Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Quests N’ Answers | Meet the Team Behind Sagas of Sundry: Goblin Mode

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Welcome to Quests N’ Answers, the companion series to Sagas of Sundry: Goblin Mode! On this very special Crew ‘N A edition of Quest ‘N Answers, we’re turning the mics over to the amazing team that bring Goblin Mode to life. Join director Graham Ehlers Sheldon, producer/editor Matt Caron, makeup lead Cici Andersen, production designer Clint Carney, story producer, Rin Ehlers Sheldon, and composer Alex Winkler as they take you deep behind the scenes of how a show like Goblin Mode actually gets made. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And why don't we go around the table? Tell the people who you are and what you do. You, Clint. Hi, I'm Clint Carney. I'm the production designer. I'm C.C. Anderson. I'm the makeup lead for Goblin Mode. I'm Alex Winkler. I'm the music composer for Goblin Mode.

My name is Bryn Ehler Sheldon, and I'm one of the story producers and a writer. And I'm Matt Cairn. I'm the head editor for Goblin Mode. So why don't we start in production order? I guess that might mean with you, Clint, with production design. You're one of the first people that we called when we started thinking about Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode. Walk me through from your perspective, some of those initial calls. What did we talk about? Well, first you told me what the show was. I thought it was a cool idea. And then you talked

about kind of what you would like to see in the show. So we started out by doing some concept art, some sketches, and just kind of going back and forth to get the vibe that you were looking for with this set. With this incredible set that we're sitting in right now. And I remember right off the bat, Clint, you pitched me a mask, which almost undersells it a little bit. but this incredible mask that's right behind my head right now. So you said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if we had a goblin mask and then you kind of went from there. Did you have a specific inspiration for this?

You know, I certainly didn't realize that it was going to be five feet tall when we were initially talking about it. But once I started going through the design, I realized it was only really going to work if it was at that large scale. And then I thought, well, if we're going to do a goblin, why not do him as almost a taxidermy mount. You know, that's why he's got the mount with the kind of the Jolly Roger-esque positioning of the axes there.

And yeah, and then I think the light up eyes came about to just as I was getting into the building. And then I thought, you know, it would be cool. If his eyes light up and I pitched it to you, you liked it. And that's what we did. Well, you've done a great job just making this set feel rugged, you know, goblin. and built in a way. It's just been very cool to see. So Cece, why don't we hop down the line to you? I mean, the makeup this season has been such a huge part of the story, and I wish

in some ways I had sort of conceived of that going in, but you surprised me in the best possible way with the whole cast, but especially with Amy. Talk about just the makeup story and how you approached this. Thank you. So when I got brought up. in sort of last minute and we were on it. I was on a shoot with Amy and she goes, hey, how would you like to work on this next show that I'm doing? And I said, I mean, yeah, of course, because like we have a long working relationship. We've done some really incredible photo shoots. We did a porcelain doll shoot where I turned Amy into this living doll in my living room. She's brought me in for other kind of creative shoots of hers. We have worked together on Nerdist News in the past. And when I saw

this set and I was like it's so inspired because really it's just a round table tabletop game and we've really brought the world into like you know they like immerse them in the world and I just thought Amy's like this really cool best friend host that's hosting this really great party and I just saw her in the center of the table and then I was like oh okay I get it like we can build a story with the makeup as well and bring it into this kind of world building and every episode the makeup gets a little bigger and if if you look there is sort of a hint at what the episode might be about. So we had a lot of fun on the show.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, getting to see that, Cece, honestly, one of my favorite things is when different departments start surprising me, right? You mentioned you saw Clint's production design, and that informed what you were doing, and then perhaps the lighting played a part in that as well. Oh, totally. I mean, because it's lit the way that it's lit,

and the set is the way that it is, I was like, oh, like, we could do some cool stuff with some light-catching gems, and you'll see some of her looks. They just get bigger and bigger, and by the end of it, I think she just looks like this goblin rock star host that's here with all her goblin friends

to build this world, this amazing world around them. And yeah, it's definitely one of the most fun parts of storytelling through makeup for me is being able to create characters. Alex, you were someone else who surprised me in a good way on this show. I'm trying to remember,

maybe take us back to those initial conversations, just like we did with Clint, that we had about the music for the show, just that initial back and forth. What was that like for you? Yeah, the thing that was interesting is you wanted something that wasn't just purely epic, like pure Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Because we've heard those kinds of fantasy themes before, yeah. Right, and that it's not always this big bombastic epicness. Sometimes it's about the ragtag element of heroes that don't know their heroes yet. And so they're going on a journey to discover that power. And so we kind of did that with the music where it starts off a little bit more

humble, more of a jaunty feeling, and then it explodes into this epic climax. And so that's supposed to sort of mirror what happens to these characters throughout the story. I remember we also talked, you know, about the imperfection of this group of characters. You know what I mean? Trying to introduce different clanks and some noises that you might not expect from just your classic sort of instrumentation, right? It's funny because you say, imperfections are part of the process, that was pretty fun to work with because I used mandolin and I didn't hire a professional mandolin player. I played it myself. Now I'm not a good mandolin player. And that's kind of actually, it was charming after a while because you realize

like, oh, it's about people who don't know their power yet. So it kind of gave it sort of a homemade feeling. Oh, I love that. I love that. It's like Busy might be playing the, I'm pointing at you, this is where busy sits normally if you're watching the show. It's like busy's kind of playing the mandolin or something as a bard. Absolutely. That's so, so cool to me. Moving along to Rinn, hello. You are a story producer and a writer on this show. So folks at home might not know, how does that work in the context of a D&D campaign like this?

What does a story producer do? Well, mostly what I'm doing is supporting Amy. And she is making giant decision trees. if someone doesn't know how one DMs. She's trying to guide the story to a place that she hopes they'll go. But Amy in particular is a really generous DM. And so even on days where we had planned for them to go somewhere specific, but they chose to go somewhere entirely different,

I'd say, well, you know, like we could just kind of fudge the geography and put that place in the way of where they want to go. and she'd be like, no, I honor their decisions. So together, we would try to build exciting challenges for the characters and also give them rewards and gifts and definitely try to figure out what motivates each one. So I don't know, does that answer your question? It does. You know, the decision tree side of it is a very interesting, and I think good way of thinking about it.

It's sort of a classic sort of game design, you know, decision A plus decision B equals decision C or and on and on and on. You can see how that becomes sort of a tree. But I loved how you guys have specifically been very pro players in a sense. You're like, no, no, no, this is where they want to go. Right. Which can be a little, you know, a teeny bit stressful. Luckily, I don't have to sit in this chair, but Amy pivots perfectly when needed. Well, and it's also for me, I'm thinking about, she's very focused on creating this wonderful game for them and being their referee.

And then I'm also thinking a little more about the audience. Like, what does the audience know? What do they not know? What do they need a little bit more of? And then together we try to strategize with, well, we know that this character tends to not take this kind of bait. So what kind of head fake can we give him or her to? maybe go in the direction that we need them to go. Well, I want to come back to more of the surprise element in a moment here, but I didn't realize this.

We're kind of going in a little bit of a circuitous route around the table from pre through post production. That was completely by accident, but also very cool. So Matt, you are editing so many incredible hours of content. So maybe we start there. So you're the editor of the show. You're also head of post as well, Geek and Sundry, we can say, yeah? I just try to keep the videos coming and going and no, nothing falls into cracks. Okay.

All around post-Guru, it's fair to say. Sure. Okay. I just want to make sure the videos get made and that they look great. Well, how do you approach a show with this kind of scope? Just what are you thinking about out of the gate? Oh, sure. I mean, it's definitely a unique type of show.

It being unscripted and it being a roundtable discussion and you're at the same time telling a story. And with all of the amazing things that everyone here at the table has brought to the production, as well as the players, the cast, and the DM, you know, I'm just trying to do my best at harnessing all of that energy and those moments, and sometimes it's chaos, just pure chaos, just trying to highlight those and make sure that I can take that energy and bring it to the people watching the video. And yeah, it's just trying to make a fun story and enhance the story that's already happening. But you're wearing a lot of different hats, too. in terms of the medium where this is going.

So this is hopefully you know by now also a podcast as well. So you sort of have a podcast hat on. You have a visual, you know, digital video hat on. Are you kind of keeping those things both balanced as you go, trying to make it satisfying for listeners and watchers? Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of lucky in that, like, I'm taking a lot of my experiences from when I was younger. I grew up listening to a lot of radio plays with my dad,

and I'm also a musician. So I'm trying to make sure that this works as audio. and that you can picture while you're listening to the show, you can picture exactly what's happening in the imaginations of the players in the DM. So taking that and then at the same time, enhancing the video to have a lot of the same similar cues that you would be hearing in just the audio.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about this tapestry. Clint. Incredible. Thank you. I hope people at home are, I hope you can see enough of this tapestry to understand that there's real stories. happening here on my left.

Talk about this tapestry. Well, that all came from Amy. She came up with, I mean, she created the story for the show. And so when we had initial discussions about the tapestry, she had an idea kind of for what would exist within each panel. And then it was my job to interpret what these strange characters would be and illustrate them accordingly. And that's pretty much how it came out.

So, yeah, I did a few revisions. If you drafts and Amy had some notes that were spot on to create what you see here. I just love it. Hopefully, you know, future Matt will put some B-roll right here of the initial sketch that Amy made. It's very cool. I mean, you see the searing, you see, you know, kind of the bad guys, you see some sundari. I mean, it's very cool. And you took that initial concept and you just ran with it. And this, I mean, other than the mass, this might be one of my favorite parts of this set. I keep finding new stuff. Wow, thank you. So incredibly cool.

Cece, for you, was there a favorite Amy look for this season or one that you planned the most or that you were looking forward to? Honestly, we did it a little bit like episode to episode because some of the things that initially we had planned ended up not quite working because the story took a turn. So we ended up having to be very creative on the fly and that's actually really fun too, especially when you have people that are game and down for anything. And Amy is very much, you know, she's down to dress up and she's down to, you know, role play and, like, you know, do kind of whatever. So I think initially my most inspired look was the, was one of the first ones was the pirate, can I say it?

Yeah, yeah. The pirate look from, I think it was episode two. And yeah, it just, you know, she sent me some inspiration. And I was like, yeah, I love this. I was like, can I do this? Is this a thing that I can do on this show? She goes, anything you want. And I was like, what a dream. You know, Cece, I remember you. You maybe texted me, you asked me, you said, hey, you know, what's the lighting going to be like for this X episode?

And the answer is truly, I am not fully sure all the time. There's some level of planning that goes into this. But we're also, you know, like Wren mentioned, living a little bit on the seat of our pants, just trying to support however we can. but I mean I'm able to put us in moonlight if we have to. Yeah, and it's so cool. Or we can go into combat, but you were very willing to roll with the punches, which I very much appreciate on this. And it's so helpful to have a director and, you know,

producer and everybody who is so game to work with each other and really create the world. Also, I have my right hand, Edwin Monzon, who creates the looks for Danielle. And, you know, he's got really creative ideas, and he's brought in a lot of, you know, cool thoughts when it comes to the makeup and how we can work with kind of a very stationary kind of stagnant set and create movement and create story in visual ways. Because really, you know, it's a round table. And when you have a lot of action and film, you know, it's like very easy to kind of get immersed in the world.

But it's a little, it's more challenging when it's stationary. Well, it's been so nice to have the makeup be, you know, take center stage, literally right here. I mean, the rest of the cast, too, but especially, as I said, Amy's looks, killer. And I hope that when there's new episodes coming out, people get excited to see the look as they're listening to the podcast. So it'll just be a clue that there's a new one coming out. Yeah, you know, I mean, you bring up an interesting point. I hope people, you know, watch a couple episodes and then maybe listen to a couple episodes. I think it would be cool if that's how.

you know, the viewership ends up, but we shall see. You guys always will surprise us. You'll catch different things. But Graham, you haven't talked about your own work as the DP and the director. Well, I showed off a little lighting, remember? Combat mode? Oh, combat. Oh, little combat. Talk about your approach when, because I think on its face, if you said to a director,

like, I want you to make a show out of three people sitting at a table, or four people sitting at a table, they might kind of go, oh, you know, like maybe there's not a lot to do there. So like, what is the strategy for you in your approach to the style of the show? You know, for me, I sort of know if I bring together, this is not just because you're all sitting here, a cohesive group of very talented people, some of which I've worked before, some of which I haven't worked before, which has been an amazing discovery, it kind of works out to some extent. Obviously, I'm trying to sort of guide the ship and I'm never sort of aiming for 100% because AI think that's kind of impossible. I'm aiming for like 80s or 90% right

of executing the vision that really, I mean, Dan Casey, executive producer sort of bestowed on me to help execute very, very early on. But you need to allow yourself, I think, to be a little bit surprised, happily surprised, ideally, by the people around you, because I think that is what real collaboration is, is that everyone very literally in this room has a seat at the table. By the way, there's a few folks actually that aren't able to sit here right now because they are mission critical to recording this right now. So shout out to Alex First AC, Grant, who's over there, who's a legendary digital intern, And then Jim, who's over there mixing audio right now.

Grab a pick of the guys over there. There they are. Very often it's just about bringing together a team of people who are smarter than you. I mean, I don't want to make you feel like that's a cop-out. But there's definitely a moment, though, where you sit down, I'm talking about the players and Amy, the DM, where you're like, you know, right a few minutes into the episode. I don't know if you feel this. We're like, are we cool?

Is this dynamic going to work? Because you think about, you know, a cast and casting this group of people around this table. And it can all look real good on paper. And but when you add the group together and they start playing off of each other in these incredible ways. And then you're like, ooh, I could do this with the lighting or we could do this with the music or the makeup could become this. Greetings adventurers. Spring has sprung here in Los Angeles and that means it's a brief period where it's only 75 degrees instead of 95 degrees. I'll take it. And that means I've been outside a lot more. Walking around, occasionally galloping after a toddler hopped up on juice boxes, traveling a bit. You know the vibe. And after doing some spring cleaning, my wardrobe, I gotta say, looking a little bit sad.

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what you're actually doing. Oh, like on a day-to-day basis while we're filming this thing? While the players are playing what all you're overseeing, because it is quite a lot. Well, so I'm liaising with Shawan Edward Howard, our story producer. I'm talking to you, our other story producer and writer, I'm talking to Matt often like, hey, something just happened in this episode. And very often Matt is actually watching the stream live. For example, right around the ethereal plane, you were like, what if we did a plate, we'll see if this is in the edit, what if we did this plate where we, you know, we're able to add in some layers of mist. So that's kind of amazing when you think about a live multi-cam show like this, getting feedback

from the department heads who aren't in the room and are watching the stream is kind of incredible. So I'm talking to all of you guys as we're shooting, trying to plan for the future, trying to plan for this moment in post, trying to land a story beat with Pekara slash Pekora. And I'm also running lights live to some extent. So a little bit, I guess, how we do the lighting in here. So there's this foreground piece that is lighting all of our faces, and I have independent control over that. And then we also are using an image-based lighting system. Shout out to Kevin Stiller for helping me figure this one out.

And we're piping in real video content into the background. So when a portal opens, you'll get the flashes as the portal opens. And also, since we're talking about image-based lighting, shout out to the DeSoli brothers who made some of the very cool images that are on this television in front of us right here. So in some instances, the players will enter an environment. They'll see a representation of it here, and maybe we'll go full screen to it in the edit for a moment so that everyone at home can see that environment.

And that same environment is also being piped into the lighting to some extent. So it's just this cohesive way of sometimes, you know, okay, well, perhaps combat is happening here, but I still wanted to feel like they're in a haunted, you know, moonlight realm or something like that, and those pieces play together. So yeah, I'm hitting lighting buttons and I'm talking about story stuff

and also just along for the ride, which has been an absolute incredible journey. So when you first called me about this project, it seemed to me that you already had a very clear vision for what this show was going to be, and then my job became to execute on your vision, try to get it as close to what you wanted. Like I think you're selling yourself a bit short,

in terms of, I think, at least to me, it feels like you already have it in your head, and then our job becomes to execute what you've envisioned. At what point in time does it click for you? Like, you know what the show is going to be, or do you just discover it as you go along? Well, from a design perspective, I mean, some of the things I initially mentioned to you and that I mentioned to Alex, and then eventually, Cici, we started talking about are the rough hewn elements, you know, goblins and skeletons and undead folk are not, Henchmen are not perhaps great at construction.

You know, obviously, you're good at construction, but toning that down, removing some of the angles, you know, not having a lot of 90 degrees. We're also, you know, a little behind the scenes where a lot of nerdist is filmed, a lot of geek and sundry videos are filmed. So breaking up that set that you've seen quite often on a lot of other, you know, episodes of Nerdist News, for example,

example, you know, making it feel like, okay, there are wood paneling elements that feel like something that's very geek and sundry, but, you know, we're adding a lot of different skeletons and especially, actually while I'm here, Clint, can you tell me what this is? Without looking at it too much. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so that is a... Because that's from your personal collection. Yeah, yeah, it's something I, I'm a weirdo, I collect skulls and things like that's right. No, I think you're awesome, but continue.

Just a bunch of weird part. So that is a saber-toothed tiger skull with a gorilla jaw and then deer antlers mounted. Cool. And we have to, we got to give that back to you after this. I hope so. Okay. Okay. So, you know, yeah, I knew those elements like rough hewn, like goblins built this,

skeletons built this. And I knew who we had and I knew for our cast. And I had seen some of the vision, especially from the great world building docs, again from Dan and Amy Radcliffe. So I knew a little bit about where we were going. And we knew enough to construct this tapestry early on. We had enough of those world-building elements to figure that out as well.

But, you know, did we have it all figured out? No. You know, we don't want to lock ourselves into all of these decisions up front. And, you know, there's places from your story that, unfortunately, we're never going to get to see. We didn't get to see in this season. Maybe some future season, fingers crossed.

And there's also elements, you know, that the Distoli brothers put together that we also didn't get to see because the players just never decided to go there. Alex, back to you. One of my favorite of your original pieces has to be the combat theme. So I remember during our original conversations, I didn't, you know, give you very much upfront feedback other than what we previously discussed. But I want stuff to be kind of humable, you know, and if I catch myself, self-humming a tune later in the car. I think that's a win and the combat song. Well, A, why don't you go into the complexity of that? Because there's a bunch of different stems and we can use it in different ways. So dive into the combat piece of music.

Yeah, when I think of combat music, I think of sort of the paradigm is games, video games. Because throughout a video game, you could fight a boss for 30 minutes. And you might be at different levels of intensity. It might be fighting as minions, and then you might fight the main guy. And so you need different levels of intensity. And so for that we used a STEM approach, which means every instrument family, like the strings, the brass, and the percussion, they're all in different tracks. And that way in post, the editing team can actually piece that together and in lower intensity moments, maybe just have some percussion, and then once there's real threat you put in the brass, you put in the strings. So that was something I knew we could

do creatively as a workflow, but the thing I wanted to do is, again, keep it humble a little bit. You mentioned the main theme we had, you were singing in the car. And so I wanted to have some twisted version, a battle version of our theme in there. And so we basically just adjusted the scale, if anyone's a music person. It's no longer minor or major. It's more like octatonic. It's way more dangerous, way more strange. And so that sort of keeps you off balance and off kilter.

Yeah. And there's different stems, if you will, within there that's kind of, it's like, oh, what are they going to do next? or, oh, this was a big hit. And my mind was instantly connecting those stems with a part of combat that I was seeing live as we were shooting the show, which means, you know, I think you're killing it. If I'm making those connections,

I wish I could play music live as we're recording this, but a little complicated for some... We can add it in post. Can you just helmet for us? Rinn, why don't we go back to the story for a moment? So you touched on this a little bit working with DM, Amy, Vorpal, but can you dive a little deeper into that relationship? Like, what are the kinds of things you guys are discussing? We have a lot of meetings.

Okay. Originally, she created a lot without me, and then I came in to support her about two weeks before production. Well, I should also mention that thanks to Dan Casey and Amy Radcliffe, who did a lot of initial work on the world building documents that then sort of was transferred over to you and Amy to kind of take the ball and run with it. Yes. Yes. And then Amy got sort of the trajectory of the campaign as she sort of hoped with about

the first half of the episodes more specific with different beats and then the second half very loose because we had no idea what they were going to do. So that could all just change and you don't want to just write a bunch that you're never going to use. I mean we did use quite a bit that we never used. Is that a bummer? Can I just ask? Yeah, it's a bummer. Because now that the show is over, then they watched all the episodes, there was a scene

that I was really excited about where they were in the airship and they were going to interrupt to mating dragons and piss them off. And it never got to happen because they got into a battle with Palacius, who's this air elemental. And me being a Final Fantasy nerd, I'm a huge airship guy. So all the airship stuff, I was like more airship. Yeah. So what would happen? So we did some initial planning sessions.

And then a lot would be, Amy would present me with an idea for the episode. And then I would say, oh, awesome, how? And who's this? And wait, how are they connected? And so a lot of times when you're playing with your friends at home, you can skip some of those things. But when you have an audience watching, you do have to paint a more thorough picture. or like think about the story as a show

and not just the game that you're setting up for your friends. So that's kind of where I would come in. And then sometimes I would just pitch her wild ideas and she was very generous in indulging me in some of them. But then we would always have sort of a post-mortem after every single episode of, okay, like this is what worked, this is what didn't work. So we're clearly throwing out this whole storyline

or we're going to kill off this person or this character seems a little bit to woe begotten and how are we going to resurrect this because we cannot sustain this for multiple episodes because then it's tedious for the audience and they're not invested anymore. So it's a lot of those types of conversations. And then the night before the episode,

then we kind of strategize for what do we really want to hit, what's very, very important because of what's coming for the next 10 episodes or two episodes. episodes. Now I overheard a little bit of one of your initial planning calls with Amy, which, by the way, last a couple hours. And I was in meeting. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, I'm not knocking that. You know, it's a lot of work. But I was very quickly like, oh, I just need to stay out of this and let this happen, because this is going really well. Well, and we also, a lot of times we just are imagining something and we build out something that's really full and then we're like, oh, no, we can't do

that because they actually don't have that yet. Or oh, we can't do that because then that deflates this other thing that's coming up next. It's also partially like a classic continuity job in a way, right? Just knowing like who has what items win and which NPCs are with the party win? Yes, and that's another thing is that when the episode is shooting, our other story producer Shawan Howard and myself, we were watching. And if they happen to make choices that actually don't check out with what has already happened, we would be like, stop, stop, stop, hold.

You don't have that anymore because you left that in the cave. Or, excuse me, where is Picara? Where is Pacara? Picara. Pacara. Okay. I appreciate that, though, because it gives us a chance to jump in and do touch-ups. Oh, good.

I don't know that. Yeah, because it's hard for me sometimes, like, I don't want to stop the momentum of something that's happening. And then usually it's one of Tippy's hairs is like, it's a minded zone. I feel like, which is good for his character. That makes sense, right? Yeah. To you, Matt, with your job, how do you think about pacing something like this? Are you kind of following them into combat and you want it to feel a little bit more twitchy?

Are you trying to let moments breathe? What's your process like when it comes to pacing something like this? Well, for episodes of the scale that we're doing, it's kind of already convenient that they are, like, almost feature length. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world,

praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old-school adventuring, at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare

with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon

with the podcast version dropping the next day. day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you.

From modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum, this is the podcast that redefines what's possible. Hit play, subscribe, and join the millions who've made Mick Unplug their go-to source for growth and greatness, because your next breakthrough is just one episode away. This is Mick Unplug. The Voice in Face of Modern Leadership Entrepreneur and Self-improvement. Let's get started. Feature-length stories, you know, each episode.

So that already lends itself to a certain type of structure that it's just like, okay, cool. I know by this point in the episode, this is the recap of what we've just seen. Or here's some exposition that Amy is setting a new scene or setting that, oh, cool, I'm going to put in a music cue. Or especially when you do like a lighting change, that inspires me to do a little more sound. design or slow down the pace, something like that. Anything that makes this more cinematic and lends itself more to the theater of the mind that everyone at the table is experiencing, you know, that's just to translate what is happening here in the energy of the table into the video or the podcast.

You know, I've been trying to mind meld with you sort of mid-shooting. I hope you've been feeling it, but there's a moment where say like the airship is overhead during the heist and you're feeling the rotor blades and the lighting I hope is kind of accentuating that. And I'm like, oh, Matt, please have a helicopter, SFX in here. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's just like any new element that comes in,

it's just like you want the audience to feel it just as much as the players are in the moment. You could very easily just be watching people sitting at a table talking about something that's happening, but there needs to be that level of engagement that locks the viewers into. the player's seats right then and there. Well, now I'm looking at the clock and I have to wrap things up fairly quickly here.

But last question, I'll leave it for you, Matt. Graphics. What's the role of graphics in something like this? Because you can get to a certain level of crunchiness when it comes to the game mechanics or you could try to pick a middle ground, which I think you're more of the middle ground, right, when it comes to showing these things? Yeah, I'm definitely a very engineered brained for this kind of stuff. I like a lot of the crunchy things in tabletop game playing, modifiers and the actual dice numbers. You know, I'm just trying to bring what are the elements that are specific to role-playing games

that do rely on some of the visuals. That, you know, if you're watching this as a movie, or sorry, if you're watching this as a video, you do get the same type of visual cues that the players are getting. And then at the same time, when you're listening to it as a podcast, if someone rolls well, oh, I have this wonderful little sound effect that's like a nice little magical shimmer. Or if they roll really badly or really poorly, it's just almost like a, well, you fell in the dirt kind of sound. So anything like that is, I think, just enough to keep the viewers and listeners engaged as if they are playing the game. But I'm also not trying to overload them with too much information that's just going to bog them down or be confused. confusing. Because then no one likes to read the rule book. We like to play the game. We just don't like to read the rules.

Yes, I am exactly that kind of gamer. So I feel you. Well, look, you know, it's strange kind of walking on to the set with all of you as we were getting going here. You know, now that the whole season is in the can, as we say, I was getting a little emotional. It's just we've seen these characters go on such an incredible journey right here. I mean, you know, Clint, there's some, There's some energy to your little mountain peaks here. That's just been very cool to experience, if only for a little bit of time. So thank you all for your incredible work on this season. Thank you. Thank you for having you.

Why don't we leave it there? Thank you so much at home for watching the work of all of the people at this table and the people back there behind the cameras. Don't forget, I hope you've watched Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode season one. But if you haven't, go back and look at all the episodes or listen to them, as Dan Casey would say,

wherever fine podcasts are served. Thanks for watching, everybody. Cool. All right. I already have a pickup request. Oh, okay. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership.

I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you. From modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum,

this is the podcast that redefines what's possible. Hit play, subscribe, and join the millions who've made Mick Unplugged their go-to source for growth and greatness because your next breakthrough is just one episode away. This is Mick Unplugged, the voice and face of modern leadership entrepreneur and self-improvement. Let's get started. Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, said, confused. I'm Josh Harrowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, say, confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan

and Quentin Tarantino for over 10 years and over 700 episodes, Happy Say I Confused, has broken movie and TV news every single week. That's because I ask all the questions I want to know, and more importantly, you want to know. Casting what-ifs, backstage stories, acting pet peeves, and much more. So whether you're into superheroes, prestige TV, or just the coolest actors and directors alive, you're going to learn something in every episode. Listen to Happy Say I Confused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries,

the show that jump started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top True Crime. headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast.