Gideon Productions

As an OLD, I get sorta annoyed when people are all, "Hot take..." and then they say something that a lot of people already agree with, it's just not super popular. But, I think I might have a Take this maybe sorta Hot.

I feel like the audio quality of Audio Dramas is just not that important.

Before you jump all over me, I'm a studio musician, producer and director and have been since we started with Studers and 2" tape back in the late '80s. And I'm gonna talk about mics and equipment and stuff later.

But when I think of the shows that are either somewhat or VERY beloved, I have to admit that they aren't necessarily obsessed with audio design. I'm thinking about three of my favorite shows. And this is NOT throwing shade to them, all three of them are really well produced.

The Bright Sessions (@brightsessions) is simply an amazing show, and it is so beloved that everyone who worked on it has gone on to write/produce/act in *other* incredible shows. But Lauren recorded the thing in her room! She did all the production on it. Do we love it because there are super-hero special effects? Absolutely not, we love it because of the characters. And that comes almost entirely from the writing and acting.

One of my favorite shows comes from Nightvale Presents (@nightvaleofficial), their show Within The Wires. Listening to the first season of this show changed what I thought was possible in Audio Drama. But the sound design, while different for each season, is largely static. Nobody spent six months panning left-to-right to simulate the movement of a person in conversation - the whole show literally sounds like it's on a cassette. Because it is.

And most recently, Modes Of Thought In Anterran Literature (@wolfatthedoor). They have dozens of shows they're working on and I got the chance to hang out (virtually) with Alex, who writes the show and plays the professor, and they produce it the same way we used to do Indie Theater here in New York. He writes it and then records it at a lecturn in one of their offices. Boom, that's it. I think he edits together two total performances.

Coming up with a cool, weird premise is incredibly fun, but you really have to investigate whether or not it works in this medium.

This is especially hard when people bring us projects but they're primarily film people. When their first question is "how do you handle the total lack of visuals", it's pretty unsettling. Because if you really need visuals to tell the story, maybe it's not an audio show!

Every single show we've done has had to pass through this gate except for one. Our whole team really wanted to do the show "Almelem", which is sort of a raunchy backstager drama centered around the first century crowd that constructed the Jesus story in real time. It worked beautifully on the stage and the producers/director wanted to do it.

But I couldn't really justify it as an audio drama. It's not that it requires visuals, it's just that it wasn't written *for* audio.

When you get the actors together to rehearse or perform a play, everyone goes out together afterwards. When you get the actors together to record a show, that's basically... it.

I'm pretty sure the answer is social media. Like this, right now.

But I also realized that I'm maybe scared of going on social media any more? For a while I felt pretty comfy posting on FB and Twitter but about six or seven years ago, they started feeling really gross. Threads is funny but everyone I know on there is from IG, and those are all people I met in 2011. Bluesky is great, but also a bit of an echo-chamber.

So, I'm coming to Tumblr. I love reading what you guys are writing and I'm planning on writing more. It's mostly going to be about how we're doing what we're doing in the Audio Drama space. I might even drift into technical stuff.

I got an email from a distributor. He was asking for scripts that are three minutes long. If your script is accepted, they will then either take the audio you recorded or allow you to record at their space, then they will record an introduction, create an image and release the show.

In return, there's no offer of money. You will then share 50% of the IP of the story with the distributor. There's no mention of who owns the audio, but I'd have to assume the distributor.

This was on a larger list of people and this distributor was respectfully called out for being a predatory IP farmer, and the distributor's response to that was also respectful and curious about what was wrong with the ask, and what a better proposal might be.

(If you feel so compelled, please don't harass or seek out this distributor - I just described the email so I could answer it here.)

Intellectual Property is a really tangly thing. The person who invented the story owns it... but we're all standing on the shoulders of giants and ever since the Medicis, we've all been hoping someone would buy what we make. In the modern capitalistic world, nobody is going to buy anything that they can't sell for more - and that's the rub.

How much more? And who gets to keep it?

If a person creates something and you want to utilize its value, then you either need to allow them to sell it to other people or you have to compensate them. I know this is a very dry way to explain it, but if you want to live on the business side of things then you have to look at the chunks of entertainment as if they are "units that need to be moved".

A writer writes a script. A director crafts that script into a story that can be understood by everyone. Each actor creates a character. Every designer creates the world that the story exists within. So... who owns what?

If you are going to retain ownership of the final product, then your pay-scale should reflect a buy-out of future earnings. If you can't afford a buy-out, then you should negotiate a share of your future earnings.

But let me go back to the emailed proposal I got. The distributor felt that his company's ability to provide an introduction, a "kick-ass image" and distribution was enough to secure 50% ownership of the piece forever. Nobody on the list felt like this was equitable.

A better proposal would be to fund and produce and an entire season of a show - maybe 8-10 25-30 minute episodes - and then share the revenue from ad sales on the feed. If. distributor is willing to do that, then that's a start for a better offer.

Gideon was offered a low-end budget that didn't quite cover the cost of a season of a podcast, then 30% of the ad sales and 33% of the IP when it went to market. The offer they made included huge marquee-name actors, and it was a film company that intended to make it into a movie. After some not very-intense soul-searching, we walked away.

While we don't regret saying no, it's a pretty good deal!!! There was nothing predatory about it and they weren't IP farming, they sought us out and wanted to make *this* show, they weren't just throwing a huge bunch of ideas into the world and waiting to see what would hit.

I want to just throw out a warning to everyone who are pushing to be not only creators but also producers... Be aware of your tiny shifts from Left to Right.

There has always been a divide between Labor and Management and in the arts, many of us have to be all things at all times. We start out as laborers and then we slowly start to take over management. (Or maybe quickly, I don't know...)

As a laborer, you are always fighting to make sure your work is honored and compensated. It's very clear as an actor or painter or designer or musician that you are the most important person in the flow-chart of creation and your line-item should reflect that. And fairly soon, you get sick of people not honoring your work. Why does *their* work have financial value when yours doesn't?

So, you take over as a Producer. If nobody else is gonna give you the chance, you've gotta do it yourself.

The *second* this happens, you have to deal with The Market, and it completely changes your perspective. The creations you are unleashing on The Market have a value that you have no control over and is completely opaque. It's almost as if, say, an "invisible hand" were shoving your work's value in one direction or another.

And you have to figure out how to break even, you have to figure out how to make a profit so you can create more in the future... all while you suddenly realize you are not only still labor, but you've become *free* labor. And... it can make you look at the labor around you and wonder why their work has financial value when yours doesn't.

I've seen it time after time after time. A young actor who is desperate to get into the union decides to produce non-union work because they can't afford union artists. A writer will start designing scripts to have fewer actors, fewer (essentially) employees they'll have to pay later.

I'm just putting this out as a warning. Keep stepping outside yourself and remember to keep your passion for compensating great art alive. You will be tempted to look at your bottom line and instead of addressing The Market, you will want to address the line items in your budget. But that's what *bad* producers do - they try to pay people less instead of finding revenue that will support the work.

I know this because I do it ALL THE DAMN TIME. And it's embarrassing.

I should say up front that 98% of my friends are just Scrambling Struggling Boobs like myself, but I know one person who is a muckety-muck when it comes to A.I. and TV/Film, and he finds the idea of creatives losing their jobs to be pretty unlikely.

Let's say you want a new episode of "Law And Order, Kitchen Confidential, Las Vegas" or whatever. (My entire exposure to Network TV is overhearing people on the subway - this might not be a real show). You're an executive and you think, "Great. I'll just ask my li' A.I computer to bang out an episode and *voy-lah*, we're done.

The problem is, these execs are total Noodges and they're not gonna shoot what they get. They're gonna have notes. Really stupid notes - they always do. "I like this but how do we RAISE THE STAKES!!!" or, like, "I find the empowered woman in this story to be off-putting"...

AND, their notes are always prescriptive. "Give the woman a dog to love, it'll make her more likeable". The AI does it, and it doesn't fix anything. "Give him a dead child to round out his character" and everything's worse now. They can't make it good.

So.

They hire a human writer for rewrites.

Now, this isn't from me, this is from a guy who not only knows these Noodge Execs, but *is one himself*. And his argument is that A.I. is actually *expensive*, and if you're gonna end up hiring a human writer, then you should just start with a human writer.

I know this is awful to say, but if you look at corporate America, these people have always found the cheapest possible way to create the widgets that they sell. This is why we have trade agreements with countries that pay their workers absolute shit. Americans like getting six t-shirts in a tube from CVS for $3, so we *kinda* don't question the conditions of the people who are making them.

Unfortunately, creatives... Like, we all know this, right? But Creative People are currently paid like crap, and the computing power it takes to replace us is expensive.