The Magnus Archives - Building the Panopticon - Making MAG 158

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

SPOILERS NOTE: This ep includes discussion for the whole of Season 4, up to and including MAG160.Anil hosts in this peek behind the curtain as members of the TMA production team talk about what it took to get gargantuan episode Panopticon to your ears!Thanks to this week's Patrons: Michael Spiral DESERVES Rights, Andy Loth, Daniel Williams, Heather H ,Evil Angel, Vivianne Starlight, Coney's Mom, Kay-Jay Bee, Cato, planetsandmagic, Mariada, Stephanie Simon, Melissa Ponce, Olivia Pugh, Tatyana Beck, Brittany, The Paper Librarian, Kira Apple, Lena Williams, DaniIf you would like to join them, be sure to visit www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited this week by Nico Vettese & Alexander J Newall.Check out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribePlease rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Join our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillTWITTER: @therustyquillREDDIT: reddit.com/r/RustyQuillEMAIL: [e-mail] Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International Licence Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone, Alex here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Michael, Spiral Deserves Rights, Andy Lott, Daniel Williams, Heather H, Evil Angel, Vivian Starlight, Coney's Mom, KJB, Kato, Planets and Magic, Mariada, Stephanie Simon, Melissa Ponce, Olivia Pugue, Tatiana Beck, Brittany, The Paper Librarian, Kira Apple, Lena Williams, Danny. Thank you all. We really appreciate your support.

If you'd like to join them, go to www.patreon.com forward slash Rusty Quillthe-scenes look at the Magnus Archives. I'm your host, Anil Gidgumur, and with me I have... It's-a-me, Johnny. I'm Lowri and I produce the Magnus Archives. Alex, I play Martin and direct and help on production. I'm Elizabeth Moffat and I work on the vocal cuts for Magnus. She does the hard work. She does the really hard work.

When Alex comes to get the door, I talk to her. Thank you from all of us. She can't respond. I mean, I love our chats, Johnny. They do. It's very intimate moments. It's great. I love having a conversation the other person just can't interact with at all.

That doesn't surprise me on any level, John. You're a writer, of course you do. Today we're going to look at what I think is safe to say the most challenging episode of Season 4, Episode 158, Panopticon. Get away from my secrets, we're not going to be telling any. Everything went fine, stop asking. Yeah, it was great. Well, let's delve a little bit deeper into that, shall we? I just wrote some words. I don't know

what the big deal is. Cool. Let's start with you then, Johnny. So, on the writing side, what were you hoping to achieve with this episode? The two aspects of it, I think, were probably revelation and resolution, because we knew what was going down in season five and we knew that 159 was going to be the emotional climax of one very important storyline and 160 was going to be the start of the final phase 158 was very much our last chance to get all the other all the sort of the disparate strands you can, put every single character in the entire series into a single episode. Yeah. It was our last chance to take all those different storylines

and put them, get all the pieces in place for Season 5. In some cases, tying them off nicely, like with Gertrude, or with Peter. In other cases, getting them in a position so that when we go into Season 5, we can do all sorts of

interesting things with them i had a writing teacher once um called it which is a thing from there as well like readying positions so it's like if you're going to do a multi-season thing you need to make sure that everyone is in ready positions for next season yes it was getting everyone in ready positions getting some of them dead. Dead is a ready position. Yeah, dead is a ready position. A ready position for other people to be sad. So that leads me on to the question, at what point did you realise that it was going to involve so many characters? I mean, pretty much from the off, to be honest.

Like when we were sitting down and planning out season four, we did mark 158 as the episode that was going to cause us problems um i think some of the problems that ended up causing us were not necessarily the exact ones we'd anticipated some of them were unpredictable yeah but we certainly knew that we knew that it was going to be a big complicated episode with a lot of different scenes and a lot of different characters and interactions to it. Well, it's because as well, thanks to Lowry, we have a big shiny spreadsheet which changes colour

and one of the colours it can go is a nice big bright red when there's too many people in an episode. Alex, I don't understand. It's all red. Red's the only colour it goes, I thought. Yeah, there are other colours colours they've never come up no it's different shades of red there's one that's almost black that's my favourite

I can't take credit for that spreadsheet that was yours wasn't it it changed a lot I built a rudimentary little wagon and then you turn it into a Ford shock horror Alex and spreadsheets spreadsheets solve most but not all problems. There is the problem with too many spreadsheets.

In my experience, spreadsheets highlight the problems. Bright red! On the writing side, how long did it take you to write Mag 158? Ooh, good question. That is a good question and kind of a difficult one because the scenes got written at different points, both because of recording considerations and because some of them were resolutions to different storylines

and so got written sort of concurrent to those storylines. I think the Gertrude Elias one was actually written a good few months before a lot of the other scenes and there was a lot of the peter martin scenes is 158 the one where we had to do a last minute rewrite due to a recording breaking that had fey in it i think so yes yes i think it is uh yeah so that was one that had an emergency rewrite especially and there was also there was some rewriting when we realised that Ben and Alistair weren't going to be able to record together, that led to quite a few quite significant script revisions.

Yeah, we're going to come to that. I have specific questions about that. Absolutely, because writing dialogue that can be recorded in isolation, it can be done and you can get good dialogue, but it's something you need to be aware of when you're writing the lines so that you don't have a lot of overlap, you don't have a lot of direct back and forth. Moving on to once you've finished the script,

we'll move to script editing. Alex, when Johnny passed you the script, what was your first reaction? He loved it. That is a very strong word, isn't it? A good word, love. He loved it that is a very strong word a good word love loved it um he was like johnny you've done it again so we have a couple of rules which is to do with maximum number of people on a thing we accepted that this was going to be a big one i cried a little bit with joy when i saw how many scenes it was because there's one thing to bear in mind

on the production side which is worth noting which is this is gonna sound really weird to bear with me more scenes even if it's with the same number of people is worse than the less scenes with the same or even less people what it comes down to is if you have multiple scenes, you have to do the audio equivalent of an establishing shot, which is where like people know from TV. So you've got like your big, you start with the exterior, big spooky house exterior cut to interior. And I've assembled all of the suspects here, blah, blah, blah. It's an establishing shot so that people know what they're looking at before it starts. You have to do that with audio as well. But what that means is that if you've got 10 scenes, you have to do establishing shots and you have to do that with audio as well. But what that means is that if you've got 10 scenes, you have to do establishing shots

and you have to make sure that everything is distinct in pace and in soundscape and in tempo and so on so that when you are bouncing them between those scenes, people know where they are. That I wasn't ready for. I was ready for there to be lots of people. I think at some point it must have flown under my radar and I went, weren't there like 10 or something?

10, 10, 10. There were 10 where we started the series with an average of two. And then we hit 10 on that one and that one caught me by surprise. I was expecting like maybe six, you know. I was like, that's manageable. 10's a lot.

10's a lot. So that threw me. We had close to 10 for the unknowing. That's fair, but I used a few tricks and cheats in the unknowing, which made it a lot easier. That leads me into, like, how do you go about breaking it up for recording? Something that is as large as that.

That's probably worth handing over to you, Lowrysofar as i think for 158 you broke it up more than anyone just because you were handling the logistics at that point well i guess it's breaking it up by person i mean ideally you want people to travel in the minimum number of times and you want everyone in the room at the same time uh which can't always happen, as I discovered on 158. I mean, I don't know that I did do much breaking down because I, Alex and Johnny, had produced this, you know, a spreadsheet that I work from, essentially, which is breaking down all the scenes.

So I just saw, right, there are 10 scenes. There are 10 people. Some people are in scenes with different people, so they need to be in the room at the same time. That's a bit of a nightmare. Yeah, I don't know that. So I'm trying to think, with different people, so they need to be in the room at the same time. That's a bit of a nightmare. Yeah, I don't know that. So I'm trying to think. With the spreadsheet, for instance, how it works is

you take an episode and we split it into scenes, even if it's not like a clear transition between them. So like, Elizabeth, you'll do this all the time, where it's like, we'll have statement, and then the post statement is a separate scene, in inverted commas. But for that one, we just record it together together there's no reason to separate it out whereas for one five eight and for anything that's got a huge number you end up having to go scene by scene and you also can go by version and scene so you can have like scene one which has three people in it

now let's say that those three people can't be in the same room. So you'll have scene one and then you'll have version one which is with this person. Version two which might be with these two people and version three which is this person. So you've got scene one, version one, two, three. Then you have takes within versions. So you have scene one, version two, take two.

Scene one, version three, take two. And then you combine versions and you pick the best take from each version. You combine the versions and then you have a scene. And then you combine the scenes into other scenes and you have an episode sorry i wasn't listening could you say that again the vocal clapperboard basically honestly yeah um people laughed when lydia playing melanie did the clap when she was going to do a recording and so on that's what we literally do like we you literally do markers on tapes and so on but i think elizabeth would agree

that the process of combining all of those is trivial and requires almost no time investment whatsoever and is is almost automated by this point really well i mean for episode 158 it ended up being four hours and eight minutes of recording so some of those were the same scene but you had one like not sasha i think was um yeah she was she was recorded separately yeah and then obviously we had been recorded in isolation and all of those combined so so in the end it was like yeah four hours because i just did a quick check and then of course you're like well for those four hours eight minutes you've also got at least two people on each scene on each record so there's probably like maybe 11 12 hours worth of actual yeah yeah i did prepare myself for a half an hour episode yeah the things bear in mind as well just because from production experience on other stuff this is going to sound

peculiar like for anyone who's like doing this professionally they're going to go that's actually a decent like ratio of raw to thingy but what it is is the reason that we as a company function is that we've paired processes down as much as we can and we keep shaving it and trying to make it more efficient. So bizarrely, for like, let's say for a radio play or if you were doing TV, for instance, maybe not live broadcast, but you know what I'm talking about. Like the ratio, that's not... If you're doing one to four, I think in film,

it's considered pretty good. Yeah, film, I think if last time I checked, average is at one to ten. One to four is like, yeah, you're doing a good job. You're a good director if you're managing 1 to 4. This is significantly higher than ours, but it's also worth bearing in mind this is audio only. We have like 140 episodes under the belt in terms of infrastructure.

So yeah, going up to that, that's what, a factor of maybe a factor of 10 higher than we would normally have relative to the... It's hard to say i mean i guess the average episode where it was like just a johnny episode would be maybe 40 minutes worth of recording yeah that sounds well yeah because the statements they're they're the secret they're the trick like the statements you get maybe 10 minutes more than you'll actually get because it's generally one storytelling take with sections repeated if i've flubbed up a word or that sort of thing i think most dialogue scenes we generally do maybe three four takes if we're struggling yeah that's fair so yeah as a as a rule magnus is

actually bizarrely like surprisingly efficient the wastage isn't that high but i mean obviously that time includes you guys chatting at the start you know what you mean we give you nothing but pure gold like going to get the door because the doorbell's gone never arrange multiple shows to record on the same day yes it seems better on paper but it isn't it just isn't bing bong yeah don't don't bing bong we've removed the doorbell today it's literally not gonna, but it isn't. It just isn't. Bing bong. Yeah, don't. Bing bong. We've removed the doorbell today. It's literally not going to ring. Well, it does mean you get quite happy, nice little outtakes.

I have like a small collection of just doorbell noises. You would be surprised what I've stored in a folder of things that are for me. I'm happy to let it be known to the public. There is a breath library that's been building. We have a breath library for what's happening. Well, this person's in the scene, but they're not speaking, but we need them to feel in the scene. We'll just use some of Johnny Breath 7.

Actually, you know what? This feels more like a Breath 6. That's actually a bit much. But genuinely, we do have stock breath that's built up organically. That's fairly natural because room tone is something that is very consistently needed and used in audio and video productions. Which is why it's a benefit. So we actually record in an unusual room,

which is normally when you're recording vocal work, you don't need this extreme like in terms of sound proofing and baffling and so on because you end up in something called like a null space or like a like dead space i'll be honest i haven't been in that many recording studios that have as many cold iron glyphs embedded into the wall it helps with the resonance mainly um ethereal resonance specifically sure but um so if you're doing like corporate voiceovers yeah you'll be in a null room you know like i come to canada we've got bears i don't know but like you put that in a null room but when you're recording like audio drama and scenes

it normally needs to sound like it's in a room shocker so as a result you just use standard soundproofing which is a little bit whereas we've built this to be as dead as it can be because we're bouncing around between locations and stuff. But it does mean that we add artificial room tone. Plus it used to have Mike as a character. Oh my god. That guy could fill an auditorium without

anything else in it. What a bassy boy. Sandbags are a valid strategy to deal with Mike. Much like an enormous flood, a sandbag is a good way to deal with Mike. Much like an enormous flood, a sandbag is a good way to deal with that problem. How do you apply a sandbag to deal with Mike? You just fuck him with it. Do you want the genuine answer?

You get him to hold it. It absorbs the chest resonance so it doesn't just go boom. Yeah, there's a reason that when we were recording off single Mike and stuff, he used to stand at the back of the single file. Amazing. So that all of the fleshy meat sacks could absorb his resonance. I still remember just lining up in that corridor.

That was, what was it? There was you, then it was me, then it was... There were six of us, I remember that. What was that for? This is like in the early days where we had to do a finale with multiple people, like season one? Yeah, I think it was you, then me, then Eve, then...

Season one then. No, it was season, then me, then Eve, then... Season one, then. No, it was season two. We were in the disco flat. Oh, no, you're right. We were in disco flat, yeah. That would be just before brutal sounds of... Yes, it was... It sounded like a brutal pipe murder.

Yeah, that's it. It was the era of getting my mother to sit on a chair in a corridor under a disco light. Yeah, I remember. So let's run through the list then. I realise I'm going completely off-piste here, but it's what I do. Don't worry. So we have

Setup 1. A clothes horse with some blankets on the sofa in the flat that I was a lodger. Asbestos flat. No, it's way pre-asbestos. So this is clothes yurt in James Ross's

flat because he let me start Rusty Cool Gaming in there and the first episodes of Magnus were recorded there. No, it's way pre-asbestos. So this is Clothes Yurt in James Ross's flat. Oh, God, yes. Because he let me start Rusty Cool Gaming in there and the first episodes of Magnus were recorded there. Yes, I'd forgotten that. From there, we migrated to Asbestos Flat. Sofa Yurt in Asbestos Flat. Which was Sofa Yurt in Asbestos Flat. Which was really weird because it was literally

one minute's walk away from where I had been living a year before. But we thought we'd make weight. And we just sort of missed it, yeah. Then a Spestos gate happened where everything that I owned was destroyed. So after the chaos, we bounced to another place called Twickenham. No, I can say it, I'm not there now. Twickenham Road, which was sort of near but not the same place. So then we were recording there where I literally bought furniture specifically

because it was more useful to record with at that point. That was where we piled, what, five duvets on Lottie? That was where we did. So she could scream at midnight. Yeah, that's where we did screaming until 4 a.m. and none of the neighbours, oh, they heard. They just didn't care. Then after that one, we bounced. Yep.

Then after that one, we had to bounce to, that's Disco Corridor. Yeah. Disco Corridor, because Martin, our head of tech, we found a corridor that he had in his flat. And I was like, yeah, I can make this work. It was nice. It was on the 13th floor. So up on the 13th floor, which was away from traffic. Nice.

Although wind, big problem. Martin thought it'd be hilarious if you replaced the light bulb where we were recording with a disco light bulb. So if you turn the light on while you're recording, it was full at bright greens and yellows it just sort of slowly sadly rotated it was a good disco ball

then we migrated from disco corridor to here but pre-studio here oh when you just pinned a bunch of sleeping bags to a wall and then we then converted my poor father just staring into the staring into the sleeping bag wall he took such a leap of faith

he turned up when it was it was still sleeping bag wall it wasn't even corridor where like your mum was like i understand what's happening here that's fine this is a temporary whereas your dad was like so this is your permanent setup i was like yeah yeah it is put this sleeping bag on okay let's bring this back to mac 158 in specific um lori when alex told you what the episode was going to require what were your thoughts well i don't remember Alex telling me. I just remember looking at the spreadsheet and going, oh, there are 10 scenes and 10 people who all live scattered across the country. Not everyone's in London.

Because it's the cast. That episode happens to have all of the most far-flung people all in the same episode. Faye Cambridge, Ian's down from Manchester. Manchester, yeah. Ben's coming up from Brighton though that isn't that big a thing.

Yeah, we've got that one down to a fine arm. Eve was, I forget where, but it certainly was in London at that point. She was away at that point. Alistair in Reading, your mum.

Oh, yeah. No one was in London! And do you know what else? But the big thing for me, so I had only been producing Magnus for I think three months

oh yeah this was horrendous this was horrendous mid season which I cannot imagine how dreadful that was because you came in to cover the previous

producer because I will say yeah that was Story Sylvester who did a fantastic job oh she was great she basically left to pursue other projects

more power to her and it was hilarious because I know for a fact that story was like we've got this it's all going to be fine and then i was like i'm gonna have to move on at which one i was like story said that we have this little did i think i should probably make sure that that is passed to lower you in some way so i need to put this in the in the on set the record straight story was wonderful and all of the reasons for any difficulty transfer was me this was all me i don't think it's it was there was a bit of a gap between her leaving and me starting as well i think yeah because that's that's my point is yeah i had to produce it for a while yeah and that's when problems start just because you have

so much on right yeah that's it i remember i remember there was a phone call i don't remember why but i was in seven dials at the time i was literally sitting on the little in the middle of the little roundabout when you were talking and we were chatting and this was the conversation where we were like okay well let's we'll have to do a bunch of it like recording separately like this is a this is a was that me and you yeah this was this was the conversation where it's like okay well for this episode we're suspending our policy of always try to have people in the same room um and uh you know it was it was a lovely conversation you're like no i have had a little cry that's probably true the thing that

really put a spanner well there were two things that put a big spanner in the works that i did not foresee was edininge. Oh, great. So I looked at this and we, according to another spreadsheet, we needed to have the recording done by mid-September. And this was July at the time. So I was emailing people, hey, can you come in? We've got some scenes for you. Lovely.

And of course, so many of the guests were in Edinburgh. So that took all of August out. So I was like, like okay that's fine we can do this it is worth explaining so for US listeners there's the is it formally International Edinburgh Festival

okay so there's a whole bunch of festivals at the same time the Edinburgh International Festival is one of them the Fringe is a separate thing

there was the Edinburgh Film Festival at the top on at the same time for a few years. That's now shifted. There's the Book Festival. There's the Deer Festival.

The tattoo's on, so you actually get Americans come over for the tattoo, for example. And they're like, what the hell else is going on? A huge comedy festival. So long story short, there's a massive, massive, massive festival

that happens in Edinburgh. I say one, it's like eight of them, but it uses up a whole month. But there's a thing in the UK, which is that pretty much everyone in the arts will be there in some capacity. And as a side effect, it means that almost all things get made around that month.

It warps the production calendar for everything. The last couple of years are the first first couple of years in 10 years, I haven't been up there doing something with either Mechanisms or some other project. I only stopped basically once the company was running. I miss it a bit. You must enjoy your money, though, because the problem about the Edinburgh Fringe is

whoever goes up there, regardless of what you're doing, attending or performing, you're losing money. With Mechanisms, we did all right, actually. We were a free show, but we sold CDs afterwards. It's like, oh, Fiverr will also get a CD. So a lot of people were like, oh, well, it was free to come in, so we'll just buy a CD. So we actually did all right.

No, I don't miss it. I would mostly be up in Edinburgh with, caveat here, it would be with like six shows or something but it's because I'd be like I'd be creative director on one I'd be resident director on another which is where you just make sure that the show doesn't fall apart but you didn't build the thing. To be fair I did pitch you I did pitch you this

I did pitch you Magnus at the Edinburgh Fringe Oh yeah, I'm eventually going to have to go back but yeah I'm not hugely keen if I'm honest I want to do the fridge. I mean, go there doing something and be aware that it's not... If you enjoy really intense kind of going a little unstable across the course of a month because you're exhausted and stressed

and really busy all the time, if you enjoy that sort of thing, it's amazing. If you don't, it's very bad. But you don't have to do the whole month, though. No, that's true. A lot of folks just do a week or two. I realise we're going off on one again. I would say, as a caveat, it depends whether it is a full professional business thing for you or not.

If it's a full professional, like This Is Your Livelihood, you've got to do at least three shows a day to even begin looking at covering costs plus you then want to have a side gig so for me it was teching other shows and things like that but it does mean that you are genuinely working 12 to 13 hours a day like hard work as well not sort of software i would hate to do it in any sort of professional capacity like it was it was great sort of the seven eight of us crammed into a flat going yeah actually but like the self-contained project where that's your thing you do it and you leave i've done before a while ago was great when you it's like this is me

doing my networking for an entire year in a single month at the same time as doing all of this blah but to circle it back round there's a a reason why the entirety of August is just dead. Just dead every year. Yeah, and it's very hard to book people for August. So the second thing that kind of put a spanner in our works was someone very, very selfishly getting married at the end of September. What? What a joke. Yeah, absolutely. That, of course, takes the studio out of play for weeks.

I mean, no, but that would only be the case if whoever was getting married lived in the house with the studio. Which would be madness, by the way, because London real estate is fractionally like zero, like rent is zero in London. So there's no reason for that. That doesn't make any sense. Gosh, maybe I was mistaken and it was all unnecessary.

Or if like half the company weren't going to said wedding. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was quite challenging to get everyone in the same room and in fact we didn't get everyone in the same room and i we did it was more of a tent but everyone was in the same all right so how do you go about organizing a cast recording of that scale geez doodle polls good start yeah actually i looked back on my emails before coming here just because i wanted to get some dates right and the very first i very naively just sent out emails and then like three

or four emails later oh sweet summer child yeah quite down the chain i was like okay here's a doodle poll please just put your availability in because ah yeah i remember getting that back and you and ben in particular alex just looking at it and be like there is no day there is not a single day both of you can bear in mind there were like 50 options or something because one of the benefits is having our own studio comes with a couple of advantages and one of which is it makes the flexibility plausible this the stuff that we make would physically not be possible if we didn't do our own studio. Like categorically, it's just completely out the window. And we couldn't utilise a commercial studio

on the basis that we record. Well, no, because even things like if someone's late for a recording, great, your recording's shot, which is fine when you don't release the thing until the entire thing's recorded and you have a 16-month production window. We don't.

We're making way too much content for that to be a thing. So you have to have your own. But even then so that means that on a doodle poll it was like 9am to 11am 11am till 2pm

like there were 10 options per day 40 days and you're like yeah no no and of course that makes it even worse

when you think about the fact that Alex has to be here for the recording to happen because he runs the studio so

you won't be able to get in well yeah that for us also. He's got Kespin. He is a lazy cat. Why haven't you trained him yet? He does not understand compression and I don't know why.

Typical. No matter how many times you drill it into him, hit the kibble. I'm like, look, if you balance your EQs, you get a dreamy. He just steals the bag and runs.

Oh, he's a good cat. To be fair, he's quite good on narrative structure now. I've been taking him through some basic scripting lessons. I'm looking at this draft. I really think that we should do maybe six scenes for this. Five. Fine. Three.

So is Casper going to get a co-writing credit on season five then? I mean, maybe. Are you ready for the real dark secret? The cat that's in the Magnus Archives isn't Casper. I think fans know that by now, but still, there may be new people who aren't aware. Casper's not actually that vocal. He's not. He just sort of silently glides up.

And then you're like, oh, hello, Casper. And then he's like, embrace me. And you're like, yeah, okay. Sure. So aside from the scheduling, were there any other kind of difficulties that you ran into yeah honestly this was the first show of this scale that i had produced because i'd come from gaming which because it has been running for so long and is so regular in its recording schedule it's actually yeah it's not i mean you need a producer but it's not it doesn't keep changing exactly as you said it's stable it's it's built to be as boring to produce

as possible yeah so then coming into magnus and you know i'd never produced something i mean gaming is improv so i'd never had to think about the fact that i've booked this recording i have to tell johnny to write that script you know that was that was a thing where I had, oh, no. And then I called Johnny, please tell me you've written this episode. Occasionally there has been a, okay, Laurie, I've finished up this script. And it's been like, oh,

actually that's not the one we're recording next. We need these two episodes. It was a steep learning curve okay that's it's all right to be honest i am i've said it before um i'm a bit of a deadline writer so i'm quite happy being like okay two episodes in in two days yeah sure that's fine leaves me the rest of the week to not do anything why would you tell me that because now i'm just gonna constantly be like so we're recording this tomorrow i mean if you do i'll get it written i won't i mean i won't be good in the recording because i'll be like yes so how long did it actually take to record all the different scenes

oh i don't think i'm the one to answer that i don't know so we're talking from raw audio which was four hours and four hours eight minutes or do you mean time time time span oh like from like from the the day the first scene was recorded to the day below the last one the last one was on the 6th of september because there was also when did the episode drop it was edited by the 21st of September. Yeah, well, Elizabeth has never missed a deadline. I absolutely miss them one day late most of the time. But I don't notice because I don't check until the day after that. Because I assume the producer has put that into their schedule already.

Yeah, they have! I should have looked this up before I came on mic. So Mag 160 was 31st of October. Well, 30th because we released a day early for the early episode. So two weeks before that. 14th of October. Yeah, so mid-October was the episode drop. And we'll talk about some of the other problems on that side in a bit.

Including post. How did we do this? I mean, I came here prepared to look Elizabeth in the eye and say I'm so sorry I couldn't get everyone in the room at the same time I tried so hard

I would genuinely say from first scene of that episode being recorded to last scene more than a month oh definitely maybe pushing two

yeah because I think the Gertrude and Elias scene was recorded quite separately to everything else as well no they weren't but I don't think they were recorded together right no I think Gertrude and Elias scene was recorded quite separately to everything else as well. No, they weren't. But I don't think they were recorded together, right? Really?

Gertrude and Elias. Oh, no, they weren't. No, they weren't. Because they were the hardest of that episode. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't gel, did they? Oh, did they not? When I was trying to match it with other ones, like with Martin, Peter, Elias,

I had the overlap of the people being in the room together who were in the room together. And then I could work with that and that had that natural flow. Oh, was this the only one where it was completely? Yeah, it was two separate ones. And I really found it hard to find whether an overlap would work or, because when you're editing it, I sort of visualize it, right? I've got them in a room and I might think about like,

are they going to pace? You know, I think of it almost like a visualise it, right? I've got them in a room and I might think about, like, are they going to pace? You know, I think of it almost like a televisional film, right? You stop people from teleporting across the room in terms of timing. Yeah, you've got imaginary blocking that you're doing. I found that scene the hardest by far. That's one that I spent way more time on than you would expect

compared to the other scenes. And especially I think that end bit where Gertrude gets shot and the takes that I had. And it was written in the script, you know, in the words that she's shocked, but she's not. But she didn't give any breaths with it. Oh, no. And having fallen, like, in my experience,

when you fall down the stairs or something happens, which is a bit of a shock to your body, you take very short, shallow breaths. So I built in some of that breath works but then afterwards when I noticed that the scripted three shots didn't occur when I listened to the episode I was like maybe that's my fault maybe if like I was gonna say there would have been three shots I don't know two things happened there one was that that is an element but not your fault in so far as like the timings for three didn't work.

Like, they just didn't. For three shots? Yeah. The second thing is, because we were so up against it, I think mentally I made a mental note of, what I'll do is I'll do one shot, and then I'll have him say pity, and then just do two more shots after she's on the ground,

and then I can just dodge the timing thing. Then didn't. That concludes the explanation for that. I do remember listening to it back and going, where's the other shots? Yeah, the timing did not work. I read the script. I've been giving this a lot of thought.

The workaround I had was, yeah, to do the two shots after the fact and be like, it'll be fine. Didn't happen, did it? Yeah, post was a little bit stressful. I don't know what you mean. It was flawless. Okay.

So moving on to some questions about the directing given all the issues with the recordings being so split up like that how smoothly would you say that the actual recordings went intense stares at alex it's a big complicated question because the variation is huge. So once you realise that a recording session is one scene, one version, so you can do multiple takes in a single recording session, but you can only do one version per session. You can't do two versions in the same session, otherwise you just have them in the same room at the same time. So what that means is like between recording sessions is huge variation. I would say that generally speaking, things were better than they would have been if we'd have done them earlier, because a lot of people got used to some of the shortcuts and tricks that we use.

So for instance, early days doing any kind of combat, so like the Daisy Basira and the running and blah, blah, blah was rough. People didn't know what worked. People didn't really know what you were getting at. I'm going to make a bit of an elaborate comparison but bear with me on this journey i'm not as pompous as this will initially sound okay any of you know about like the director who worked on the mad max remakes george miller uh i believe so but i don't know like fury road yeah it's not they're not remakes it's the same guy who did the original

yeah yeah he's done all of them i think i know that he like when he's done it like there's one Because they're not remakes. It's the same guy who did the original. Sorry, Reboot is what I meant. Was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's done all of them, I think. I know that when he's done it, there's one square that you can basically, all the action happens in. Yes, yeah, yeah. So I am not comparing myself to that director. Let's put that to bed.

What I am saying, though, is that he was well known on record, especially for the newer one, as basically the cast didn't get what he was getting at. And a couple of them openly, publicly confessed afterwards. They they were like i was a bit of an ass like did not get what you were getting at i totally see it now it's fine combat in the early days of magnus was a lot like that where people like don't really know what's happening here is that what i don't know what you want yeah yeah a lot of a lot of me saying right can you grab

yourself and shake and people look at me like i'm insane like i'm completely lost the plot it's like no trust trust me on this but as time has gone on people have learned these tricks and they've heard the end result and gone oh okay so that makes you do this and that's the fix that da da da so that went a lot easier that said there were a few, which was time compression was a huge problem, which is that a recording session can be compressed to a point and then no more. And where it's just a case of this was probably the episode most where at the end of a recording session, I would just contact Lurie and go, yeah, Lurie, we were meant to do three scenes, two versions. We have done two scenes, two versions. and it's not a case of okay can we accelerate guys because if you accelerate you're ruining the take the scene is garbage the take is garbage do it again so if you go quick you're doing more takes so it actually takes longer than

if you just cut it off what that means is you would book a recording for let's get three scenes done today and you will get one scene done today and go cool we need an emergency recording to pick it up and then you do the emergency recording and something comes up and you only do one scene not the other two so you need another recording so this is the one where within room everyone was very professional

things were fine I think there was one bit towards the end where I started to lose my temper a little bit which was the recordings had broken was this the episode

where Alistair's dialogue vanished yes no that was 159 wasn't it I forget it might have been 158 I think we had him in because we had him we had. No, that was 159, wasn't it? I forget. It might have been 158. I think we had him in because we had him.

We had him doing 158 and 159. But there was one where I didn't lose my temper at performers, but I did lay down the law in a way I don't normally do, which is all conversation that is not recorded, stop. Now, stop, stop, stop talking. No, now. If we don't record this within the next 10 minutes, the episode will not drop.

Shush, stop. I don't normally operate like that. So that was a bit of a weird one. But for the rest, mostly people started to be aware that we were up against it. And with that comes an element of people don't mess around. And that's not me sort of casting aspersions. It's just that when you're up against it, people tend to put their game face on, you know? Also, to be honest, Alex, you are a good director

and you inspire a certain degree of loyalty, so most people are willing to really go to bat to record an episode when they need to. It is better to be feared than loved and to convince everyone to say that you are loved on audio. I didn't say loved. You, I am a delight. We're back into strong adjectives here.

So actually on the directing side as well, did you learn anything from The Unknowing at the end of season three that was useful for... No! I learnt a lot in The Unknowing, mainly in what you can get away with, none of which was applicable, which is why 158 was a headache. So for The Unknowing,

I knew straight out the gate, hang on, ah, number one, I have creepy circus music in the can. Wasn't originally creepy circus music. It was nice circus music that we then made creepy. Fantastic. But then with The Unknowing,

this is something that I genuinely have had and you can corroborate this, Johnny. We have had sit down meetings where I've gone, right, it's time to learn what is easy to edit and what's hard to edit what's easy to record and i was talking about season five with you a while back and i was like oh this is going to be really tough because there's like loads of loads of proper hellscapes in this this is a transformed world a lot of episodes are going to have like strong unknowing vibes and you're like oh no that's fine that's fine that's fine because 158 the difficulty was it was all in the real world so everything had to sound real and what alex has drilled into me over and over again mainly verbally sometimes physically uh is that things that people

don't know what they should sound like because they are otherworldly are a hell of a lot easier to soundscape than things that people... People know what running through a corridor in a basement should sound like. And the error margin is tiny. People know what it sounds like when a door gets kicked in. Even if it's not true, it's that classic thing that a punch makes a noise. You're weirdly trained to recognise.

We've seen enough films and stuff. Vehicles in space make noise. And you've also got to take into account that some things, you don't need it to sound realistic. You need to figure out what brand of non-realistic people will correctly interpret. Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, that might not be how a door actually sounds

when it gets kicked in, but that is the nut. But you need to figure out which of the noises that people will be like, that's what's happening. Gunshots are a good example of that the secret with with the secret of doing a good gunshot on audio is that you need to really really compress the tail so that the initial bang in a real gunshot an actual waveform you just see a line it just goes bang pops every mic and then there's no other sound so the way that you do audio gunshots as an example is they're not real what you do is you compress the heck out of it so you hear lots of the tail but the initial bang is quite quiet but that's exactly the kind of thing we're talking about so for the unknowing you just put a bunch of

creepy music underneath which is the only time we've done scene transitions where the music swells and comes down because it's allowed because the unknowing is kind of theatrical also uh one thing was it you it might have been you that told me this but apparently when in films they're filming people being on fire, like in an action movie or something like that, they never direct them to act as if they're being on fire because it is categorically too disturbing because they scream. Oh, I didn't know that.

So what they tell them is, imagine you've got a swarm of bees on you. Yeah, that's what they look like. Because they're running about like this. Yeah, because that apparently gets the level where like, oh my goodness, they're on fire. We can watch somebody being on fire and being like, oof, they're on fire without being like, oh my God. So that's why they have the stagger,

which I've known like that sort of, oh, I didn't know that isn't me that's on fire. Because I can imagine with someone with their arms down, running on fire would be just horrifying. No, that makes sense. And actually, don't you tighten up? You really rapidly... I mean, I don't actually...

You're heading out, my gosh. I don't... I mean, I've never stuck around to watch. I know how to treat the issue. I don't know how to... I like to watch. Oh, God. And before we get any creepier...

Yeah, so it's a circle to 158. Although we learn a lot in The Unknowing, the issue with 158 is they are all knowable spaces. So season five is grand. It's just like, oh, you know what? I need the sound of a thousand people screaming. It's like, trivial, come on. Are we heading into spoiler territory here?

A good example, okay, here you go. The anglerfish is a baby slowed down 60 times, I think, and then with reverb and bass boost bass boost added to it it's just a baby going easy no one knows what angle fish sounds like no one cares but the ultimate evil which i have been hating is transitions from one space to another someone is in the archivist's office opens a door steps out into a corridor. That's hours of work. That is absolutely hours of work to get that right. And C-158 is full of stuff like that.

Absolutely. I know people love the phrase chocker. It's chocker with stuff that sounds like, oh, cool. And he's like, cool, that door, that's three hours of work. Oh, no. What happened? Someone dropped their gun. Clock that's three hours of work. Oh, no. What happened? Someone dropped their gun. Clock in two more hours of post.

It's just because everything's knowable, whereas all of the finales up to then have been sufficiently weird. It's like I was worried about the lonely. I was like, Alex, are you going to be okay? Lonely was easy. And you're like, yeah, it's just going to be like a beach sound, and then I'm going to do a bunch of audio effects on it. It'll be fine.

Lonely was easy because I was just like, cool, it's going to be in one space. That's the only rule. As long as it's in one space, we can get this out real quick. I actually have a question, and it's not 158. So it's 159, and it's the only episode where we've got panning of audio. Technically not true. There's a small amount in the unknowing. Oh, is there?

And I was like, ooh, Alex, you made a choice. I wasn't expecting it. The rule that I have always had, which has been unspoken, and is a house-style rule, but I've never had to teach anyone because I did the soundscapes. People are going to build theories on this now I think about it. So the tape sounds are stereo.

All of the vocals are mono. So they are not so bear with me yeah there was an actual tape recorder would record in mono is that yeah yeah yeah so an actual tape recorder recording mono so everything's in mono meaning that it doesn't have any pat it's just flat down the level everything's centered in if you were wearing headphones it's centered in the middle of your head yep okay the tape recorder is in stereo deduce from that what you will all of the effects are in mono as well so like someone dropping a gun someone going through a door whatever

anything that's full post ritual so in like the unknowing that was full ritual style all of the music because it's semi-digetic uh meaning that so digetic and non-digetic digetic means in scene as in like um if someone's listening to a radio in a car and it's on the TV, it's diegetic. If it is non-diegetic, it's like a film score where the audience can't hear it, the characters can't hear it. What, imposed on top of? No, I'm trying to think of, like,

die-jeldrich? No, I'm just kidding. Die-jeldrich is not bad, actually. It's pretty bad. So, semi-diegetic is the one where it's like a character is driving down the road listening to the radio and then the music swells until it's the soundtrack. So The Unknowing has semi-diegetic,

where they're hearing music, but it's actually stereo and it's done the way that Magnus music is. And the Magnus music has always been non-diegetic. So that one bled there. This is on the sort of directorial waffle thing. For 160, because of of that i started to mess around with making it become panned because they're in a post ritual scenario so it should have been beginning to pan a little bit at the start of the episode and then towards the end it

all have gone full like panning and stereo right so we mentioned in passing that ben and alistair were not in the room together to record their lines what are the challenges that come with directing a scene like that honestly directing is not as bad as you might think what it just consists of is having an idea for what the scene is in your head and making extra effort to make things match that so you are the meeting place between these two recordings if you have all the time in the world what you do is you play that recording for the next person who comes in so they have a sense of pacing and blah blah blah blah blah we did do that in fairness for one of the pairings but we couldn't for the

other because the turnaround was too tight i can't remember who it was i think it might have been the gertrude ben one where they had to do it in complete isolation from one another so in that one what you have to do is go tell one person okay this is the way the scene should be and then get the other person to home in on that however i am gonna be honest and say that the art isn't in the directing in that it's just not it's in the editing it's in the vocal edit specifically the directing is just again basically could you do that better better how better in this specific way i'll try rinse repeat sure the vocal edit is one where it's taking something that's a little bit broken and making it not i think what you're really

hoping when you get the files is that the energy between them is the same because i think when you've got someone beside you, you're feeding back the same amount of energy they have. The one scene which I've edited where I was like, oh, God, this is completely mismatched was when Mel is – she's angry at Johnny. Was it surgery? This was after the surgery and she comes to him. When he goes to see her.

And I was like, shit, because you were much lower energy and she is like, you know. I'm going to get you. Yeah, like she's really, really high. And so it was difficult. I didn't know about this one. Did I record this first or did she? This is end of 157, I think. It's around that time.

It would be earlier than that. It would be more like 130s or something. It would be pre-therapy, Melanie. Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about when he goes to see her. When he's like, I'm sorry, and she's like, get away from me. Oh, that post-surgery, right. I remember because that was a thing

and I was really impressed again with you, Elizabeth, because the energy levels were like, whoa! And I remember looking at the script and sometimes you do it with the script. So when I get the edit, so I'll download the script and I get some editing notes from Alex, which will have some time codes for when things happen. Not very good notes, I'll add. Well, it depends whether you're in a scene or not. That's really true. So obviously I go by the script.

I look for if there's going to be any noises that I'm not expecting because sometimes you'll listen through and you'll... Woo! Thanks, Josh. Thanks a lot, Johnny. Just a quick demonstration. Yeah, and the editor, thank you for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No problem. It's fine, Elizabeth will take care of it. She's great. I can only laugh so much about that. I know, right? It's getting old, huh? You know, so you're looking for maybe unexpected things that if you're just listening to people talking

you might just not expect that they're there. Unless there's a specific reaction to it and you're like, oh, it's a gun! And you're like, okay, so you've got to know what's happened. Oh, no, those are a nightmare. But sometimes what you do need to do is in that case, I played with the timing of your lines. So what you'd scripted, I moved it so that it was more spread out with hers.

So you're trying to interrupt her a bit more rather than, and also add in a bit more like of your ums and ahs from other bits so that you're like. I mean, it came out sounding good. You know, just to give you that sort of sense, like you're trying to get to her while she's in the middle of the, you know, I'll say a rant, but while she's in the middle of this high energy. It came out really well.

It came out really, really well because that's what we call, as an arbitrary phrase, it's not a real thing, like Frankenvoicing. Yeah. So, yeah, like Frankenvoicing is where you take something that someone said and you're like, this doesn't work. We'll chop it up and make it work and put it back together like a frankenstein oh yeah well a frankenstein's monster before people complain um but yeah that was his name was adam frankenstein who's i mean you know he was the son of victor frankenstein it works he's still frankenstein we will come back to the thing but

i've got one last question for alex on the directing side how many takes were needed for the elias laugh i don't want to admit this he got it on the first take and he did two more just in case he didn't quite i was the second take no because because he did he did a really good laugh but i remember quite distinctly that there wasn't any relief in the laugh it was all amusement and so like once we explained what the laugh was because he didn't because at the time oh no yeah the thing is he didn't actually know what was going to happen in 160 so we had to explain no this is you've just nailed this you have this is the laugh of my plan is now actually basically complete then it can't it's all work no like as soon as we explained to him what the laugh actually was, he just did it. Which is really annoying, by the way.

His ego doesn't need that. And it's also annoying because villain... He's just won an award. Yeah, I know, I know. Villain laughs traditionally are terrible. Like no one can do villain laughs. Everyone thinks they can, that's what it is. Everyone thinks they've got the villain laugh,

and no one does, and he happens to have it, which is fine. Him and Gertrude. Oh, yeah, yeah. In fairness, Johnny's mom has a fabulous cackle and was still disappointed, because the one that made it into bloopers isn't the full cackle.

That was a little side cackle. A teaser. And that wasn't a 15-seconder, which I have heard. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A 15-seconder at the end of it. You're not bored. You're not going to ask for that now.

I don't have it. It's not recorded. Oh. There is no recording of a 15-second cackle, which I know that your mum is capable of doing. It's fine. You're overselling it. I disagree.

I mean, bring her back for season five. I want her. Just the cackle. We'll see. I'm just saying, we could record the cackle. If we slowed it down like 50 times, put some bass in there, that's a hellscape. Turn it into an EDM.

I know. So moving on to the editing, we've touched on this throughout, but a lot of the comments from the fans have been how good the editing and the soundscaping on this episode were, which obviously starts with the vocal cut. You've touched on a bit about the editing notes that Alex has given you. What were your thoughts when you saw those?

I remember I did have a glance back and I remember there was a piece in red, which is like, just ignore this bit. It's just here for safety, which I duly ignored in the editing notes. And the word strap in was also. Oh yeah, I did. i did write strap in at one point it's because it was like wasn't there one version that was like so this is take 16

and there was one where it just went on and on and i think that was when we uh when the hunters burst in yeah there were a lot of takes of that yeah sorry there were just there were a lot of different and because that was one where we did have everyone in the room so there were five people in the room and like there were just a lot of takes a lot of different energy levels a lot of trying it different ways you are welcome that they were all there yeah no it was it was amazing like especially because that was both ian and fay yeah uh who are two of the harder ones to coordinate with travel. I mean, that was probably more luck than anything else. So basically, I'd just come back from a really great holiday. Yes! Oh, yes!

I had gone to the Pacific Islands, swum with humpback whales, gone back to New Zealand, had a great birthday, been with my family. You good? Yeah, I'm good. And I was messaging you while you were away as I'm like, would you be able to do these edits? We gave you a treat. Yeah, sure.

I'm feeling real chill. That'll be good. I was able to listen to some edits that I hadn't been involved in, which, you know, I jealously want to do all the work, but I can't do all the work. So it does give me a little bit of joy to be able to also then listen to edits i don't know what's happening before for any of it right i just wait until i get an edit oh yeah sometimes something so like it's interesting sometimes like yours is the first audience reaction uh because the performers will generally know what's going on

alex knows and then you'll get and you'll be like oh happened, didn't it? I'm like... I remember 160, I was like, Johnny! No! Dang! I have to tell all my friends to listen to this the moment it drops because it's like, yeah. My brother is still like,

why don't you just end it season four? Because he was like, it's the perfect ending. This is how horrid it is. I'll be honest, there is like, that was something we did consider. But at the same time, I'm really interested in what happens afterwards.

Yeah, yeah. No, so am I. So, yeah, normally I just listen to it as it comes in. Although, obviously, for a script like this, with so many scenes, you have to read it and understand what's going on. You can't just, like, with the statements, you can just start playing it and editing it. But it was pretty intense.

And I just went at it. And then normally what I do is if there's little sections of things where I don't know, because I'm not doing the soundscaping, I have to assume that Alex will need some more time and spots to allow for the soundscaping and also like pulling out little bits that you might want to reuse because you're not happy with. Fabulous habit to habit to have the one that i've chosen so that's kind of how i approached it but it was a it was a big edit i think overall it took me like 25 hours i think it's worth saying since you've been doing vocal cuts or at least as long as i can remember you've been doing vocal

cuts i haven't actually had to go back to raw which is quite rare so normally in mastering because again because of the tight turnarounds and something what will happen is that we'll have the vocal cut and then we'll add in the soundscape and then we'll add in the music over the top and then mastering you kind of make sure that all levels are correct and I'll be like damn it that was a good vocal cut but I need to swap that out because of this other thing I don't actually think I've ever had to go back to raw with the vocal cut that you've done now I think about it which is really rare but it's because you provide those options yeah yeah that makes a massive enormous difference for me exactly so if there's been multiple screams I will edit those ready so that he can just go okay actually I

didn't like that scream that she you know that Elizabeth picked or I need to it's not working for some other reason because of the actual soundscaping I like your notes that come with them so if you're like, I've included this screen because I think the timing's right. Frankly, I prefer Demented 3, but apparently Demented 3 is probably not going to work with the timing. So I'm including it just in case, but if you can fit in Demented 3 or maybe Apocalypse 5, that's a good one too.

I just like the little notes that you get. That's like we always say, Elizabeth is the best. Unless you're another podcast company listening to this, in which case Elizabeth is awful. Oh, she's a nightmare to work with i mean i wouldn't even approach her just you know just problems were there any other challenges that come with the very piecemeal nature of this episode and so many cast being involved i think that you know as mentioned the big thing is actually um so it will take longer to edit because you need to go through just more footage, so to speak. And then whether or not the energy is right between the actors.

I think, yeah, to be honest, I think it's mostly covered. It's just that energy. It will take longer because you're having to go through more folders. Yeah, I don't think I've got much more to add. Unfortunately, there's not really any shortcuts you can say. And then we did this shortcut because we already take all of the shortcuts. We make a lot of stuff. Like, there's not really...

There's no more shortcuts we can make without massively compromising quality. Oh, it'd literally just be cutting scenes. Like, at that point, you'd be like, cool, scenes three and six aren't happening. Sorry. There were a few ones where we were like, look, this scene, we could drop it. It will make the story worse. it will make the story worse it will make the episode worse but if we literally cannot do this scene it would function without it we can drop good example basira and daisy are in three scenes in one fight eight the recording in scene

two originally had daisy saying a bunch of lines That recording was one of the ones that broke. So as a result, we had to do an emergency rewrite and basically redo the scene in such a way that Daisy was listening to hear what was going on. And we needed a shh. So technically that counts as another appearance by Hannah as someone else's character. I thought we managed to get a shh from her.

It ended up being one of the Hannah shushes, I believe. I'm 90% certain it was one of the Hannah shushes I believe I'm 90% certain it was one of the Hannah shushes yeah in your notes it was like there's a scene it's someone else

doing Daisy shush yeah yeah Daisy shush was actually it is all her breathing though I believe because we have that big breath library

I think it's no no it's from there because I don't use that I don't particularly use that you don't use the breath library I've got my own breath library oh okay it's a personal use only I don't use that. I don't particularly use that. You don't use the breath library?

I've got my own breath library. Oh, okay. It's a personal use only. Genuinely, the breath library is mostly for me. It's mostly for me. That was creepy. We collect breaths. Yes, okay. I have annals on store.

There's not many of them, though. He's not been on audio that much. Not a big breather. No, I'm not in studio very often. Rarely breathes, rarely blinks. That's our annal. And the times I've been in studio, I haven't been onher. It's not a huge breather. No, I'm not in studio very often. Rarely breathes, rarely blinks. That's all I know. And the times I've been in studio, I haven't been on mic. No, not really.

Actually, when you've got less characters in, you can just grab a breath, right? If it's only one or two characters, you just grab it from earlier. It becomes problematic when you've got like four characters and you're like, okay, I need to change this up. But, you know, Alex has gone, everyone do a load of breaths. And you're like, Alex, it sounds like an orgy in the scene. Because you've gotten everyone to be like... So they need to have too many than too few. Which was the scene when we were all shouting so much for so long

that we all got dizzy because there wasn't enough oxygen. And it was one of the last ones involving Mike. Yeah. So that probably would have been back in the unknowing. I think it was actually. I think that's when I remember. Oh no, it was when everyone was freaking out because the unknowing happened and we did like five takes.

We did too many gasps. We did five takes or more of like the unknowing starting to happen and everyone going. Yeah, that was it. That was it. Like freaking out. And yeah, by the end we were like, we need to go outside. There's not enough oxygen in this room anymore. Yeah.

Coming towards the end of season three, there was a lot of breathing. A lot. So, Alex, you were doing most of the soundscaping for season four. Were there any specific issues that the soundscaping for Mag 158 raised? What happened in 158? Let's run through this. You talked a little bit about the corridor sounds. Everyone else, by the way,

has done these things where they read the questions ahead of time, they prepared. Listen to the episodes on the way over. I just went, nah. The Not Sasha was released.

Yeah. Okay, Not Sasha releasing. Let's go with that. The Not Sasha releasing was astonishingly easy because Eve's just on it. Eve's another one who can just do villains

straight out the gate. Eve's very much a one-take wonder where she'll do it and I'll be like, actually, it needs to be this. She's like, oh, I didn't realise. Bang, and it's that. So Eve's lovely to work for for that. I know the tunnels are okay because we have a lot of pre-made templates

that we can bring in for like the reverbs and so on. So it's just like add that in, that's fine. Is Helen in 158? Helen's not. No, Helen's not. So the Helen Michael ones are annoying because you have to manually add a bunch of extra stuff in for the laughs and so on that takes a while so the initial scenes are fine it's basically just everyone talking about stuff we did do a

redraft because originally it was in the original somebody like i was like stumbles in going i've started in i have been shot in my head like it head oh no it was marginally subtler than that but not by much it was a bit like I'm going in full season finale mode and then

I did take the opportunity to be like no no corpses stumble into the no because there was a lot of that background fighting

between with Trevor and Julia so yeah you had a lot of those fight scenes going on. Because I think you meant, in your notes, you were like, if you want to do the fight scenes, you can. And then I thought, no. That's a very valid response.

I would say, actually, here's an interesting challenge. Although we try to make it very similar to Julia's and it all holds together and feels quite realistic, normally the violence is fine for me. I don't get affected by horror. I don't get affected by horror and I don't get affected by the sound of violence because it's hard to stay like, oh, that sounds like a hard break

when a piece of celery has just gone mushed and you've seen the celery go mushed, you know what I mean? Also, you kill so many people. I kill a lot of people in my head daily, so at some point, why do you care? But I found it quite difficult doing the sounds of removed hunters and the fighting and so on and i'm happy to like publicly say what it is which is it felt

when i was editing it had a certain school shootery vibe yeah like and that's that's not me making light of it at all i was editing it and because we were going for we haven't really done that kind of combat you know the quite modern with the gunfights, it's normally quite punchy and knifey, which isn't... Much more London. Honestly, it's not as loud as you think. Whereas with that, it was the sound of all the disturbs and then gunshots and then distant people running and blah, blah, blah.

It really hit that school shooter situation, that active shooter situation. And I found that really difficult, which is unusual for me. I normally have that divide. It's one where like writing it i don't think i realized quite how much of that it would carry i was like oh obviously we'll do like content warnings and things like that but for that one that's the first one i've been like really needs this yeah i remember you briefing me before it before it dropped on something yeah it's just it's because it was muffled and so on. It worked in a way that I didn't like.

But I don't think that's in the script per se, that it's like them with guns. You know, they do have guns in the... Because for all I'm like, oh, you know, it's not something I wanted to elicit. I did want it to drive home the monstrousness of the hunter mentality. The fact that it's like yeah no these are people who like attack civilians because they have decided that they

are arbitrarily monstrous i was just going to say though but because they had to be distant as well i think that also would limit you to things that make loud noises right guns and bombs if they're just like beating the crap out of people you're not going to hear that as a distance noise right so you have to make that kind of decision. Well, the other thing as well is that it's one of the strengths that audio has is when it's doing something that's like distant and overheard, audio works better because people are already paying attention. People are normally listening. If you're in your car, 90% of this has been lost on you anyway.

If you're listening with headphones, though, you can hear those things that you're not going to hear when you watch TV or film. And that's because not many people watch TV and film with headphones. I recommend that you do it and try it. It's a completely different experience because the sound is normally done full surround for everything that you're watching these days. It's just that you're not getting the experience because you're pumping it out through stereo speakers

at the other end of the room. Or your phone. Yeah, exactly. Or your tablet. So that I was finding very tricky. The Panopticon was quite easy with one caveat. So the Panopticon is just it's a big echoey boom there's some fun effects in there there is whispering at the lowest end

that humans can discern via electric equipment so maybe 50 of people won't even be able to hear it like that they can't pick it up that's nice so that's in there and it swells at certain points blah blah the footsteps they're a nightmare they're walking along metal grating that takes ages and the reason being you can't just take the sound of one person doing a footstep and then reuse it because what that sounds like is hopping doesn't work so footstep that took a bit of a while it's like oh i've got to do this and i've got to do each individual footstep it's right up there with the bloody chains in the prison on elias i was like oh elas has got to have chains, otherwise it's just weird.

There are at least 80 separate chain cues per tiny little scene because I couldn't find an audio sample that was good to go, so I had to do it all manually. Did I write in the chains? No, that's me. I feel like I didn't write in the chains. I did. I feel like you put in the chains.

You did, that's you. I'm probably not going to put chains in there. It might be a bit much. Full steps aren't difficult. They're just time consuming. Chains are a... Actually, I think I did put handcuffs, I think. Yeah, I think I put handcuffs and you made it full chains.

Well, bugger Elias. Chains it is. Listeners who are early access patrons will know that we have problems come early release so much so that it was delayed by about 19 hours which is the longest delay that we've ever had on that well on the season at least i blame you you said that i should sleep and i was like no and then you were like no sleep that added at least five hours self-care we insist on that but what were the challenges of bringing that all together into the cohesive whole? Obviously, some of that we've talked about.

But was it just a perfect storm situation that we ran into? Or so he's a perfectionist. Perfect storm situation combined with... The fact he's a big perfectionist. Two things that I'm going to... That's not a bad thing, Johnny. Two things that I'm going to share which I haven't before, which is... Number one, I have a personal preference, which is my secret shame that I don't to share which I haven't before which is uh number one I have a personal

preference which is my secret shame that I don't like to talk about I still master in audacity which is the free open source editing suite it's not the best one out there but the reason I like it is you know when people talk about like driving an old car and you can feel the engine in the in the wheel and blah blah that's kind of how audacity feels for me because you can do anything in it but you have to go all the way down to like core principles and build it up yourself you can't just go process this for me click a button and it's done but what that means is it teaches you a lot but it gives you complete control so that's why i like it it cannot handle that many layers 158 all in i had to start using certain workarounds because it just crashes once once you pass a

measly 85 separate layers of audio it just starts to break which is nonsense so the issue that i was running into towards the end is that in the nicest way i i had transcended beyond mundane editing equipment channel that was the problem you see i needed to normal interface was really the only way to get them the nuance now it just kept breaking so we had to do that i had to do a few workarounds and also audio density is a problem in mp3 which is that you have to remember that we have vocals okay cool we then have music okay cool technically within the music there are subtle layers and alterations that get lost in the compression and then on top of that we have the soundscapes then on top of that we have what we call incidental effects so that is like someone

picking something up dropping footsteps or whatever which isn't your ambience and so on then you've got your transitions on top of that blah blah basically the equipment couldn't really handle it i have as good a laptop as you can really get for editing. And even if I swap across to other programs, Magnus occasionally breaks things. But part of that is because I am not leaning into the strengths of them. I'm not going, hey, could you please process this? I'm going, no, I will process it myself because I will do a better job.

Automated process. You do, but it also takes so long yeah and time that you didn't have because of the production issues we'd had earlier down the line as well so honestly 90 of the delay was literally the equipment started breaking um it's that simple so we had to work around that and that was one where it broke once and i was like no we can still hit this it broke a second time went there might be a minor delay then there was a third time where it lost like two hours work and I save like once every 10 minutes because it didn't just lose two hours work it's because it actively corrupted save files that I had and I lost three separate save files that corrupted and I was just like ah kill die we had a meeting on the Wednesday evening

and by this point Magnus158 was about four hours late. And I'd been running firefighting on social media to keep people informed. But I was just about okay at that stage. It's fine. It's coming any second. And this is something that folk won't know. Alex told me it will be done by midnight. And then I said, okay, can you guarantee that?

He was a bit umming and erring i believe the exact phrase was as long as it doesn't break again we'll be fine so i sent out a message and said okay and we'll build in a little bit of leeway it should be here by the morning yeah didn't quite hit the morning because i did insist or we all insisted that alex actually get some rest yeah and yeah the fans were mostly um happy to say that we were practicing self-care it was annoying for me because we would have met despite everything we would have met deadlines even if it had broken once but we had a bit of a catastrophic like software collapse yeah which is why it's like it came out 11 a.m the next morning which not ideal

and we do apologise for, but sometimes the equipment just can't quite take what Johnny has written. In all honesty's defence, before everyone says I brought this on myself, I did attempt to work in a different suite. That suite collapsed faster. Who's laughing now? We're all very sad. But also it's like, you know know so we're doing 40 episodes generally in

one year so that's 12 weeks off there's going to be sometimes a ball that's yeah it does it does build up as well you know i mean yeah i mean coming up to my holiday i was like alex you realize i'm going on holiday i'm highlighting this to you months in advance you going away alex having his wedding, and then August. Perfect storm of events just happened. And also, of course, this isn't happening in isolation. We're recording the rest of the season. Yeah, because 159 and 163. Are there some other shows?

I want to say there are other shows. Oh, Dave. Okay, so let's bring this all. Each of you, what would you say was your highlight of actually working on Mag150 or on the finished product? When it was finished. I like swiftly in there. I enjoyed the big recording where we were all shouting and going,

I don't know, there's some violence occurring. That was fun. I enjoyed the feeling when it was done. Yeah, it was done is a legitimate response to that question. I mean, actually, having everyone in the same room, I think for that big scene with six people, having them all, or was it five, all in the same room, that was a nice feeling.

And re-listening to it on the way here, actually. I don't re-listen to anything ever that we make unless i literally have to it's weird to me no it's fair yeah yeah so um i guess you know being involved in such a big project it's always nice when you deliver something and it feels really good but to be honest the real highlight for me was hearing martin disappear Martin disappear? I honestly That was satisfying right? It was I mean we all love Martin

No He needed booting into oblivion for a while He needed a time out You know for me I have to have a villain

for why am I doing this in my hours I'm like it's always Alex so then Martin gets sad because Martin's the proxy for Alex so you've Hayden Martin's the proxy for Alex, right?

So you've equipped him there. Hey, Martin's great, especially when he doesn't deserve it. Interesting. So from a psychological point of view, you find that you are placing a lot of your own criticisms of yourself onto Martin and externalising your... Martin will always be someone that I've already progressed beyond, so it's OK for me to think less of him. Interesting. How does that make you feel?

Wonderful. Very satisfying. I always like the moments when I get the audio files and you're coming to record, particularly maybe season two, season three, but it's like just before you start to go into Martin, you're like sad and pathetic, sad and pathetic, sad and pathetic. Shrill and we'll begin.

Well, I think we'll draw a line under that I have an ally in Elizabeth Anil can just hear all the work he's going to have to do on the Discord A thousand voices cried out It's why he doesn't really hate Martin And before we have to spend an exorbitant amount on therapy bills, I think we will draw this episode to a close. Thank you very much for joining us.

Oh, no, we've got to ask you, Anil. What was your favourite part? What was your favourite part? Was it midnight on the day of release? I bet it was. Actually, I will say that firefighting and keeping people informed was not my favorite task um of just having to get running updates from you on that unfortunate jobs there yeah um but in terms of

what was my favorite actually seeing the fan reaction for how much effort had gone into it because i was getting the running update of the difficulties behind the episode, actually seeing the finished product and seeing everybody's amazing reactions to how dense it was, how much plot there was, how much emotion went into that episode. And I think it came out fantastically. And it also helped be a cap on, well, not so much a cap, because 160 is the real cap but in terms of an emotional high for going into the lonely on 159 and then the end of the world on 160 for everything

that had come today because we were getting a few complaints about or not complaints per se but we were getting a few comments about how the beginning of season four was running a little slow it was a slow build it's a weird one because actually if you look at the amount of plot that happens and the amount of stuff that happens in season four it's actually almost like it's like twice as dense as season three like there's loads of actual plot stuff happening all the time it's just that because emotionally it's dealing with loneliness and isolation and these very quite low energy but intense emotions, it feels slow. It feels like, you know, if you actually map out the plot points,

it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But, yeah. How they come across. Yeah, it comes across as very slow. But then 150 to the end is a massive ramp up in terms of feeling. Okay, so yeah, the fan reaction is basically my highlight. So thank you very much for joining me. Thank you very much for listening.

I hope you have found this somewhat enlightening. Such tangential. We will see. This has been very useful for me, actually. This is a debrief. But here's an insight into exactly what you do so that I can hopefully make your lives easier. We are a coordinated company, honest.

Yeah, but we haven't had such an in-depth discussion about one episode before. This has been great for me. Sorry, Alex, who is this? A figment of your imagination. Don't do that. That's not funny for anyone listening or me, so just stop. Okay. Thank you, everyone. No. Don't do that. That's not funny for anyone listening or me,

so just stop. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. This episode is distributed by Rusty Quill

and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial share-alike 4.0 international license. For more information, visit RustyQuill.com,

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