Director's Notes - 188: Listener Questions

Well, this sure is an episode.

I’ve had the idea for this one for a bit. In the original version, it would just start as one of our normal intros, but the intro would never stop and it would turn into the episode. Because our dynamic ad insertion breaks up the intro from the main body of the episode, that format didn’t quite make sense. So instead I did this version, in which a placeholder listener questions episode turns into something much different. I was a little worried with the title and description that some folks would skip this one, but it's the risk we run to surprise the ones who give it  a shot.

The concept did mean I had to act it all myself, and I am definitely not a professional voice actor. So, would this episode have been better with a real actor performing it? Honestly, no. Because the concept only makes sense with me (or Jeffrey) doing it. Sometimes imperfect is better. 

Speaking of Jeffrey, it was a lot of fun to write him as the straight man to my existential panic routine. Also to write his cats into the world of the show. Carol really did used to be a real bowl of mashed potatoes, but apparently she actually has developed into a teenage dirtbag. Weirdly, for an episode that started with a fake scheduling problem, there turned out to be an unexpected real scheduling problem which prevented Jeffrey and I from recording our part until literally the day before the episode came out.

Me holding Carol, who is a real bowl of mashed potatoes. 

When it came to Lucy from Claremont, Julia Morizawa seemed a good pick because of her extensive experience with acting in podcasts. I knew that I wasn’t going to have to explain the concept or help her figure out how to get a recording set-up, and I knew she could nail the role. The part that was a bit uncomfortable was when I had to take my deeply unprofessional acting up against her professional acting, but she was very nice about it.

When Jeffrey was editing the script, he asked me if I planned to do some out in the field recording for the final section. I hadn’t, but he urged me on, and so I recorded that last bit in a single take while running around my backyard with a portable recorder, finally stepping into what Jeffrey refers to as my “murder basement”, a concrete storage area under my house, to record the section in the radio station. I was genuinely thrown off my game a little when, mid-monologue, I entered the basement and almost stepped on a dead mouse, but such is life in the country. I stepped around it and finished out the episode by a work bench that was left down there by a previous owner.

While it was conceived separately, in many ways this episode is a prologue to our 9th anniversary episode on June 15th. That one we have been working on for about a year and a half now, and I’m very excited to hear how it turns out.

From my Night Vale to yours,

Joseph Fink