Monday, June 25, 2007
Don't miss the online SEASON TWO RELEASE PARTY tonight! We're going to kick off the season by holding a live chat where fans can talk with cast and crew while listening to the season premiere. Ever watched a TV show while talking on IM with a friend about it? This is just like that. We will release the episode during the chat, so everyone can download, listen and type "OMG!" together!

The chat will start between 9:00-9:15 p.m. EST, so show up then to make sure everyone's in. At 9:30, we'll release the episode on our site, and listen together.

To join the chat:
1) Go to http://chat.efnet.org
2) Enter whatever you want as a user name
3) Select "Other" on the menu
4) Type in "#secondshiftreleaseparty" in the dropdown

Or, if you're familiar with IRC, just join "#secondshiftreleaseparty" on efnet.

We'll see you there!

Second Shift goes healthy! Greetings, Shifties!

I'm writing to you from a plane to Chicago, where my cousin is getting married tonight. Because of that, I won't be able to report on tomorrow's recording session of episode 2.02, but I can tell you about our rehearsal this week and our current escapades.

On Wednesday, the scent of beets and snap peas filled my apartment as we rehearsed out on my deck. The group had stopped by the grocery store before coming over, and brought all sorts of healthy produce to accompany our pizza and Oreos. Sitting on my deck (avoiding the section where my upstairs neighbor's dogs sometimes launch urine attacks from above), we made use of our newly-acquired patio furniture, and broke in the newcomers a bit.

We've had a number of extra roles so far in Second Two, and we're struggling a bit to find people to fill them all. With complications of timing, talent, and ability to perform a Laundian accent, additional actors are sometimes hard to come by. Since we record everyone in real-time, we need people to work with our schedule, which is sometimes short notice. However, for this episode, our director Neil Marsh has really come through for us, bringing in four additional actors. With his ample experience founding and running theatre groups, he has a long list of people he can call. But, even so, we need to test our actors' talents by having people play several roles. Some of our actors, particularly Andrew Schwartz (Fesmer) is very talented at it; others, like myself, are not so gifted. Wondering why one of the Legionnaires at the end of Season One sounded like some kind of demon? *raises hand sheepishly* Sorry.

See you at the Season Two premiere!

-Becki

Monday, June 11, 2007
Mansion, Apartment, House... Shift! Episode 2.01 has now been recorded, and our session on Saturday was a big ball of excitement, stress and flying Wiimotes. With our current makeshift studio in Brad and Sequoia's house, a few of us were in the room at a time, while everyone else hung out throughout the house and tried not to make too much noise playing Wario Ware upstairs. Although our attempts at being quiet weren't entirely successful, and we were repeatedly interrupted by the landlord doing things outside the window and prospective renters coming to see the house, we managed to have a great recording session.

Let me back up a bit. Last Wednesday was our the official rehearsal of episode 2.01, and the first read-through of 2.02. We made use of the Official Second Shift Scheduling Bitch Egg Timer, pictured below:




And we minimized distractions by having the actors in each scene rehearsing in one room, while everyone else hung out in another. In this hanging-out time, Sequoia took us down memory lane by proposing a game of M.A.S.H. - yes, the game you played in junior high school, not Hawkeye vs. Hot Lips. Our rule for picking your potential spouse was that it had to be either a fellow Shiftie or a celebrity, for comedy purposes. It turns out I'm marrying Ari (our newest actor, with minor roles in 2.01), a man I just met. We're going to live in a shack and I'll be a professional skydiver, for the record.




As for our recording session, I must say that I loved our new recording setup. We converted Sequoia's office to a tripartite makeshift studio, with blankets hanging on a rack to minimize echo and bleed. I have to admit, cooped up within the walls of comforters in a 4x4' corner of the room, I felt like a little kid in a blanket-and-chair fort. It was a little stuffy, but cozy. And it caused me to rethink my notions of seeing my fellow actors while recording! In the past, we've recorded lines in the same room at the same time, and often made eye contact and bodily gestures to really play off each other. I've always thought this was important, and didn't want to change it. However, in this setup I was still in real-time with the other actors, but I couldn't see anyone else, or anything else. To my surprise, it more easily allowed me to get into character, and really imagine my surroundings in the scene and connect with the actor on the other side of the wall. The blankets really "blanketed" my thoughts, covering distractions and allowing my character to speak. I've had a few moments like that in my acting career with this show, and they tend to be my best. I'll let you guess which ones they are - one of them starts with "D".

Keep your ears out for the second season premiere - it won't be long now!

Thanks for listening,

-Becki Davis

Thursday, May 31, 2007
2S S2 has kicked off! That's right - Second Shift, Season Two is officially in progress. In truth, we've been working on it for some months now, but last night we had our first rehearsal of the new season. To celebrate, we're going to revamp this blog, starting with me - Becki Davis, Senior Producer.

My role as a Producer has developed a lot since we began the project. In the beginning, it was mostly just being the person Andrea bounced ideas and information off of. Once she moved across the continent, my responsibility increased, as I became the standing leader of this diverse group. My job is sometimes hard to describe, as I do what needs to be done - or find out what needs to be done and get other people to do it. However, at our first S2 rehearsal last night, I tried out something new and important - organizing our time. This consisted of mostly yelling "That's not important. Next scene. GO!" every few minutes.

We've had some major problems being efficient on Second Shift, and we have a lot of reasonable excuses. None of us have ever done exactly this before, for one thing. And every person on the team has work, school, relationships, and all sorts of other commitments that we have to work around to make this show happen. With rehearsals, writer's meetings, creative meetings, audio production, thousands of emails and everything else, there's a lot of time that we devote to our beloved show. And there are a lot of people doing many different jobs.

For example, I'm an actor - I play Shauna (and Tyler) in addition to my producing work. Therefore, it's a big challenge for me to keep everyone on schedule (or create a schedule in the first place) when I'm also trying to get into my character during rehearsals and recordings. Last season, we had WAY too many 12-hour recording days, just trying to get ONE episode done!
That's why for this season, I hired on Sequoia Wild, our new Project Coordinator/"Scheduling Bitch". She has been actively working on wrangling the 20ish cast/crew members to coordinate their schedules around our meetings, and to use our time more effectively. One idea we're going to try is the Official 2S Scheduling Bitch Egg Timer - a helpful device intended to let us know we're taking too long chatting. Also, that our eggs are done.

So last night went well for our first read-through. It was great to see everyone again, since some of us hadn't seen each other since Arisia in January. The reading went very well and was fun, and we discussed ideas about the script for 45 minutes. Best of all, Brad gave me a little prize he'd been saving for me - a tiny Mario stamp he got for free from ThinkGeek! It's the sprite of Mario in Super Mario Brothers 1 when you die, and it came in one of those plastic bubbles from quarter machines. And that's why I love this crowd.

Keep your eye out for blog posts more often, as I'm going to try to start posting each week. And we're ready to announce -
EPISODE ONE OF SEASON TWO WILL BE RELEASED ON JUNE 25TH! (Avid fans will notice that's our one-year anniversary!)

Thanks for listening,

-Becki Davis

Monday, October 23, 2006
New Website Coming Soon You might notice some dust. Pardon us.

Friday, July 21, 2006
Show Notes #3, or "On Collaborative Writing (Because Real Writers Begin Titles with the Word 'On')" I ought to be writing Episode 7 right now, but instead I am contributing my first post to this Second Shift journal-thing.

That's how I procrastinate - by doing something I sort-of ought to be doing, rather than the thing I really ought to be doing. This is how I became involved in the project. It was late February of 2006, and I was supposed to be grading essays; instead, I was tearing through writing opportunities on Craigslist. I found and replied to Andrea's listing, an exciting dialogue ensued, and I soon became one of the show's writers. But I still hadn't graded the essays, and did not for weeks longer. My former students, I suspect, would not recall this period with great fondness.

But I do. When I came on board, there was a draft of Episode One (simply titled "Pilot") and a rough recording of that draft, which both Andrea and Becki have described in their respective Show Notes. My task was to go in and "see what I could do with it." In those early days, I made more comments and suggestions than actual changes, and they were all met with praise and further questions from Andrea and Becki, which led to yet more questions, etc. The three of us came up with a lot of great stuff.

As a result, I became fascinated by the collaborative process. In the past six years, I've taken nearly twenty separate creative writing workshops, and not one of them encouraged collaboration. Mostly I submitted a short story, dramatic scene, poem, or whatever to the class, and the class then gave me comments, suggestions, and criticism (they were always very good at criticism - it's much easier to criticize than to praise, after all). What I did with that information was up to me; sometimes the class would see my revision and offer me further criticism, but often, I no longer cared to revise. Something in the writing had died for me, now that all of its imperfections had been exposed to the harsh light, and none of its virtues illuminated.

In the literary community, there is fearful talk of the "Workshop Story," which is a technically perfect composition that, for whatever reason, lacks a pulse. No one dislikes it, but no one really likes it, either. It is a possible consequence of taking everyone's suggestions, of trying to make everyone happy. It is a definite consequence of having lost what compelled you to write in the first place, and this can easily happen when writing for other writers. I have much to say about the value of writing workshops-I would encourage every aspiring writer to enroll in one-but I do believe that, at a certain point, a writer must leave the workshop.

Collaborative writing is the most effective workshop I've had. When something doesn't work, the other writer will simply delete it and replace it with something that does. Frequently, this new exchange not only works, but I never would have thought of it on my own, and am grateful to have it. In turn, the other writer's contribution gives me an idea of how to better work that awkward exchange I never really liked on page sixteen, which inspires the other writer to add another page to scene five, etc. etc. When I've reached an impasse, the co-writer knows exactly where to go. Sometimes it can be jarring to see my brilliant words warped or deleted entirely, but there is no room for writerly hubris here. It serves no one. Besides, writing should be about surprises, and this process not only allows for that, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun.

The first episode, which came to be called "Everything to Everyone, Part I," went through at least twenty-three revisions. Sixteen for the second episode. Much of this is a result of extensive world building and re-building. When John came on board as my co-writer, he brought many new ideas, and the early scripts changed a lot to incorporate them.

But he could better tell that story. I should really get back to Episode Seven.

~Brandon M. Crose (because Real Writers also use their middle initial)

Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Adventures in Foley By Brad Smith

After the preview release of ep1, one of the first comments we got was that the episode needed more sound effects. The problem was that with a script containing no fewer than 63 SFX cues, building a library of legal, high quality foley was proving difficult to say the least. Since we're a professional-standards production we can't just go grab whatever sound files happened to be out there on the 'net and those that are in the public domain vary greatly in both quality and appropriateness for the kinds of sounds we were looking for. Andrew, our intrepid Sound Guy (with bonus Fesmer voice-action!), found or engineered sounds like the truck driving by and noises for spellcasting and waa-loaren, but we were still missing a lot. See, the thing about audio productions is... that you can't see what's happening.

Bet you didn't see that one coming.

As obvious as it sounds, for my part I admit that I'd underestimated how much you need sound in a production like this to set your scenes. A character can say "where did this forest come from?" but it's easy for details like that to slip out the ears. Better to have leaves rustling and birds singing in the background to set the stage on a more intuitive level. Another good example of this was the running scenes, which those who have heard episode one know there are quite a few of in our pilot (fun fact: these scenes are actually titled "Run Like Hell: Part 1" through "Run Like Hell: Part 6" in the script). Up until the preview I'd figured "hey, it's pretty clear from the context that characters are running in these scenes. We even did our lines as if slightly winded to convey it" and yet friends I'd shown it to said that we needed more.

But where to get the sounds from?

The subject came up while rehearsing at Julia's house one day. It was said that plans were afoot to get out to the woods behind Lexy's place and get recordings of people running, tromping through brush and so forth but the release date for the official pilot was fast-approaching and no one was sure that would happen in time. It was then that I remembered my media player. I say "media player" when most people would say "iPod" because, well, I don't have an iPod. I have an iRiver H300, which is similar but not as much of a knockoff as the silly "iRiver" brand name makes it sound like. Anyway, one of the very nice features of the H300 is that it has an excellent built-in microphone. So I figured, hey, why not do it now? Some of the cast had to go home but Andrew, Julia, Brandon, John, Christina and I decided to hang around and see what we could get. There's just one problem: we were in Jamaica Plain, which is not exactly known for its lush forests.

We headed for the first place that had grass, the front yard of an apartment complex across the street. Grass wasn't quite the sound we were looking for so we gathered up twigs and leaves from around the yard and spread them over a small area. Then, with me holding the mic at ground level the others took turns running across them in circles, getting samples of different paces, weights and so forth.

It would have been great if I'd remembered to start recording then. Oops.

So, ok, take two. This time we got about a minute of Andrew running back and forth when a question we should have been expecting was heard from the apartment building's front door:

"What the hell are you doing??"

Please, take a moment to imagine the scene: six strangers gathered on your lawn. One of them is down on one knee with some sort of device in his hand while another performs a strange, pagan twig-stomping ritual before him. I'm impressed the landlady didn't come out shooting.

We tried to explain: "We're err.. recording sound effects for a.. podcast.. a sort of radio.. thing... on the internet?" but basically ended up beating a hasty retreat.

As we walked, we talked about where we could record while inflicting the minimum amount of fright upon the neighbors. These efforts were not helped when we found some large tree branches, about six feet long in one case, that had been trimmed by landscapers earlier in the day and would be perfect for generating "forest sounds". Then we became six strangers with big sticks talking about how not to scare the locals. Great.

We finally found what we were looking for when we got to the edge of Jamaica Pond: an area of dirt and woods with lots of brush to whoosh around in. We laid the branches down and created a nice library of recordings with every combination of ground-type, walk-type and walker wieght we could get. Then we started brainstorming what else we could do. We knew, for example, that we were going to need the sound of pieces of wood hitting each other for an upcoming episode. John immediately volunteered to help out with this and began beating some poor tree senseless while I recorded. Writers. These guys have some serious pent-up anger.

Anger or, in Brandon's case, masochism. He was first in line to help record the sound of someone getting knocked off their feet. "I have a long history of being in student films where I end up crawling on the ground", he said, apparently ready to graduate up to falling on it instead. And, to his credit, he did throw himself to the ground with much gusto. Twice. Brandon, I'm sorry to report that the sound of your body hitting the earth was actually a lot louder than I'd anticipated and it.. sort of overloaded the mic. Meaning we have nothing. Meaning we'll need to get you to do that again sometime. Yeah, sorry about that.

We went on to record stones getting thrown into the pond, people rattling saplings about and so forth. Then it was back to Julia's to make some kitchen noises by rattling pans, frying paper towels (more on that momentarily), squeaking doors and generally being a bother to the housemates.

The next day I settled down at the local Indian-restaurant-with-free-wifi and, laptop in hand, was able to extract a full 87 usable soundbytes out of our 30 minutes of raw recording. Not bad. In doing so I have become fascinated with the power of sounds out of context. Most of the sounds were recognizable, but some, when recorded in just the right/wrong way, ceased to sound like anything from our world. There's a snippet I have of someone's foot scraping across gravel. If you listen to it with that in mind you can sort of hear it, but I'm willing to lay money that if I just played it for the average person they wouldn't be able to tell what it was. Keep an ear out, it may show up as a spell effect someday.

I also learned that sometimes fake effects are more realistic than the real thing. We needed frying noises for the pizzeria scenes in ep1, for example. Andrew had the brilliant idea of folding up a paper towel, getting it wet and tossing it in the frying pan. We tried it with actual oil and with plain-old water. The water "frying" created a nice, even sound, whereas the oil, as it popped and sputtered, shifted so quickly across such a range of low and high tones that the recording sounded strangely... alien. You may hear that as a spellcasting effect later on as well.

And that's the story of my first adventure in foley. The main thing I learned: It's fun. A lot of fun. I've found myself listening to the world in a different way lately, trying to hear things "out of context" and considering how a sound could be used as something other than what it is. Since I've always got my media player/recorder with me, it's easy to capture these sounds at will so hopefully we'll see our sound effects library grow even more in the near future. Plus the final version of ep1 really did sound better.

Until next time,
--Brad