How to Create SciFi Audio with Big Finish

0:05 hello and welcome to this exciting big finish panel at brit sci-fi now i'm going to confess to you straight away that i have a script in front of me for this introduction and for some of the questions so if you see my eyes moving around that's why for those of you who don't know who i am my name is nicholas briggs and as well as being the voice of the daleks on bbc television's doctor who i'm also the creative director of big finnish productions i don't hear a cheer oh well since 1996 big finish has been producing high quality full cast audio drama with hundreds of productions to choose from the majority of our audio plays are based on popular tv series such as doctor who space 1999

0:50 the avengers blake seven uh with many of the original actors from those series reprising their roles as part of the brit sci-fi weekend we thought you might be interested in a behind the scenes peek at the production of a big finish audio from start to finish to that end we've assembled the team behind one of our latest doctor who stories the at the time of broadcast unreleased ninth doctor adventure girl deconstructed which was written by lisa mcmullen hello lisa hello script edited by matt fitton hello matt so with music by howard carter hello howard hello i expected him to sing and directed by

1:38 helen goldwyn hello helen hello surely you should sing anyway now the first question goes to matt how long ago was it that you were told that we would be recording new doctor who stories with christopher eccleston i think i first heard about a year ago um and we started putting things together with your first introductory box set nick and at the same time we we started putting together other stories as well to reintroduce the ninth doctor to the world what about how chris came on board i mean how many stories did we know were required at the very beginning it's a run of 12 stories um the first three the boxset ravages

2:23 which is already out by now um written by nick uh is a sci-fi space epic in time and space and everything in between um and so the the other nine stories in the run we uh brought in a range of our big finish writers um asked people to pitch ideas uh looking for things that would you know catch the listeners attention would be interesting for chris to perform and uh some variety really just everything that doctor who does it could be anywhere in time and space historical contemporary future uh and so we took looked to our pool of writers

3:09 and invited them to offer ideas and we took those pictures and ran them past our executive producers and the bbc and chris himself to see which ones took hold and fired the imagination what kind of story did you want to commission from lisa in particularly what's interesting the second set uh we specifically wanted to do one historical one uh contemporary and another kind of future spacey wastey one um and i think because of the order that that i've asked people when i first went to lisa and asked for a pitch i think she came up with a really good historical idea but um that's not already been taken so i said could you do something set

3:55 around contemporary earth quite domestic in scale something that felt like the ninth doctor's stories that we saw on tv really because what russell t davis did with when he brought back the character was really kind of ground it in reality in the day-to-day what we saw with rose and her family uh in a contemporary uh london estate setting so something along those lines i was looking for so lisa came up with the idea for um girl deconstructed what are them are there any particular parameters or restrictions you know for writers writing a script like i didn't know you know number of cast that kind of thing um yes so we we have a budget of course

4:40 so there are a certain number of actors we can use i mean it used to be in the days when we were able to go into studio we were also restricted by the number of booths within the actual physical space because the actors come in and record their uh parts individually in in a studio in normal times though we were doing this remotely there would still be a restriction on the number of cast because within a scene when you're listening on audio you don't want to have too many voices all at once you need to be able the listener needs to be able to keep track of who's speaking who's moving where and uh just just to help the story flow along and it helps to focus in on the relationships and dialogue really is at the heart of everything

5:26 oh thanks matt um lisa how did you feel knowing you were going to write uh for the ninth doctor um when i when it was first announced i was so excited and was you sit and you hope and you cross your fingers that that maybe somebody will come to you and say do you want to do this um and then when matt did come to me and say how does this sound um then yeah really really thrilled because i remember we mean we've been waiting for this for ages um and we never ever ever i don't think thought it would happen because um chris has been quite famously doesn't seem to have wanted to to come back to who at all but then did a convention last year or the year before before

6:11 their pre-covered days and had such a blooming lovely time that i think that that persuaded him that actually doctor who fans are a lovely lovely people and we absolutely adore him talk it's through the script writing process how does it start for you with a horrendous blank page um and a deadline and panic and fear actually fear um i usually try to start especially a doctor who story with thinking about something that is frightening or scary or something that stirs negative emotions because what the doctor famously does is he helps and he makes you better and he makes you feel better

6:56 um so this should i talk about this particular story or yeah yeah that's deconstruct girl deconstructed so um it came actually it had a different title to start with but um it came from a childhood terror that i had because my parents used to tell me that if i opened the windows too far i would fall out and then i'd never see them again and i didn't i was must have been two or three so i didn't realize what death was i just thought i would be in some altered state where i wouldn't be able to communicate with them or they wouldn't be able to communicate with me so we'd both still be there in the house but we wouldn't be able to talk to each other very odd um so that was the

7:43 the starting point just thinking about what it would be like if suddenly you were in the same environment as your loved ones but you couldn't make contact with them and they weren't aware of your presence that's such a brilliant inspiring idea for a story isn't it it's kind of it's sort of sweet and terrifying at the same time did you get any initial feedback on your storyline or did the feedback start coming when you were underway with the script um oh that's a good question there's always feedback right from the very beginning so what will happen is i'll send a paragraph to that um or whoever's script editing and they'll fire back thoughts on whether this seems like a vaguely good idea and with any brilliant hints about what might make it more interesting or more frightening or more

8:30 apt for the particular characters that you're writing for and then you'll expand it to a couple of pages and so you'll then plot out the beats of the main beats of the story and then that goes back to matt the script editor and then over to to nick and and you get notes back again saying this is a great idea that ending's terrible i'm notoriously bad at endings when i write a script i usually send the first draft to matt with a massive sentence at the end in capital letters that says and then here at the end i'm going to do something really good but i haven't worked that out yet [Laughter] no one's good at endings lisa i'll tell you that now none of us are any good at endings because we don't know endings in our lives you know what i mean it's they're always

9:17 difficult and by the way um how long did the process take this time round um well because it was written during 2020 which was coronavirus times it felt like about 17 years but was probably actually really really quick um i can't actually remember mac can you remember roughly how long the price has been i think it took it was maybe only a couple of weeks to get the storyline sorted out and then maybe a month to two months to do the actual script it was quite a quick turnaround what i remember um yeah and i think that's that's something people may not realize is that yeah we do work out story in advance where everything's going i mean some some writers like to

10:03 begin writing and then see where the story takes them but we don't have that that luxury really we need to have pinned down the entire outline um of what happens what happens at the end how the doctor fixes everything because um everybody needs to be able to confirm and approve that that's that works as a doctor who story um so that's your starting point the storyline is um of the skeleton for this script and um writers then kind of make it exciting flesh it out and delve into the characters there's always tweaks and and scope for doing exciting and interesting things as you go along but you still follow the road map of the story now lisa you've written for other media you know you write for television

10:49 quite regularly what what's uh what would you say the differences between writing audio and you know other media uh the money sorry i couldn't resist um it's i come from a background of theater so i found audio actually quite i found it easy in the writing for television initially because like theater audio is very talky there's lots of dialogue a lot of what you say has to be communicated um through through the dialogue and we'll get to the amazing things that the sound guys do in a bit but um yeah so you can't

11:35 with television you tend to try to show what's happening which you can't do with audio which can be really difficult because you want to communicate that there's a giant green alien blobby thing in the distance without saying oh look doctor here comes a giant green alien blobby thing um so that's challenging and and also because the audience can't see the different characters um they have to rely on the vocal tics and mannerisms and the tone of the characters voices so you have to try to really capture each character's voice and make it somehow different from

12:22 the other characters around them did you sit in on the recording of this episode no i didn't um that was why what is great about this this job is that quite often you get to be in the recordings and so you can actually watch what the the actors are doing with the words that you've written and usually um when you get the actor and the director and the the designers all involved you they make it so much better than it looks on on the page but no i because of again coronavirus um i couldn't be in at the recording um and i was yeah for other reasons i couldn't look in to see how it was progressing because we could have we

13:08 could have had you in on the clean feed session which is the means by which we record over the internet but um oh well hey listen should we uh should we have a little listen to a clip let's see yes [Music] that oh hello this is mr mcdonald marnie's dad dad i was just wondering if she was with you oh only she didn't come home last night and it's not like dad i'm right behind you or am i right in front of you i don't know where i am

13:54 have you got any idea where she might be um everywhere if you hear from her dad can you tell us she's not in any trouble dad why can't you hear me but to please come home i am home except well i feel strange everything is fractured i'm fractured thank you goodbye hello police please why can't you see me i want to report my daughter missing i'm not missing mommy mcdonald she's 15. she didn't come home last night i haven't left the house i think she might have run away i haven't

14:41 dad i'm here i'm i'm right here dad please help me somebody please help me [Music] all right don't get your knickers in a twist i heard you the first time honestly a migration of the seraphim fantastic hang on that's not right what are you doing there talk about the long way around you'd be quicker on a pogo stick unless this thing's stuck again somebody please

15:27 help me hello there you are now helen uh normally you'd be recording in a studio sitting behind the class in the director's chair lisa mentioned about studio recordings earlier so did matt but this was recorded during lockdown how does that work as if we didn't know but well yes we've big finish has come up with this amazing system that i think a lot of other audio companies eventually came across i think we were some of the first weren't we um where we use a central recording system called clean feed so everybody gets a link sent to them in their internet and then we all click on that link and we meet each other in the internet magically and it's kind of like i just described

16:14 it to an actress today and it's like being in the same building but in different booths little rooms where you can't see each other it's exactly the same sound quality as you would have in a studio it's just you don't have any visual connection with anyone or anything and that is quite a different process and it uses quite a different kind of concentration and energy what's your process when you receive a script first of all what do you do first of all well i have to read it i have to read it so i do a lot of script reading uh and i think some people probably take notes as they read but i just have to read and digest just understand the story and the characters and then i will schedule that's that directing day so i have to go through each scene work

16:59 out who's in it how long it will take to record it and and then shuffle the scenes around so that it all makes sense that people are in the studio and they can do several scenes in a row and that's quite a laborious process um and then once i've done the schedule i can start thinking about getting the actors in place so the casting process uh and that involves falling through people's demos so people have their voice demos online and with their agents online and you listen and listen to lots of different voices until you go that's the one i want that one but of course this has been complicated during probit because we've been we need people who have studios at home so you might find a perfect voice but they haven't got home studios so then you have to compromise and

17:46 get someone who's similar but they have the equipment and the ability to record from home do you um make notes on the script about you know your thoughts about a scene in advance or do you wait until you hear what the actors have to offer well i'll always go through it two or three times you know before we record to find the emotional beats of it so there are moments where you think well i have to have that moment kind of really standing out or there's a subtext where you know something that the listeners don't know yet and that you want the actor to be informed about that so that it comes out in their voice because as long as they know what's coming they don't have to you know layer anything on top of it it

18:32 will come out in their voice and it adds depth and texture to the scene how was it working with christopher eccleston for the first time it was really exciting i was really i never in a million years thought that i would be directing him i just knew that i wanted him to work with big finish i knew that he'd have a great time with big finish and when i heard he was coming to do these i was so thrilled for the for the fans you know this is what they've been waiting for and and then when i was asked to direct him it's like oh okay um and it's quite intimidating because because i had that impulse more than anything i want everyone to have a wonderful day of course you want to create a wonderful drama but you want everyone to love the process of creating it and it was even more important for him because he'd signed up

19:18 for these 12 stories well you don't want him to have a miserable experience on the fourth one because then he's gonna dread the rest of it so yeah it's a big responsibility to make sure that he is having a great time so yeah just trying to make him feel welcome and and valued and and of course he's he's amazing in the role and that's thrilling so it was very easy in that respect i mean i always think that if people are having a good time they're more creative yeah and they want to feel trusted because i am an actor i trust actors even if they're not doing a brilliant job first time you have to make them feel trusted because then they can relax and do it better whereas if you say oh no that wasn't very good

20:04 it tends to get a bit worse next time i'll bear that just i try and convey that i totally trust you i i cast you i think you can do it i believe you can do it and then it's easier for them to believe they can do it as well yes i think that's a really good point something that people might want to ask is you know do you record in sequence and do you have a concept of how it's all going to fit together when you record is it sort of can you hear it in your head but yeah in sequence or not well it's we don't always record in sequence i prefer to go chronologically if i can because again that's easier for the actors to know where their character is on that journey um but sometimes you've got actors who are only available for the afternoon so or some actors who have to leave at lunchtime so you've got to cluster their

20:50 scenes together and and then i have to go through all the scenes that we're missing out and give the actors the context and say well before this scene that this explosion happened and you're all in a state of shock because if you don't do that then you know you're not going to get the right dynamics but yeah i get very that's really heavy to hold all that in your head so that's quite a complex part of it well we're talking about how it all goes together i suppose it's worth bringing in howard now on these ninth doctor adventures you didn't do the sound design you often do do sound design don't you yes indeed but for this you you did the music um what stage what stage did you become involved in the process so i think i knew quite early on uh that

21:35 these were coming up and then you and i had a discussion about what direction we're going to take with the series what you want to do a bit of the menu shy of the sound world we're going to create so um just started by creating some uh example pieces of music just to see if we're on the same page and um get a few themes together and uh you and i went back and forth and found something we quite liked the sound off so there was a opportunity to build a template get all my ducks in a row and then um i had the scripts through to read and then um i just patiently wait for the sound designer to get his act together and get things over to me and i'm chomping a bit ready to go i should say that in this case one of the reasons we had an initial uh conversation is because we needed to

22:21 get together a trailer for uh the first box set quite early on and i needed some music for i had some sound design there to edit together from ian meadow who was a brilliant sound designer but we needed some music and you gave me a few pieces of what you were thinking of which you later developed even more uh you were a little bit nervous about me putting them out there since they were your test pieces no it's fine it's just it's always a nice way of actually working getting something initially that we can agree on and find a sound and it just it makes the whole process a lot easier because there's also like a um a very solid starting point or a foundation so we know where we're going with the sound world and it's more than about filling in gaps and exploring the stories individually and when you started composing music

23:07 for the episodes do you receive notes from the director um i think we hit the ground running on this one because we've already done the first series there were a few themes in place and again the sound world was there i had my big old template set up and then it's a case of looking at the individual stories seeing if there are any uh particular themes that need to be explored any characters that might deserve their own little motif or any ideas and then i think um helen and i go we work together quite a lot so a lovely rapport i think we hit the ground running you talk there about themes you you create themes and motifs for specific characters do you also you know focus on mood as well very much so it's something that um i try to do with

23:53 the series like this it's nice to have a bedrock so the uh the overall sound of the series is very familiar but with each story create a certain palette of sounds and instruments which make each one unique and there are obviously bits in the story where you need various characters might need a bit more attention than others i'm trying to think of things i can say that won't give away any spoilers but there are certain characters in this that need a little bit of their own motif and a little bit of um like you say a little bit of mood and he's creating in certain scenes uh yeah there's not much i can say without giving it away so i should be careful let's explain our terms here you keep using the word motif some people might not know what that means could you describe that for us sure

24:40 matupa theme is is this say perhaps a short repeated phrase or a musical instrument that you may associate with a character or a certain uh psychological situation and it repeats and it can evolve over the um over the piece but it gives a sense of continuity throughout and evolution perhaps over the whole episode so it's a series of notes a tune or or indeed an instrument a little tune a little you can think of um if you're if you've seen jaws you know that the famous little little motif there for the shark uh i think of et the character the little melody for et it's those kind of things little nuggets that stick in your head and can follow you through a large

25:28 piece of body with work am i hearing that now actually um what instrumentation would you say suits the ninth doctor as opposed to other stories you've worked on so it's a balance really between a slightly more traditional orchestral score with a lot more synthesizers added it's got more of a drum kit roomy sound it's it's a move away from maybe the slightly more traditional stable the ets and the jaws it's more of a hybrid feel so there's a lot of electronics going on there it works it's got to be snappy it's got to be it's got to go at quite a lick in quite a pace so it's oh you dropped out there have we lost howard so leave and come back in and see if

26:13 that helps okay all right well while you're doing that um i wanted time now for us all to talk about uh what are you all to talk about how you first got started in the business um lisa how did it all start for you how did writing start for you um well i was a teacher i was a high school drama teacher for quite a lot of years um and then one of our friends that i've been to drama school with because i originally i wanted to be an actor but that didn't work out because i was terrible and so i became a drama teacher and then somebody had been some of us you know and then a friend that i've been to drama school with um asked me if i'd write a place that he could actually be in something because he hadn't worked for years

27:01 uh so we co-produced a little play above a pub pub theater in london and produced it ourselves and i thought well this is this is much more fun than teaching so i um i packed in my day job um i'm not sure i'd recommend doing that immediately i think i'd wean yourself off your day job actually is probably a better idea because i had a hairy scary couple years where i didn't earn very much money at all and then i very slowly started to i write wrote some spec scripts sent them to various writing competitions um i met matt um through another friend and and begged him harassed him over a number of occasions to

27:47 to please let me write for big finish uh and eventually he asked me to send him a spec script um a spec script is a sample of your writing that you send out to people to try and get work and then he finally gave in and allowed me to write on one of your series uh called survivors and then the rest was history um but tv wise it just took a lot of knocking on doors and emailing and applying to schemes and things and getting an agent which is quite i mean it's possible to work without an agent but um an agent makes things a lot easier but they do take 10 oh my god i'm obsessed with money that's the second time i've mentioned money

28:33 yes you are coming across as money obsessed they said no we're really grateful uh for you know that you write so many lovely scripts for us so thank you so much i'm well done to matt matt how did you get started well i'd always wanted to write ever since being a boy and i did a kind of a normal job for quite a long time and decided actually i needed to try and creative urge so i i looked for opportunities to write things like the bbc writer's room uh readily it always helps to read a lot of scripts if you're interested in writing scripts of whatever it is you want to write and i'd always listened to big finish since it began i'd always been a doctor

29:19 who fan i'd listened to big finish from the first release so i felt i knew the audio world and i'd love things on the radio like hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and the lord of the rings dramatization when i was younger and so it just happened that when i was looking around for opportunities big finish had uh an open script opportunity a submission opportunity which i went in for about uh 10 years ago now um i didn't win uh i didn't come first in that particular submission but the script editor alan barnes came back to me and said he kind of liked what i'd done and could i redevelop the uh the story idea i had and the script i had for different doctor and companion so i i

30:05 did that i wrote my first story for the sixth doctor colin baker um and i directed it didn't i yes i remember from then on i i've just continued working for the big finish it seems that uh yes i've things i've done have been liked to have been successful and we've i've built up a really nice relationship with producers and script editors and directors there and uh being given more and more responsibilities so as a script editor i i now help bring new people in which is a joy to do um it's it's great when we when we look for new people uh something lisa mentioned earlier people who've written for theater

30:50 are always a good good call a good bet to try on audio uh and yeah we're always kind of looking for people who've got a track record show they can write uh and who are interested in doctor who and audio well thank you matt um you know in common with everyone here uh you are loved and trusted and and highly thought off um so thank you um helen we will be coming to you to hear your epic story of your entry into showbiz uh but i feel we should grab howard while his internet's still working how did you start out howard so i was very lucky i just finished music school um i just finished con piano degree and uh i think it's through

31:36 a mutual acquaintance i very boldly got in touch with you and um sent you a copy of some of my work and asked if i could possibly audition you very gratefully said yes and the audition went reasonably well and i think we just took it from there i think i had a first speculative job um that seemed to go down okay and then we started working together on a regular basis and here we are crikey gets 10 years amazing i remember being absolutely delighted by the the samples you sent and yeah and i think it was uh was it patient zero i think i did a companion chronicle to begin with called the steelers from safe and then i was entrusted with patient zero was the first time you and i were together yeah many moons ago great stuff

32:22 okay the moment everyone's been waiting for helen goldwin um it's hard to know how to sum it all up so i'll try and be quick i was an actor couldn't get auditions did do lots of lovely work but was constantly battling battling to get through doors knocking on locked doors all the time uh and in actual fact i started writing properly when i turned down a job i was offered a year's tour international tour in fiddler on the roof understudying one of the daughters and as soon as my agent said under studying i thought i can't can't do that i can't go around the world for a year doing tradition in the background and not playing the part so i turned it down and then i had

33:07 to justify that decision i wrote my first screenplay which i entered for a channel 4 competition and um and they i didn't win like matt but they were very encouraging and they said keep going you know you've got some talent so that was great and in directing wise because i was writing my own stuff then i was directing it as well because who else is going to direct it because you've got no money and i always had a directing instinct always loved to i knew exactly how i wanted it interpreted and then it was just a natural progression from being an actor with big finish to becoming a a director and a writer and you know i feel very lucky to be in a space where i can use all of my range of of experience and ability so i'm just very

33:53 very grateful to be here well we're lucky to have you i'm very grateful to have you and all of you on board thank you very much and i think that seems a good note to end on um thanks to all of you i hope you enjoyed this insight folks you brit sci-fi uh it's an insight into how a big finnish doctor who audio production is created and we hope you will take time to enjoy listening to the ninth doctor adventures starring christopher eccleston uh i didn't have to read that bit i knew his name there are three volumes available to purchase now big finish um it's a bigfinish.com our website so go why don't you just go there and find out thank you and goodbye

34:41 you