audio drama – directing, writing, producing and casting
sound design, sound editing, sound effects, foley
creative writing, storytelling, characters, anthologies
working with voice actors, remote recording, studio recording
genre – mystery, comedy, thrillers, crime, historical drama
the Audioverse Awards
audio drama recommendations
Recorded using Zencastr on 15 January 2022. Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity.
Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703
hello and welcome to audio visual cultures the podcast explores different areas of moving image and audio based production with me Paul up there I'm delighted to be speaking this time with John Bottcher of mercury theater podcast and audio drama anthology of stories written and directed by John we'll be talking about those aspects as well as sign design and working with voice actors as well as the storytelling process for thirty minute standalone dramas across different genres huge thanks to our listeners and our marvelous patrons over at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures if you would like to see the full video recording of my chat with John sign up to our behind the scenes here your support means I can make continual improvement state issue and it gives me such a basic knowing the work is being acknowledged and valued and appreciated another way to help is sharing this episode with your friends and spacing Assabet on social media thank you so much and enjoy this episode John Thatcher it is great to me she I am really looking forward to learning more about mercury theater podcast but first of all I have very warm welcome to the official cultures I feel the heat from here even though we have the the snow coming soon it is nice to be warmly welcomed I appreciate that's nice cast John hi are you to say and where but sorry I am fantastic and partially because I live in North Carolina and the United States of America we succeeded we won right but now it's a it's a beautiful location like %HESITATION I'm in the the Blue Ridge mountains so I get the the view of the mountains and we're about to get snow like I said and it's just I really like I've lived all over the US and I finally found somewhere that I can call home %HESITATION so nice to hear the snowflake a not so nice right to stars I've interviewed a few audio drama producers before and that's something I'm really enjoying learning a lot more bites so it's pretty great to have you on you know I've been learning a lot of fights the processes of writing audio dramas and the processes of directing them and that in particular I've been really enjoying expanding my knowledge on sign design I think that's a really fascinating part of this I've got a background in some studies and found analysis and that is her relation and not subject area is sign design focusing on audience Humm has such a lovely way of learning much more about it you know so that's something I would love to get in to it he later but can I just firstly Askey state campus and move if you give us some details about each mercury theater podcast and your work making it absolutely it's one of one of my favorite topics of all time so I I'm not not shy mercury theater podcast is an anthological audio drama so anthology meaning that every episode in and of itself is a story so your no matter where you start listening in mercury theater podcast you can start one that I made last month or one that I made last year and you're going to get just as much out of it as anybody else would because the story is depending on the episode it might be thirty minutes long and you start the story in the beginning of the episode and eat the story ends at the end of the by mercury theater podcast is completely done by us and the only exception is I get I get my sound effects from online for the most part but I just got myself a microphone so that I can make some of the some of the Foley artistry and I can do that on my own and it's a nice shot gun Mike can I get so ecstatic about some of the equipment that we buy and mercury theater podcast is completely done remotely in their heads I'll be over here and we'll meet on discord and we'll watch the the other actors and will recorder selves individually and will go through the episode so we'll spend a couple hours recording an episode and because were on discord and were able to record in real time that makes it so it's a much better final product because most of acting is reacting and with such a way that a lot of audio dramas are created they're not done as much in response they're just reading their lines and then they're sending in all of their lines and then somebody has to chop it up and then they get certain it's cohesive as much as possible you know one might have more of a route read and then another one might have more of a an emphatic read so you're having these different conversations that yes they work on paper but they don't actually work in feeling like it's a conversation so with discord it makes it so that I'm able to have everybody will react to one another and it makes for a much better final product if if I don't say so myself in there pretty crisp I have to say I've been listening and the sign is really crashed at you've got different points of audition you've got mace ments coming straight you've got different locations changing locations while people are made things very spaces and having cover and you can really pick up really well so he asked to hang off so you mentioned television or movies and the sound design of that it's very much the same process but as an audio drama the listener only has the ability to base it off of dialogue and sound effects and there is no visual component and that has some drawbacks but at the same time it gives a lot more freedom on my end and on the listeners and I've been finding this to be pretty consistent thing with books for instance so you might read the Harry potter books are you might read the lord of the rings Bucks or anybody and then you watch the movie adaptation of that what you read and once it goes on television on the screen then it confines what your imagination has because you see it you hear it and you know at that point really only you can just imagine what it smells like I guess at that point but with audio drama you don't have to worry about so much the the visual element because the listener gets to design what that circumstance looks like so they're imagination takes another step that they would be able to in a book but they have the sound design that helps them get drawn into the circumstance but they can build whatever else elements yeah and that the love they sing as well as you can decide what people look like because I think with some in television for example diversity can be a big issue and saying C. seventy and when it's full he says and it signed a fax you can imagine more %HESITATION what way will select for example yes so I am actually in the process of auditioning for another series that I'm making but in the process I'm realizing these people have faces right but they only have faces to me as somebody who's working with them now the listener will be able to ultimately listen to the this series and they can figure out whether she has blonde hair or you know if she has her at all there all these different elements that people can design for themselves but with working with social media I'm finding that it's requiring me to get some that visual elements right so I'll have the series but also promote the actors themselves so that might be a little bit disheartened because I mean how many podcasts do you listen to and you just assume what they'll look like or or radio show I don't know if you've ever heard the term a show prairie home companion but that was a show that was on in P. are all the time only every %HESITATION Saturday night right and I've listened to it and I create a mental image of what the main actor garrison Keillor looks like and then I saw a book that he had written on my side the cover photo and I was like oh no it's incredibly disappointed that's the first thing that was the glass shattering moment for me and I was like but it didn't remove that magic of what they are accomplishing it just's an obstacle there is in merry he didn't expect that fiesta go without voice or something we'll also and if I spent a couple years listening to him and I didn't have a face to make a an actual picture then it's it's different but yeah you do the same with a bunch of voice actor it's more with other podcasts and then you realize what they look like then and it kind of breaks that that image for you but you can go back to imagining whatever it is that you wanted them to look like especially as voice actors because they are after all acting in C. mentioned it's an anthology series so every story Stephan mangy find that real challenge writing a different type of story every time no both those are all of that is there are benefits to writing an anthology and that if I just feel like writing something if I just come up with an idea I can make it into an audio drama and I don't have to worry about it lasting a whole season or multiple seasons I can write something and it be thirty pages long and then once that's done it's done so I can have this whole whole process of of going through the wanting to make something to making it putting out there and then going back to something else and if I look at all of I probably have ten different episodes that are in the works of being written right now but I might come up with an idea tonight and then write an entire episode before I put any of those other ten out because it's something that I can do whenever I want to but the drawbacks there are drawbacks to writing an anthology in that the listener can get engaged with the storyline for that thirty minutes of an episode by day you don't feel attached to that character or any of those characters right so I'm in the process of creating a series that isn't a logical you can listen to episode one two three four five and on on and then every episode you don't know this but you're becoming more attached to the characters and then when a character does something that you disagree with you can be disappointed it with that person right but with an anthology and only thirty minutes minutes investment your not as inclined to be disappointed so there are drawbacks to writing an anthology but it's certainly not the ability or the inability to come up with more stories I'm not short on content it's just a I'm short on time that's what I'm short on answers saying do you think it's a grind for experimentation because maybe more so so than in traditional tax publishing you have a bit of the way to the I suppose make some mistakes or things if you realize that things maybe don't work so well and then you can figure out how to you it just sayings or tweak things or you think will my strength sinus pain this is part of it these are parts where right I need to hone my skills in these parts you know it's different aspects of that you do you think that you have that freedom of experimentation a bit more if I didn't listeners don't go back to episode one of mercury theater podcast so I've actually been referring to mercury theater podcast as my playground and I can do that experimentation at first I didn't know what I was doing at all I really just wanted to get into voice acting and I figured making a podcast would be an opportunity to do that and if any listeners have been have listened to mercury theater podcast all knows that you probably don't even recognize my voice at all and is because I'm not on here as much and the reason why is because I found that my passions actually were more in tune with the stuff that I wanted to pawn off on other people like the directing and the writing and the sound design all of these things that I got really excited about and the voice acting is something that you know I will make an appearance every so often I'm kind of like I refer to myself as sometimes the the Stan Lee of audio drama in the end and I'll show up every so often yeah the experimentation is something that if it wasn't for experimentation I certainly wouldn't be where I am now and working on a series as well and because I've been able to experiment with mercury theater podcast I can find out what my capacity is what I can and cannot do now I can put this into an audio drama series and have have it so that you're not going to have a really big difference between episode one and episode three which with mercury theater podcast you would be able to notice the night and day difference between episode one and episode three but between the episodes my ten and thirteen there isn't as much of a of a jump because I'm down I'm now to the point where I can hone my skills you mentioned there that because you try and keep them quite tight to thirty minutes and they're different story every time there's not necessarily that much space to flush out your characters it's not something you work on with the voice actors a senior you you write what needs to happen for your lost and to they help you flashlight the characterizations but Mario I did some work for you the characters aren't incredibly fleshed out but with the episodes that have fewer characters you can get to you understand their reasoning more so I have an episode that I'm recording tomorrow that it's just two people and those two people you get to understand where they stand with their perspectives right and there's an episode of one that I actually am I'm still very proud of one of the first ones that I was really proud of was D. N. for Denver International Airport and that was a really fun one and the reason why one of the reasons why is because there are essentially two characters and one leads the other one and explains a bunch of stuff and you get to understand what what's going on so with the voice actors will do essentially a cold read and get to find out what their characters are doing what they're trying to accomplish but as I don't go so far as to say okay this is who your character is this is your motivation not all the time so now there are certain times when I will say for a certain scene okay so your character is being elusive so be elusive but at the same time like telling whatever right so it's seen my scene at that point but where is the series and this is one of the most exciting parts about making the other series is that we'll go through the entire first season and everybody will understand who their character is and what their goal is and you know they'll have those character arcs that I I don't have the ability to with the anthology if you're enjoying the show and would like more information straight to your inbox head over to audio visual culture style wordpress dot com linked in the show notes and sign up to our mailing list I was wondering as well abrasion on rent the kids from the episodes I've listened to you and then scrolling dying three a lot of them you're touching on a lot of different genres I think you know there's some crime there's mystery there's smithy thriller there's historical drama you know there's lots of different kinds of stories being told is it again an exploration of what's your water the possibilities of genre and what you can accomplish and not in thirty minutes you know what how do you feel about that so for me I really enjoyed being able to do that because it is whatever it is that I I want to at the present time but with you know a lot of anthologies they'll stay thematic rain so they might have a horror theme so all of the stories are different but they still fall on that or aspect same with with any theme for an anthology but with mercury theater podcast it's just completely different every time and some more listeners might not love an episode right but they'll be able to skip off to the next episode and really enjoyed that episode now for me I'm just writing whatever comes to my mind right so I'm using this again as my playground and getting familiar with the process but at the same time also figuring out what it is that I enjoy writing and I do have some very old time radio investigation kind of episodes or some you know like you said there are all these different themes bye I'm finding that I enjoy a certain type of writing but at the same time I'm not held to like I would you can't put mercury theater podcast in a box that's one of the things that I like about it but the same time I know that there are probably listeners who listen to the F. as in not knowing what they're going to get they find that they're not as inclined to listen to the next episode I mean at the end of the day it's my podcast and that is the bottom line of indie podcasting is I can do whatever I want that's the point of this yeah that's really really interesting because I don't know how much freedom writers here maybe in more industrial settings in terms of writing for media and somebody so for television example there may be just hired they have to do it I have to J. M. so it's really ready and saying that you've called freedom to make this decisions but also it's the creative impulse really I think is what you're exploring as well and also from the from the sound designer perspective I'm actually giving myself an extra challenge as opposed to making it somatic say for instance television show so %HESITATION have you seen the show house no but I know of it okay and I just picked house out of it as in no reason there is for instance they have their set right at the studio they have their status and then they can go there are several different levels to the set but how much it costs to actually produce it is much lower because they only have to work within that set right not every so often they'll go off location and then go do something else but that's a very far and few between but with you know to a much smaller extent with sound design so with sound design I have to create a scene right for the listener so I might have like birds chirping in this outdoor setting but I'm I also have another setting where there is a vacuum cleaner running in and I have all these different sound effects but if I have a series then I don't have to work so much on the bird sound effects I can just work on the vacuum cleaner sound effects because every so often you're going to run into that vacuum cleaner like as you're going through I'm just again pulling things out of the hat but that sound is lying is much much more freeing with mercury theater podcast but it's also something that you have to do a lot more investigation to get those sound effects and everything and that's one of the things that I'm excited and and I also bummed about with universe twenty five the upcoming series is that I I can have some consistency and I don't have to draw from all of these different places for all of the sound effects it's going to be something that there's going to be this it's the matic I know I totally just ramble there but you know it was great because %HESITATION that's the sort of thing I mean really open to learn about it actually because when you're when you're saying that I think especially with the location changes because I listen to your most recent episode and it's a bit of a murder mystery and Sam you know their investigators Sir there's that scene where two investigators I think are having a conversation as they walked through a corridor so it's quite accurately and there's actually six steps and then they answer the office of another character and then suddenly date signed as much more soft and there's no wacko anymore you know so it's small things like that help you imagine they're setting and help you visualize right the kind of the location you know as you're you're not saying very clunky dialogue of going well let's just go into this room nice LA and adding the signed a fax do you got for you which is a very show don't tell thing and send them that as well so it's a very lesson don't tell saying it as what you're doing in your sign design I love that show don't tell I'm I know that that's you know you didn't just make that up but that's so so very much what I do I do if you listen to the audio dramas of yester year right now I know that in the U. K. they have they've consistently haggling BBC four has been the audio dramas right and you guys never stopped we kind of jealous of that but with audio dramas there are a lot of that say oh he has a gun or there's one I think it's from the show %HESITATION have gun will travel which is one of those really old shows but they're supposedly in the scene there are people in a car and they're being haunted by some woman right or like chase by someone then and one guy says he's when is that ever going to be dialogue at least in real life like winds anybody going to say that and I try to make sure that everything that is said in mercury theater podcast is stuff that's likely to actually be sad sometimes in that same episode there is like for instance the one of the girls vapes right and you hear it by this then he refers to like don't paper on me right this is stuff like there's no audio cue but there's also that dialogue reinforcement of what it is that you just heard but it's not Hey I see that vaping your hand you should probably put that in your pocket it's dialogue that I I intend to make so that it sounds as realistic as possible there's nothing worse than audio drama than having to link having made get yourself re engaged to audio drama that because they're saying stuff that just wouldn't actually be set in war I love this so that he can see and creates M. some eight takes as well and some just chatter amongst your cast out with you and your cast and the production process and it's quite revealing but it's also quite fun why why do you say to those going back a little bit and the couple minutes of and that is that there is at the end of in the credits right all of the people say their own name and their character and you get to hear what their voice actually sounds like because sometimes they'll do something that that is totally different than their actual voice it's far and few between but it is fun to listen to so going back to the episode B. E. N. that one there is a voice actor Angelo Cruz who has an on Nazeem voice what an amazing voice he plays the role of probably somebody it middle aged man he's twenty one one in the episode but he has such a deep veering crest vocal it sounds amazing but when he says has so and so I'm Angelo careers and then you hear what they actually sound like great and then going into our takes the reason why I did that was actually partially because one I wanted people to know what they sounded like but also it's an homage to the show let's pretend that was also an anthology back in the day I listen to that as a kid absolutely love that and they would say I I always remember civil trend was one of the the consistent voice actors on there so they would say there is their name but with the out takes I enjoyed out takes and I just find highlights within that and I'm already having to work with those outtakes regardless so I figured I just put them at the back of this the episode and then find my favorite ones and then put those in there the favorite ones that I can put on there yeah okay %HESITATION mercury theater podcast is actually designed to be listened to by children in addition to their parents I say that it's it's written or created for adults and then edited with kids in mind right I found that family friendly usually means that it's for the kids but parents might find something that might be enjoyable about it and I kind of went the other way around and made it so that kids can listen to it and not be offended but it's really to get the adults happy about it there's some people who just don't like swearing and a lot of stuff they rely heavily on swearing as the way that they put out stuff but I I don't like to do that not with our universe twenty five is gonna be a little bit different in that regard it's going to be much more adult centered so university five what might people be able to expect from not woody planning for that one then can you tell us yet yeah there are some friends who thousand years in the future these friends find an artifact that was from a thousand years prior which if you do the math it's about right about now it was it was left by Dave finds that it goes against what they have come to understand as reality and they use this artifact and try to spread the information that the artifact represents that's kind of a jumping off point it's gonna be a lot of fun some people think of it as probably science fiction but it's not really meant to be science fiction it's kind of just I've been trying to put some what it's like and I realize that really I can't find a whole lot of stuff that it's very much like now like Fahrenheit four fifty one is a book that I've been told might have some similarities and there are some other %HESITATION have you ever seen breaking bad okay right yeah it'll have some breaking bad element to it but in that group getting attached to the characters right and then you're wondering at what point do they devolved into when you stop being their friend right and there's a lot of emotional investment that I'm I'm hoping to accomplish with this but at the same time you know asking questions that people are dealing with today and I'll have to leave it at that there's just so much the that's going on with it I'm so excited about it but I don't really know how to I haven't actually tried to put it into words in that concise elevator pitch what it is but I don't have to yeah yeah so do you have an idea when you'll be able to release that one then so we're in the casting process right now and because it's going to be a lot easier to actually create the sound design it'll be a lot faster of a process but at the same time I'll still be putting out mercury theater podcast and have to record it can and doing all of the recording next month but with the snow storm it might actually put us into March and it'll probably be out in may I'm thinking but don't hold me to it could come out in August or November is a well whenever whenever it's ready weekend read twenty two we can based whatever every great I'll really yeah well good luck with the production of it signs and treating thanks if nothing else it will be intriguing I'm loving the writing of it partially because it is a series right and I can go from episode one that'll be pretty mild and then index celebrates as the series goes on but at the same time I can write stuff and I can write theory into stuff that happened or will happen with the environment with the characters and their stuff that still I wrote something a couple days ago and like that would be amazing you know because I've already written it but I realize that their stuff that has the potential of being before all of it even starts that would completely change the environment that's going on so I kind of accidentally blow my own mind maybe the listener won't be as excited when they find out about it but you know for me as a as a writer it's so fun to be able to excite myself and to find find stuff that still still really interesting and %HESITATION with mercury theater podcast it's only thirty minutes and now granted if you look at the thirty minute episode of mercury theater podcast and sometimes is like twenty three minutes or whatever for each minute of final product you're looking at about a page of dialogue but with with a screenplay for a movie it's actually going to be kind of the same but most of the only probably half of the writing is actually into explanation as to the screen like where the camera is like it's panning over the city scape or whatever I don't have that ability as an audio drama creator so if you actually put the dialogue of my episodes to the dialogue of a movie it's certainly not one to one and it's much higher be much closer to like %HESITATION probably a fifty minute creation as far as dialogue to like if it was a movie it would be about the equivalent of fifty minutes but it's something that I found interesting when I was a I don't know if you ever do this but if you look at the screen play of a moving as you're watching the movie and like reading along with the dialogue and seeing all of the stuff I was surprised at how short those water and I have now written with universe twenty five something that's longer than this and it's actually going to be probably two and a half hours of season one that's a fun thing to be able to look at before I actually put people in front of a microphone something to look forward to then on the on the audio drama sphere and we're curious if I cast it's a monthly afterwards so %HESITATION keep mind listening to that of course I do enjoy the variety of not have to say you're really getting into the different stories I was just thinking as she heard her talking there is files that you know you mentioned that you record everything remote they so I mean that's has worked right fairly well over the past couple of years I'm guessing this is something he started during this some strange time that we've been in for the past couple of years purposes something you retain before I did actually started this during Copeland so I was actually my %HESITATION my wife was on was on holiday as you would say and she was across the country visiting family and I was bored and I figured I could just redesign my my spare bedroom so I did that and she came home and she was not happy nobody's ever in here by R. awhile for sure he has so I made it so there is a soundproofed areas that I'd be able to do recordings that's not where I am right now but it's it's over there I should probably be more respectful of people every so often %HESITATION and do that yeah so I did that but with with the other voice actors most of them actually are in theater and they were kind of missing the that theater experience so I kind of unintentionally made myself a conduit that people could actually find themselves doing something that they enjoy doing and it's a lot of fun to actually make an episode of mercury theater podcast but you know that's one of the things that I'm going to be changing with universe twenty five is that I'll actually have that one and that one will be in person as opposed to being virtual and that's going to be I'm so excited about that process because it'll be more of the same but at the same time it's something that's different and people can respond to each other's like visual element even though the listener isn't going to see that visual they're going to hear there's more excitement when people are standing up in front of a microphone as opposed to sitting down in front of a microphone and to break that glass people might have so mercury theater podcast is mostly acted sitting down and I want people to get when physical grain so instead of a running scene that sounds like this they'll actually get involved in the long run in place without lifting their feet if that doesn't get confusing too much in that physical element is going to put it to yet another level and funny enough so mercury theater podcast has been I don't know if you're familiar with the audio verse awards but a bunch of audio dramas will submit an apposite of various two audio verse awards and then they will don't judge it right there were over seventeen hundred applicants for this year in audio first awards and we actually got nominated amongst the top ten for vocal directing gradient yes and I again that goes back to people having somebody to respond to if you listen to a bunch of audio dramas you'll realize that the conversation is stilted and I try to eliminate that as much as possible but if I can do that with being virtual how much more so can I do being in person so I'm excited about that the funny thing is I have no no directing experience whatsoever before all of this well take it yeah episode one hundred of our podcast was wastes both of them more and he said an audio drama producer right now away and does a lot of Toorak saying I'd recommend seat actually to listen said my top with him because he talks a lot about exactly what you just been talking about it and working in space with doctors so that they're actually standing around in a circle and they're interacting with each other and trying to get performances side of people actually getting in T. embody that performance you actually walk across and then shut something up that guy because it's not coming up with you pretending to date just actually doing it you know what that sort of stuff so he's really a sell to us and she's very very experience so that men actually should write a book and I've seen a lot of his post so we're in actually a couple of the same groups on Facebook he puts out a lot of information essentially the the author of today's audio dramas KC Wayland wrote the book bombs always beep and that guy is amazing well as I actually had the ability to have a conversation with KC Wayland and there's an episode of us talking it's just that being willing to learn and being willing to change your actions accordingly because sometimes somebody will get a bad habit and then they'll stick to it and if somebody is able to say Hey you should probably do this maybe do that and then if you do that then you have the potential of growing violence the best way to make no progress is by doing the exact same thing that you've been doing I've read bombs always beat cover to cover probably three times it has a bunch of highlighting and a bunch of notes that I've put on there I actually need to read it again because I've gotten to add another level and it's something that no matter where you are in the production you can always learn more from it his book was actually probably an eighth the size that it probably should be because there's so much more information that could be given but I can't imagine somebody would want one backhand but being like it's a really really good resource but Bo Lamar should should write one as well yeah really informative there's a lot of free tickets this was an advice you can take it as a price and and not upset it did for them and I just mine's just filled with and pets not to hate this creates a be a lovely saying it's something else that's never gonna happen I don't think that if the I love the idea to stay if you ever K. it would be the like says life recordings I think with mercury theater GM he ever thought of thoughts that may be a far off future saying you are you can have a say in a pub or something or I remember I said that if an audience even a small one and have your actors in the same place yes and because I know they're all all over the place but just sent in a dream scenario you know base it's a fun thing to say would be to have like a life audience I receive with your actors a very fun yeah so I mentioned home companion little bit of go home companion was one of those shows that I believe they traveled and they would go to different theaters and they would have their performance and every week is something different but they had some of this definitely some of the same elements and there's one this gauge that they were just there to go back to and I was Dino are private right I really really enjoyed that because you get the sound effects and everything like the shoes the people walking there was somebody that was a Foley artist he had issues in his hands and he was making those walking sound effects and then you have on the door creaking and all that stuff all of that stuff is on stage and there are these these voice actors who are doing all this stuff every week if I could I absolutely would the problem is there isn't enough time in the day to get all of the stuff that I want done so an episode of mercury theater podcast if you go back far enough you can like D. N. or Nikki sketch and those those episodes really early on those were actually taking me about a hundred twenty hours to produce in sound design that's not even including the acting and the writing that was just the sound design it's a lot of time now and this time M. as progress as I've honed my skills I can now get an episode thirty minute episode done in about thirty hours so if you think about that I'm touched me about an hour and minutes which is still kind of a lot but in addition to that I'm also doing the universe twenty five which is a series of %HESITATION now tack on another I think it's going to be about eight episodes in tack on another eight episodes or sounds a hundred fifty pages or something yeah it's a hundred fifty pages to add on to that put in a live setting there is not enough time in the world take him to get all that stuff done but if I had my what I I've heard referred to as my druthers right if I had my druthers I would actually get to the point where I I can pass mercury theater podcast on to somebody else and say this is yours take care of it right I would still have some say in say maybe try something different or whatever but I definitely would see myself having hands off thing with that but fixating on stuff like universe twenty five and potentially going into live I've definitely even scouted out a really small community theater I was like Hey that would be a place that if once a month or something that I would have like an audience and have people interacting with the voices that would be a lot of fun yeah nice maybe some day yes there is a there is not enough time in the world I just I'm just I just had a little Mandarin my imagination there no I love it and this is actually a conversation that I've heard and I've had this now on a on a few occasions and it's because it is a really good idea it's just it's the implementation and right getting all those elements to work and currently in this environment there's fully artistry that I want to do I want to make it so crowd work but the problem with the crowd work right now in this world is it's hard to do because one you're either risking people's health more two you're getting the muffled masking and everything or you know go the step further and goes for a third and then you have maybe a hundred people in front of a hundred different microphones are one microphone and just have them kind of cycle through but that's not going to have the same element that a crowd would you're getting just that really small again going back to acting and reacting in a crowd of people are using other people as they're gauge for how excited or how mellow they need to be if I had a crowd I would be able to do that but want to get rid of this whole code thing I mean I and then be able to get people back into our room and not have to worry about masks muffling the sound that they would be giving otherwise it occurs to me that I hadn't asked G. as there is significance to the mercury theatre %HESITATION I was a really big fan of old time radio most of everything they do one way or another is an homage to previous endeavors and Orson Welles have you ever heard war of the worlds the audio production so that was done by Orson Welles and now is mercury theatre on air so he had his theater which was mercury theatre and then they would also do the audio dramas so it's an homage to Orson Welles and his works very nice love it is there anything we haven't touched on that you ready open to talk about eight I want to talk about all things I could DO IT %HESITATION drama for ever and ever and ever and still want to go to the next person and still do the same thing I love the whole process just everything that's involved with that but now I think that all of the %HESITATION all of the stuff we went over do you have any other people's idea dramas that you listen to that you think people should know about anything oh my goodness yes okay kind of self serving but if you go into mercury theater podcast and go into the with the extrapolations their interviews that I've had with a bunch of audio drama creators I have spoken to like I said to KC Wayland I spoken to governor eller Vienna he created while three fifty nine and unseen but it's the any audio dramas I'm the most excited about because it's people who are like me who don't have they're not working with the highest names impacting right SO Casey Whalen he cheats he's able to work with Laurence Fishburne and with lavar Burton and all of these other actors that the in the drama of creators aren't able to but they're putting out stuff that they're extremely passionate about and the first one that comes to mind is the vanishing act and that's amazing definitely an adult audience but fun adult audience that's amazing then the call of the void that's the audio drama as well and I've spoken to both the producers from both of those and there are a few more I actually have on my website a list of audio dramas that people should listen to you and they are definitely among them but I love audio dramas people because they're excited about being able to put out something that I'm also excited about putting them but they have their own unique styles and you know with the vanishing act that was done mostly remotely for the second season but for the first season they put it or or the second half of the first season they did remotely but they still did it in such a way where is kind of live by it they have theater backgrounds and then call of the void they actually know the vanishing acts people and I did not know this but as they meet all of their %HESITATION stuff they did kind of that's what I was telling you is stilted and and you know they would have their their dialogue and then somebody else is dialogue just keep on putting that but they did it in such a way that they were able to have somebody respond to them right so they were able to use the other people's mannerisms so that it that it was all cohesive and all these different directing processes that are that are going on right now with you because of it being a thing it's really creative how how people are coming out with content and not losing what they built okay great just some not then so those are a few things we can put in the show notes and links take you wanna say about your website and any socials you want to point people towards sure so first and foremost the website and all of the socials and everything and you can contact me if you wanted to %HESITATION via email that's on there so me personally I'm John S. badger on Twitter or I am all the socials you can find mercury theater podcast on Twitter Facebook just it's actually a really big time stock is all the socials I I'm sure you can use all about it it's like somebody else will get on there for fun and I'm just on there to to get the word out let people understand what it is that I'm I'm doing but at the same time not being like a salesman right it's five but yeah %HESITATION mercury theater podcast dot com mercury's deter deter spelled either way I got both of the domains and things it is spelled are easy if you were wondering about the actual spelling I did it the right way yeah they say it's a thought okay %HESITATION very casual John Barger and has been such a pleasure I've really enjoyed our conversation I hope you got something out of it SO I'll spend really great to see your enthusiasm is welcoming sherry Spencer enjoyable yeah the enthusiasm isn't something that's going away anytime soon I got into this about a year and a half ago and got really excited about it and as time has progressed I've only got more excited about it it's just now I'm figuring out a lot more of the old one people don't like to geek out a whole lot but still like okay it's a podcast but it's not it's it's an audio drama it's like yeah yeah is on a whole other level podcasts can be pretty accurate to me have to force was pretty good ones this one this is a great way yeah it's putting thirty hours of post production and to adjust to admins on the facts and everything just take people out of their head space and put them into a storyline ends thank you so much for sharing all of that with this this is exactly the place to come if you want to get going to bite stuff we love a whole heap a kicking I John audio visual culture so you're welcome back anytime thank here it's been an absolute pleasure really has been
audiovisual cultures 