Hi, all:
Although I joined Stage 32 a while ago, I haven't been active before, and so I'm taking this opportunity to (re)introduce myself. Also, I'm working on a new project that I'd love some feedback on.
For two years now, my colleague Julia Warren (https://www.stage32.com/profile/826266/about) and I have been creating a podcast of audio plays called Tales from the Penny Bloods, adapting nineteenth-century British fiction. I'm based in California and she's in London, working together to create one 60-minute episode monthly. I collaborate with a local radio station (KCBP-FM), which provides studio support and airs our shows, which we also distribute on Spotify and Apple as podcasts, and on YouTube and TikTok as videos.
I mention all this because I know there are many others out there creating audio play projects, and I'd love to "chat" about the joys and challenges of working in this genre and format. Issues like casting, engineering, music, effects, promotion, whatever.
If this sounds interesting, why not touch base? BTW, I've posted a video we distributed to mark our one year anniversary (https://www.stage32.com/profile/817881/about). Check it out to see what we do, and let me know what you're working on.
All the best!
-- Arnold
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Hi, Arnold A Schmidt. Hope you're doing great! I just subscribed to Tales from the Penny Bloods on YouTube. I'm gonna check out an episode.
I'm working on two projects for Stage 32's November Write Club (finish a feature script and outline another feature script).
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I really enjoy audio plays Arnold A Schmidt, always have. Theater of the mind!
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Yes, I love that notion of "theatre of the mind." Dramatizing resembles, but differs from reading a novel (though it feels a bit like listening to an audiobook). Of course, the audio episode makes choices that the reader can't control -- we decide what the characters' voices, their environment, etc., will sound like. In that sense, we limit the listener's imagination a bit, which, let's face it, is almost infinite when you're reading and imagining everything whole cloth in your head. But of course, we go on to enhance that imagination by creating the episode's world and let the listener enter it. It feels a bit paradoxical, in a way. Cinematic, but w/o the visuals :-).
although we add in visuals as well - we've been experimenting with AI to (re)create 19th century scenery and ambience for the Youtube/Tiktok versions, and of course for social media. I like to think that audio does create a whole world that you can 'see' in your head...
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Here's an earlier favourite - it's done well in festivals, and picked up over 5,000 views on Youutbe (still trying to figure out the algorithms on that one! ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sq22b54a-4