in the beginning - the process
How New Dawn happens. The process.
It all starts with writing a scenario. It may be entirely original, or it might take inspiration from something existing. But either way it starts here with an actual play scenario.
That scenario forms as a cinematic piece in my head. It takes on a vibe and a theme. The first New Dawn case was very ‘spacious’. There were lots of locations and movement over distance. There were lots of different environments to sit the story in. It was heavily investigative. There were a lot of different characters to meet along the journey. And that was immense fun. Building different locations and making them solid and believable.
“Taking individual sounds and music and the dialogue and bringing them all together in just the right balance and amount is a very cathartic experience. The movie reel moves from my mind to reality track by track, minute by minute of editing and sound design.”
Image by Hennadii Kolchev from Pixabay
However, I wanted the second scenario to feel a lot more claustrophobic. I wanted the vibe to be totally different - much faster paced. I wanted the number of characters to be fewer, so we got to see more of them. I wanted the in-world timescale shorter. I also wanted this to move deeper into horror.
All of this forms before I metaphorically put pen to paper. I know how it is going to ‘feel’ before the first word is typed.
Although I essentially write the story, that story isn’t the end. The scenario aspect and playing and recording that scenario with the main cast means that the story changes. The leads they pick up, the actions they take change the story and the ending. That is exciting for me. It challenges me to think on my feet, and it allows my mind to broaden its ideas. New scenes start to play in my head interweaving with my original images and start to create something more than I would have created on my own.
Once the actual play recording has been completed, I can then see the entire picture. The film can play from beginning to end without interruption. And then comes the exciting part. Creating that vision as audio.
My first task is to see where I need to step the listener away from the cast actual play and into full audio drama scenes that the cast did not experience. The back stories, the parallel stories, the flashbacks, the stories and images that will raise the experience and bring the audience in with more knowledge than the main characters. Again I ‘see’ the film reel playing. I can feel the atmosphere, I can smell the smells, feel the emotions, hear the sounds. This additional film reel, or at least these new scenes are then put onto paper as the full audio drama scripts. As I write each word, each section of dialogue and any prompts that go with it - I can see the scene unfolding and what it will sound and feel like. What it will be like to experience.
The sounds and effects and music that I need are already forming. I can hear the dialogue and ‘see’ the characters in those scenes - what they are doing and experiencing. Those images formed before I put the first word of the script to paper, but now they flow and bloom as I write.
The audio medium is a wonderful medium to create scenes in. Film is beyond me and certainly the scenes I create with all the location changes would cost a lot of money to create. Audio, well that’s another matter. One person can create that audio landscape, and in fact one person does, with the help of a lot of voices and special effects from sound libraries, some self-made sfx and of course the music.
Producing audio allows you to set a scene but magnified to create the atmosphere that you want to create. It allows you to pull out the sounds that are essential and push or ignore others that would just muddy the landscape. It allows you to place the music that supports the scene and changes it, magnifying the feeling or emotions, setting the mood and tension. It allows you to bring all of that into sharp focus. The focus that will set the place, feel and the emotion of that place or situation.
This is the very time consuming but extremely enjoyable part of creating New Dawn for me. All those images, all those reels of celluloid playing in my head can now be transferred into audio allowing new reels to play.
Taking individual sounds and music and the dialogue and bringing them all together in just the right balance and amount is a very cathartic experience. The movie reel moves from my mind to reality track by track, minute by minute of editing and sound design. It takes many tens of hours to transfer those scenes into a tangible rendering of those little sparks of imagination. Any one episode of New Dawn can take 50 plus hours of work, and that is ignoring everything else that comes with it - The writing and recording, research, keeping track of everything, getting the scripts out and the recordings back.
Is it worth it?
One hundred percent – YES. There is immense joy in seeing that ‘reel’ move from mind to reality. Of course there is already another reel forming.
But that’s for another day.
As always, my undying thanks to those that cheer me on and those that give their time and effort to be a part of New Dawn.
