Director's Notes – Episode 107

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

This is an episode I’ve wanted to do for a long time, switching between two parallel versions of the same town. In my original conception for this episode, the other version of Night Vale would be a kind of “normcore” Night Vale, a version utterly without weirdness. For the necessity of plot, I had to mostly drop that idea, although some elements of it remain in the Ace Hardware that actually just sells hardware, the City Council apparently made of human beings, and the weather that is an actual weather report.

I had no idea how to convey to Cecil (the actor) exactly what this other version of the character was like, so I summarized what had happened to that Cecil’s version of Night Vale, and he created the character based on those differing life experiences. I love the whispering sadness to this other Cecil, the way he murmurs about the Carlos in the sky the way that a Israelite prophet might murmur about a sign delivered from heaven. It is neither fear nor love, but some cosmic mixture of the two.

The sound of the transition between worlds was something I spent awhile experimenting with. Originally, this episode was going to be produced by Disparition directly, as we sometimes do when the sound design gets more complicated than my self-taught skills can handle. But between this month’s tour and the currently running Alice Isn’t Dead, Disparition’s plate was full, and so I found myself in the position of having to translate all the soundwork I had so confidently written into the script. In case you’re curious: the sounds of the transition are a mixture of bubbles and static. Everything is put through a sliding pitch up 40% and then back down. Also the background music in the alternate Night Vale is pitched up 10% permanently, on account of their size (take a careful listen whenever there is a transition that has a continuous song in the background).

Today’s story was obviously a pretty big plot revelation. There are a few more of those coming. This is not the end of Night Vale, but Night Vale will also not be the same. We’re not interested in running our show unchanged forever. People get older, they change, their towns change. What happens will affect our characters and the town forever, as they should. None of us get to stay the same for long.

- Joseph Fink
May 1, 2017