional Notes: Delays

I've said that Dream Realm Enterprises is the worst show I know for delays, but I'm officially calling this "The Darker Project Syndrome" for future reviews. While DRE Gold may be caught up because of lack of time, DP seems to take cruel pleasure in making its listeners wait while they are distracted by "shiny keys". A fantastic series can wait months, even over a year while producers dally in one project after another. As a listener there are few things that are more maddening than being kept in the dark for releases. I know that most listeners won't mind if they have to wait two weeks, one month, or even three months for a new release if they are given- up front- the schedules for release. I've wandered in and out of Darker Projects realm simply because frustration has caused me to go elsewhere. But I am a man of faith, in that I keep coming back to DP hoping they have not forgot me, their listener, as they play in different corners of their yard.

Over All Rating

I have only one other criticism of Darker Projects, and that is their name. "Darker" than what? Than other podcasts? I can think of at least three podcasts that have equal or darker shows in similar genres. Some of the snippet actors' comments on their opening widget may give a clue. I get the feeling that DP is pretty clear within its own circles that they produce the best audio drama on the web.

Hubris notwithstanding, they do have a great sound, and often entertain. I recommend giving them a listen if you like genre fiction- especially horror and science fiction. They haven't branched out much past those two segments, but what they do, they do quite well. Not the best, but certainly up there. Rating 4/5

The Endless Night

2010-03-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

The Endless Night is an Art Lawful Production and a new series just into its sixth episode from the count on the libsyn server. The Production company is a theater and audio production company founded by Timothy J. Meyer in 2008. They have recently focused on online podcasting and film.
Website
The website is a typical Libsyn feed site. Nothing special or invasive. The color scheme works for the series The Endless Night, but there's little details about the people involved, the universe, or where people can get in touch with the creators. Rating 3/5

Theater Type- Modern
Endless Night uses voice actors that appear to be recorded in some form of studio and uses modern sound effects and music.

Acting Type- Amateur
While some of the acting is extraordinarily good, there is certainly a sense that the actors are new to this genre and are still finding their voices and characters. This is understandable, and I look forward to hearing more from them as the series continues. Steven Molony as Captain Nemo is especially a delight. Danielle Marie who plays Moira seems a little shakier on her role. Perhaps the funniest acting comes from Oddy the alien, although he remains uncredited in their wikipedia entry. Bel8 played by James Vonasek sounds the most artificial of the bunch but by episode 5 he's much better, and Katie Adducci does a more than able job with the lines fed to her. One of the main issues I have is that sometimes actors make a mistake in the line and there is no attempt to do a second take. Errors that don't sound natural, aren't natural. Still, all in all the show keeps improving with each episode. Rating 3.5/5

Production Type- Minimal
While there certainly are a lot of sound effects occurring in space battles, for the most part sound effects are sparse. This makes for a bit of an uneven performance, as at times when someone was running through the spaceship, I was craning to listen to footsteps that were not there. Creating an atmosphere for each setting would improve the production immensely. But the number one production requirement is better microphones. The first episode was ghastly, and I recommend people skip it and move to the second. The sound quality was no better than everyone wearing metal pails on their heads while recording. Still many of the characters sound like they are recording in their bathrooms where echoes and distance from the microphone makes it difficult to stay with the story which is a shame. The story is really good! Another minor problem is the different stings used. The fiddle sting works very well with the tone of the story, the standard ominous sting that so many people use from Garage Band and was made especially famous in the 7th Son Trilogy should be shelved. Try to get different fiddle or guitar stings to keep the integrity of the theme. Rating 2/5

Writing
The writing is what shines about this series. Meyer has a real love for space opera. His dialog between characters is natural sounding. The Captain's pithy remarks sing off the page and must be fun for the actor to read. Meyer writes exciting battle sequences with interesting battle strategies. Everyone loves a rogue, but a clever rogue is dynamite. Captain Nemo is the rapscallion everyone wants to have as their captain when the shit hits the fan. Great character development for the other characters don't really develop until episode 5 where we look at how they got together. This episode is a little confusing as it goes back and forth from past to present time, but fills in a lot of gaps as to how some of the crew got on the Unconstant Lover (Personally I think the word should be "Inconstant" but my dictionary tells me that "unconstant" is allowable too) . Rating 4/5

Additional Notes
I get the feeling that Meyer is a fan of Firefly. If he isn't, he should be. And if he is, he needs to trumpet this to all the Browncoats everywhere. The Endless Night has the energy of a Firefly story: Pirates and spaceships, a Captain down on his luck, and an unfair universe stacked against him. Everyone loves an underdog, and I think there's lots to love about Endless Night.

Over All Rating
I would say that if you like space adventure audio drama, with some humour, lots of battles, and you don't mind folks who are just on the learning curve of understanding production values, then give Endless Night a listen. It's a fun show with lots of good potential. Rating 3.5/5

Some Notes

2010-03-04T03:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to SFFAudio and The Sonic Society for making this blog public. There's been lots of people who have read and left a few comments. I'm not certain I was ready to be discovered yet, as I haven't really produced enough reviews for all the audio drama that is out there. But I thank you for your interest, all the same.
A couple of things:
1. I make no apologies as a listener and lover of audio drama. You can be certain that I will tell people what I think is the unvarnished truth of their productions. You don't have to read them if you don't wish, but I made a promise to myself that if I was going to do this, I would be honest about what I heard, and not sugar coat real problems. Similarly, I am not afraid to tell people when I think something is awesome.
If you're looking for someone to be supportive and not critical, you've come to the wrong place. There are many other great places out there though. Please feel free to check them out.

2. Paeter from Spirit Blade was kind enough to offer his professional work to me to review. After a sleepless night, I have declined.
This blog was designed to offer an honest criticism to those who do not sell their work in the hopes that they may improve and some day offer their audio dramas for purchase. I have bought, and continue to buy professionally produced audio drama and would like to see more of it on the shelves.
Does this mean I think everyone should sell their product? Or that giving away their product for free is wrong?
That's not my job to judge. My job in this blog is to identify those who COULD sell their product, and those who need to work more on their shows to be capable of selling.
When everyone on the Internet is professional quality, I'll either close down this blog, or I'll redefine it to review everyone.
Until then, please go buy Spirit Blade and find out for yourself!
Warmly,
~J. Snowe

Bells in the Batfry

2010-03-03T04:37:00.000-08:00

Bells in the Batfry is a periodic (usually once a month sometimes twice a month) comedy show that is written, produced, and acted by John Bell. The setup is that Mr. Bell runs a regular radio show with a number of segments and characters. The chief characters are Arny, Brad, Miss Schmackleheimer (Miss Sadey Shmackleheimer), Mr. Wizzr'd and a few other "guest" characters that pop in and out depending as needed.
Website
John Bell keeps the website very clear of clutter. There are a few links- beginning with the Show Notes and Shows, Forums, Cafe Press Store, downloads of extra songs, and contact information.
Just the basics and that's a good thing. It's easy to find either RSS feed- with commentary notes or without and an icon for being a Parsec Award Winner. In fact, the only complaint I have about the website is that it has an extraordinarily large Twitter pic. That bird looks it could eat the other show bits. Rating 4.5/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater/OTR
While using the set up of an old time radio like that of Jack Benny, Mr. Bell uses professional and modern production values to his show. His style is practiced and polished, and there's no doubt he understands what kind of show he is presenting for his fans.

Acting Type- Solo Professional
While not knowing if Mr. Bell is actually a professional actor or not, I will state for the record that if he isn't he should be. His control in front of the microphone should be an example to be studied in production schools. His ability to switch characters is astounding, and his range is rich and seemingly endless. When I first heard this show, it took me some time to actually come to the realization that he was the lone actor in the studio. His comic timing is the best in audio drama today, and would give some of the greats of the past a run for their money. His characters are distinct and iconic. They round out an important cast and produce a number of archetypes that Bell uses for foils against his main persona. The actress who plays Miss Shmackleheimer is marvelous. The two of them could read the phone book together and keep their audience riveted. The only disconcerting acting I found was the actress who plays the Cookie girl. Her interactions with Mr. Bell sometimes come across as a little creepy. I'm not sure if it's her tone, or the way she approaches the character, but I shudder a little (involuntarily) when she has too much air time. As an actor, John Bell would certainly have his own show were he to have grown up with the early days of radio. Rating 5+/5

Production Type- Detailed to Minimal
Depending on the setting, Mr. Bell's sound effects can range to none at all to a rich sound. Mr. Bell knows how to paint a picture. There has never been a time that I have been confused as to where I am in a Batfry show unless Mr. Bell is painting a scenery of confusion. Mr. Bell understands exactly what is needed to tell an audio story. There are few if any need to narrate what is going on, unless Mr. Bell who acts as the defacto straight guy needs to explain. Mr. Bell's production makes me want to believe that any story, produced right, could be done in audio. That's no mean feat. He understands the power of compression, proper positioning of a microphone, and reverb within a recording. I'm not certain if Bell in the Batfry is recorded in a professional studio, but it certainly has that quality. Rating 5+/5

Writing
While there are the occasional shows that do not measure up, there is little doubt that Mr. Bell is a comic genius. After completing 100 shows, he's been able to keep the plot of the Batfry constantly in motion, his characters constantly in turmoil, and build a strong background to the entire Batfry universe. He's writes the fast talking comedy, made popular by old stars like Abbott and Costello, naturally and with impeccable flare. His shows, for the most part, move quickly from segment to segment, and his opportunities for comedy seem inexhaustible. Comedy is harder to write than drama, but it would be interesting to see Mr. Bell's writing in other genres too. Rating 5/5

Additional Notes
Recently the Batfry has hit its 100th show (quite an accomplishment for an unpaid podcast)! Mr. Bell was threatening for some episodes before hand that he would "change the format". The running gag had a number of other podcast shows "call in" to the Batfry to express their dismay or support for some of the more outlandish format changes. When the centenary hit, the Batfry went "on the road" in an RV to discover adventure. Mr. Bell has an uncanny way of drawing his fans in to help him with ideas, and has asked folks to write to him about places he should come visit. Great idea!

Over All Rating
After listening to other shows, its exciting to delve into a professionally produced, written, and acted comedy podcast. Doing comedy right is infinitely harder than doing any other genre, and maintaining such a standard is a herculean task. Mr. Bell is a standard in modern audio drama today. He is a must listen show. Get through his archives now before he goes professional because, Mr. Bell is what audio drama could be and should be today. Rating 5+/5

No Shit Sherlock- And Five Other Common Dialog Errors

2010-02-27T07:40:00.000-08:00

Writing dialog is never easy. We all can't be Elmore Leonard but after listening to some marathon sessions of audio drama I thought I'd pass on some tips:
1. No Shit Sherlock The phrase "No Shit Sherlock" was big when I was in grade school. Its synonyms are "duh", "well duh!" and "no shit" among others. Not only do they denote a waste of writing, but they point out that the dialogue before was a waste of writing for your listeners. So why use them? Consider also that if your hero says, "No Shit Sherlock" to any other character, they are pretty much a douche bag for pointing out someone is being obvious. If your character is a villain, there are plenty of other ways to show that. Please disuse.
2. Other Tired Dialog Cliches Some of these have come from Gaia's Voyages and I apologize. Certainly that show is not the worst offender but my hope is always that these entries informs and not flames. Phrases like, "Don't go there" and "I don't need that picture in my mind" as well as others grate on the listeners nerves. They are phrases that seem over used and out of place.
3. Out of Character Dialogue Each character should have his or her own voice. If you read your dialog out in a scene (one line rarely is enough) to someone and they don't know which character is speaking it, you're in trouble. This is especially important in large casts. Remember a different acting voice or vocal effect is no replacement for the actual voice of a character. Phrases like "Now, see here" is not something I would ever hear from a character that wasn't a bit of a snob, or British, preferably both. The phrase "Now, see here" I don't think I've ever heard in my life outside of a formal debate.
4. Dialog is not true speech This is a tricky balance. Dialog written in novels often sounds terrible and unrealistic read aloud (Except for people like the aforementioned Leonard or other great writers like John Irving and Nora Roberts). If you want to hear how people talk. Go to a coffee shop with a notebook or a small tape recorder. People talk in half sentences. They interrupt each other all the time. They stop halfway when they say something stupid, and they whirl around a pile of different topics. The trick is to take the hurricane of human speech and stick it in your pocket. Don't make dialog your way of telling what happens in a story or giving background to someone's character, unless you can use it to hint at elements. You shouldn't mimic true speech, but you should try to approximate it.
5. Overwriting I've mentioned this before, but writing too much dialog can slow down a story to a dead crawl and make listeners just what the heck, if anything, is going to happen. This is a hard call, because depending upon the story and genre, perhaps the dialog IS the story as in the classic My Dinner with Andre. However those kinds of stories need to be paced well, and they need to reveal deep character points that draw the plot forward. A good rule is, if the scene does not forward the plot or develop the character, it is a wasted scene. This goes doubly so with dialog. Say it succinctly and get it done with!
6. Repetition. Keep away for constantly repeating a word constantly. The constant use of that word will constantly get on someone's nerves. A good writer will try to use the best word for dialog, and while human beings are often prone to having a shallow vocabulary in speech, it doesn't mean we all need to hear a repetition of a word or phrase unless its for comedic sake (as in a call back line), a verbal tick of a character, or designed to emphasize something within the plot and even then that can come across heavy handed when done poorly. Phrases like, "My head doesn't want those images in my head" should be edit to something like, "Don't want those images thanks." It's clear that they will be in your head. It's clear what the person's thinking. It's more like real speech, and its conservative in its usage.

Dialog can be tricky, but you'll do yourself and your listeners a good turn if you but follow the above suggestions and keep this in mind:
Omit if you can. Rewrite if you can't. Limit at all opportunity.

Gaia's Voyages

2010-02-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

Gaia's Voyages is an ongoing space opera written by Elaine Barrett set in the Earth's future after a near environmental collapse. Gaia is a spaceship that operates effectively as some kind of zoological science vessel. It's not quite certain exactly what it's role is in the show, but according to the Encyclopedia Gaiactica (nice pun!) it seems to be a war vessel with a highly developed capability to transport alien life form and a mandate from the Galactic Confederation to protect and save species and cultures from environmental disasters- kind of a United Nations/Red Cross starship. Gaia's Voyages used to be hosted by Misfits Audio but has now found a home at Broken Sea. As well as penning the tales, Ms. Barrett also produces, directs, and stars in them as Captain Elizabeth Monroe.
Website
The design is simple and one found all through the Broken Sea website. Links to other Broken Sea shows are lined down the right, with the shows- operating with the most recent on the top- taking the main page. There are two other links, one for the Encyclopedia and the other for an About page.
The website gives you everything you need to know about the show including nicely detailed show notes that give a synopsis as well as credits. Rating 5/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater
Right down to the long distance actors and sound effects with music, Gaia is typical of the modern sci-fi series you can hear today.

Acting Type: Long Distance Amateur
With the exception of Ms. Barrett herself, the rest of the Gaia crew and guest stars are all long distance players. While some are experienced audio favorites like Mark Kalita, David Ault and Bruce Busby, there are a lot of other actors that have shown some real talent. Melissa "Mippy" Johnson is a real find as the voice of Gaia, and James Rossi as Zeet have some great vocal qualities. Ms. Barrett herself plays a good captain, although at times she tries to sound a little too clever for her character and that can distance herself from the audience that wants to like her. Heroes generally need to present a kind of vulnerability to draw others in. The acting has some interesting vocal tricks and mimicry of different animals, but sometimes can come across as too over the top to be believable. There is a sense that as a directorial role, Ms. Barrett prefers the bigger the better, and the wilder the more fun. This isn't always a good choice. Sometimes silence can say far more than a big personality in a good audio play. Rating 3.5/5

Production Type: Detailed
Gaia's Voyage started off rockier in Misfit's Audio. Ms. Bennett was obviously a newbie getting to know her way around production. As with many new production people she has swung a little too far to the other side and overproduces the work. With Audio Drama every sound must have a purpose or you become a victim of noise clutter. Hearing the newly mastered versions of her old shows in Broken Sea presents that clutter at times. There is music in the background that does not set the mood, nor provide tension. It seems to be there like many elements of Gaia's Voyage, because its sounds cool on its own and therefore must be fit in.
Vocal effects like that of the Zeet character sound overly used and flicker in and out from highly processed to nothing at all. Since Zeet is meant to be a mechanical being this seems highly unlikely.
Sometimes standard sounds can be your friend, like stereotypical characters and settings. They can quickly attune your audience to a character and a time and place. Ms. Barrett needs to be sparing with how unique her sound is, and focus on keeping the suspension of disbelief in place. Rating 2/5

Writing
The writing is clunky at times, suffering from classic "over writing". Over writing is when an author tries to pack too much dialogue into a scene. One of the lines I remember most is from one of the first episodes and wasn't edited when it was remastered for Broken Sea. It mentioned an image in her head hurting her head. A big "no-no" in writing piece is to make certain you do not use the same word repeatedly in the same paragraph let alone the same line. Repetition should be used sparingly and with powerful effect.
Also, Ms. Barrett loves to play with sexual innuendos and suggestive language. It seems a little out of place for people working in some kind of service to be so unprofessional with each other at all times, especially the Captain. The use of these elements seem to be a little self serving on the side of Ms. Barrett and tends to diminish what is actually a rich background universe and series of interesting plots.
The characters of Gaia are similarly interesting, but need to be less overt. Almost every character in the show is broadly drawn and can be almost cartoonish at times with their heavy-handed antics. There's a reason why the curtains on a stage are never completely full drawn back during a show. Give us something to wonder about, and keep the mystery- the central focus of any story- going. Rating 2/5

Additional Notes
I get the feeling that Gaia has one thing going for it that most other shows do not- that being the abundant energy of the show runner. Elaine Barrett loves this series and shows no sign of tiring of creating new shows. While the production has slowed at times, from the sounds of things her fans can expect many more shows to come.

Over All Rating
Gaia obviously owes itself a lot to Star Trek as do many science fiction audio drama shows today. It's a child of the belief that mankind can step out of its shadow and do something good for the cosmos. But it doesn't forget that individually we're all pretty mired in our passions and hatreds. Gaia has a lot of potential, and I see the production and writing improving with each show. Ms. Barrett infuses her own sentiments on the series, and you see strong characterization and budding love interests that you might not see on other shows. Rating 3.5/5

Children of the Gods

2010-02-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

Children of the Gods is an exciting space opera about Earth's future that has a huge cast, and grand special effects by Dead Weasel Studios. I first heard this show during J.C. Hutchin's 7th Son Podcast, so it has one of the oldest roots for original Science Fiction series of the modern audio drama era.

Website
The Cotg website is a marvel to behold. It is well thought out, created with a strong theme in mind and detailed beautifully. Everything you want to know about the show is here, except perhaps a synopsis. It seems strange to have so much fantastic detail and yet not a basic synopsis of what the series is about. Even when you look at the individual episodes, they have great graphics, and nice log entries, producers comments and full credits (not enough shows include full credits in my opinion), but there isn't a single synopsis of what happens in the show to be seen, not even a teaser! Coming episodes give you a good idea of the stage of development and there's a section to help those interested in auditioning for parts. The forums are pretty sparse and sad looking. I recommend they get abandoned and Christopher Mack just looks for a spot on Audio Drama Talk like many other producers have. Rating 5/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater/Audio Book
Cotg's has become one of the first examples of the power of modern audio stories on the web. It uses narration, plenty of sound effects, and a strong plot. There's an effort made for different sounding voices and strong use of music in the production. The largest complaint here is that it's really not Audio Drama. The script is written more like described audio. You find this occurring from people who really want to make a movie or write a book and do not trust the conventions of Audio Drama. Instead of setting up a situation or explaining the back story (which is done handily in the first episode) the main character describes every, little, thing that occurs in the story. Yes there are sound effects, but they end up being ways to confirm the story instead of telling it. Yes there are other actors, but so are multi-cast audio books. That's what Cotg feels like, an audio book with a big cast and lots of sound effects.

Acting Type: Long Distance Amateur
Acting is varied and unfortunately the unevenness shows. There are strong actors and weak ones. Strongest are Chris Mack himself as Kevin Corval. Strangely enough, all the female main roles are equally as strong. The poor acting at times takes away from the story itself, although there are script problems and production problems that add to this too. Rating 3/5

Production Type: Detailed/Rich
You would be hard pressed to more rich production. Christopher Mack knows production value. The sound is multi-layered and filled with appropriate and energetic music. The sound effects act as a character in the story, and that is how great audio lets you fall into the experience. This is the kind of audio story you want to listen to with headphones to get the full effect. Although I did play it in my car as well to work and enjoyed it too. It can not be emphasized enough how important it is to watch the levels of a show the more you add sound effects. An audio drama can easily go from layered to cluttered. This does not.
However if there is one problem in this production it is in direction. The editing of the actors voices comes across as mechanical and painful to listen to at times. There's something that occurs in many audio drama editing I will call "Ping Pong". This is the effect of one person talking then shooting the ball over to another person to talk and vice versa. Real discussion doesn't work that way. People run over each other's lines, they interrupt halfway through a speech. They speed up. They slow down, and they pause before they say things. There are moments where Chris Mach has a character say half a line and pauses as if the other character is supposed to interrupt them, and then another character takes over. Do not be afraid to have your characters talking at once. We can follow along, and it will sound far more natural. Rating 4/5

Writing
Many of the issues of the writing creep up in the other elements of the story- production and acting direction. Starting with script problems can make a struggling actor come across as horrible. Chris Mack is best at innovative plot developments, action scenes, and the tech jargon- and don't get me wrong, those are very good. Where the writing is troubling is in its descriptions. Mr. Mack describes far too much. It slows down the story and sounds unnatural.
The entire first episode was written as a log entry while the main character awaited rescue, and that was a good way to give the background to fill in the blanks as to where and when the story takes place. But each episode afterward continued with the same method even when there are characters fully capable of explaining what was going on through the story.
Don't take us out of the story to tell us the characters shake hands, use the sound effects and the dialogue to give us the idea they are doing so.
Cut the dialogue so that it doesn't sound hokey at times. There are a lot of clichés and phrases that seem unnatural. In episode three or four Korval is telling another character why one character wears a dagger. It's a good touch for the character, but it comes across as something that doesn't feel like real conversation. It's artificially constructed. Rating 3/5

Additional Notes
The biggest complaint I have with Children of the Gods is that the production has delayed so often as to become legendary. While J.C. Hutchins has gone on to write five books, Cotg's is only on its tenth episode. Is it because Christopher Mack is too busy to produce more? Is he struggling with the scripts or the production? Either way when people mention Cotg's someone says, "Oh yeah... I remember that. What ever happened...?" and that's never a good thing. While the website gives a lot of tempting information it really just teases us.

Over All Rating
Despite the fact that there are script, actor, and directing difficulties, and in spite of the fact that I doubt Children of the Gods is an audio drama at all, Cotg is a great story can be exciting to hear unfold. Some people describe it as Battlestar Galactica, but I would liken it more to Space, Above, and Beyond. It contains all the great elements for a space opera- gripping drama, heightened danger, and a universal threat to the existence of mankind. Rating 4/5

Dream Realm Enterprises

2010-02-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Dream Realm Enterprises is one of the oldest of the modern audio drama companies on the Internet. It is chiefly run by Jonithan Patrick Russell who carries the moniker of "CEO" and "Executive Producer". I first heard their work over on The Sonic Society and enjoyed their continuing series Robotz of the Company. They had clever characters, and a smart way to mask terrible sound recordings by making the main characters robots of various models. They present a number of offerings including: Robotz, The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, 2 Sides to Every Story, Jeff Niles Presents, Realm Weaver, and Doctor Who.

Website
Some websites get away from having a light color (preferably white) as their background, and the DRE website is an example. This is a mistake as it often is hard to read, the various light colored text can overwhelm the eye. This is again a problem with DRE. There are basically three columns of text that have little clear definition as to what each column is for. The left column lists shows, the right seems to detail latest news and coming attractions, the middle swath seems filled with who they are and a series of oversized links.
It be better if there wasn't so much scrolling needed to just get an idea what the shows are and what was new. Subscriptions can be put on another page, or listed tightly on one side. It's not really necessary to have the definition of Dream Realm on the first page as most listeners will want to go to the website to find what shows they have, subscribe and or listen, and find out about DRE only as a third option.
That brings up another element. DRE seems to be its own universe with its own mailing list, "Making of" series in the "Dark Building Lounge", news, shop for "exclusive" products, and facebook and myspace pages.
One gets the feeling that DRE must be adding new content regularly. The website is far too busy with too much text and not enough ways to draw the eye in Rating 1/5

Audio Drama Type- Modern Theater, Experimental, Fan Fiction
I give DRE an "experimental" theater type because they are the first group- I know of- that used the aforementioned problem of bad microphone recordings to their advantage with Robotz of the Company. They used to have a series of Superman Improv shows (What happened to them?) and like so many other audio drama companies they do their own version of Doctor Who, so fan fiction is a staple of theirs. The rest of the works seems to be under the Modern Theater banner as they produce works from anthology series.

Acting Type: Long Distance Amateur
The acting is at best uneven. They exemplify the worst elements of having actors work in isolation. Many of the scripts feel like the actors made single responses to lines, and the editor needed to hammer them together even if they don't come across as natural. Some shows are better than others. Realm Weaver has had better success with their later shows. Dead River by Vince Stadon is my favorite pick of the bunch. Their Doctor Who also seems plagued with problems in the acting department and recasting. Strong direction is required to bring a coherent quality to productions, and actors should provide a range of emotional responses in their lines to give the producer some better choices. Maybe that is their best options, if so, either better actors or a good series of practice readings around Skype like Wormwood does would be highly preferable. Rating 3/5

Production Type: Detailed
DRE is one of the first audio dramas that worked hard on their production. You can tell the sound effects are well prepared even in the earliest episodes. The problem is the tools and skills have not kept up with the times. While other shows have produced near-studio quality production types, DRE hasn't progressed nearly enough. Sometimes their sound effects come across as jarring or inappropriate, other times they work perfectly. One gets the feeling that the producer only does as well on the show as he has the time to put in. Poor scenes might represent a late night and very little patience. Good scenes show a love for a particular script or mood. Quality seems to be something that needs to be more of a focus. Rating 3.5/5

Writing: Jon Patrick Russell
Mr. Russell penned most of the Robotz of the Company stories and many of the other shows. While he has obviously allowed others in the organization to provide him with scripts, Mr. Russell remains the Executive Producer and ultimately is responsible for script production, and sometimes that suffers. There appears to be a large sophomoric streak in the humor at times, and one gets the feeling that stories are rushed and thin on plot. The later seasons of Robotz of the Company are scattered and have lost the fun of the earlier seasons- almost like they've been replaced with the old adage "what can we do to them that's never been done before?" Instead of asking where the characters might go. Mr. Russell himself has expressed that Robotz has become more of a fantasy with Magical Wishing wells and the like instead of the tight science fantasy comedy that made the characters more endearing and a metaphor for a heartless corporation running roughshod over its employees.
Doctor Who seems to be made with the adage, "We need to make more Doctor Who" as opposed to having a powerful story to tell. Fortunately, the anthology series Realm Weaver and Jeff Niles Presents (what we've heard of it) at least work with a good story concept in each episode. Rating 2/5

Additional Notes: Production Delays
DRE is perhaps the worst offender (with Darker Projects pulling up a clear second) for production delays. Since no longer appearing on the Sonic Society at around season 3, production for Robotz of the Company ground to a near halt. While they are up to Season 5 now, the seasons have been released infrequently. Doctor Who has had even more delays with shows promised for years now that haven't been released. Jeff Niles Presents has only presented one show, and Realm Weaver which has been talked about for five years now has four episodes in season 1. (Is there going to be another season?)
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes has only five parts despite being a staple for nearly as many years as the company has been around. Where are all the new shows?
No one is expecting the breakneck speed of Broken Sea Audio which promises and delivers new content (often multiple shows) every Thursday, but with such a mature company even a monthly release or every other week would make a huge difference. With so much detail on the company on the main page, I couldn't imagine what their email subscription list gives its audience beyond broken dreams.

Over All Rating: 2/5
Dream Realm needs to get back to basic. Revamp its website, focus on its core products and decide exactly if it still wants to be in the Audio Drama game or not. Its fans deserve a schedule that is adhered to, and show consistency, for the amount of effort they are asking people to invest. I have a lot of fond memories of DRE and right now, I'm not compelled to go visit them. Please welcome me back.

The Problem of Acting in AD

2010-02-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished listening to Twin Stars from Kung Fu Action Theatre (another Canadian production from the look of the "re" and the lack of Brit accents) and Giant Gnome Productions with their fan audio Star Trek-Outpost and I'm reminded of the problems with using amateur actors in audio drama.
It may sound like a cliche but it still fits: Acting is about not sounding like you're acting.
If you have volunteers who feel confident enough to place voice to microphone to record- especially if they are not in the same location as you are- you might want to work with them on sounding natural. There are two very unnatural sounding actors that seem to still be used in audio dramas today:
1. The Reader is the kind of actor who is used to very carefully measuring the tone of their voice and speaking so very clearly that they are able to emote just enough to get you relaxed and have you thinking about the next audio book you want to listen to in the car. But they are not acting. The reader is so focused on the way their voice comes across so that everyone can understand the message they are saying, that they nearly always sound like a futuristic android given human sentiment through technological means. As narrators these actors are superb, because they have just enough emotion of a Lake Wobegon story and yet sound completely unreal when matched up with other actors. Especially The Emoter.
2. The Emoter is the kind of actor who swings wildly from emotional extremes. In a single scene they can inexplicably scream, act sexy, cry, get bored, and go back to screaming at an unbelievable pace.
While there are crazy characters that may call for such quixotic moods, most of the Emoters have forgotten that they are creating a real person and focus strictly on the emotional content of a line.
Even if a line calls for shouting, take it back to the writer or producer and ask exactly what range of emotions are required. Make them aware that going too far may make the character appear somewhat unbalanced.

So PLEASE, because someone can do a good voice or create an interesting character in an audition, doesn't mean they can sustain it. Make sure they do that, and you've got a winning team that will take you far.

Decoder Ring Theatre

2010-01-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Decoder Ring Theatre is an audio drama company that comes out of Toronto, Canada (which is why Theatre is spelled "re" instead of "er"), and is the brainchild of Gregg Taylor. Mr. Taylor is another of the "one-man shows" of audio drama in which he writes, directs, produces, promotes, and acts in all of his productions. For most people, this means production in fits and starts. Decoder Ring Theatre however, has been podcasting faithfully for almost five years. This in and of itself is no mean feat, as many companies have the best of intentions and less than intrepid follow-throughs. The show itself focuses on three main signatory shows, all original- The Red Panda, Black Jack Justice, and the Summer Showcase.

Website
Clean and slick. The website has a good color scheme and theme (mostly the colors of the Red Panda). Whoever did the art work knows how to make a good logo. There are contribution buttons nicely out of the way on the side but clear enough for anyone who wants to help Mr. Taylor change the world one show at a time can help out. Other offerings such as members pages, fan forums and links to his novelizations on Cafe Press all help add to the perception this is a company that knows what it's serving the public. Rating 5/5

Audio Drama Type- Old Time Radio Knock Off
Mr. Taylor clearly knows and loves OTR. His style of presentation is right out of the playbook of the 1930's radio programs. From the selection of his own shows he has a wide understanding of OTR crime fiction, pulp classics, film noir, and perhaps most importantly The Shadow and most likely The Spider. Mr. Taylor produces all of his shows from his home with a small but talented group of actors with sometimes uneven recording capabilities, and a minimalist approach to sound effects all fair game and in style with the OTR feel.

Acting Types: Local Amateur/Professional
Many of the actors in the Decoder Ring cast have played on stage in Toronto and in some television and movies. Jonathan Llyr plays in various roles with Decoder Ring including their Deck Gibson series that was penned by Matt Wallace famous for his Failed City Monologues. But all of the voices are strong, and Taylor obviously has a good vision to be able to direct the best. Mr. Taylor records monthly with two new scripts and the main characters in both The Red Panda Adventures and his other show Black Jack Justice know their emotional beats so well; one could imagine they could perform them in their sleep if needed.
This is not to say they sleepwalk across the stage, but rather the actors have a kind of comfort and knowledge of their characters few modern audio drama groups achieve.
The backbone of the acting is Gregg Taylor himself who fills in as the voice of the Red Panda as well as the irascible Lt. Sabien and his wife Clarissa Der Nederlanden Taylor who speaks as The Flying Squirrel and other sundry cast members when necessary.
If there is any criticism to be had in the acting it is in the limitations of a small group. Taylor, whose baritone voice is perhaps one of the most recognizable and powerful leading men in modern OTR and Clarissa who's wisecracking yet charming trill are unmistakable. Lt. Sabien sounds like Red Panda who has been out all night drinking and smoking cigarettes, and The Flying Squirrel is a less classy version of some of the other incidental roles that Der Nederlanden-Taylor shows up in.
Similarly, Steven Burley and Andrea Lyons could be picked out of an audio police lineup in a minute. Christopher Mott has a number of voice variations that make him harder to place. But these criticisms are weak at best, considering that most OTR shows had reoccurring actors that played a mug one week and a stoolie or a victim the next.
The only concern would be now, with such iconic voice prints on his signature shows, what would happen if any of the core team decided to leave? Perish the thought! Rating 5/5

Production Types: OTR Flavored/Minimalist
Perhaps one of the secrets to Mr. Taylor's success is that he does not spend as much production time on his shows as other companies. You won't find the same painstaking detail to panning as you will find on some shows, in fact the highly compressed formats give a better mono effect. Some times the microphones are not set perfectly for the actors; there is a dearth of sound effects. Mr. Taylor does not spend time with footsteps unless they are called for directly in the script. Sound scapes of the outdoors are presented very cleanly. The trick is to tell the story with the characters and not with the surrounding world. This was par for the course in the OTR world where digital sound effects were science fiction and panning was the province of prospectors alone.
Taylor seems uninterested or unwilling to put more detail into the production side of his shows, and it sometimes can suffer the end product, but over all, it's a formula that works and works well. Rating 4/5

Writing
There is little doubt why his first born son is named "Max". Maxwell Grant's spirit inhabits Mr. Taylor's pen. In one of his interviews he let loose the fact that his shows are written and produced sometimes as far as a year in advance. That's a new show every other week for a year before the podcast runs out of ammunition. That's a prodigious writing schedule that would make writers of all calibers blanch. You'd expect the quality of the writing to be wildly erratic. But it does not. Mr. Taylor's tales are consistent and entertaining. He understands the form, and he understands the formula. Character development takes a backseat. Only the villains of both shows portray heightened motivations and reasons.
Take August Fenwick, the recently named alter ego of the Panda. There's been precious little revealed as to what motivates Fenwick to put on a cowl and a pile of expensive inventions to fight evil. He's a billionaire playboy (or at least he was a playboy until he married the Flying Squirrel) in the same carbon copy mold as Bruce Wayne and Lamont Cranston ("Wealthy young man about town"). In fact, it seems like Fenwick has very little to distinguish himself outside of the iconic Shadow character. He has a female companion. He's independently wealthy; he's got hypnotism powers like the Shadow, and an overabundant desire for justice. The Red Panda has more of utility belt full of gadgets like the Batman.
In his other show, Black Jack Justice, Jack's only defining characteristic outside of others like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe is that he's got a wise-cracking partner by the name of Trixie Dixon, girl detective.
But what Taylor lacks in originality of his protagonists, he more than makes up in the breadth of his tales. The sheer scope of his scripts and now novels shows that he understands what Maxwell Grant understood- if you get a good idea, take it slow and it will last for decades.
That he is able to write month after month two new scripts for his series, is nothing less than awe-inspiring, and his fan base shows their loyalty to the loyalty he puts to those worlds. Rating 5/5

Additional Notes:
The Summer Series often is both a chance for Mr. Taylor to allow someone else to provide scripts (as he did with Deck Gibson) or give him a chance to step outside of his two main franchises. He's provided some western shows and some suspense thrillers, and more mystical fair than he usually writes, sometimes with less than his normal consistency. Mr. Taylor may be more like Maxwell Grant than he knows, and could get stuck writing Justice and Panda so proficiently that he finds it difficult to branch out. But that's a worry the rest of us need not concern ourselves with. As long as he keeps writing Decoder Ring Theatre, we're going to see bigger audiences flock to his steadfast, professional "amateur" productions.

Over All Rating: 5+/5

Whether you're a fan of old time radio or not, Decoder Ring Theatre is simply not an audio drama company you can afford to ignore or pass up. The works are as professional as they can be. The sound is consistent. The characters are familiar and fun. The only question is why he has not consistently won awards for his efforts.
Well, maybe one more question. Are the Taylors going to name their daughter Lois?

Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind

2010-01-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind is a relatively new Audio Drama podcast having posted their first show in April of 2008. The show is produced, directed, written and often narrated and starring the Tanja Millavich- at least I hope I'm spelling her name properly as I cannot find it anywhere on the site and only have the podcast to listen to. Lightning Bolt is where Tanja prodcasts original and adapted audio recordings that she engineers herself (although there is a typo in the way she spells "engeneering").

First the Good News
Tanja strikes me as a young person, and its very exciting to hear a younger generation taking up the Audio Drama banner. Creating original radio plays can allow creativity to take be explored in more interesting ways than on the page and less expensive ways than video. Tanja has a pile of interesting ideas. She also has some very poignant moments between her characters and is obviously a very intelligent and thoughtful person. Lightning Bolt Theater has a good mix of romance, science fiction and horror stories, and Tanja appears to be having a great deal of fun making the stories come to life.

Now the Bad News
Lightning Bolt Theater gets the 2009 year nod for absolutely worst audio drama currently being produced. This show is so consistently bad at times that I had to take out my ear buds and give the pounding in my head time to settle before continuing to listen to some shows.

Webpage
The Lightning Bolt webpage is as boring as it comes. It's hosted at the G-Cast and feels like it comes from Compu-Centre in the 1995. If Tanja was going for a retro look, this is it, complete with stone white background and ugly red block banner at the top that says "G-Cast".
All the standard "Podcast 101" fair is there, and appears to be part of the original template package of G-Cast pages. But there is no Lightning Bolt logo (I used a card from Magic the Gathering up at top) and very little information other than this is a labor of love and that Tanja is new at this.
We appreciate you're new Tanya, get a geeky friend to make you a template and put it up before posting a show. Give us something to visit when we see your page. Even the links all don't work right. Tanya suggests www.lightningbolttheaterofthemind.com but that comes up as an error message for me.
The shows are at least in order of appearance, but I'm going to give that to G-Cast template again, as it seems that's what they do- boring and orderly. Rating 0/5

Audio Drama Type- Experimental
This show must be produced in a number of different locations including at the bottom of an emptied out septic tank, in a bedroom, living room, and across the neighbor's yard. The sound quality is so terrible at times, one would hope it was produced live, but there is no such luck. This is meant to be a modern recording, but I'm going to be kind and call it "experimental" and give Tanja the benefit of the doubt.

Acting Types: Local Amateur
And I mean amateur. All the actors sound like they were pulled randomly off the street (perhaps after happy hour). The acting is so murderous that you spend much of the time trying to help the actors out with the words as you know they are coming before they do. Words cannot express how haltingly the actors try to trip over scripts, that you hope they have never seen before because if they have then Tanja has abducted a class load of students off the short bus to help her or she has gone armed with a tape recorder to customs lineups to pull strangers who have English as a second language.
In one episode alone, I heard one actor stumble and say "sub-til" instead of "subtle", clearly pronouncing the "b" and "dis-cree-shen-ary" instead of "discretionary". I'm certain I would have caught many more errors but those ones stuck out especially poorly.
Even Julie Hoverson, usually a decent voice actress sounds halting and out of place in her guest performance.
Whether the actors have English as a stumbling block in which to say their lines, does not diminish the fact that so many of her actors ARE from a different country. I'm assuming that Tanja is probably from Russia or the Ukraine and her English is near flawless, but there appear to be other Eastern Europeans and latinos among others not so lucky.
I found myself sweating profusely listening in pain as these poor actors fought with the words that so many of us take for granted.
Beyond reading the words, the actual acting is so halting and uneven that the emotions that come from the actors are beyond forced. They explode one minute only to change quixotically halfway through the same phrase. If the men and women existed in the real world who act in this place, they would be locked up for the fastest cycles of manic-depression and studied for years to come. Rating 0/5

Production Types: Minimalist I am guessing a little when I term this "minimalist". There are times when they is way too much going on with sounds. Tanja seems bewildered as to how to put together a story with sound effects to keep it believable. In one episode I know I heard a Hanna-Barbara "leap" sound, which was so completely out of context with the seriousness of the story, that I had to stop and replay it to be certain I wasn't hallucinating the sound.
Furthermore, in Tanja's audio stories, I can only imagine that human beings are buckets of vomit that are bundled up in thick balloons or bladders. Every time I have heard a knife strike (and there are a fair amount of them) it has included the wettest slashes ever. It feels like Tanja found a really cool slasher sound effect and has used it again and again for every strike. This knife hit is so juicy, I wouldn't use it on a zombie that had been bloated on blood and brains from a daycare center.
Characters punch in and out their lines with almost painful clicks, and voices that are sometimes distorted they don't sound like they are on the same planet let alone the same room. Sometimes within the span of a single conversation a character's microphone can go bad and abduct the character's words from something like the room they were in, to a talking into a bucket, muffled, tinny, and plain awful.
Panning is also painful. Most of the time there is none (which is fine) but suddenly there will be an incomprehensible flick back and forth if the actor yells and an echo is needed. so that the voice calls out from the centre, echoes once left, and then once right afterwards. That is a talented echo that defies the law of physics.
This strikes me as a central problem with young people making Audio Drama today. Most people younger than 35 grew up with an almost entirely visual medium, so all audio drama is presented like a movie without the understanding how how to present something visual for the ears. Rating 0/5

Writing
This brings us to the writing. In many of the shows, Tanja includes, inexplicably, a narrator, who is neither introduced at the beginning, nor consistent through the show. She adds in narration strictly to give a very detailed description of a setting. For a period of about ten minutes in one episode, I felt like I had entered a new version of "pick your own path adventure audio drama" as the entire story stopped while a narrator suddenly appeared to explain every detail of the characters room including what her radio looked like even though it was never mentioned again.
I was hoping that the narrator would give me options as to which directions I could take to exit the audio drama, but to no avail.
Narration in audio drama is a very tricky job to do well. It usually has to be a very familiar genre style, or it needs to be a personal internal monologue of the main character. Mysteries and fantasy seem to do the best with narration and they require consistency through out the entire show. Bringing in a narrator to explain what a setting looks like just to paint a picture in the listener's mind clearly shows that the author is a visual person who desperately needs narration to be able to go forward in the story.
Instead use sound effects to paint the picture. Have the character open the door to her bedroom, turn on the radio.. listen to the way it sounds to get that its an old set. Turn it off. Sit on the bed. Let us hear the bedsprings. Fluff the pillow. Your brain will fill in the rest.
If you must, use dialogue. But use it sparingly!

Another sign of poor crafting of a script is over writing- having a character explain in dialogue what the author wants the audience to know.
"Hi John, I'm just going to go over to this bookshelf and cock this rifle. You'll not like what I do with it when I'm done!"
"Wow! Look at him! He's got fur and fangs and those red beady eyes look like they could burn into our souls!"
Who talks like that? Dialogue is your stock and trade in an audio drama. You need to hear how people speak and write the way they talk. People speak in short phrases. They change topic quickly. They focus on what they want to talk about, and not what someone is saying.
Here's a suggestion. Go out to a local coffee shop with your personal recording device and sit near people. Record their conversations. If you find that too conspicuous, then go with a notebook and write down what they say verbatim.
Don't be over clever in your choice of words. Beyond having actors who have trouble reading the words out loud, you can have your listeners not believe that your characters would speak like that without a reason.
Beyond dialogue and narrative, the plots are also a major problem. There are good points, but the scenes go on far too long at times, and while the interactions between characters may seem interesting, if they do not serve the plot or to develop the characters within the plot- DON'T DO IT. Many audio drama producers suffer from being in love with their words. Dialogue slows plot. Action speeds it up. Use dialogue to set up your next scenes of action.
All that being said, it bears repeating that there are good ideas in the plots, and moments of real genius. Yes, the dialogue is mostly horrible. Yes, there are way too many tired phrases and idioms that never should be aired in public let alone on an audio drama ("No you di'unt"), but Tanja is beginning her craft of writing, and I see big opportunities for growth if she continues down this path. There's going to be an exciting series that will captivate her pen and bring some actual magic to the stories. It is my understanding that although a novice, Tanja is a poet, and some of her descriptions and lines from her shows are pure poetry. Unfortunately they are few and far between. Rating 0.5/5

Additional Notes
One uneven, but definite benefit here is Tanja's music. I believe she performs it herself, and while certainly jarring and inappropriate at times, themes and mood music can really reach into the heart of a scene she is trying to tell. That is a strength I'd like to see Tanja exploit in the future.

Over All Rating Rating 0.5/5

Because of work in outstanding terrible quality, acting, and the Bleeding Ear Trophy for 2009 goes to you. Take solace in the knowledge that you are the best at being the worst for 2009, and 2010 can only get better.
Take heart too that this reviewer sees big things happening as you understand elements of writing, sound production, and better direction for your actors, and we'll all be looking forward to the day when you've triumphed with a fine production. Good luck.

Icebox Radio Theater

2010-01-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

Icebox Radio Theater is one of those few audio drama companies that tells the listener where they are from. This occurs most often with live performances of a theater company. Since the location often adds a flavor to the type of performances, this is Icebox's strength.
Hailing from International Falls, Minnesota, Icebox is on the US/Canada border.
While some of their shows deal directly with living on the border, most of the writing comes from the oddities of living a rural life. After listening to a number of episodes, one gets the distinct feeling that although creator/writer/executive producer Jeffrey Adams may not understand small town living much, he certainly has a kind of affection for it.

All the typical characters and plots you find in a northern small town are in these shows: gossips, hunters and fishermen, small town cranks who escaped the big city for one reason or another.

Webpage: The webpage is a bit of a mishmash of ideas. You can find the latest show embedded and a video clip showing the town pretty much the way you'd imagine it would have been. There's no visible spot to instantly subscribe though, and the bland blue color doesn't do anything to tie in the whole site as a theme. It feels like an old fashion community website (which may have been the idea). Use the links at the top to get to all the good content. Rating 3/5

Audio Drama Type: Theater Shows
While there are some studio recordings, most of the shows were performed before a live audience and suffers from many of the problems of all live recordings. Sound goes in and out with some shows with actors almost losing their lines through blocking changes. I'm not sure what kind of live recording crew they have, but more microphones the better, including at least one facing the audience to catch reactions would help. Sometimes the audience sounds like it's conspicuously absent in the live shows. Other times they are fully present, and it's when they are reacting with you to the humor and the horror, is when you actually feel like you're one of the community experiencing the event.

Acting Types: Local Amateur
This is one of the weakest parts of Icebox. While they have some bright stars, the amateur acting of a small town troop can come glaringly through, especially in the earlier productions. This is one of the problems with a live performance. Sometimes acting to the crowd can throw off the listeners because visual cues may be missing to hint at the show. It feels like Adam's is getting a better idea who his stars are in his shows and who need to have smaller roles. Since Icebox has made the interesting move into non-profit status there may be small town politics that limit the casting choices. Over all the acting has been improving. Rating 3.5/5

Production Types: Genre Flavored - On-Stage
Similarly production has been sketchy at the beginning and getting much better as time goes by. Sound quality was the largest issue as microphone placement often gives a sense that actors are further than they should be from each other or closer than you'd expect. Sound effects are a hard sell when you're trying to work with live sounds (as it appears are happening in most shows). Live sound effects rarely come across as being positioned in the right place on the sound stage, because they are often done from a stationary position. Some of the sound effects earlier on seemed a little cheesy, but they have improved. In fact, there are some real times when I'm wondering if the sound effects were studio produced afterwards because there have been some inventive choices.
Music is also tricky. The introduction of "Icebox Radio" sounds unrehearsed and a little forced. Other musical choices have been on the whole quite good. You don't expect an entire orchestra in live performances, and mood music when it is used is appropriate and effective for the most part. Rating 4/5

Writing: Jeffrey Adams
While there have been other scripts by folks in Icebox, Jeffrey Adams tends to write most of the shows on the podcast. They vary from comedy to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His "Dome Dog" series, while designed to be an adventure series, is more comedic. His best comedies tend to be the small town living, where clashes occur between bureaucrats (like the Border Guards) and every day people just trying to get by. His best effort for science fiction for my money was "Distant Land". Don't bother looking for it on the feed. I couldn't find it any more, and am at a loss as to explain why it's gone. The two-part show had all the feel of an old Dimension X show with a rich storyline and back story of the main characters.
Many of his old scripts have been horror, and it seems that as a writer Adams feels the most comfortable in that genre. Considering how spooky and strange small towns can be, there should be ample fodder.
More recently he's been focusing on some continuing series. "Dome Dog" and "The Scoop Sisters". Both deserve their own detailed reviews. "Dome Dog" is a kind of superhero in the vein of "Chickenman" back in the sixties, although the humor comes through the silliness of pro-football fans and not so much through wise cracking jokes.
"The Scoop Sisters" centers on the lives of three generations of women from the same family. That alone is interesting, and often times the plot feels like it interferes with the interaction of the women who are well played and feel familiar.
When I'm listening to shows with a chief writer, I'm always listening to where I think the writer is going. Where his or her heart lies. I'm not sure yet with Adams. I get the feeling he's reloading the writer's gun and taking a shot in different directions to see what sticks on the wall. This sometimes is baffling because the "small town" audio drama (unless it's a horror like Wormwood or Shadow Falls) is hard to find and a good niche. Those stories seem to come naturally to Adams and appeal to his local audience most. Is he looking for Icebox to go International? Only time can tell. Rating 4/5

Additional Notes: Icebox Radio
Adams has taken the time to set up what I think is the world's first constantly running Audio Drama Internet Radio Station. Icebox Radio ends up playing about eight hours of content a day repeated three times. So for those who want to just turn on the radio and get into a show, this would work for you. All the usual suspects are on his show, so you're probably familiar with the content.

Over All Rating: 4/5
Icebox has some real challenges by doing the live performance, and you have to give leeway for anyone who wants to try it. As opposed to being able to control all aspects of sound, music, and effects in a studio production, live theatre requires characters, flexibility, and sometimes a little improvisation to make it work. They aren't quite there yet, but Icebox is improving through leaps and bounds. The real concern is, if Icebox is a non-profit organization, but is run almost entirely by Jeffrey Adams, what will happen to its quality and ability to produce more radio drama if he retires? His writing reflects a little restlessness and the feed itself seems to suffer from that of many shows, at times it can be inconsistent, and that can be harrowing for a listener who is looking to dine out on Audio shows.

Audio Drama Review and Definitions

2010-01-28T06:24:00.000-08:00

Come here for reviews on Audio Drama companies and shows.
I'll give you the unvarnished look at what I think about what's going on today in audio shows.
You don't like what I say? That's okay.. write your own. These are my thoughts.

Let's start with a few definitions:

Audio Drama Types:
I see there are five types of audio dramas out there
1. OTR knock offs
2. Theater shows
3. Modern Audio Book style
4. Fan Fiction
5. Experimental shows

Acting Types:
1. Local (in-house) amateur or professional actors
2. Long distant amateur or professional actors
3. Solo amateur or professional actors
4. Artificially created actors

Production Types:
1. Detail oriented
2. Minimalists
3. Genre Flavored (ex:OTR style, On-stage style)

Scoring:
0- Go back and start over. Nothing works.
1- Major problems
2- Major flaws. Painful at times to listen
3- Passable but barely
4- Good. Minor issues.
5- Excellent show
5+ Why doesn't this have an Oscar?