alexanderdanner.bsky.social
Writer of eclectic things, sound designer of audio drama podcasts.
Co-creator: Greater Boston.
Scriptwriter: official ElfQuest audio series
Sound Design: What's the Frequency?; Unwell; The Amelia Project.
The best things in life are blue cheese
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498 followers
252 following
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This feels like it should be obvious, and yet it's still so tempting.
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That's fair. Even for that, there's definitely things you can do that let you be around people without necessarily obligating you to interact. That what the work I've been doing was like the first few months, until I found my way to one of the more social stations. But it was still nice!
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Seriously. I hadn't really gotten myself fully back out into the world since lockdown, and have definitely been feeling lonely. So I started doing some regular volunteer work with an organization a former student recommended. It's not hard, it just takes a little effort!
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I love this movie! Our S4 mid-season finale of @greaterpodston.bsky.social borrows significantly from it, though with the foreman's character inverted in intention.
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(This is not a callout post. I've done it to myself plenty of times. It was one of the biggest Lesson Learned in producing our first season of @greaterpodston.bsky.social. Fewer conference rooms, more bowling alleys was my mantra for Season 2. But I still sometimes create this problem for myself.)
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But the most important thing was that giving the character some Business helped embody the character--it gave a character that exists only as audio a greater sense of physical presence. That's super valuable!
And it's good for the writers to already be thinking about this at the script stage.
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It also allowed for an emotional response by Jack to be amplified--when presented with information that startles him, he loses control of his shuffle and sprays cards into the air--a variation on the spit take, but with less...spit.
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It works because Jack had earlier mentioned a predisposition for gambling--I wasn't inventing whole cloth, but drawing on the established character as scripted. But the sound of the episode really gained tension for giving Jack something physical to fiddle with.
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An example of this is the @theameliaproject.bsky.social episode "Jack." It's a simple interview setup, throwing back to the early days of AP. But it's also a bit long to leave it at just voices. So I invented a tick for Jack--when he gets agitated, she takes out and shuffles a deck of cards.
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As a sound designer, I need to create sonic interest in each scene, even where characters are just talking. It's quite common that audio scripts leave physical details out completely. Then it's on the SD to figure out what actions we can safely invent for the characters to flesh out the scene.
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That's an impressive head of hair for a goldfish.
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Like, half the reason they want this is to have an image that counters the stereotype of Italians as violent, mobbed-up criminals.
My guys...this is not helping.
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Didn't "Who Wants to Work for a Billionaire?" already get made? It had a bunch of seasons, but I'm pretty sure it got cancelled after the host became president.
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That doesn't mean you can't use humor. My olfactory precognition story, "The Woman Who Could Smell The Future" (soundstoryteller.com#smellthefuture), is full of humor, but is also a genuine exploration of imposter syndrome and undervaluing oneself. Finding the serious within the unserious is key.
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If I were more knowledgable about Russia and thought I had worthwhile comment to offer, "Vladimir Poutine" would be seriously tempting to me.
But the trick *and* the challenge of working with deliberately bad ideas is to approach them seriously, not just make random gags out of them.
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***Using Storymatic with students, I once drew the card "a deaf person" together with "a person with a speech impediment." Now, an actual deaf writer might be able to make something personal and beautiful with that. But for me or a random student? I put those cards back and drew again.
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***CAVEAT*** Though ideas aren't inherently bad, some ideas might be wrong *for you*. For instance, if you're white and know nothing of the undocumented experience, maybe don't try to write American Dirt.
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Where you start hardly matters, so long as you chain thoughts in an interesting way. That's why story prompts like Storymatic or @storyenginedeck.bsky.social work! You just need something to make the page not blank. That's all ideas are for. A few words picked at random do the job.
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"Spatially, the parens are opposite ends of a house. The scenes all open in Dad's office and close in Mom's office. Mom and Dad are the parens enclosing the kids. Mom and Dad never talk, so the kids have to carry messages back and forth between them, so they appear in both halves of the play."
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"Parens. is a fun word. Just one letter off from "parents." Let's use that. And parentheses imply a structure. Let's do nested scenes. Go forward in time, opening scenes in the first half of the play, then backward in time, closing the scenes in the second half."
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Process on that last one: I was lying on a futon at my parents' house, thinking about a punctuation mark. "The abbreviation is odd, though. 'Parens.' I should use that as a title for...something."
That's it. The "idea" was a one-word title referring to punctuation. It became a full-length play!
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Some ideas I've executed:
* Olfactory precognition
* Someone really wants to destroy a crystal ball for petty reasons. (<-Eventually became part of @greaterpodston.bsky.social, now headed for season 5)
* "I like parentheses." (<-Became my creative thesis for my MFA. Yes, really.)
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Ohhh, that's amazing! I LOVED his Master, and honestly thought he gave a performance that easily could have earned him a turn as the Doctor himself.
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I'm not sure what my mom's favorite episodes are, but next time I talk to her, I'll ask and report back!
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I absolutely love the sequence where he was possessed by Lucifer, and played the role so clearly as *Mark Pellegrino playing Lucifer.* He had me dying with how recognizable Pellegrino's performance was in Collins' performance, verbal and physical tics alike.
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Oh, I'm a terrible one for picking out favorite individual episodes of anything! But as a throughline, I love how much the writers clearly enjoy writing for Mischa Collins. Anything that lets him show of the range of his character work is a delight.
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I'm on hold for the last season, as my mom made me promise I'd wait until her next visit and watch it with her.
(My mom is the biggest Supernatural fan I know, and she's been trying to get me to watch it for years. I only resisted because 15 seasons is a LOT to commit to. But it's a blast!)
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Oh god, yeah, that is definitely a "hold it until it's worth the trip" situation, especially if you've got a good writing flow going!
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The list of things these people misunderstand is long, and really only just begins with:
* Metaphors for humility
* Humility as a value
* The iconicity of the scrappy mutt
* Representation of traditional middle American domestic life
* Literally anything at all about Superman
* Who's a good boy?
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My brain won't even acknowledge how bad I need it until I hit a stopping point. Actual exchange I've had with my wife:
B: I'm going to shower, do you need the bathroom?
Me: [Panicking] Uhhh...uhhhh...I'm in the middle of writing an email and can't focus enough on your question to know the answer!
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Oh heck yeah!