DM Notes: Lakeshore 19

Patrons! I'm writing you these notes on the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm about to eat my weight in Tofurkey, and I hope you are finding a little bit of time for peace and relaxation, too. You're worth it!

Since I (Jesse) edited this episode, I thought I'd give you some tech-and-editing flavoured behind the scenes info this time around.

Two big firsts for Many Realms in this episode! The first first (?) was the inclusion of custom recorded music for an episode, which we'd never done (besides, of course, commissioning friend Nik October to compose our show theme). And who was talented and dedicated enough to produce this custom recording? Why, myself of course!

Bragging aside, we had a hard time finding the exact kind of wonky piano practice audio we wanted for the opening scene with Hazel, so I stole Jillian's MIDI keyboard and used my own nonexistent piano skills to whip something up! It was very fun to listen along to the scene and figure out what to play--I felt like one of those old-fashioned accompanists they used to have at silent movies.

Patrons who have taken piano lessons in their lives might recognize the opening bars of the tune Hazel and I were struggling with--it's MacDowell's "To a Wild Rose",  a pretty common beginner piano piece that I thought was more than a little fitting for Hazel's character.

Our second first for the episode was Roman meeting the many versions of herself in the strange dreamscape caused by Charlie's magic. We've gone back and cleaned up or re-recorded parts of scenes, but this was the first time a cast member played a different character and acted opposite themselves! I asked Eli for her insight on this dramatic challenge, and here's what she said:

I think the Dream!Romans scene turned out particularly well because, and the credit goes to Jesse, all of the characters are not only distinct and easily identifiable from one another in personality, they also all had fairly opposing vocal cadences reflected there. Jesse had originally said the Dream!Roman lines and I had dubbed back over them afterwards, which made it a lot easier to copy a natural conversational rhythm. Funnily enough, I felt like Dress!Roman, cycling through 30 different outfits to create some sort of illusion. Still, the key was doing all of the voice for one Roman at a time. If I had to switch back and forth in-person and re-recorded it chronologically, it would’ve broken up the rhythm in a stilted way. That’s the magic of editing, baby!  

For the actual performance, it was interesting tapping into the “What I Could’ve Been” of it all— there’s a layer somewhere in there about all of the potential that Roman could’ve been both as a person inside the story and what I could’ve intentionally grown her into in a thematic sense. It felt very poetic and whimsical to just go with the flow and explore all of the voices and desires she could’ve had and just... didn’t. I almost felt sad thinking about it! At the end of the day, I feel like it’s that kind of whimsy that this cast thrives well on, so I feel particularly proud of that scene.

And that's all we have for Lakeshore 19! The next episode is the first part of the finale--we hope you're as excited as we are!