The Home Stretch
Happy September friends!
Welp. Here we are. A few days past our 3 year anniversary of starting this campaign, entering the final weeks of post-production and lead up to launch. Could any of us have imagined THIS would be when we brought this baby home? Absolutely NOT. But we can honestly say it feels right. Despite the years laden with fits and starts of progress in addition to waves of setbacks, perhaps this fall was always meant to be the Season of Wayward Guide! Aside from a few early sneak peaks leading up to the release, this will likely be our Final Production Diary for Wayward Guide! Wow. We sure have been through a lot together and have simply loved getting to share our production tales, tricks of the trade, and emotional baggage with you all through the many ups and downs of this project. So let’s take her out for one final spin, eh?
CREDITS WHERE CREDITS ARE DUE
Like we had mentioned in our January Update, one of the final elements to plug into the series was an opening credits sequence. We had come up with a practical design that we had planned to shoot at the YouTube space in the spring…but…you know…that ‘ol global pandemic and all. So, we creatively pivoted and came up with an alternative option (<—honestly, the motto of all of Wayward Guide).
For the last few years, whenever we cut to the JAMMING theme song after the cold open of each episode, this is what we saw:
A practical placeholder? Yes. Full of valuable information? Barely. Fun? NO WAY. We’ve been itching to finally sub something into this slot. A sequence that would match the grooving vibe of song, give you a taste of the show’s tone, and maybe looking COOL-AS-HELL as well!
We ultimately decided to animate a sequence based on templates of hand drawn images. Ideally, this could make it feel authentic to our original concept, but also affordable and not too complex. For reference, we were going for something similar to the opening credits of the Good Omens TV show or the end credits for the A Series of Unfortunate Events movie! Our friend Shannon created designs for Artemis and Paul, as well as multiple layers of background, that Corey will then animate around each other to bring to life the sequences we storyboarded!
Our Valiant Attempt at Storyboarding
THE REAL DEAL
ASSEMBLIES, MIXES, AND MASTERS, OH MY!
In addition to the work on opening and closing credits, a big chunk of our time is spent combing through the series and podcast to fix any remaining notes before each gets mastered. One must be an expert decoder if you were to glance at our scheduled to-do list and make sense of the workflow happening between us and Ears Up in these final weeks. So lemme do my best.
Just this past week, we finally had our last remote recording session with one of our actors for the podcast. Ears Up is now able to plug them into the assemblies of all the episodes. To create these assemblies, they string together a bare bones edit of the episode, with all of our preferred takes and some temp music, to give us an idea of timing and flow. TCB has been noting these episodes on a rolling basis (we’re through episode 5), after which Ears Up is implementing these notes, incorporating final scoring, SFX, foley, and general sound design to bring us rough mixes. From there, we’ll make adjustments on these mixes to then lock in the episode. Ears Up has had a lot on their plate this month repeating this process 11 times over (in addition to a round of final sound notes on the series). Hence, the rolling note structure. In several weeks, both the show and series will be ready to enter the mastering stage. While this sounds like we’ll be putting the sound through a ninja-like gauntlet to gain it’s blackbelt, this final stage is far more granular. Simply put: we watch/listen through EVERYTHING to catch any final mistakes and balance mixes. PHEW!
RELEASE THE REWARDS!!
Our final outstanding aspect of Wayward Guide has been the rewards! And we’ve really had a blast putting the finishing touches on these goodies this summer. Almost all of you should’ve received your Connor Creek Postcards by now. Keep sharing your thoughts on the puzzle and helping those out who haven’t been able to crack it yet! We love bearing witness to all the online camaraderie over discovering the secrets in these little mysteries we send out. And get ready to whip out your tweed deerstalkers hats once more because the game is still afoot! Investigation Kits are in the mail and headed your way with a brand new, multifaceted puzzle to sink your teeth into. As always, we’re here to offer any necessary assistance, but are always advocates for twitter and tumblr teamwork amongst yourselves. Posters, Podcasting Packages, and Shirts are now being packaged by our friends at Ann Arbor Tees, and should coming your way in the next few weeks, loading you up with plenty of nifty Wayward Guide merch to show off during the release.
And…that’s about it. We’ll obviously keep you posted on all the things we got planned to hype everyone up for the launch. But in terms of the actual project, we’re at the end of the road. It's like...who will we even BE after Wayward Guide is done and we aren’t defined by our work on it? Oof. That’s an existential question my fragile emotional state can’t even BEGIN to process. To say Wayward Guide was a journey would be an understatement. It's been a thrilling, educational, frustrating, inspiring, and profoundly humbling experience. We've stretched ourselves to the limits of our abilities and resources, and then took it even further. We've been continuously amazed by the creativity of our collaborators on every level. We've been forced to evolve as a team and captain a ship that's larger than we ever planned. And we've been so grateful for all of you who've patiently stuck with us. We’re SO proud of what we're bringing to the finish line of this life-changing marathon and know you're gonna love it. But in the meantime, get pumped. Throw some coal in the engine of the hype-train. Prepare thy eyeballs and ear holes. Wayward Guide is just around the corner.
Eternally yours,
TCB
