My 30 Day Challenge - Creating an audio play/story/thing

At my work, each year, we do a 30 day challenge, the idea behind this is to try and challenge yourself to develop a new habit or try something new over the course of 30 days.

I'm an avid board game collector/player/designer, so last year I decided to paint the plastic playing pieces (miniatures) over the course of 30 days. It was a real challenge as there were quite a few of these playing pieces and I didn't want to just rush paint them all, but actually make them look half decent by the end of it.

Above you can see the fruits of my labour in action! I chose the painting 30 day challenge because I have a lot of board games and most of them have un-painted plastic miniatures that come with them, so I thought that if I did the painting every day for 30 days then I'd get into the habit of painting these playing pieces and although I don't paint every day or every week for that matter, I am gradually working my way through my vast collection of miniatures and thanks to the 30 day challenge I set myself last year, I have a much better chance of finishing these off before I'm 80 (I'll probably get them done when I'm 79 instead)

This year's 30 day challenge came along and I thought, well I could paint another one of my games in 30 days but then I felt that was actually against the whole point of these 30 day challenges anyway. I wouldn't be doing something new and I'd already gotten a bit of a habit of painting from my last one.

So what to do instead? Well, I'm quite a creative chap and in my past I've written some screenplays and filmed some short films with friends, so I thought I could do something like that, but then I thought, well I've actually already done all that, why don't I try something new, but in a similar wheelhouse.

That's how I decided upon writing an audio story.

WRITING

The hardest thing about it was coming up with a plot, it's very hard to force yourself to be creative especially with a deadline looming. I toyed with a few concepts, some darker than others, some quite humours, but in the end I went back to an Idea in my 'book of ideas' that I add to on a daily basis, and began working on Save All Princesses.

It took me about 6 days to write, re-write and bounce some of it off of friends and got some good feedback about it including making Red the Ranger have a problem pronouncing his R's - an idea that just made so much sense that I re-wrote most of Red's dialogue to include R words.

THE READTHROUGH

After I was relatively happy, I asked at work if anyone would be happy to help me record the audio story. I did imagine that I'd have to record the whole thing myself playing all the parts, but work came through for me and I was very lucky to get some very passionate and talented people who were familiar with the fantasy themes that the story deals with.

Once I'd assembled the cast we all sat round in a meeting room and read through the script whilst I recorded it so that I could re-listen and re-work bits. Having a bunch of people breathe life into the characters was pretty great, each person reading brought something new to the characters that I'd previously not thought about or considered. Suddenly the wizard wasn't a whimpering idiot like I'd seen him, he was now a confident experienced (albeit still inept) wizard with a simmering anger that was just under the surface, the Rogue had a great droll twang and the Knight was more oblivious and dandy than I'd previously realised. Even the Barkeep(s) were interesting now and not a throw away character, they all seemed like real(ish) people!

RE-WRITES

After the initial read through I kinda got sick of hearing my own voice as the narrator and realised the final scene(s) were very Narrator heavy. There's something they say for stories where they tell you to show not tell, which for an audio dramatisation is pretty tricky to do, or at least I found tricky to do. But with a little imagination and a dab of creativity I re-wrote some of the latter half of the script so that the characters explained/reacted more to what was going on. I basically looked at what the Narrator was saying and if a Character could convey what he was blathering on about then I'd write that in.

RECORDING

Now that I'd re-written the script and was finally happy with it, I assembled the cast and over 2 lunch times recorded the entire 23 page script.

I used Garage Band as it came free with the Mac and only had one mic so we used that. Each lunch time we would act out the pages I'd asked to do, twice, and then re-record any fluff ups that we made (myself included... mainly I had issues with trying not to laugh at the great performances)

EDITING

I'm sure if I'd had more time, the editing process would have been a bit easier and less choppy. Previously I've edited together short to medium size films using movie editing software and something that's taken me 2 hours to film, would normally take me several evenings to edit.

Editing is something I actually quite enjoy doing, my analytical nature comes in pretty handy for it. I'm not saying I'm especially good at it, but I can cobble something together that is at least semi-professional. I often find amusing things I can do with music or sound effects to help lift the scenes I'm editing up a little.

Editing for just audio was a lot easier than editing for audio and visual but with only one mic and performers who had various different degrees of volume when they spoke, it made it pretty tough to get everything right. I had to adjust volume throughout and it probably doesn't sound as good as it would if I had used a 'normaliser' over the top. BUT overall I'm pretty happy that under 30 days, I have been able to write, record and edit the audio comedy.

TO BE CONTINUED...?

I had a blast writing/record/editing this and had some lovely people to work with, which is actually one of the reasons I love my day job so much, and I've already written the second part of the audio story and halfway through part three. So watch this space, I might record some more if people are game, and I've now learnt some new lessons which means that next time I go to record any piece of audio, I'll be more prepared!