The Amelia Project - Liquified Marzipan - Sound Design Special

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

“Help! The season 2 launch is next week, and I’m not ready! My computer crashed and the producers are complete maniacs! I need to disappear now!” A Behind the Scenes Bonus Episode focusing on the Sound Design of The Amelia Project. With: Alan Burgon, Mario Vernazza, Benjamin Noble, Torgny G. Aandero, Gemma Arrowsmith, Gianluca Iumiento, Ravdeep Singh Bajwa, Julia Morizawa and Chiara Fumanti. Written by Philip Thorne. Directed by Philip Thorne and Oystein U. Brager. Music and sound design by Fredrik Baden. For full credits see our website. Get in the mood for the upcoming season with a special behind the scenes episode where you meet our fabulous sound designer Fredrik Baden. Learn how the theme tune was made, step inside the Amelia office, and discover the Easter eggs that Freddy loves to hide in the music! The Amelia Project is an audio fiction series. We recommend starting at the beginning. Congratulations. You’ve reached the content warning. The Amelia Project is about death, mishaps, mayhem and misfortune. And cocoa. If you’re not comfortable with this, stop listening. Now. The Amelia Project is part of the Fable & Folly Network. Find and support our sponsors at: fableandfolly.com/partners Website: ameliapodcast.com Twitter: @amelia_podcast Patreon: patreon.com/ameliapodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Your mom hates it when you leave six half-full glasses on your nightstand. It's a good thing mom lives on the other side of the country. And it's an even better thing that you can get six IKEA 365 Plus glasses for just £9.99.

So go ahead, you can afford to hoard because IKEA is priced for student life. Shop everything you need for back to school at IKEA today. Hello, we're gearing up for the Season 2 launch next week. Season 2 will consist of 9 regular episodes and 8 mini-sodes. The mini-sodes extend each episode and will be released on the

same day as the regular episodes exclusively for Patreon supporters. As a fully independent production we rely on our patrons to keep the cocoa flowing, and every contribution, even just a few dollars, really, really helps. To become a patron, go to patreon.com slash Amelia podcast. That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash Amelia podcast. In the meantime, we thought we'd open up the Amelia office doors and give you a

little tour behind the scenes. You've already got to know Ostein and myself, as well as Julia, who plays Alvina, and Alan, who plays the interviewer, in our behind the scenes special, but you haven't yet been introduced to the fifth member of the Amelia gang. You've heard his work in every episode, but you haven't yet heard his voice. So today, we'd like to introduce you to our composer and sound designer, Frederick Barden. Congratulations, you've reached the Amelia Project. This phone call isn't happening. If you're not serious about this, hang up. Now. If you continue,

there's no way back. Good choice. A new life awaits. You'll hear back from us within the hour. If you don't hear back, please consider the whole thing a hoax. Leave your message after the beep. Help! Season 2 launches next week and I'm not ready.

My computer crashed and I didn't make a backup. And the producers are complete maniacs. I need to disappear now. Quick! Help me! me. What do you think, Einstein? It is not what I'd imagined. It's kind of very grand. It's epic. It's kind of like it sets the audience

up for something. It's almost like Lord of the Rings. almost like lord of the rings or yeah lord of the rings meets sherlock something like that i love the beat beat beat you know i love that build but the theme itself we need something that's a bit kind of stranger and smaller and quirkier. It's a little bit Harry Potter. Yeah, it's still way too epic. It doesn't set the right tone. I like the melody, though. Yeah, the melody is really nice. It could almost work like for the end of an episode, like, you know, when we're just about to go into the disappearance.

But it's too sweeping and serious. I like it. This. I like it. This is something. I like it. This is something. ice time pip yes hello guys hello hey guys hello hi there all right i can hear you um yes so uh last time we did one of these uh behind the scenes specials uh we were in the studio together in vienna enjoying cocoa

and norwegian chocolate oh the norwegian chocolate uh which was uh which was very lovely this time unfortunately we are separated by many miles we're all in different countries and we're doing this over skype which is actually our normal way of working um since yeah since we are all in in different places so yeah i'm in paris uh freddy you are i'm still in uh oslo norway i'm also in oslo but i'm not in the same place as freddy oh i thought you were in sweden right now no no i'm in norway okay cool so no norwegian chocolate and oh i don't know you might you might have Norwegian chocolate. I should have had some, shouldn't I? That's a fail on my part. The only thing I have here is a glass of water.

Oh, dear. What about you, Freddy? Do you have any Norwegian chocolate? Yeah, no, I'm sitting with a kind of cocoa. It's powdered cocoa. It's called Rettikoppen. It's directly translated. It's called it's directly translated it's it's uh straight into the cup it's not it's not that good but it's it's cocoa okay well i'm i'm drinking cocoa i'm too

i mean i i whenever i do emilia stuff i have to drink cocoa to get in the zone i'm drinking a german cocoa um uh it's called uh nida egga marzipan Trinkschokolade. Did you manage to decipher that? Yeah, you just said marzipan. There's marzipan in your hot chocolate. There's marzipan in my hot chocolate. It's a marzipan hot chocolate. How does that even work? How do you liquefy marzipan?

I don't understand. If you're feeling jealous right now, you should. It's very good. Liquefied Marzipan. That sounds like a great band name. Yeah. Cool. Anyway, so hopefully this time there will be slightly less slurping and chewing noises than last time.

We did get a little bit of flack about that. Not least from you, Freddy. Yeah. Not least from you, Freddie. Yeah, I can't remember how much time I used on actually removing mouth noises, but I think you were the worst, Pip, honestly. Well, I mean, Einstein had brought this big bar of Norwegian chocolate, and when there's Norwegian chocolate, there's no stopping me. And I think before I answered any question,

I just shoved a big batch of Norwegian chocolate in my mouth. While talking nonetheless. Anyway we've only been talking for a few minutes and we're already wildly digressing so the reason that we're doing this today is that we wanted to give you our dear listeners a little insight into the creation of the music and the sound design for the Amelia project, because last time we did a behind the scenes, Freddie unfortunately wasn't there. So we've been wanting to do something like this for a long time. And today we finally found a moment to get together and do this. So what should we talk about first? Maybe we should start, I think we should start at the beginning, which is the theme tune, actually. Because that's how our collaboration really kicked off.

You and I met up in a pub in Oslo and Pip wasn't there. Yeah, actually, that is the same pub that I met my girlfriend the very first time. So all the good things in the world happened to you in that pub. I have a very special bond with Captain Mustard, Colonel Mustard in Oslo. So yeah, that was a really great meeting. And in fact, I've just opened the document of the very first script and what we wrote in terms of the theme. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can read that out.

Yeah. So we wrote, we hear the crackle of tape run on for a bit longer than a shrill beep. The Amelia theme starts, echoey chords playing over a faint drone underpinned by a rhythmic beat. Yeah. Now that's pretty vague yeah so yeah actually the because you wrote beep and then uh i read your scripts of course and then in the second episode i think i think it is it's zale indigo ravenheart yeah you yeah there's a seamless transition into the countdown clock counting down to his demise, counting down to his cannon launch.

And I had this idea about just, well, what if I just have the beep going in seconds and then that becomes part of the theme, and then it also sets up for a really good suspense, and it transitions beautifully into the clock and the countdown clock. Philip Thorne and Oystein Braga, with music and sound design by Frederik Baden. Episode 2.

Zale Indigo Ravenheart. The very, I think the very first sound you hear in an audio drama is like really important. Like just the very first sound has to be something kind of representative or strange or funny or whatever you're trying to create. And so I love that kind of beep, beep being the very first thing. You know when you pushed play on an Amelia episode because that click or that shrill beep sound is very distinct, I think. So with the theme, it starts with the voice message and it's read by Julia Morisawa, which we all, of course, love and have dear in our hearts. In the background, I wanted to...

Actually, when you sent me the script, you already had the wonderful, wonderful icon or the Amelia Project label. And around the icon is a Morse code. And I wanted to... I love Easter eggs. It's the best thing I know. It's my favorite dish. So I took the Morse code

and I put it in just a simple sign tone synth and made it into eighths and and uh and fourth notes and it's in the background there just just so that you could hear it but maybe you don't hear it on the first time you listen to it because you're focusing on her voice and then you well there's some there's something going on in the background which is i, I love double layers. It's really fun. So that's Morse code. And is it actually spelling something out? Of course, it's spelling out the Amelia Project.

Let's start with the drums. Over that, there's some percussion sets that are giving some details and sweeteners with loads of Gran Casa symbols and swells. So together it sounds very big like this. I really like having dramatic violins in the back to counteract the kind of quirky umpa sound. So these are some really bitey violins, and together with that we have some keyboards. And to add to the weirdness there is

a little piccolo flute in the background in the in the b part sort of a little fanfare over there i love the piccolo flute asan and i are big fans of the piccolo flute where the the first sketch of it that had the piccolo flute we were both like yay yeah um and to round it out and to get to some real bottom end we have the bass section where it's a normal uh upright bass and a little synth bass as well which is just oscillating on the fourths. So for this tune it's not that simple but it's simple enough for me to be able to use it into different genres and I really enjoy like develop a vehicle that is able to go to different places. For example death metal. I really like this version of the theme that got me back to my double bass pedal and back rocking behind the drum kit. So, Freddie, there's also another episode in season one

where you've done something particular with the theme. So this is the Steve episode where there's a character who they turn up to their own funeral at the end of the theme. So this is the Steve episode where there's a character who they turn up to their own funeral at the end of the episode. And in the background we can hear the organ play. So this is kind of a baroque fugue-ish

melody line just going over while they are talking in the forefront. This is going on in the background but i i wanted to take the opportunity to do something fun so i made this bass line that you're hearing in the organ counterpoint if i speed this up a lot like this, then you can kind of hear that this is actually the theme melody being played in the bass notes and with the counterpoint on top. And then of course it goes into the normal or the normal tempoed version of the theme in organ version afterwards. In all of the themes throughout season one, all of them end on a fifth. So if I play what

is called the tonic, total harmonic cadence is it's the first and it's the fourth and it's the fifth and then you obviously want to go back home to to the first right but if you keep the bass uh it kind of feels like you're not really fulfilling the cadence it doesn't feel like you're home yet so uh again with the suspense and with keeping keeping everybody on their toes that that um throughout all of these themes there are none of them are really ending none of them are really ending uh i wanted to to make kind of a point out of that by making the only theme song that uh that ends with a full cadence it is the last episode of the season the season finale is the only it's the only episode that ends in the actual, the full cadence. I kind of thought that was a little poetic Easter egg.

So in addition to the music, Freddie's also our sound designer. So Osen and I do the dialogue in it. We select the performances we want, we put it all together, and then we send it to Freddie. And Freddie places the voices into an environment. So, Freddy, do you want to just talk us through how you created that environment, or the office for the Amelia project? I was eager to make the office alive

and to kind of establish the the ground rules for for the office and for the hallway and for how the office sounds and stuff like that so if if we if we we can just jump into the office do you want to go into the office yes give us a tour yeah so we're now okay so we're going into the corridor now and it's you have to you have to yell if you're going to be able to hear it into the office where we usually are and it sounds very reverberant and it doesn't it's not very intelligible but enough so yeah and if we knock it sounds like this and then we just go into the office yeah

and you haven't been there before have you? it's even messier in here than I wrote it. Take a tour you can see that it is from the door it is about three to four or five steps over to where you're supposed to be sitting as a client so it's a normal chair with four legs it's made of wood and it creaks a bit and then if i go over to the interviewer's chair it's kind of an office chair with some

wheels on it and i can go back and open the window for example and you hear all the noise from outside the window yeah so so uh we've established a blueprint i think uh in our in our google drive together i tried to do that as as detailed as possible as early as possible so that it wouldn't be any discrepancies over time uh you said that you want this is gonna go for a long haul and i wanted to go with it and kind of establish the ground rules and of course there's been some adjustments but i i i hope that the discrepancies and the the notable differences are so small that it's not going to be that notable hopefully um is that by the way is that the uh intercom on the desk just there oh yeah this this old thing yeah can i can i press it? Am I allowed to press it? Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Salvatore? Salvatore? Can I have some more Nida Ega trick chocolate? Let's see if that works. Another challenge was when we had the episode about the artificial intelligence, Siri. Yes, Siri was, I loved Siri. Not only where it was taking us sound design-wise,

but the element of artificial intelligence and the future, what it holds. Nowadays, you have Google Assistant making hairdressing calls for you and the person on the other side of the line doesn't know it's a machine. So that's how far we've come. But for Amelia Project,

we wanted it to be not that realistic and more robotic and more synthetic. So I took all the melody in the singing in every syllable, I took that out of her performance and she already kind of

made it like this so that every syllable has a tone and I just I sort of quantized that in the DAW you can kind of hear what it sounds like without

it has been two years, seven weeks and fourteen seconds since my first circuits were activated and with it has been two years, seven weeks and fourteen seconds since my first circuits were and i moved some notes around to make it kind of glitchy so that she doesn't sound like human that's really cool it's incredible how it's uh yeah it's incredible how it's a really a joint

effort to create serious voice i mean first it's elizabeth, of course. And then I did the dialogue edit. And I did several things in the dialogue edit that took forever. I edited out every single breath because robots don't breathe. So every single time she took a breath, breathe it in or out, I've cut that out of her speech, which means that all the words can also be smushed together because then there's certainly just holes in in the sentences um and then i also took some of the words and phrases that repeat i actually even though she read them many times i cut out i chose one of them and i used that yeah that's then several times like every time she says that word i use the same bit of recording even though it yeah so so there was uh it was that is the most time-consuming episode i've had to to dialogue it on and then on top of that you come in and work your magic um to create this this voice

so i remember getting the the first um sketch for siri with with the voice uh which was great and then um and then we got a second um uh sketch from you which included hydraulics yeah that was a workout there seems to be well either i was bad at googling uh or searching and finding the right words for the for the sample that I was trying to get. The hydraulics didn't give much results for what I wanted. It was either just huge industrial-sized hydraulic machines or it was all the wrong stuff. And then I was completely exasperated and I just wanted to take a break and lean back. So I lowered my office chair. And while lowering my office chair, I got the perfect sample.

It was just extraordinary. So I had to hold the microphone in my hand and i also had to hold the other handle on on the actual chair and doing some incredible leg exercises by going up and down with my legs while sitting in it because you can't push it it needs weight for you to go up and down um but i think i got some good samples out of it and um i think her body came alive i put on a cap and learned to rap i'm sicker sicker sicker sicker siri but there's not like not all of the challenges we've given you in the first season were that fun i know there's one you really don't want to go through again. Oh man, yeah. Selecting vomiting samples

for the hell episode. And here come your ice creams. Gentlemen, enjoy. That's so good! We've had to promise freddie not to include any more vomiting in season two well by the time we get by the time we get to season three maybe we can negotiate to have a few more vomits in there but like season two is a season two is a vomit free zone and talking of season two um can you do you want to give our listeners since

we're launching season two next week um do you want to give listeners a little uh preview of what was uh can you what was the most challenging thing for season two obviously don't be too explicit but maybe you can give them a little uh. Oh, I can tease that there will be up to several body of water movements in season two. And I don't have a boat. I can't go into the middle of something, some fjord and record. middle of something some some uh some fjord and record uh so if you want water sounds with zero reverb it's very difficult that's another thing about reverb it's really the sound designers

enemy it's the nemesis uh because it's always in the way and it's always i'm hassling you guys always for all this the track is too reverb you have to get another one uh so uh being reverb is the only thing we struggle to make disappear yeah that's a good one um yeah so because you you because you Yeah. Because you add the reverb, because you add the room's reverb on later. Yes, exactly. Like we heard in the office just now, if I move this mic away now, and you just hear,

if I sound like this, and then I put this track into another room track. It just sounds double roomy. And it doesn't sound like you're in the same room as I am. Because I'm in a completely different ambience. So for me to be able to have all these different elements as a baseball bat and roller skates and water and sound of someone puking and your voice

all of them have to be without the reverb for me to be able to put it into the same reverb you know hopefully we'll do this again at the end of season 2 and then we can talk about uh because i i think there'll be there will be a lot to talk about for season two yeah oh yeah

there's some stuff there's some stuff um i know that you're not quite finished yet with season two so we should probably uh yeah we should probably let you go and uh so make sure that you're ready for next week yeah I have some water stuff to go through but before that since we don't have champagne maybe you could give us some

digital champagne I have it right here, do you want some? yes please just let me shake it and here we go okay well let's toast to Just let me shake it. And here we go. Hey. Okay, well, let's toast to the launch of Season 2 next week. For Season 2. Tim-tim.

Tim-tim. This episode featured Frederick Barden, Einstein Breger and Philip Thorne. It was edited by Philip, with music and sounds by Freddie. See you back next week for the first episode of season two. And if you're in London, you can join Einstein and myself at the Jugged Hair Pub for not a cocoa, but a beer. Oh my God, six days, six days.

What am I going to do? I gotta run. I gotta run. Freddy! What are you doing? Hey, good luck with season two! The Fable and Falling Network. Where fiction producers flourish.

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