Beginnings

You may or very possibly may not have asked yourself ‘I wonder what happens behind the scenes at New Dawn’.

If you have you may be delighted to find these ‘behind the scenes’ pieces, if not – well, don’t worry, there won’t be questions afterwards.

I suppose I should provide a brief overview of what New Dawn is and the idea behind it.

Firstly, I… (I’m Charlie by the way – the creator, writer, editor, producer and general cleaner) love Audio Drama. It started when the BBC first released the Lord of the Rings as a full cast dramatization on Radio 4 when I was a kid. I fell in love with the immersive feeling of the story and the soundscapes that drew you in. You could tangibly feel the cold on ‘Cruel, cruel Caradhras’ as the gale blew around you the rock giants throwing their boulders and the ring bearer and his party huddling down on the winding and narrow mountain ledge.

Secondly, I love horror. Not the in-your-face horror with the rubber (or now CGI) monster, but rather the slow brooding horror where it is the expectation and the unknown that provides the suspense and feeling of dread. Once you have seen that rubber or CGI monster for me it gets a little ‘meh’. The unknown has gone, and it is the unknown that we fear the most.
I also love horror based ttrpgs (tabletop role playing games), Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green being those I have the most experience with.

So, to cut a long story short – the idea behind new Dawn was to combine my knowledge of ttrpgs, my love of audio drama (and a fair bit of experience in creating audio) and to create a hybrid podcast combining elements from actual play, totally scripted pieces and scenes based upon the outcome of actual play.
I knew that I wanted a very serialised TV drama feel to the podcast using many of the methods employed by TV and Radio – and hence my shelves are full of books on how to write for both TV and Radio. The series was to be very focused around the main characters, and I wanted the listener (you) to see their relationship with each other and to the world around them slowly develop through the cases they investigated.

The series concept was also to be very multilayered with the listener privy to scenes and information that the Agents (the actual play cast) weren’t during the game play.
This meant secret scripts and recordings to create scenes that would only reveal themselves once the episode is published. I think it is the wider world and the aspect of ‘being in the know’ as the viewer or listener that adds an extra dimension as you berate the characters for making the wrong decision or missing something so obvious to you – but of course, not to them.

I knew that I also wanted to set the series in the ‘present day’ to give the characters the availability of all the modern technology but also so I could combine some current events into the series and so the listener could easily picture the world they were hopefully to become immersed in.

I mentioned The Lord of the Rings right at the start of this piece and I suppose that now I should mention the series that inspired New Dawn – The X-Files.

Between a modern day setting (it’s 2025 as I type) and wanting an X-Files vibe the choice of actual play system was pretty much a foregone conclusion – Delta Green.

I also envisaged lots of voices, a ‘full cast’ production… but that’s a tale that we will leave for next time.

And so I will leave this short introduction to the ‘Behind the Scenes’ world of New Dawn there for now. Well, this is a suspense series after all, and I need you to come back to find out what happens next!

Until then, please do leave a comment on the podcast, drop the series a follow, a like and tell your friends because – The Truth is out There!