Hi, We're Recording a Podcast... But Like Nobody Can Be in the Same Room at the Same Time.

Hello friends,

We hope this update finds you well! Since we last chatted, we did a virtual watch party of Wayward Guide with the cast so they could finally see the series and get reacquainted with their characters (there are A LOT of accents in this show!). Believe it or not, aside from the three of us, Benji, Matt & Mark, Clark & Pierce, and Justin NO ONE ELSE had seen the entire series. To be honest, we were a little nervous to share it. It was like finally telling your friend a secret that you've been dying to tell them FOR YEARS. A mixture of terror and delight! And while it would have been fun to all be together, it was still an absolute blast to reconnect with the cast and some of the crew over Zoom and see their reactions to the almost finished product.

PODCAST PRODUCTION

We just completed our 9 days of production on the Wayward Guide podcast! After a lot of planning as to how we could execute this in the absolute safest way (while still bringing you the best product possible), we landed on four recording techniques:

THE STUDIO

Like many journalistic podcasts, the narration in Wayward Guide is the backbone of the storytelling, framing all of the scenes and creating the through-line of the journey. All the narration from Artemis and Paul needed to be captured in a completely dead room to give it that crisp, professional grade audio we've come to expect from the highly produced shows we love. So, we recorded Mary Kate and Steve individually, on separate days, in a sanitized sound booth. While the sound engineer would normally be right outside the booth, we had ours set up in the hallway for increased distance to mitigate risk as much as possible. The TCB were remotely connected to the session so we could both hear the microphone feed and give direction through the actors' headphones. It was odd at first and took some getting used to, but once we got into a groove it was fun to hear the words we wrote finally taking shape off the page. Hell, now that we have experience, we'll be the disembodied voice in your ear any day!  

Mary Kate gettin' her narration on

POV of our engineer (look with your ears!)

TCB's POV

THE EXTERIORS

To make the exterior locations sound realistic, we had to record outside. To do this we recorded in the closest thing LA has to our Pine Mountain location: a park. It's much easier for Matt & Mark to start with the natural tone of the outdoors than to try to engineer the atmosphere from scratch. This setup also gave us our only opportunity for a couple of the actors, and ourselves, to actually be there live since we could properly social distance outside.  

Is it Connor Creek, or Joanna and Mary Kate in a park?

THE INTERIORS

Because the interiors tend to have some more room tone* than the narration segments, we recorded those in Matt & Mark's studio (where we did ADR). This gives us enough control over how we want to shape the sound of various locations, while also giving the sound more natural reverb than a completely soundproofed studio. Many of the locations from the series are in the podcast, so they will be created by adding in some of the characteristic noises of those locations (e.g. a clock ticking, a fire in a fireplace) as well as manipulating the room size in post production.

*the ambient, subtle, low-volume sounds present in every room

Ryan Reynolds, himself.

"Hey there, it's me Steve recording some VO!"

THE REMOTES

Several of our actors don't live in LA so we needed to find a way to record them remotely. So, we worked with them to record their own scenes, which will then be incorporated into our local recordings. If all goes to plan, their sound will be melded with our other recording sessions and you won't be able to tell who couldn't be at our sessions (unless of course you follow them on Instagram and know who lives in NY)!

NEXT STEPS

With podcast production under our belts, we are moving onto the final final final stages of post production. Matt & Mark will assemble the podcast over the next month or two, adding sound design and original music inspired by the themes of the series. Color and sound are just about finished for the film portion, and our final hurdle will be animating our opening credits sequence (which is already in progress! update on that coming soon!). 

As always, we are so grateful to you for coming along on this journey with us. Look out for more news soon about Kickstarter rewards (we are EXTREMELY excited about how these are coming together) as we get close to wrapping this thing up. Until then, please update your shipping addresses in BackerKit (if needed) so we can lock them down. Stay safe!

Much love my friends! Cannot WAIT for you to see/hear the world of Wayward Guide!!

TCB