We Have Reached the End of Cake.

[tealin]

Night Watch, Part 5

That's all, nothing more to see here, folks, get along home...

Unless you're a radio play director (or Jim Dale), in which case ...
When you go to Radio Director Academy, do they train you out of remembering how people talk? I'm talking specifically about repetition. If someone says, annoyed, 'he wants a small brandy,' it is understandable to emphasize the word 'brandy' because that is the focus of the sentence. But if this person says, a few minutes later, 'Now he wants a large brandy,' the focus is no longer on 'brandy' but on what makes it different from the previous sentence, i.e. 'large.' Does anyone -- ANYONE -- actually say he wants a small brandy/now he wants a large BRANDY? No! That doesn't make any sense! They say he wants a small brandy/now he wants a LARGE brandy!'

Also, just because a character repeats a phrase doesn't mean it has to be said differently the second time. Sometimes people repeat themselves just to drive the point home; they might repeat it a little louder but I'm willing to bet that more than half the time they do not change the inflection pattern or interpretation of the sentence for the sake of variety.

Finally, and this is a personal thing, why not use your fancy dancy sound mixing board to do things to the vocal track when you need to? Like, say, make Young Vetinari sound young, or make Detritus sound like a troll ... or make Death sound slightly more like a supernatural anthropomorphic personification and less like an old man? Man, I would love to have access to a filter that changes tone colour; none of the freeware sound editing programs I've used have that. You've got it and don't use it! Gnarr!

In short, everybody be a little bit more like Dirk Maggs, please.

I wonder how directly descended from Carcer Moist is. Charming criminal who can smile his way out of anything? You just have to make him not a murdering psychopath and you're on your way to a great character. Hmmm...

Comments

[plottwist13.livejournal.com]

Are you upset about the magic tinkly tinkly noises? I hope not, I've grown attached, personally. LOL no the young Vetinari thing is pretty awful though. And some of the voice acting is pretty dismal too. I mean, I've never even listened to a radio play before and I'm wondering why they did, you know, one thing instead of the other, why was this decision made to deliver the line like that, why they apparently picked the world's oldest man to play a 17 year-old kid, etc hahaha. But maybe I am too picky.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Did I mention magic tinkly noises? They're practically a radio play cliché, I can't begrudge them their canned an mushy sound effects even though I don't think it would have been that hard to come up with something more dramatic. My beef is more with the really obvious misinterpretation of lines.

The Old Young Vetinari will, I think, remain one of the Great Unsolved Mysteries of Radio. He wasn't even a particularly good Old Vetinari.

But they managed to dredge up a good Vimes, against all expectation and experience. 10 points to whatever-it-is productions.