cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
Are you scared yet?
No?
Well you should have tuned in to our late night live radio show on #ds106radio — with Bryan Alexander visiting me here, it was the perfect plan to hatch. Sadly he seems to have been adbucted overnight by aliens, as have I.
I cannot full say how much fun this was to do. I was inpsired to recall stories from The Thing at the Foot of the Bed, a book I enjoyed (or was spooked by) as a kid. I ordered a used copy on Amazon, but it will be another week before I can go back in time.
We did this half planned and half improv. We sketched out a script of us talking, than getting spooked, and then something really weird happening at the end. Bryan shared a raft of eerie sound effects and music, and we practiced with a bunch of sound effects using ordinary objects (a bowl of rocks, a napkin, a knife on a piece of cardboard, a frozen bag of coffee beans).
I set up my MacBookPro with Nicecast (software which I should rename “F****ingNicecast” it is awesome) with the laptop mic as source, and used one of the effects to be able to mix/crossfade in music from iTunes. I also tossed in some sound effects which I turned on for the closing.
The best part of it was how easy it was to make up content on the fly, live while talking back and forth with Bryan.
I do not care if we had more than 2 listeners, this was a blast to organize and do live. There is something electric (= real scary) about performing something live.
Boo!
I was one of the two, and I was blown away, it was so much fun to hear you two go, and the actual alien abduction/choking scene was pretty crazy. And the tiny tina voice from Twilight Zone was brilliant—it is a blast, and the more we play in the radio space the more I feel like it s something I want to make an integral part of my web experience from here on out. It really does ramp it up to 11 when you have a live platform tom experiment with.
Thank you, Lord Bava. We ogled your tweets along the way, and appreciated each one.
It was a treat. The energy of doing something live was crackling in the room.
Alan is a genius at all levels: easily wrangling complex tech, brainstorming stories at lightning speed, improvising dialog and f/x brilliantly. Anyone would be blessed with such a collaborator.
what hapend? Im freakt out!
Hello Evan,
I would like to be able to answer you but I do not have information. My name is Wayne, I am Alan’s neighbor, and after hearing the loud sounds, screams, and flashing lights at Alan’s house, I came over this morning to see if he is okay. The doors were wide open, and I do not see him or his friend with the long beard. There is debris all over the living room. His computer was left on so I checked his email.
Where do I get the audio story? I have DS106 radio running but looking for your piece from last night specifically.
ds106 is live radio, you get what is streamed.
The recording is right in this blog post, click the play button above or go to http://cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/scary-strawberry-stories-01.mp3
I listened while driving on the 401 highway east across Ontario, Canada towards Ottawa.
It was great and well worth chewing through my mobile bandwidth. (Don’t worry- I’m still under my monthly limit)
My God, that Talking Tina part was the most terrifying- especially since a doll like that lives at my house and even kind of freaks out my daughter.
I also really enjoyed your authentic dialogue, it was not canned at all, did not sound rehearsed and was just thoroughly entertaining.
Well done!
Thanks @Guila – A good portion of the show was improvised. We did a basic outline (about 6 sentences), and did a talk through about what we would do, and what music we would try to play under the talk or in between. We then did some audio tests with sound effects to check.
I would say about 80% of the dialogue was done on the fly- Bryan and I have a good sense of each other and timing, so it was rather easy (hindsight 20/20).
Bryan and I had a good followup discussion on this (something I have been mulling)- on introducing activities and exercises that stand up comics do to be better at doing improv; it seems to have tremendous potential for teaching and presenting– and #ds106radio is a platform we can use
That Zuni fetish doll story is a clip from Trilogy of Terror. It’s great:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilogy_of_Terror#.22Amelia.22
@bryan,
And you know I blogged that Trilogy of Terror back in 2007 cause I love Karen Black so deeply
http://bavatuesdays.com/trilogy-of-terror/
I was hoping you were gonna follow the Zuni doll route in the live scary storytelling 😉
Now that was a certifiable hoot.
Nicely done lads, nicely done. 🙂
I did that too.
Thanks for the story.
I hope it is just the right amount of scary.
I cold not remember all the words to the story.