Ssshh! Don’t tell anyone....really, this is between you and me, but: we are having a great time.  Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of work with writing scripts, juggling schedules, coming up with the dosh for studio time, editing, designing the website, marketing and promoting.  And each of those categories has 3 or 4 sub-headings but, all and all, when there is a finished show, however ragtag, polished or jacked-up it may be, the fact remains that a show was put together and has gone out over the internet and people have listened and hopefully enjoyed.  Our trick is to find people who really love doing what they do.  The musicians love being musicians, the voice actors love lending their voices, the director loves bossing people around, and the producer loves trying to explain exactly what a producer “actually” does.

The pre recording set up.

The cast and crew have come a long way, from meeting in a cramped office that doubled as a recording studio, to meeting at a hip eatery for our read-through and then sauntering over to a true dedicated sound studio.  But the process has been the same: we meet up, do a read through, discuss the different voices needed for a specific character and then record.  We tried several variations of this: doing a rehearsal, then not doing one, getting the scripts several weeks in advance or just a week, etc.   Every production group has a stride they hit that works for them and the OLM group has come into its own, though it has taken several changes in the venues, the scheduling and the different script read through variations.

The OLM episodes’ release was yet another thing that had to be scheduled.  This is something I’ll go more in depth with on the “making of” podcasts in January, but the schedule to produce a weekly show became quite hectic.  Since we needed to be able to take holiday breaks and vacations, we decided to double up on the recording for a several weeks.  This has actually put us ahead and we have been able to bank away some break time.

And the trick to studio time that I learned a long time ago in downtown theatre in NYC still holds true today across the country in San Francisco.  The first 20 minutes in the studio sets the tone for the whole time in the studio for that day.   Whatever burdens are carried in life get left at the door and by the end of the sessions the group is tired, but happy and seemingly refreshed.