Reinventing Audio Drama for the 21st Century
Before you read this, listen: Locke & Key the Audio Drama is far and away the finest project we have worked on. Grab it on Audible, now. No, seriously.
Everything we learned recording in the beaches, fields, woods, and underground chasms of Southern Maine was put to work in this auspicious project, which combined my talents with those of good friend and colleague Bill Dufris and his team at AudioComics. The result: 13.5 hours of soaring, lush, terrifying, brutally human and demonic adventure.
It was an honor to have Dagaz Media be invited to the inaugural Podtales conference in Boston to offer a workshop on microphone technique. Our goal with the workshop was to bring some gear into the room and illustrate that microphone choices are the audio fiction equivalent of paint brushes, or camera lenses. Microphones all have unique properties and there rarely is a ‘wrong’ choice — just different choices that vary depending on the context, resources available to the creator, and subject matter / tone of their piece.
Too often, I see creators whose mic choices are limited to the most basic USB audio interfaces… And while that’s an OK way to get started, I would like to encourage us all to dream bigger, and also make the argument that it’s really not cost-prohibitive to try out some more interesting ways to record (e.g. YES while you can spend $2,500 on mics in a heartbeat, you can also record stereo and binaural with rigs that are well under $500, with incredible results).
I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with some extremely kind, generous, and amazingly talented mentors in the audio fiction space and seen that there is no wrong way to do any of this, just a myriad selection of RIGHT ways. You can record on location. You can record in the studio – with actors looking at each other… Or not. Or even, dare I say it, when actors aren’t in the same place at the same time (though I personally dislike this approach to recording, I think it’s possible to execute well especially if you put some work into ensuring there is some modicum of consistency across recording environments and record the actors in real-time together).
This piece is not intended to be an exhaustive breakdown of every kind of way that an audio drama can be recorded, but more to illustrate from how moving beyond basic functional recording setup allows us to think about mic technique as a creative tool to employ, rather than technical obstacle to overcome.
High-level, we explore three different ways to record a show:
You’ll see me jump around a lot between I/me and We/our in this piece. The workshop at Podtales was sponsored by Dagaz Media, which is the parent audio company formed by me and audio co-conspirator and dear friend, William (Bill) Dufris, as Dagaz Media. Bill was not able to make it to Boston for our workshop due to medical reasons, but he generously lent a bunch of microphones from his studio so that we could pull the workshop off, and also has been instrumental in iterating on the various recording methods over the years we’ve worked together — Locke & Key, The Dark Tome, The X-Files, Expeditionary Force: Homefront. When you see we/our I’m talking about the results of my professional collaboration with Bill / Dagaz Media, when you see I/me it’s a Fred Greenhalgh personal opinion… And if the two occasionally seem to bleed into each other, it’s only because Bill is such a close collaborator it’s hard to tell who is who and which is which sometimes!
There is quite a lot to dig into here beyond just a blog entry and some clips. We decided to ‘open source’ one of the original session files from Dark Tome as well as all providing the raw audio from Podtales, so you can really get a sense of how the cake is baked!
See this Dropbox folder to download the resource kit: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop
Including:
In-depth breakdown of the various mic’ing techniques and why I chose to illustrate them for PodTales:
Perhaps the most obvious way to record a group of actors is to give each actor their own microphone and have them read their lines into it. Within this model there are still about a bazillion decisions to be made… e.g. shotgun vs. cardioid microphones, how do you orient the actors in the space with one another, or even do you try and break the actors apart entirely (e.g. Big Finish for all of their dramas records in a unique studio where actors have their own booths).
My personal take is that it’s really nice for actors to have sightline with one another so that they can see and respond to the other actors within a scene. We like to get the actors to physically act out a performance as much as possible – so even though movement is limited by this approach (e.g. if actors wander off-mic that’s generally a problem) we still want to see them express some of the physical aspects of their performance even when stationary so that the sense of movement is captured. We also generally instruct actors to continue to be ‘in the scene’ even when they don’t have lines… e.g. there will be little bits of reactions, overlaps, etc. when an actor is still in the scene and hearing another person’s lines, even if something isn’t scripted. These noises risk sounding campy so you also need to temper that with the direction ‘less is more.’
From a technical perspective, what you get are nice clean tracks which you can do a lot with in post. You can orient and re-orient actors in the stereo field using stereo panning or even binaural plugins. You can also much more easily splice together parts of takes, so if an actor fluffed their line in one take, you might be able to fix it with another take. Also, especially if you use a tight shotgun mic with limited room pickup pattern, you can endure slightly less ideal recording conditions since the mics may forgive a boxier or boomier room.
Anyhoo, here’s our cast running through this Dark Tome scene on multiple mono Mics:
Pros of Multi-Mic:
Cons of Multi-Mic:
Another way of recording actors in studio, or on location, is to enter the world of stereo. Many BBC dramas are recorded this way, and… actually for masterful effect see this clip of Dirk Maggs producing a scene for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where you see both multi-mic and stereo mic technique used in a single clip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061m3yq
The advantage of Stereo is multi-fold.
First, you can start working with staging actors and action. i.e. a scene involves two actors grappling with one another, you can actually have them doing that. It also works really well when you have a whole crowd of voices and you want to convey that sense of breadth and depth in a scene. Actors coming in/off mic almost always sounds more convincing when recorded in stereo than when you try to achieve that effect in post.
Of course, to suggest that ‘stereo’ is a single thing, is completely incorrect. There are myriad ways to record stereo tracks and pros and cons for each respective technique. For purposes of this workshop, I chose to use the RODE NT-4 microphone, a rather unique microphone that offers X-Y stereo recording in a matched pair mounted onto a single body microphone.
The RODE NT-4 is a workhorse of a microphone… I’ve used it extensively mostly for location recording, going back to the very first we did (Dark Passenger) and then for Waiting for a Window and The Troll of Stony Brook before going on to use it for Seasons 1 and 2 of The Cleansed.
While a relatively bulky mic, the RODE NT-4 sounds delightful and can be utterly convincing on location. Its bulk, however, does make it a bit more clunky to carry around and more subject to handling noise than our current rig, the Sanken CSS-5. In studio, of course, this is not so much an issue!
There is a whole workshop just on effectively using stereo — e.g. mono compatibility, X-Y vs. M-S vs. ORTF vs. other methods, mic placement, etc. — but in short this can be a really interesting way to get convincing, life-like performances captured with an economy of effort IF you have great source material to begin with.
It should be noted that several common prosumer recorders– The Zoom H1n, H2n, H4n, H5, and H6 for example — ship with X-Y stereo recording built-in mics out of the box.
Pros of Stereo Recording:
Cons of stereo recording:
Binaural Mic (3Dio)
Binaural recording is a specific method of stereo recording deserving of its own section because of its novelty and unique opportunities for creative expression.
A binaural recording is stereo – two mic capsules – but the unique part about it is that the mic capsules are omni-directional, and placed in a dummy head or similar housing that mimics the human ear canal. The magic trick accomplished by recording in this manner, is that recordings that are captured in binaural, when played back in stereo, using headphones, will sound 3-dimensional.
It’s a little hard to really convey what it means to hear in 3-dimensions using only two channels (Left and Right) so you best listen on to the following clips to see what I’m talking about. Or, to really freak yourself out, check out this production of STICKS by ZBS which was recorded in Binaural.
If the results of Binaural are so cool, why isn’t it more common?
Well, the trouble with this form of recording is that as soon as the mix is played back on loudspeakers (rather than headphones), the 3d effect is completely eliminated. Worse, because of the sonic phenomenon called ‘feathering,’ there is phase cancellation of the stereo playback which results in dialogue and other effects sounding kind of weird. So, what is a gorgeous, beautiful, and immersive mix on headphones, can end up sending like crap when played back on speakers. Bummer!
As mentioned above, there have been some really interesting experiments with 3d audio over the years (Stephen King’s THE MIST in 3d sound by ZBS is a classic!!!) but because of the desire for mixes to sound OK on speakers, and no practical way to offer separate mixes for separate contexts, it’s remained a fairly fringe recording technique… though it’s currently enjoying a bit of a resurgence. Check out works by The Truth and The Owl Field.
While the mic used in this demo is fairly price ($1,299) you can get more affordable earbud-style binaural mics if you just want to play around. What happens if you hang out in the subway with binaural mics in your ears instead of earbuds? What crazy weird things might you hear in the woods, or on the beach?
Pros of Binaural recording:
Cons of Binaural recording:
To speak to the ‘let’s try some weird stuff’ side of this all, let’s talk about how you do creative things with mic placement… as in this idea that KC Wayland had us try out at Podtales!
Here, we took the binaural mic, spun it around and around and around in circles while KC chanted in Latin. Ummmm yeah… you just gotta kinda hear it for yourself!
*** NOTE: As we said above, this effect only really works well on headphones, ideally high-quality ones in a quiet environment. This is NOT the average listening environment of today’s podcast listener, but dangit, can’t audiophiles get stuff made for them, too?!?! ***
Go forth, make cool stuff, and let me know how it pans out!!! And don’t miss the Dropbox full of goodies for digging deeper into this, link back at the top.
I even included the entire mix of the original Dark Tome episode, inclusive of sound design and music mix, which gives you an idea how one of my finished shows comes together (this one has a hybrid of field-recorded primary dialogue that dissolves into studio recordings when we transition from our world to hell through a demonic portal).
Don’t forget to jump over to Dropbox and grab the resource kit that goes with this, so you can hear all the differences in clips yourself, and even better, break apart the ProTools session and see how one of these shows is made!
Dropbox link: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop
It’s a fantastic day for audio fiction podcasts in Apple Podcasts (still far and away the most important discovery and listening platform for these shows).
See the new category listing here: ApplePodcasts.com/Fiction
For many years, a common complaint amongst fiction podcasts — spanning the range from full fledge radio drama/audio drama to narrative-based, single or multi-voiced productions — was that there wasn’t a sufficient ‘home’ for these shows.
Under the previous category structure in Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), most shows awkwardly listed themselves under “Performing Arts” or perhaps “TV/Film” — odd, because most shows in these categories were actually shows ABOUT these subjects (e.g. Game of Thrones recap podcasts) vs. original content in and of themselves.
There is a long and ongoing conversation about the importance of category labels vis-a-vis discoverability, but suffice to stay it’s still important. Many people use Apple Podcasts to find new shows — especially since it became a standalone app in 2012 — and so the choices that Apple makes are important. Further, since Apple still drives ~80% of podcast traffic, their choices set the tone for how other indexes work, and hopefully we’ll see other podcast listing services adopt a dedicated category for fiction podcasts soon.
Nearly all of the major podcasting services have introduced compatibility for the new categories [see: Apple’s take on podcast hosts], and it’s pretty intuitive on how to change the category of your show… which you should do immediately.
I personally use Spreaker, you’ll find this option under the ‘RSS Customization’ section. Just look for the new ‘Fiction’ category, and use one of the sub-categories — Drama, Comedy, or Science-Fiction — if relevant for your show:
These new categories have been spotted in the wild as of early August, 2019, so don’t delay!
This new update is a pretty quick ‘win’ for categorizing your show properly and making sure it is found (and competing for chart placement) in the correct location.
A few general best practices around marketing your show remain true: