The Magnus Archives - MAG 80.3 - The Making of Magnus

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

Join Alex, Mike, Anil, Martyn and Ben as they discuss what it takes to get an episode of The Magnus Archives from the page to your ears.If you'd like to support us, head to www.patreon.com/rustyquillCheck 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/subscribe.Please rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear. 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, and welcome to a making-of special of the Magnus Archives. Obviously, I'm Alex Newell, director, and I play Martin, and I have with me today... Anil Gudi, community manager. Ben Meredith. I play Elias Bouchard, and I do a bit of admin on the feeds. Martin Pratt, I'm the CTO, and I do all the tech stuff. Not Martin, the character.

And I'm Mike Lebeau. I play Tim, and I'm also the lead editor. So what we thought we'd do is help describe for people what the making of consists of, because we talk a lot about the writing, and we sometimes talk about the recording and the performance side a lot, but we don't tend to dive much into the actual nuts and bolts, the mechanics of what it takes to take what is effectively a script on a page and turn that into the show that you know and love, something that appears in your feed when you want it to and so on.

So with that in mind, we thought we'd go through sort of point by point and explain how it is that we make these shows. So starting at the thing that everyone does know, obviously, is the script. We're going to go ahead and assume that people know that scripts have to be written, that Johnny writes the scripts, and we are presented with a script. This is what will be recorded. And with that, we are able to start doing things like the logistics and planning the recording dates, casting, and so on. So I'm not going to dive into that. Similarly, we do casting next. I'm not going to dive into that. Similarly, we do casting next. I'm not going to dive too hard into that because we have answered that in the Q&A. Suffice it to say, we get the script, we cast the roles based on people who we think would fit the part,

we get them to send in recordings, go, oh yeah, that sounds about right. And then we cast the roles and then we get into the recordings. And it's from here that we're going to start digging a bit more into it. So with that in mind, uh mike and ben both of you have sort of taken part now in quite a few recordings both as tim and elias would you be able to walk us through what from your perspective a sort of standard recording looks like well i mean what we've now got the studio so we're all sat around the table which is great this is yeah it's much better than it was before yeah we did a recording today and we all got to sit down we weren't all huddled in martin's hallway uh surrounded by a duvet that keeps falling over um or underneath a yurt made of uh blankets in pre early days yeah still very warm um but effectively i guess we go through the script and we make any edits that need to be made

because of how people speak and ideas that are had during, which doesn't happen too much, to be honest. And we'll do a read-through, right? So we'll have a look through the script and then we'll read it to each other just in normal speaking voices and then in character to make sure that if there are any points of contention, we can iron those out. Or typos, that's a common one.

Typos is another thing, yeah. It's unbelievable just how much a typo can throw you off when you're reading through a script. Oh yeah, completely ruins. There's lots of, I mean, we did one today where we changed something and then changed it back and every single time I got to that line, I just went...

So once we've done the read-through, what we do is we get everyone allocated to each of their individual mics and we set all of the mics running simultaneously as we are now actually so once we've done that and we start doing these takes we'll do one take or two take if it's a normal statement i'd say normally what we do is we do it in a single take but we stop and start so we'll we'll record a paragraph stop maybe re-record that paragraph or carry on and then work our way through in a choppy way rather than doing one huge whole episode stop and then reset a whole episode again because we tried that and it didn't really work as a way of functioning really yeah i mean podcasting is not like radio

no you have to operate in a completely different fashion yeah absolutely and to be fair i mean having gone through this process a few times i mean all the guys who are in the cast like now we know each other's styles a lot better so we can start doing fewer takes every time we come in and we know how we're going to react to things we know how we work with each other so that's it's sped up the process quite considerably yeah absolutely so the only time that that really changes is when we get a guest in so part of being a guest is that we have to sit them down and we brief them on um obviously who their character is and sometimes if they're going to be a recurring character we have to walk them through you know what kind of arc they're going to have give them all the spoilers give them all of the

spoilers and then force them to uh as far as johnny has written and then force them never ever to reveal what they've they've learned here until it's already common knowledge etc and yeah the recordings generally speaking we can record up to i'd say about four episodes in a day more than that is unusual but it can happen but we try to record about once every two weeks and we'll record about four episodes that we can build up a backlog nice and quickly guest recordings can slow that down a little bit just because you know people need to get used to the setup and simultaneously we've not worked with them before so we try and arrange things in a way that suits them but skipping ahead we'll say that we've got the recording the recording is done yay so everyone was really good everyone was brilliant we all done

a really good job yes lots and lots of raw audio now that's the thing is whilst we have an audio recording let's say a 20 minute episode can run at 40 minutes, 50 minutes of raw audio sometimes. And that's not actually a bad recording. That can be just a good recording with lots and lots of retakes because we want to get it perfect. And with that in mind, we then save that

and make it available to our team of editors, of which Mike was lead editor for the entirety of season two of Magnus. So with that in mind, walk us through. You have received a large amount of raw audio in your lap how do you then turn that into a fully fledged episode that we can pass to martin for release well the first part of the process is to get a pan and put it onto a medium heat um and usually it cooks quite well on one side before

you flip it over onto the other for about you you know, after about 30 seconds or so. That's if you want it pink in the middle. You start with the left side or the right side? Got to start with the right side first, I find. So no audio ta-ta then? No, not in this case. I mean, we haven't got the budget for that yet, but we're working towards that. And as you know, in the Patreon stretch goals, that's kind of where we're at.

What an excellent example of the kind of thing that can turn up in raw audio that you need to remove in order to get a fully-fledged episode out at the end of it. So Alex will usually pass me the episodes in bulk, and we do this through online drives, because that's just the easiest way for everyone to be able to access the audio as and when they need it. Before we were able to bring on other editors when I was back in the beginning of season two, it was mostly Alex and I who were doing all of the editing together. And so I would do the first pass. So I would look through the audio, find the silence gap that we'd prepared at the beginning, use that for background noise removal. Once we've done that, we clean the audio a little bit using a couple of tricks that we have up our sleeve and make sure that each bit of the audio is sounding nice and leveled.

And we make sure we take out any top end or bottom end noise. And also we work on the actual waveform itself. We normalize it to make sure that it's all kind of playing at a standard volume level and there's nothing there that will aggravate or annoy any of our listeners. And then once that's done done we start cutting it together yes so what's worth bearing in mind in this is that when you're editing an episode we actually split it into sort of three parts i'd say really which is vocal cut is you take your audio and you get the vocals you get what you want there you get it laid out correctly you get the timings right

and you get it sounding like someone's speaking it you know without retakes etc yeah the second layer that again i'll pass to mike when we go into a bit more detail is we we put the music in we put in ambiences and soundscaping and all of that and then the last stage is the sort of mastering which is realistically it's just going through and tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until it's just right but let's say that we've got our vocal cut together what's the next step well once everyone's sounding as beautiful as they can possibly do alex or horribly but in a good way horribly but in a good way also uh we have some uh music tracks which are produced by our in-house music producer sam sam the music man and he's your title yeah yeah he um he's developed some tracks uh specifically

for season two so in season one we had uh some tracks some tracks specifically for season two. So in season one, we had some tracks that were developed for season one. But in season two, we wanted to kind of give it a little bit of a different feel. We wanted something that was a bit more dynamic. And so we worked on producing a set, a series of tracks that work together, no matter what order you put them in, which was quite clever on his part. Yeah. So they're all like for anyone who knows their music, they're all in compatible keys,

they're all in compatible time signatures and that kind of thing. So you can layer them up as many times as you want and they will all still fit together like a jigsaw. So some are more bassy, some are more treble-y and there are some that are kind of middling. So you've got your upper, middle and bass and then you just sort of use your use your ear really at the the key points to try and make sure that the uh the music isn't overbearing but is also trying to emphasize the

specific parts of the story that it needs to so if a monster's chasing you chuck in a little bit of treble or dependent on the type of monster maybe some bass and then you work it through all the way through until the key crux of the episode to quote sam sam the music man good music is invisible in that it's there and if it was missing you'd notice but when it is there you're not really paying attention to it because if you're paying attention to it there's too much going on and that's the hardest part it's really yeah that's the hardest part about editing the music for magnus because getting that striking that balance between things being not quite visible in terms of you're not focusing on the music but being present that's the that's the trick and we only really know that we've done that once we go through the mastering stage um where that's sort

of where I kind of pass it back to Alex and say hey what do you think of this the thing to bear in mind as well is that at the start it was just myself and mike and now we have um we've had a dedicated team working on it we've had someone working on vocals we have someone working on music and it's all been a lot more complex but a lot more streamlined as well and it gets passed eventually to myself for mastering what mastering consists of is it's always easiest when the director is mastering because the director knows what it should sound like ideally before they've heard the episode you know you have a clear idea of what it should sound like what bits should be silent what bits should have a loud noise to them what should have soundscaping what shouldn't basically what we'll do is we'll go through and it'll tweak one little

tweak here one little tweak there but through every single second and when i'm saying a tweak i'm talking sometimes we'll shift a vocal performance a tenth of a second i've spent 10 20 minutes before getting that tenth of a second i've spent 10 20 minutes before getting that tenth of a second right because that edit's just not quite sitting right and then one thing that i've been tending to do as well is i'll do the soundscaping and that's one that can take a long time as well so with that the way that we've been functioning is we'll take either some foley rarely but normally we'll make use of um creative commons um available foley that other people have recorded uh we tidy it up we basically pass it in some ways through all of the stages that you would a normal

edit and then we layer them together until you've built your soundscape so that sort of falls under mastering at the moment but long story short once all that's been assembled we have a finished file let's say that we then export as an m3. And that is our package product. That is our we have an episode here. And at that point, it gets handed to Martin and Ben, between the two of them, really, because Ben, you handled the uploading and so on, and Martin sort of set up all the infrastructure. So between the two of you, can you walk through what happens? We have just handed and put on the sort of servers and the drives ready a finished magnus episode on time and and and wonderfully in time for release etc that's a lie and you know it so what happens next well i don't know martin you want to start

off with the sort of the foundation well yeah first of all there's the the initial setup of our systems we've gone through different ways of hosting audio. We've moved around a lot. Yes. And there's the between stages where you have to take all the audio previously and move it to the new system. So we've done that now at least three times. So what are those systems doing? So they're doing a number of things. One of the things they're doing is hosting an RSS feed, which is what everyone is subscribed to. So that's just a big list of a format called xml that just has a big list of episodes and they're also hosting the audio files themselves so that's just a file itself so your rss feed is more like for computers it's a written set of directions yeah leading you to the files yeah

in fact the directory yes so both of those are actually hosted on acast and it makes our website it means our website is a lot lighter and does very little essentially and just points and says oh yeah the rss feed go to go to acast they know all about that so pretty much the heart of everything comes down to that rss feed which is yeah that set of directions so from the website if you play something from the website actually what you're doing is you're clicking a tool that just goes to that directory goes oh this is where the file is and then plays it for you so that's pretty much the the core of what everything holds around where it's whatever like regardless of what podcast player you're using all the podcast player is doing is checking the rss feed and yeah downloading the episode when the rss feed says it's here and that's the same for

all podcasts like all podcasts that are running as far as i'm aware that's the only way that you can really do podcasts itunes is so tied to the format that i think it's basically like if you when you're hosting a podcast it's an itunes podcast and that's just the format that you use even if you're not necessarily listening to it on itunes if there's one piece of advice for anyone who's wanting to do a podcast is it is so much easier to use one of the big like systems so libsyn's the most common one because it does it all for you and you can put it on there and it will handle a lot of the sort of admin of getting your feeds added to other places or you could do it yourself like we did figure it all out but we know how it works now

which is good well the other thing is also if we are not on your podcast feed of preference or platform of preference do let us know we're new ones pop up all the time and we don't necessarily know them all and it also helps if if there is a particular platform you want just tell us and we'll add it but the audience are saying but annil how do we get in touch with you well you can get with get in touch with us on Twitter at TheRustyQuill or email us, mail at RustyQuill.com. We have a Facebook page and we also do scour various other forms of social media. But it is probably easiest to find us on Twitter or email. Genuinely speaking, though, if you're having technical issues with a system, let us know. I mean, don't get me wrong.

I'd say the majority of the time it's not an issue with the way that we're running things, which is great, but... Try turning it off. But we do need to know, so do let us know if you're running into problems. Tweet me and I will basically drop Martin a line and basically bug him until he either gives me an answer or the problem is fixed.

There is one exception, which I'm going to address now and we have addressed previously, is Google Play play google play is not currently available in the uk and for reasons that make no sense to anyone when you make your rss feed it has to be tied to a real world country basically we are tied to the uk because we make things in the uk and what that means is that google play is not available for us when it is available we will be available on there but who knows when that will happen so similarly with spot, we are working on that one. Sure. That's sort of our infrastructure. So that's the sort of nitty gritty nuts and bolts of how things

go together. Ben, you're really at the moment, the person that I'm handing these finished files to, what do you do with it when you've handed a finished file? Yeah. So it usually turns up in Google Drive and then I have to upload it to two places uh one of that's the patreon um which is patreon.com forward slash rusty quill um and the other one is acast so acast have their own back end and basically what i've got to do is um upload both those things uh make sure the adverts appear in the right place so although if you want them without adverts come to the patreon because it has no adverts on it so that's good that's the reason for it that is in fact the reason for it and basically just make sure i've got the title right um that i have credited or well um alex keeps a big google doc with all of the credits and stuff so because we're using creative commons effects yeah part of that is that

almost always they ask for attribution which is where you say this person gave me this effect this is where i can get it and if you actually look in the show notes for any magnus episode anytime we've used an sfx there's always either a direct link to the thing, or we'll mention that it's previously credited artists, because shocker, some people are good at it, and we use them so much that we just have a massive list that you can just go look at via the show notes. Yeah, and I just compile the show notes for that, and yeah, credit anyone that needs crediting, make sure that all the patrons for that week are in, and then just basically scheduling it. What happens next? Anil. It's sat there. It is ready to go.

Assuming you have subscribed, it should be waiting for you when you get up or when you get home, depending if you're in the US. I will then do a shout out on social media and then I'll go on the forums and you will get a dedicated thread to the episode. After that, I'll then give it a couple of hours

and throughout the day, I will then do social media sweeps just to keep an eye on what people are saying, see if there are any problems with the episode. Then check the Reddit. We do have a dedicated subreddit for Magnus at r slash the Magnus archives and just follow the conversation. See if people like the episode, see what they are talking about it. Have they delved into the conspiracies and the red string behind it? We'd definitely recommend listen to the episode first, then go on the forum about it. Yeah, that is a good idea.

So, yeah, see what the discussions on the forums and subreddit are going. And then also, like, do a sweep checking what the Tumblr community are saying about it. Proper shout out to the Tumblr community and what they are doing with... Like the amount... With everything that we're doing. Yeah, the fan art, the stories. And I will say here,

those of you who've listened to the Q&A will have heard Johnny say that he doesn't read any of the fanfic or anything like that. And myself, I don't either. And neither does Alex. No one who's generating story read the fanfics. We get to.

I will say that I will. I'm really interested to see what you guys have come up with the fan art is amazing and the fan like we're really we're really really interested to see how you guys have have interpreted the episode one thing that i'll mention at this point as well is we are always on the hunt for visual artists and we're always on the hunt for new people to get involved if you've done some fan art and you think it's great yeah like if you want to just release it like in tumblr and keep it out of our site that's and we're always on the hunt for new people to get involved. If you've done some fan art and you think it's great, yeah, if you want to just release it in Tumblr and keep it out of our site, that's absolutely fine. But similarly, if you want us to see it, send it us.

And if you're sending us stuff that's great, we will come and we will message you and be like, that's really great. We won't come to your house. We won't come to your house. I think it is also important to say, yeah, if you're doing fan art and you're not a professional artist and you're not doing it,

you're doing it because you want to do it and not as a job thing, also send it to us because it's really cool. Oh, yeah. I saw some Elias fan art, I think, for the first time with the brutal... Sounds of Extended... Yeah.

Sounds of Extended Brutal Pipe Murder. Which comes from the transcript, which, and again, transcripts you can find on our Patreon page. So we'll just do the transcripts, as in very, very quickly, other things that we have to do regularly. So we have to generate transcripts and other patreon bonus material patreon content is something else that i also produce so um again those of you listen to the q a will uh also know that i am the writer for martin's poetry and that gets released

uh every so often on the patreon feed i also do the transcripts and we release those for free on the Patreon feed, both in a normal format and in an accessible format. I will say one thing Alex did mention talking about communities not wishing necessarily everything to be shown.

If you are on Tumblr or even on Twitter and you don't want us to look at or feedback on stuff that you reproduce, we do have a tag for do not archive so you can use that and you can be sure that this is not getting back to the creators at all yeah and i think that's basically it i mean we can't dive into every single little thing because that

will take days of like so much time but it's Delicious content. I haven't told you about my... The fans want to hear this. I haven't told you about my Flambé episodes yet. But I think we'll wrap up there. So that was a very, very quick walkthrough of how we go from script to what arrives in your podcatcher of choice. As we've said this before, and we'll say it again,

if you want to get these things automatically sent to your podcatcher of choice, if you want the episodes waiting for you when you wake up in the morning, remember to subscribe. You can go get them manually and you can go fetch them, but honestly, there's so many easier ways of doing it if you just use one of the podcast services. Or again, you can look at it on the website and stream it from there if you'd prefer, www.rustyquill.com, but subscribing is easier. If you haven't already, leaving a review on whatever

service you use to access the episodes makes a massive difference for us. A lot of people underestimate how much of a difference that makes. It literally determines how visible we are on these services so that when new people are looking for a podcast, we're there, we're waiting for them. The reason that we're so visible on iTunes is because so many people have taken time to review on iTunes, but that's not the only service out there. If you want to do us a favour and it doesn't cost you anything apart from a little bit of time leaving us a review will make a massive difference for us and then the last but not least thing is spreading the word we have no marketing budget we we are not spending money on posters and on adverts and promos the only reason that anyone has heard of us is because one person heard us when that's quite good and then told other people

that's that's how we've been functioning. That's how we've got to where we are. So the biggest favour you can do is recommending us to people until Martin finds a way to entirely automate the listening process so that now no listeners are needed. Yeah, that's going to be the best way that you can really help us out. Just make the podcast listen to themselves. I mean, that's the truth.

Brilliant, barbarous audio. And not just Alex. It really glans my heart when I see somebody say, ooh, have you heard the Magnus archives? And also, I mean, from the editing team's

perspective as well, whenever we look at reviews that are left about the podcast, we always feel a little bit better knowing that, you know, if people are enjoying it, then what they're enjoying, or if they're not enjoying it,

how we can make it better. Tell us about the production value. Throw some love to the editors by far it's the hardest least rewarding job here it's it's really difficult and takes ages and really dedicated but make sure you say elias is brilliant so i think we'll close up there but uh thank you all for coming and talking about sort of the making of and we look forward for season 3 and we hope you all enjoy the trailer which should be incoming to you very soon Woo! Bye guys

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