"You settle back in your chair, turn out the light, and close your eyes. Gently you find yourself floating away down some darkened street in a city you've only imagined, the rain-soaked streets giving off a damp, musty smell. Suddenly, you notice those footsteps behind you, stepping in just the same rhythm as your own. Your heart starts to beat faster, your step quickens, and you begin to run, the echoes of your heavy breathing reflecting of the glass of the shop windows. You decide to cut down an alley in the hope that you'll lose your pursuer, but the alley is blocked at the end by a huge chain-link fence. Your fingers grab hold of the links and shake, but the fence is solid, and does not give way. You start to climb, and take a look over your shoulder at the mouth of the alley just in time to see a tall shadowy figure standing, patiently watching you. He slowly takes something from underneath his coat, and as he slowly advances toward you, you see the glint of the sharpened steel edge of a long knife. The shadows almost completely cover his face, but as he walks slowly toward you, small bits of light wash across his face, where all you can make out is the cold smile on his face. Your fingers begin to bleed from the steel in the fence, and your feet can't seem to get a hold on the fence links, and he's coming closer, and one of your hands is starting to let go, and you feel something grab one of your feet and your lungs let out a scream..."
Back in the days before television became popular, families used to get together and listen to the radio, which was the mainstay of the entertainment industry. Such shows as Suspense!, The Shadow> and Gunsmoke were listened to with rapt attention, the visual imagery of these shows provided by the listener's imagination. It was the Golden Age of Radio.
Nowadays, people listen to the radio when they're driving, or while they're at work, because it's easy to have background noise on while you're doing something else. But the next time you're stuck in that traffic jam, and the radio is playing song after song that you've heard countless times before, wouldn't it be nice to pop in a CD and be transported away to some exotic tropical land where adventure awaits? Or perhaps travel through time to some exotic foreign land where spies and intrigue abound? Or you might prefer to follow the footsteps of an investigator of the paranormal as he delves into the unknown...
The next time you're wondering what to do some evening, when renting a video seems just a bit too mundane, and going out is too much of a hassle, think about how nice it would be to turn down the lights and listen to a chilling space adventure, and imagine all of the locations in your own mind.
The old radio shows had some wonderful writing at times, and were intensely involving, but listening to them today is almost painful, due to the limitations of the technology of the age.
Today's digital recording technology enables us to perform almost miraculous feats, bringing on-the-spot location recording, generated effects, and music together to create moods and feelings that exist vividly in the imagination. The same sort of technology that allows computers to generate virtual reality spaces allows us to create virtual locations and sounds that will blow your mind.
Aside from the technology, the techniques of recording have improved many orders of magnitude. If you think of how much movies have changed from the first black-and-white films to today's color superhits, or think of how music from the '20's compares to CD's today, you will get an idea of the advancements that have been made.
One of those advancements has been around for a while, but is more effective today than it ever was. It is called Binaural recording, and is used to recreate the "feeling" of your head in the recording, particularly if you listen with headphones. The effect is amazing-- when you listen, you can hear that mosquito buzzing around your head, you know exactly where it is, and you can almost feel it when it lands on your forehead. You can hear voices with perfect imaging that sound as if they're standing right next to you, and with your eyes closed, you can't tell if they're there or not!
And of course, all the technology in the world won't make up for bad writing. Our writers have experience writing for varios media. Chris Jones has made inroads into the Comic Book scene, where he and his cohort Steve Jones have come up with wonderful stories and artwork for many years. Rob Withoff has written primarily for radio commercials, but has written several short stories and is working on a couple of novels. Both of these fine gentlemen are making their first excursion into the realm of full-length audio plays.
"Part of the difficulty of writing an Audio Cinema(TM) story is that you can't have a single actor in a scene believably providing exposition. There must be a second actor there, or the listener must become a passive actor in the story. You also have a difficult time establishing a location: where a film or television show will use an establihsing shot, we don't have the luxury. We have to use music, effects, and dialogue to get all of the information across."
Music is something that can carry the mood of the piece and tie everything together. We use music from various sources, from independent composers to in-house crations, and occasionally from nationally-known artists such as Midnight Syndicate.
We hope that this has been an interesting visit for you, and that we have generated a desire for more information. If you would like more information, please e-mail info@magic-marmot.com.
Thank you for taking the time to look us over. We hope you'll give us a listen, too.
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