The Making of Magnus

hi and welcome to a making-of special of

the magnus archives obviously I’m Alex

Newell director and I play Martin and I

have with me today a little girly

community manager by Meredith I play

allies bouchard’s and I do a bit of

admin on the feeds my sim Pratt I’m the

CTO and I do all the tech stuff

character and I’m Mike LeBeau I play Tim

and I’m also the lead editor so what we

thought we’d do is help describe for

people what the making off consists of

because we talk a lot about writing and

we sometimes talk about the recording

and like the performance side a lot but

we don’t tend to dive much into the

actual nuts and bolts the mechanics of

what it takes to take what is

effectively a script on a page and turn

that into the show that you know and

love something that appears in your feed

when you want it to and so on so with

that in mind we thought we’d go through

sort of point by point and explain how

it is that we make these shows so

starring that the thing that everyone

does know obviously is the script we’re

gonna go ahead and assume that people

know that scripts have to be written

that Johnny writes the scripts and we

are presented with a script this is what

will be recorded and with that we are

able to start doing things like the

logistics and planning the recording

dates casting and so on so I’m not gonna

dive into that similarly we do casting

next I’m not going to dive too hard into

that because we have answered that into

the Q&A suffice it to say we get the

script we cast the roles based on people

who we think would fit the par we get

them to send in recordings go yeah that

sounds about right and then we we cast

the roles and then we get into the

recordings and it’s from here that we’re

gonna start digging a bit more into it

so with that in mind Mike and Ben both

of you have sort of taken part now in

quite a few recordings both as Tim and

Elias would you be able to walk us

through what from your perspective a

sort of standard recording looks like

well I mean what we’ve now got the

studio so we’re all set around the table

yes right yeah it’s much better than

there was before yeah we did a recording

today and we all got to sit down we

weren’t all huddled in Martin’s hallway

surrounded by a duvet that keeps falling

over or underneath yeah made of thank

you

it’s still very warm yeah effectively I

guess we go through the script and we

make any edits that need to be made

because of how people speak and like

ideas that I had during which you know

it doesn’t happen too much to be honest

and we’ll do a read-through right so

we’ll have a look through the scripts

and then we’ll read it to each other

just in normal speaking voices and then

in character to make sure that if there

are any points of contention we can iron

those out what typos that’s a common

typos is another thing yeah it’s

unbelievable just how much a typo can

throw you off when you’re reading

through a script oh yeah completely

ruins I mean we did one today where we

changed something and then changed it

back and every single time I got to that

line I just went oh so once we’ve done

the read-through and what we do is we

get every one allocated to each of their

individual mics and we set all other

mics running simultaneously as we are

now actually so once we’ve done that and

we start doing these takes we’ll do one

take or to take if it’s a normal

statement I’d say normally what we do is

we do it in a single take but we stop

and start so we’ll we’ll record a

paragraph stop maybe rerecord that

paragraph or carry on and then work our

way through in a choppy way rather than

doing one huge whole episode stop and

then reset a whole episode again because

we tried that and it didn’t really work

as a way of functioning really yeah and

podcasting is not like radio you have to

operate in a completely different

fashion yeah absolutely and to be fair I

mean having gone through this process a

few times I mean all the guys who are in

the cast like now we know each other’s

styles a lot better so we can start

doing fewer takes every time we come in

and we know how we’re going to react to

things we don’t how we work with each

other so that’s it’s sped up the process

quite considerably yeah absolutely so

the only time that that really changes

is when we get a guest in so part of

being a guest is that we have to sit

them down and we briefed them on

obviously who their character is and

sometimes if they’re going to be a

recurring character we have to walk them

through you know what kind of arc

they’re gonna have give them all the

spoilers give them all of the spoilers

and then force them to and then force

them never ever to reveal what they’ve

they’ve learned here until it’s already

common knowledge etc and yeah the

recordings generally speaking we can

record up to I’d say about four episodes

in a day more than that is unusual but

they can happen but we try to record

about once every two

weeks and we’ll record about four

episodes that we can build up a backlog

nice and quickly guest recordings can

slow that down a little bit just because

you know people need to get used to

setup and simultaneously we’ve not

worked with them before so we try and

arrange things in a way that suits them

but skipping ahead we’ll say that we’ve

got the recording the recording is done

we all done a really good job that’s the

thing is whilst we have our audio

recording

let’s say a 20 minute episode can run at

40 minutes 50 minutes of raw audio

sometimes and that’s not actually a bad

recording that can be just a good

recording with lots and lots of retakes

because we want to get it perfect and

with that in mind we then save that and

make it available to our team of editors

of which Mike was lead editor for the

entirety of season two of Magnus yes so

with that in mind walk us through you

have received a large amount of raw

audio in your lap how do you then turn

that into a fully fledged episode that

we can pass to Martin for release well

the first part of the process is to get

a pan and put it onto a medium heat and

then usually it cooks quite well on one

side before you flip it over onto the

other for about you know after about 30

seconds or so on the right side got to

start with the right side first I find

though no audio no not in this case I

mean we haven’t got the budget for that

yet but we’re working towards that NLS

you know in the patreon stretch goals

that’s that’s kind of where we’re at one

excellent example of the kind of thing

that can turn off in raw audio that you

need to remove so Alex will usually pass

me the episodes in bulk and we do this

through online drives because that’s

just the easiest way for everyone to be

able to access the audio as and when

they need it

before we were able to bring on other

editors when I was back in the beginning

of season 2 it was mostly Alex and I who

were doing all of the editing together

and so I would do the first pass so I

would look through the audio find the

silence gap that we’d prepared at the

the beginning use that for background

noise removal once we’ve done that we we

clean the audio a little bit using a

couple of tricks that we have up our

sleeve and make sure that each bit of

the audio is sounding nice and

leveled and we make sure we take out any

top end or bottom end noise and also we

work on the the actual waveform itself

we normalize it to make sure that it’s

all kind of playing at a standard volume

level and there’s nothing there that

will aggravate or annoy any of our

listeners and then once that’s done we

start cutting it together yes

so what’s worth bearing in mind in this

is that when you’re editing an episode

we actually split it into sort of three

parts I’d say really which is vocal cut

is you take your audio and you get the

vocals you get what you want there you

get it laid out correctly you get the

timings right and you get it sounding

like someone speaking it you know

without retakes etc yeah the second

layer that again I’ll pass the mic when

we go into a bit more detail is we we

put the music in we put in ambiences and

sound scaping and all of that and then

the last stage is the sort of mastering

which is realistically it’s just going

through and tweaking and tweaking and

tweaking and tweaking until it’s just

right but let’s say that we’ve got a

vocal cut together what’s the next step

well once everyone’s sounding as

beautiful as they can possibly do Alex

or horribly but in a good way

horribly bit in a good way also we have

some music tracks which are produced by

our in-house music producer Sam Sam the

music man and he’s developed some tracks

specifically for season two so in season

one we had some tracks that were

developed for season one but in season

two we wanted to kind of give it a

little bit of a different feel we wanted

something that’s a bit more dynamic and

so we worked on producing a setter a

series of tracks that work together no

matter what order you put them in which

was quite clever on his part yeah so

they’re all like for anyone who knows

their music they’re all in compatible

keys they’re roling compatible time

signatures and that kind of thing so you

can layer them up as many times as you

want and they will all still fit

together like a jigsaw so some are more

bassy some are more treble E and there

are some that are kind of middling so

you’ve got your upper middle and base

and then you just sort of use your use

your ear really the the key points to

try and make sure that the the music

isn’t overbearing but is also trying to

emphasize that specific parts of the

story that it needs to so if a monster’s

chasing you chuck in a little bit of

treble or dependent on the type of

monster maybe some bass and then you

work it through all the way through

until the key crux of the episode to

quote Sam Sam the music man good music

is invisible in the it’s there and if it

was missing you’d notice but when it is

there you’re not really paying attention

to it so if you’re paying attention to

it there’s too much going on and that’s

the hardest part it’s really yeah that’s

the hardest part about editing the music

for Magnus because getting that striking

that balance between things being not

quite visible in terms of you’re not

focusing on the music but being present

that’s the that’s the trick and we only

really know that we’ve done that once we

go through the mastering stage where

that’s sort of where I kind of pass it

back to Alex and say hey what do you

think of this the thing to bear in mind

as well is the start he was just myself

and Mike and now we have we’ve had a

dedicated team working on it we found

someone working on vocals we have

someone working on music and it’s all

been a lot more complex but a lot more

streamlined as well and it gets passed

eventually to myself a mastering or what

mastering consists of is it’s always

easiest when the director is mastering

because the director knows what it

should sound like ideally before they’ve

heard the episode you know you have a

clear idea of what it should sound like

what bits should be silent what bits

should have a loud noise to them what

hats should house sounds gave in watch

them basically what we’ll do we’ll go

through and it’ll tweak you one little

tweak here one little tweak there but to

every single second and when I’m saying

a tweak I’m talking

sometimes will shift at vocal

performance a tenth of a second I’ve

spent 10 20 minutes before getting that

tenth of a second right because that is

just not quite sitting right and then

one thing that I’ve been tending to do

as well is I’ll do the sound scaping and

that was one that can take a long time

as well so with that the way that we’ve

been functioning is we’ll take either

some Foley rarely but normally we’ll

make use of Creative Commons available

authority that other people have

recorded we tidy up

we basically pass it in some ways

through all of the stages that you would

a normal edit and then we layer them

together until you’ve built your

soundscape so that sort of falls under

mastering in the moment but long story

short once all that’s been assembled we

have a finished file let’s say that we

then export as an mp3 and that is our

packaged product that is our we have an

episode here and at that point gets

handed to Martin and Bend between the

two of them really because man you

handled the uploading and so on and

Martin’s or set up all the

infrastructure so between the two of you

can you walk through what happens we

have just handed and put on their soft

servers and the drives ready a finished

Magnus episode on time and and and and

wonderfully in time for release etc

that’s a line you know it what happens

next well there’s the initial step of

our systems we’ve gone through different

ways of hosting audio we’ve moved around

a lot yes and there’s the between stages

where you have to take all the audio

previously and move it to the new yes

we’ve done that now all those systems

doing so they’re doing a number of

things one of the things they’re doing

is hosting an RSS feed which is what

everyone is subscribed to so that’s just

a big list of format called XML that

just has a big list of episodes and

they’re also hosting the audio files

themselves so that’s just a file it’s so

your RSS feed is more like for computers

it’s a written set of directions yeah

leading you to the files

yes in fact a directory yes so both of

those are actually hosted on a cast and

it makes our website it means our

website is a lot lighter and does very

little essentially and just points and

says oh yeah the RSS feed go to go to a

cast they know all about that since it’s

pretty much the heart of everything

comes down to that RSS feed which is

yeah that set of direction so from the

website if you play something on the

website actually what you’re doing is

you’re clicking a tool that just go to

that directory goes oh this is where the

file is and then place it for you so

that’s pretty much the the core of what

everything holds around words whatever

like regardless of what pod cosplayer

using all the podcast player is doing is

checking the RSS feed and yeah

downloading the episode when the RSS

feed says it’s here and that’s the same

for all podcasts like all products as

far as I’m aware that’s the only way

that you can really do podcast iTunes is

so tied to the format that I think it’s

basically if you when you’re hosting a

podcast it’s an iTunes podcast and

that’s just the format of use even if

you’re not necessarily listening to it

on iTunes if there’s one piece of advice

for anyone who’s wanting to do a podcast

it is it is so much easier to use one of

the big like system so Lib sins the most

common one because it’s it does it all

for you and you can put it on there

it will handle a lot of the sort of

admin of getting your feeds added to

other places you could do it yourself

like we did which figure it all out

we know how it works the other thing is

also if we are not on your podcast feed

or preference or platform or preference

do let us know with new way up up all

the time and we don’t necessarily know

them all and it also helps if if there

is a particular platform you want just

tell us and we’ll add it but the

audience is saying but annal how do we

get in touch with you well you can get

with get in touch with us on Twitter

at the rusty quill or email us mail at

rusty Qualcomm we have a Facebook page

and we also do scour various other forms

of social media but it is probably

easier to find us on Twitter or email

genuinely speaking though if you have it

if you’re having technical issues with a

with a system let us know I mean don’t

get me wrong I’d say the majority of the

time it is it’s not an issue with the

way that we’re running things which is

great but try turning up me and I will

basically drop Martyn a line and

basically bug him until either give me

an article or the problem is fixed there

is one exception which I’m going to

address now and we have addressed

previously is Google Play Google Play is

not currently available in the UK and

for reasons that make no sense to anyone

when you make your RSS feed it has to be

tied to a real world country basically

we are tied to the UK because we make

things in the UK and what that means is

that Google Play is not available for us

when it is available we will be

available on there but who knows when

that will happen so Emily with Spotify

we are working on that one shot that’s

sort of our infrastructure so that’s the

sort of nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of

how things go together then you’re

really at the moment the person I’m

handing these finished files to what do

you do with it when you’ve handed a

finished file yeah so it usually turns

up in Google Drive and then I have to

upload it to two places one that’s the

patreon which is patron force that’s

rusty cool and the other one is a cast

at a cost have their own back-end and

basically what I’ve got there is a blurb

both those things make sure the adverts

appear in the right place so although if

you want them without a verse comes the

patreon because has an adverse

that’s the reason for it that is in fact

the reason for it and basically just

make sure I’ve got the title right the I

have credited well Alex keeps a big

Google Doc with all of the credits and

stuff so so because we’re using Creative

Commons effects yeah part of that is

that almost always they ask for

attribution which is where you say this

person gave me this effect this is where

I can get it and if you’re actually

looking to show notes for any Magnus

episode anytime we’ve used in SFX

there’s always either a direct link to

the thing or we’ll mention that it’s

previously credited artists cuz shocker

some people are good at it and we use

them so much that we just have a massive

list that you can just go look out by

the show notes yeah and there’s

compilers show notes for that and yeah

credit anyone that needs crediting make

sure that all the patrons for that week

are in and then just basically

scheduling it what happens next

annal it’s at there it is ready to go

assuming you have subscribed it should

be waiting for you when you get up or

when you get home depending if you are

in the US I will then do a shout-out on

social media and then I’ll go on the

forums and you will get a dedicated

thread to the episode after that I’ll

then give it a couple of hours and

throughout the day I will then do social

media sweeps just to keep an eye on what

people are saying see if there are any

problems with the episode then check the

reddit we do have a dedicated subreddit

for magnets at all slash the magnet

archives and just follow the

conversation see if people liked the

episode see what they are talking about

it have they delved into the

conspiracies and the red string behind

would definitely recommend listen to the

episode first then go on the forum about

to see what the discussions on the

forums and subreddit are going and then

also like do a sweep checking what the

tumblr community are saying about it

proper shout out to the tumblr community

the stories and I will say here those of

you who listened to the Q&A will heard

Johnny say that he doesn’t read any of

the fanfare no one who’s generating

story read the fan fics

we get to I will say that I will I’m

really interested to see what you guys

have come up with the fan art is amazing

the fans like really we’re really

see how you guys have-have interpreted

the episode one thing I’ll mention at

this point as well is we are always on

the hunt for visual artists and we’re

always on the hunt for new people to get

involved if you’ve done some fan art and

you think it’s great yeah like if you

want to just release it like in tumblr

and keep it out of our site that’s

absolutely fine but similarly if you

want us to see it send it us and if

you’re sending your stuff that’s great

we will we will come and we will message

you and be like that’s if you’re doing

fan art and you’re not a professional

artist and you’re not doing it like

you’re doing it because you want to do

it and not as a job thing also send it

to us oh yeah like I saw some Elias fan

I think the first time with the brutal

sounds of extended oh yeah murder which

comes from the transcript which and

again transcripts very very quickly

other things that we have to do

regularly so we have to generate

transcripts and other patreon bonus

material patreon content is something

else that I also produce so again those

of you listen to the Q&A will also know

that I am the writer for Martin’s poetry

and that gets released every so often on

the patreon feed I also do the

transcript and we released those for

free on the patreon feed both in a

normal format and in an accessible

format I will say one thing Alex did

mention talking about communities not

wishing necessarily everything to to be

shown if you’re on tumblr or even on

Twitter and you don’t want us to look at

or feedback on stuff that you’ve

produced we do have a tag for do not

archive so you can use that and you can

be sure that this is not going back to

the creators at all yeah and I think

that’s basically it I mean we can’t dive

into every single little thing because

that will take days like so much time

but it’s all content Alex that was a

very very quick walk through of how we

go from script to what arrives in your

and your pod catcher of choice as we’ve

said this before and we’ll say again if

you want to get these things

automatically sent to your podcast of

choice if you want the episodes waiting

for you when you wake up in the morning

remember to subscribe you can go

get them manually and you can go fetch

them but honestly there’s so many easier

ways of doing it if you just use one of

the podcast services or again you can

look at it on the website and stream it

from now if you’d prefer wo rusty

Qualcomm but subscribing is easier if

you haven’t already leaving a review on

whatever service you used to access the

episodes makes a massive difference for

us a lot of people underestimate how

much of a difference that makes it

literally determines how visible we are

on these services so that when new

people are looking for a podcast we’re

there we’re waiting for them the reason

that we’re so visible on itunes is

because so many people have taken time

to review on itunes but that’s not the

only service out there if you want to do

as a favor and it doesn’t cost you

anything apart from a little bit of time

leaving us a review will make a massive

difference for us and then the last but

not least thing is spreading the word

we have no marketing budget we are not

spending money on posters and on adverts

and promos the only reason that anyone

has heard of us is because one person

heard us when that’s quite good and then

told other people that’s that’s how

we’ve been functioning that’s how we’ve

got to where we are so the biggest favor

you can do is recommending us to people

until Martin finds a way to entirely

automate the listening process so that

now no listeners are needed just make

the podcast listen to themselves

it really glammed my heart when I see

somebody say ooh have you heard the

Magnus archives and also I mean from the

editing team’s perspective as well

whenever we look at reviews that are

left about the podcast we always feel a

little bit better knowing that you know

if people are enjoying it then what

they’re enjoying or if they’re not

enjoying it how we can make it better

yeah tell us about the production value

throw some most of the editors by far

it’s the hardest least rewarding job

here it’s it’s really difficult but it’s

ages really dedicated but make sure you

say a license brilliant thank you off

going and talking about solve the making

off and we look forward for season three

and we hope you all enjoy the trailer

which should be in coming to you very

soon

hi guys

the Magnus archives season 3 coming

November 23rd 2017 see you there

you

you