S2E17 - Trailer Talk

There are over 40,000 value stores currently operating in the US alone. Wherever you find yourself, these outposts of late stage capitalism provide convenience and comfort in equal measure. Whether you're hunting for a deal.

Can I get one of these for free?

Picking up last minute party supplies.

You know what you need? Balloons.

Or attempting to fill that void at the centre of your life with the latest seasonal merchandise.

It's a never ending maze of red and green man.

The buzzing fluorescence above will guide you to your heart's desire. The names may be different, the logos may vary, but unlike life outside of these doors, inside you'll discover certain things you can rely on. Bargains.

Where are the name brands? Where are the high end products?

You do realize we've got the word value in our name, right?

A dedicated and friendly staff.

If you'd like to keep all of your bones, I suggest you take your very sad assortment of frozen dinners and exit the store as quickly as possible.

And of course, the people that depend on these bastions of variety, the customers themselves.

Hey, do you sell motor oil?

This.

This is a value store.

From the outside value vault. Store 236 is no different. A typical neighborhood staple, a keystone of the local community. America. Condensed, distilled. So when things start to go wrong in a place like this, when it becomes the backdrop for the unexplained.

Did a bunch of crows just steal that man's bags?

Sinister.

I will report every single one of you for your horrible customer service and get you all fired. No. I will get your store shut down.

And the disturbing.

What the hell is it? Oh, my God. Oh my God. What the hell is that? No. No.

Well, what does that say about America itself?

Store 236, a dark comedy audio drama coming October 17, 2025.

Shop at your own risk. Sam. Okay, now I have to mute the work laptop because somebody's texting me. What are you doing? I had like, I put my webcam on top of it. That's how little it matters. But I really can't have this thing binging at me.

I had a feeling of panic rising in my chest when I heard the teams notification.

It's like, what? Where is the. Got the mute button. I have to hit function mute. Okay, maybe. Did I do it right? Well, hello and welcome to behind the Locked Doors, a podcast where sometimes the team's notification gives everybody a slight panic attack. I am Scott Paladin. I am currently waiting on people to give me their auditions for a Sci Fi. Or not. Sorry, a noir audio drama. All that takes a While I forgot.

What I say, we're really, really locked in this morning already. We really are. Really are.

I'm Sam Stark. I am working on a spinoff of Unspeakable Distance, AZ in West, and currently doing sound design for the upcoming podcast store two three six.

Hey, I'm Jack. I'm also working on Azin west, and I'm in store 236. My voice is in it briefly, but it's going to be very good and you should all listen to it when it comes out.

And I'm Mike, aka Interiority, and I'm also install 236.

Wow.

Albeit in a slightly less, like, confrontationally annoying role than Jack. That's for others to judge. That's not for me to decide. And I also write Sundered, which is a. Let me check my notes. A Horny Werewolf and the War.

Oh, wait, hold on.

No, I need two of those.

I think we've got this mixed up.

Ah, shit. Thanks. From the top, everybody. We're all scrambled today.

Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. Totally. I don't know. We're something. My brain is.

We're here. We all made it here. We are here together.

Twig from crawling into my lap right now.

Let him. I want to see him.

They.

They are quiet until I get on either a conference call or like a podcast recording or something. And then I start talking and moving around a little bit and they're like, oh, we're up. We would like to be involved in whatever you're doing now. And it's like, you could have been bothering me before when everything. But I didn't need to be involved.

Like, this is right when I wasn't doing something.

Yes.

Opposite world. So you might hear them in the background as they sort of keep themselves occupied. All right, let's do it.

I love it when he says that.

Well, let's do our check ins. Mine was that I wanted to have the. The casting call, like, ready to go. It's actually out now. We are like, I don't know, like two weeks into it, three weeks into it, something like that. That's going to run for another two weeks. And I'm. I'm. I discovered that the system that I'm using for forms gives me a desktop notification every time one comes in, which is. Makes it very difficult to not go listen to stuff ahead of time.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

The temptation.

That's been fun. Anyway, how are y' all doing? How did y' all do on your updates? I don't remember what any of you said you were gonna do. So it's because it's been a minute.

I was gonn, I think, write the next episode of Azin west and get the Google Drive back up and available so Jack can leave stuff in there and look at stuff. I did the Google document part. I have that all set up and everything that I think that we have, like the artwork and the first episode script and all that stuff, and the outline that we did. My glorious Excel spreadsheet, that's all in there and available for us now whenever. I don't know what happened to the first one. It's just lost forever in the ether. So that's all good. And then I did manage to write about half of what I want to get done of this next episode, but I can't really go any farther until Jack and I kind of have a conversation about that.

Yeah, we have to talk.

Yeah.

And not go out of town.

But I'm pretty happy with how far I got, especially since I've been doing so many other things. And I think from this point on, I'm going to also include my stored 2, 3, 6 stuff because it's very important that I get it done at specific times. So that's going to be part of. It's going to be part of my goals from now on. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool.

Where are you at on that stuff right now?

I finished the trailer last week or the week before or something, and so now I'm working on the first episode. And I have. Luckily there's a big chunk of the first episode in the trailer, so I have a bunch of sound design already done. But I had to sound design, like, the beat beginning, which is, like, really important because it's like the first thing everybody's gonna hear. Oh, yeah. So I've been, like, going through thunderstorm sounds and rain sounds and kind of just spooky sounds to like, give ambiance for the new. For the, like, the first few minutes. And then I had to really kind of like, narrow down all of my choices on things like cash registers, the beeps for the cash register, the plastic bags is really important. Plastic and Plastic and paper bag sounds and then receipt sounds. Cause there's actually a lot of receipt handling in the show. And then I had to make decisions on footsteps. Because you can either be a show that like, plays all the footsteps and shows all of the movement, or you just sort of like, let people, you know, know that people are moving around. Cause sometimes footsteps are really overdone.

Yeah.

So I'm. I'm Definitely a put footsteps in when you need them and do not use them when you don't need them because they get distracting. But that being said, I had to go through and find all of my favorite like indoor on linoleum and sort of carpeted footsteps. So.

Yeah, yeah.

So you've been busy. My update is that I tabled at a convention in California and we drove there and back and so I was preparing for that and then I've been trying to manage my chronic pain flare ups from being in the car for four days. So that's where I'm at with my life. But I did at least click into the Google Drive that Sam reorganized. Re like set up. Thank you for doing that, Sam. And I think my task that I was gonna try to tackle yesterday and was too busy lying down with a heat pad on my neck was turning the first chunk of the pilot from a PDF back into a Google Drive so that I can go in and make dialogue edits. But that's a goals for next time thing.

I haven't been around for a while, so I genuinely cannot remember what my last thing.

Perfect.

It's been so long. I have a sneaking suspicion it's something along the lines of learn to read and write at a ninth grade level.

Which I think I've covered.

Wait, I think I remember. I think I remember what you said last time which was write literally anything, even one sentence.

Yeah, I think it was literally just.

Like, yeah, that does sound like me. Yes, I have written. I can announce that I've written a thing.

Good, Perfect.

It's about a paragraph I think has been the total output that I've done in the past week or so. Everything else has been paid work and other stuff and secret projects.

So. Yeah, secret projects. Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit today about trailers, honestly because there was the big discussion about on or there was the release of those store. Oh God, I can't remember the number anymore. My brain is 236. I wanted to say 2:56 but that's because I'm a. I'm a computer nerd guy and so powers of two are all are the only thing my brain ever retains. And then also there's been some other discussions so I was like, I'm like, oh God. This is one of those things that I always, I always struggle with. However, before we get the trailers, you mentioned footsteps and you deactivated my trap card because I feel so strongly about whether or not what shots would be included or not. And the thing I realized the thing that always kills me, which is that footsteps can't follow the point of hearing. Right? Like, so you have. Right. So if the. If the camera, as it were, because I can only think in movie terms, but if the camera is following the characters, if we are, like, moving with them, then you do not include footsteps. If you. If it is somebody entering a scene or leaving a scene, then footsteps can work. You don't always have to include them. But, like, that is, like, the big thing. But, like, if you are. If you have. If you have a walk and talk going where, like, two characters talking and then you're just, like, listening to footsteps underneath all of the dialogue, and it's just like, oh, my God, it is. It can be. So it's just like something about that just, like, really, like, sets me off. But, yeah, I learned it the hard way myself when making footsteps, and I'm like, this doesn't sound right, but, like, they are moving. They should need to put them here. And then like, later on being like, oh, now I understand what the litmus test is.

It's basically like anything else in writing. If you. If it doesn't serve a purpose, it really shouldn't be there. So, like, if you. If you are following a character and you're in the POV of a character, you don't need the footsteps for that character unless they are, like you said, entering or exiting the scene. And so actually, that's what I really kind of struggled with that for the beginning of this episode for 236, was we have a customer entering the store very, very first thing, and we kind of follow them. We're, like, coming in the store with the customer. And so because it's the beginning of the scene, I have the footsteps. And also because, again, footsteps can tell a story, they can do some of the work. Some of the footsteps that I put in to the last episode I did in breathing space. When they were walking around the llama farm and stuff, it was sometimes to emphasize what they were talking about because they'd be walking and it'd be very casual, and then somebody would stop and be like, excuse me. Or, you know, it's like a emphasis. So you really need to just think about what your footsteps are doing. I do a lot of voices for Meltopia, the Maltopia, like, Universe. And Steve and Mark are just sound design crazy people. Like, Steve is just. He's very, very good. And he actually. His. His, I guess, ethos is like, he just does everything. Like, everything has a sound. And so it really Feels like you're there. So he has like footsteps for every single thing that happens. And actually it works the other way if you have footsteps all the time and it's just sort of like a natural. Footsteps are happening all the time. You kind of forget that they're there because they're there all. So there's really an argument for every kind of. Every kind of way you use footsteps. Just don't make them overbearing, obviously. Don't put them like too loud.

Yeah, I feel like it's common to hear the really loud clack clack type footsteps in audio where it's like no footstep actually sounds that loud unless it's like a heeled shoe on a hard floor, you know what I mean?

And when there is a heeled shoe on a hard floor, there should be fucking footsteps like all the time. But they have a program called Walker, which is really great where you can like put in how many people are walking, what shoes they're wearing, what floor they're wearing. They're on. Are they in a big space? Are they outside? And Walker will just do the footsteps for you. And so the footsteps always sound very natural.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the. If you're going to. Yeah, I guess if you're just going to go full on. I need to have the like immersive experience of like we are really doing everything. Yeah. Then it would be better to just go the whole hog in it and like not do it. Like the something coming in and out. Like the, like when a white noise goes away. Like your air conditioner shuts off after like being running all day and you're like, oh, wait there. What I thought was silence is not actually silent. They can just sort of disappear that way. And probably some good volume control and probably eq. You might want to duck those. Like, that's the thing I've experimented. But ducking in the. For anybody who doesn't know is when you, you can automate one channel to control the volume of another channel. So for example, you could have. I do it all the time on intros for this, for this show where if the intro music's fading out but one of us is talking, then automatically the intro music gets turned down just a little bit more. And you can do that on sound effects as well. And what it gives you is a feeling of. Well, what it does is it means that when somebody's talking, you don't have a bunch of other noise at the same volume, but when nobody is talking Then the volume can be a little bit higher. It kind of simulates. Simulates a little bit of the dynamic range that human hearing actually has because we are very, very good at hearing both very, very soft sounds and also very loud sounds. That's why decibel scales are logarithmic in scale rather than linear. You know, a five decibel bump is like twice as loud or something like that. So yeah, you can get deep in the weeds on that.

I use ducking on the 236 trailer.

Oh yeah, yeah. Being able to automate ducking and side chaining and all that stuff so that one. One channel can, can control the other one is like, that's the reason. That's one of the reasons why I gave up on Reaper. Is that like figuring that out? Not that it's hard and Reaper, but I had already learned how to do it in audition. And once, you know, it's. It's one of those things where you're like, once you know how to do a thing that's kind of complex and you don't want to have to relearn it from the ground up. It's like, okay, well this is, this increases the. Yeah, it's like this made switching to Reaper so much harder.

Yeah.

Yeah. Scott is absolutely singing the song of my people right now.

Yeah.

Me and Mike are sitting here like eyes glazed over. Like, I don't know what any of you guys are talking about, but it sounds very complicated and way over my head.

I mean, honestly, I've been thinking like, I'm fairly sure like ducking is like a filthy double entendre in English vernacular. Sex act in a rowboat on an honor. So. So I didn't really feel qualified to input anything into this conversation. But you know, it's.

It is what it is. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, don't knock it until you tried it, but yeah.

Yeah.

God, there's the. What's the. Garfunkel and Oates, the. The comedy music pair Ricky Lindholm and Kate Miguchi did a song called Sex with Ducks Switch from like way back in the day about the debate about whether or not people should be allowed to get gay married. Somebody American politician likened it to people having sex with ducks. So they're like, oh, let's do an entire song about this. And so now I can't think about ducks or in any kind of innuendo based world without the, without that song. It is now stuck in my head.

All I can think about when I.

Hear the words ducks and sex. In the same sentence are the corkscrew dicks.

Yep. Now some. Yeah. Some species of ducks have corkscrew dicks. Terrible season. Yeah. And the. The females have corkscrew vaginas because they're. It's a. It's an arm defense mechanism or something.

Yeah.

I'm so glad that this conversation has taken this turn. This is amazing, you guys.

Yeah. Yeah.

What were we supposed to talk about today?

Trailers. Trailers.

Yeah, trailers. Okay. Yeah. Which you probably shouldn't put corkscrew dicks in. I mean, I guess if it's. If it's an important part of the People need to know what they're getting into. But you might have some trouble with trailer exchanges. With other.

Yeah. I tried to put corkscrew dicks so many times into the store. 236 trailer.

Damn.

And Mel just shot me down every single time.

Tragic.

Killjoy.

Now let him speak.

All right, so trailers.

No trailers. Yeah. Like this is. It's one of those things where I have heard other people discussing what makes a good trailer. And I know that brevity is super important, but it feels not doable to me sometimes where it's like, how do you explain an Entire show in 30 seconds without it being ad copy? Basically, where it's like, oh, this week you're. Blah, blah blah is a super dark and brooding supernatural thriller. Blah blah blah. You know, with. You know, like how do you communicate? The voice of a project quickly and succinctly is incredibly non trivial. I've. One thing I've. I have noticed as I've listened to other people's trailers though I would rather hear one person speak, maybe two people speak or whatever the whole thing is. Rather than hearing the best little clips of voice act like. Like the sort of clip show version of things. To me this is not. And maybe I'm weird, maybe this is why I don't understand things. But to me, when you just put a bunch of like audio clips next to each other of different people saying things sort of contextless that my brain is like not able to process that correctly. Like I don't know. Like it comes off as. I don't know. I feel like I get less information than if I just heard 30 seconds of one thing. But obviously that's not how most people do it. So I guess I don't know if I'm wrong or not. I would love to hear Yalls thoughts on it.

I think the one voice thing is it only works if the. The idea is so incredibly succinct. Like if you can have one person be like, you know, like a short little. I don't even know how I'm trying to say. Like, how am I trying to say what I'm trying to say? The clips of things works for me because when I'm listening for what I want to hear in a specific. I'm talking about specifically audio drama.

Yeah.

I want to hear the voices of who's going to be in the show. So, like, if I recognize somebody's voice or if there's a voice that I've never heard before and it's like, oh, that person sounds great. I'd love to hear them in an audio drama. And sometimes if it's just one person, it's just like a narration. And, like, I don't know that it has to be a really, really good idea or something to hook me really quick. Gotcha. For me to kind of check it out. And like you were saying before, something about, you know, like, what pulls you in and what doesn't. I'm not even going to pay attention to a trailer if it's not immediately something that's in my genre anyway.

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.

If it's not something that I'm interested in generally, it could be the best goddamn trailer in the entire world. And I'll be like, man, whatever. I really don't care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's that factor. Factor to think of, too.

The factor of showing off your cast is a really good point, which is not something that occurred to me that, you know, you might hear a voice that you recognize and go, oh, hey, that's, you know, so. And so I will watch any. I will listen to anything that they're in, and I recognize their voice. That is absolutely a way that you can get people in. That never even occurred to me.

Yeah. Specifically with the 236 trailer, if it had just been Mike, like, doing the whole trailer. Mike is Mike, and I'll listen to anything Mike is in. So, like, like, obviously I'm like, yeah, let's go. But if I didn't know the person that was doing it, I'd be like, interesting for me, specifically the.

The.

If you haven't listened to the 236 trailer, it's the documentarian giving, like, a kind of fuck, man.

I'll put it at the start of this episode. It'll be. It'll literally be the start.

It's a great. It's a great speech. It's quirky and silly, but then it's also kind of sinister. And if it had just Been that person, I would have been like, interesting. But the. The little clips of dialogue that go interspersed between what he's talking about gives you a little more context for what he's saying. And it just gets really kind of absurdish towards the end because Mel was very much like, this show is all about tone shift and just whiplash. So we need that in the trailer. So specifically for that trailer, it needed.

Clips and having that understanding what you're trying to communicate with the trailer, like you. Like you're saying with Mel, where Mel's like, this show is about tone shift. So that is what this trailer needs to do. Having that kind of clarity sounds super important to me. Where it's like, I. What is this show selling? So that we're not trying to, like, appeal to the broadest audience. You're trying to find the people who want. Oh, a show that's about, you know, a customer service and has a huge tone shift. That is what I want. You want to find those people and make a thing that will appeal specifically to them. That is really good. That's a really good point.

Yeah. Now, something. Something I want to really quickly interject something like, I hate to bring up the Magnus archives because they're so just saturated everywhere. But the thing about the Magnus archives and the way they do their trailers is it's just Johnny Sims, but the show is mostly just Johnny Sims talking. So that works for the Magnus archives because. And it isn't even a lot. Like, their trailers are like Johnny Sims saying, like, the Madness archives. And that's like it. And it work. Works because, like, most, like, 90 of the Magnus archives are just Johnny Sims telling stories anyway.

Yeah.

So it absolutely works both ways. But you got to understand the.

What you're delivering on what you're delivering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, in an. Because I am at the moment already trying to plan out what I'm going to do for. It takes a wolf. Because I want to have something I can show for. I'm going to have two episodes by the end of the year. So I'll have content. I can pull from those or I can write something and obviously I can create it and all that stuff.

Stuff.

So I'm, like, trying to figure out what I want. And obviously, 50% of the dialogue of that show is me. The remainder is like, you know, a couple of leads. So maybe it's like, do I want the trailer to be just me saying some stuff? Do I want to have. Bring in a little bit from the. The show? And again, what am I Trying to, like the, the clarity of what am I trying to communicate from the show is the important thing that I guess I haven't clarified yet. Like, I need to know what it is I'm selling, which. Trying to think about, like the biggest reactions. It's like, do I. Do I lean into the fact that there are, you know, there's some dick jokes. There's some. But it, like, it's sort of taking itself seriously in that regard. It's sort of dry humor in that way. Do I take, you know, is it more about the mystery? Which I don't feel like is. It's a. To me, it's like the biggest part of it is it's a character study of our, our mains. And so I guess I need to focus in that direction then. I guess, like, I'm just spitballing. I'm. I'm literally thinking in real time here.

So do you have. Do you have the Beast narrated or do you have the. Or do you have the. Oh my God, what is the other one called? The Fool. Do you have the fool narrate it? Because that's. Both of them are extremely integral to the storytelling aspect anyway.

Yeah. And the. I mean, based solely on what the format is most of the time, it would be beast narration with maybe the fool commenting.

I feel like, also because those two voices are the same character, how do you portray that in the trailer in a way that's like, quickly understandable?

Yeah, that. Yeah, yeah. Because like, there was a discussion in one of the discords I'm on where they're talking about like, well, how long should a trailer be? And I remember like my initial thought was, oh, yeah, when we did Breathing Space, it was like, I think it was like five minutes or something. Like that was our, like our initial trailer. And then they're like, everybody's like, oh yeah, two minutes max. 30 seconds is better.

And I'm like, five minutes probably long.

Anything in that amount of time.

Yeah, I can't think of any good audio drama trailers that are 30 seconds. That's kind of ridiculous. Except like something like the Magnus archives where everybody already knows what it is.

Yeah, sure, the Magnus archives. If that's all it is, that's one thing.

Yeah, exactly. But if nobody knows the show, you gotta like, like you gotta have that two minutes.

Yeah, probably. I mean, like again, you're, you're. And honestly, if you can probably have both because there might be situations where you can. You can sneak a 30 second trailer onto somebody else's feed that maybe they wouldn't necessarily agree to a slightly longer one. And also like, yeah, I don't know where I was going with that anyway.

No, that makes sense. Like you have your, your, your elevator pitch version and the like, you can have a longer one that you know, at the end of a longer episode of something where people are already listening and already poised to absorb information. And then you have your 30 second like flash fry trailer that you just pop somewhere.

And like, I think about my experience as a user or a listener, right? Where if somebody put a two minute trailer at the start of an episode of a show that I wanted to watch, I would skip that.

I'd be like, oh my God, what is this? This is not what I'm here for.

I would be reaching for the skip forward button. But if I, if you put 30 seconds of something ahead of time, you know, in front of a show, that makes me much more likely to be like, oh, what's this? I'm more intrigued, you know. But if you put anything at the end of a show, the number of people who have already flipped onto the next episode, the moment the credits roll on a show is also probably pretty high too. So it's like, what's the trade? There are trade offs there.

Of course, I absolutely don't listen to either. Like, it doesn't matter what it is. I'm here to listen to a show. So I skip the stuff in the beginning and I skip the stuff in the end. If you have stuff in the middle and I'm doing something, then I will listen to it because I don't have a choice. But if I have the ability to skip it. Yeah, I'm gonna be completely honest. If I have the ability to skip a trailer, unless I know the people doing the trailer, I will absolutely not listen to the trailer.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

You know what that said, now that I think about it, anytime I've listened to a audio production that's not like an indie one that, you know, my friends have made or whatever, they do mid roll ads. Like there's stuff in the middle of the episode and I kind of hate that. But I also like see how it works because people are less likely to skip it.

Well, and yeah, the, and it also mean you can sell a mid roll ad for so much more money that you can sell a, a, a pre roll or, or a post roll. Like that is, that's where the money is. So if you're trying to run a business, then you basically have to do that. That's why, I mean, that's that's why all advertising exists the way that it does. Which I agree with you that that is, as a, as a listener experience is terrible.

I'm like, what is this shit? In the middle of this Ghost Honey's Dream Machine episode. Like, I did not come here for this. Yeah.

Yeah.

To be completely contrary to what I just said, though, when I, when I do hear those mid ads, like the trailers that. In the middle of my very intense ghost hunting podcast, sometimes they're, they're really intriguing and I'm like, oh my gosh, what is that? And I'll go listen to it.

What is that?

Absolutely.

It makes me, it makes me think about like you probably as a, as a, as a creator, you should be thinking about where those ads are going to go in the show. Right? Like, you have to be putting brakes in. I can like, like his. Hey man, look, you can't like, you have to have, you have to have scene breaks. Like the number of scripts that I've written that have no scene breaks in it. One long continuous shot like an episode of the Bear. And like, and like I'm like, well, what are you gonna do? Like, stop mid sentence like to roll an ad?

Yeah.

Anyway.

So funny.

Yeah. Okay, so I think clarity of purpose makes a lot of sense. I, I had not thought about showing off your cast, but that is a really good point. So maybe there's, maybe there's a split decision here of like making a 30 second teaser trailer, right? Where like this is the, this is what they release on, you know, freaking two years before a movie comes out, right? Where there's just like vague shots of whatever, of whatever locations and, or people they're gonna show and they're not actually showing you anything. And then there's the like, like old school. Have you guys ever watched old trailers? Like trailers from before? The modern non spoilery trailer thing was where they will tell you the entire movie. They will show the big damn kiss at the end in the trailer and they'll explain to you every plot beat.

Over the course of the like, yeah, they're amazing.

It's like, damn, I don't even need to watch this movie now. I've seen the entire thing in five minutes.

But like the, the ability of something like that to communicate what you're buying into before you get into the story is great too. Where it's like, yeah, like this is not like the, the. The modern version of a trailer where we're gonna show you nothing except for big sweeping shots and maybe like a couple of lines. Of dialogue that may not be in the actual movie. But we're gonna be intriguing you. Right? Like, we're selling you on the possibility of what this movie could be versus the old school version of. We are selling you exactly what this movie is. We are gonna show you and, like, explain to you precisely what this movie is. I kind of. I really respect the old way of doing it.

Yeah. Shout out to the people who are like, we made a good movie and here is five minutes of it. Like a little selection of morsels from five minutes of this hour and a half long movie or whatever.

Yeah. Or you do like Netflix and you just randomly choose two minutes from somewhere in the movie that has absolutely no bearing on what's going on. You have no idea what's happening, and it's just two characters that don't even matter. And you're like, I still have no idea what this is about. Thank you, Netflix.

I still don't know what this show is about. Thank you.

We've wasted five minutes and we're right where we started.

I absolutely do not understand why Netflix doesn't play the trailer. When you hover over something, it's just a random two minutes of somewhere in the movie. Doesn't make sense.

Well, it's. Because that is the cheapest possible thing they can do.

They don't want to pay.

A good trailer company can, like, make a. Like, they can make a bad movie look good. I mean, we all remember the. It's. There's suicide squad and then there's the suicide Squad. And I can't remember which one's. Which was the first one, the bad one where, like, the. The movie was bad and like it was in progress production hell and nobody could make it look good. And then they hire an outside trailer company to come in and make a cool looking trailer. They do. And everybody's like, oh, that movie looks rad.

Yep.

And then they're like, well, we'll just let these trailer guys try to fix the movie. Like, they hired them to fix the rest of the movie and re edit it and do some reshoots and it did not work.

Incredible. Yeah, well, because making a movie and making a trailer a different. Do you remember the sucker punch trailers, Scott?

Yes. That was awful, honestly, because they did not show you what they could not possibly have sold you. A different, like the. The degree to which they were selling a different movie. Right. Yeah. They were selling the little parts of the movie in between the big part. Like all of the, like, action fight sequences. They were saying, this is what the movie is. And they didn't give you any indication that there was anything else going on, despite the fact that that is a huge chunk of the movie is like this depressing mental institution where all of the cool stuff happens in fight sequences that we're kind of critiquing and blaming the audience for enjoying.

Yeah.

So if you came into the movie expecting. Have a raucous fun time watching a girl in a sailor outfit use a samurai sword to fight giant robots and zombies, and. And you're like, this is going to be rad. And then, like, the movie is like, you for liking this.

You're like, but you told me to come.

Okay.

That's the crazy thing. That trailer was doing something. And the thing was setting a trap for you specifically like that. That trailer was a saw trap for you.

Yep. Y. Yeah. No, you're 100% right. Fucking Zack Snyder being like, I need to trap Scott.

I need to trap Scott W. Paladin.

In my Saw trap, I spawn him like a. Like a. Like a supervillain story. This is going to be his origins.

Yeah. So that's the thing trailers can do, is specifically set up a wrong expectation about the show so that you can flip that expectation later. However, use wisely. Like, don't just be doing that for the hell of it. We talked about this, Scott, when we talked about Sucker Punch for however many hours we talked about Sucker Punch, which is, like, it is a nasty thing to do to, like, set up an expectation that you're gonna subvert later, not in, like, an interesting narrative way, but in, like, a fuck you, I'm smarter than you way. Like, don't be like that as a. As a creator. It just sucks. Don't do it.

Yeah.

And, well, I guess that means. So, like, the. I was just praising the, like, explain everything trailer. But there are movies for which the mystery is the point. Right?

Right.

Like, you wouldn't want to walk into an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Like, you shouldn't put the, like, oh, yeah, he's dead, by the way, in the. In the fucking trailer. If that's the. Right. Like an interesting, intriguing. Here's. Here's some. Some little tidbits that may. It might intrigue you, but that we're not going to actually provide you any media information is important. If mystery is a particular part of.

The show, I would like to. I would like to bring up weapons for that. Weapons. The movie weapons. The trailer is so intriguing because it, like, it shows you this thing that happened, and you're just like, what what the hell? Like, you. Absolutely. There's no way that you could possibly know what's going on in the movie from the trailer. And. But they seemed to, they seem to tell you so much in the trailer. You get this, this full ass story in the trailer. But when you go and see the movie, it's only like the trailer's literally like the first five minutes of the movie. And yeah, you just can't. And, and there's just no way that you could figure out what's going on from the trailer. And it's so intriguing. You're like, I, I need to know what is going on with these kids. And I think that that was done so well. Their marketing for weapons was incredible.

Interesting. Yeah, I've not heard that one. I will have to check that out.

It's not. People went insane and were like, this is the best horror movie I've ever seen. It's not the best horror movie I've ever seen, but it's very, very good.

It. Yeah, well, not everything needs to be the best. Sometimes you can just have like a good movie that.

Exactly. Yeah.

You enjoy and that you like. And you can also. People need to divorce the instinct that the degree to which they enjoy something directly relates to how good the thing that you're enjoying. Oh my God.

I'm nodding my head massively.

My neck is actually sore. I'm nodding so hard.

Yeah, my neck is sore because I was in the car for four days. But that's.

I'm sorry, Jack.

I wonder if the microphone is picking up the noises my vertebrae are making when I turn my head.

Oh yeah. I'm like thinking about like the movie the Proposal. Right. Like, which is not a good movie. I will tell you this.

It's so fun. It's so delightful.

Enjoy that movie so much. And it is not good. It is not. It is a movie that is getting by entirely on having a reasonably good script. That story of which is dog. But the, the moment to moment, how fun it is to listen to is good. And then you have two leads who are just charismatic as hell.

And that's, that's the, that's the whole thing. Listen, it's a, it's a good execution of a very sort of middle of the road romantic comedy. Like they just executed it well and the leads did a nice job and it's like really enjoyable to watch even though it's not like any sort of groundbreaking, you know, film of any kind.

Agreement.

And, and of course the, the, the, the reverse of this is also true. Like There's. I can't remember the name of the filmmaker. The guy who did the Lobster. Right. So the movie the Lobster, which is. I think that movie is excruciating to watch.

Yeah.

That movie does not want you to be enjoying any particular moment of it. And that, to me, follows through. That movie is a chore. However, that movie is very good. That movie is like. Like talking about some stuff, is making some points, and it is a movie that I think about a lot. I don't ever want to watch it again, but I think about it a lot. And that, you know, like, it was. I would not count that as a movie that I enjoyed at all, but it is a very, very good movie.

So I feel those things are not.

Those are divorced from one another.

I feel the same. It's very hard to recommend the Lobster to anybody. You have to, like, really understand the person if you're gonna recommend it.

Yeah, well, you have to understand. Yeah, I like that. I can't remember his name. The guy who made the Law, who's the guy who made. Because all of his movies are like that.

Didn't he do that one with Emma Stone too, where she's like a Frankenstein character?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also good and weird.

Yorgos Lanthimos. Yeah, Yorgos Lanthimos. He is. He's just like that. He's one of those creators that you're like, I'm glad you're doing what you do, but. And like, nobody could stop you. Like, I'm pretty sure that nobody ever gave. Nobody gave him money. He would still be doing the exact same thing, just like with smaller.

Smaller budget.

Yeah, yeah, smaller. And if you gave him more money, he wouldn't do anything, like, different. Like, I don't think that guy can. I don't think he's ever gonna make a Marvel movie. He's too much of himself.

But I kind of wish he would. That'd be amazing. Okay, so trailers. You have learned. You have learned that sometimes showcasing your actors is important. But there is. There is 30 second ideas that could be just one person that you could stick in the middle of somebody else. Else's podcast.

I think it has to be case by case. Like, it has to depend on the show. It has to depend on what you're trying to communicate about the show. It has to depend on what utility the ad is actually for. Yeah. Like whether it's a mid roll or an end or a beginning or like a little just teaser taster tester thing.

Yeah, well, and we didn't even discuss the Fact that, that not every trailer is meant for, like, being put on another show. Like we having something that's meant to go out on. On a shorts platform or be tweeted or not. Whatever. X, I guess tweeted.

Still tweeted.

I don't.

I, I will be dead. Naming Twitter until I die, probably.

Yeah, me too.

I know I was. Or you know, but it's meant to be sent out on social media and that is a whole different sort of thing of like, what's, how can I get people. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, people, people need to be able to click it and then, like, listen to it, and that's a whole different sort of thing. But I think the, the most important takeaway that I can think of as I try to start thinking about what I'm doing for the next for. For It Takes a wolf is that having clarity of what you're trying to communicate. Yes. Is the important that you don't have time for discovery in it. Yeah. You don't have to, you don't have time to like, just throw everything in there. You have to figure out what's the most important thing, what's the thing that people will really want and then execute on that and say, like, okay, I am going for I need to communicate horny or something like that. You're like, this is the thing that I have got, like, I've got like, you know, this is about frantic tension. This is about action. This is about, you know, dark comedy. Whatever it is that you're like, you think the selling point of the show is and then execute on that is probably the most important part of it.

It'll be interesting to see what you do because I can think of a bunch of noir podcasts that I like a lot and I'm trying to think of what they did for their trail, but you have the extra added thing where there's also werewolves. So I don't. It'll. It'll be cool to see what you do.

The, the I, I, I'm running into a similar problem with this that I am. I, I, I, I think I mentioned a while back I wrote some lyrics for what I think is going to be the Outro song. And ever since then I have been trying to write lyrics for the intro song and it is so hard. It's like writing a little poem about your show. And it like, I keep finding art, but the thing I keep coming back to is playing on the name where it's like, if you can run through a list of things that it's like, you know, to. To catch a killer. To, you know, stand. You know, to stand the brunt. To blah, blah. You, like, list all these things and then you end with. It takes a wolf. Right. Like, you can then call back to it. This is the. That's the format that I keep thinking about, but I don't. I don't know if it's good or not. But with the idea that it needs to communicate really clearly what the purpose of the show is, I'm not sure that format survives. I think I need to do something different about that.

So maybe your homework, Scott, not to assign you homework. Maybe your homework should be to go to watch a bunch of James Bond movie intros. Like the intro songs for James Bond movies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they always love to do a big pop song.

They love to do it.

They delay. Love to do a big pop song. Yeah, that's a good idea. That is a good idea. That will be part of my homework. My homework. But we'll just roll into it. This is where our setting.

We're so good at transitions.

Yeah. Sometimes we just barrel right into it. I'm going to work on figuring out what my trailer is going to look like because I don't know. I don't have anything else to do. I'm waiting on additions. Yeah. That's what my thing will be. I'll be working. Maybe I should actually just ask on some of the. I bet if I ask on some of the audio drama discords that I'm on, I'm just say, hey, send me your trailer.

Can I listen to a bunch of trailers?

Then I'll just get a bunch of them and that can give me sort of a broad thing. Yeah, Bond is a good idea. I should look back at, like, the trailers for, like, Brick and lucky number 11 and some of those other movies that I really like and see what they did, because there's some of. That's translatable. And they start working out what my thing is.

So check out the. The Penumbra podcast. They're.

They're.

They're sci fi, but they're also noir.

Yeah. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do. Okay, so that's mine. How about you, Sam?

Okay, so the most important thing is the first episode of 2, 3, 6. Sound design. And so I think that I will have the full episode done by the next time we get together. Nice. That's my main goal. And then my secondary goal is I am going to schedule a time with Jack and talk about stuff for the next episode.

6. Yeah, my goal is talk to you, say I'm with my human mouth, and then also get into the PDF of the first half of the pilot, turn it back into a Google document, and make whatever small dialogue edits for as I need to make and any other notes that I feel like I need to make.

We also probably need to specifically discuss the Stowaway in our second episode because we need to decide if it's something that a very, very young child can do or somebody like. Like Oz could come in and pretend to be a younger.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll figure that out.

Cool.

And I think it'll kind of. Just one other thought on that. I think it'll kind of depend on, like, how much to that part gets added in the next episode, because we know roughly how much dialogue that character has to speak in the, like, first of the Stowaway episodes. And then in the second one, if it's like, okay, well, here we are, bye. And that's it. Then it's like, that doesn't add a whole ton to the part, but if there's a whole bunch more content with that character, then maybe we're looking at casting an older person who plays younger. Anyways.

How about you, Mike?

Well, for the first time in a long while, it seems like there is light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the paid work, which is distracting me from sundered. So I'm hoping that after this weekend, I'm going to be able to sit down and for at least a month, have it as my sole creative focus.

Yay.

That's very exciting.

Exciting.

Yeah. So I've been wanting to do it. Like, the need to properly sit down and write on it has been building. Like, I've been doing a lot of work in the background, just kind of like thinking of things and kind of like just adding more pieces to the puzzle and like, you know, like, you know, the bones of what it is. I'm going to need to write, come up with a really interesting framing device. I really want to see where it goes.

Cool.

So, yeah, so actually getting to put that in paper is. Yeah, I am. I'm desperately looking forward to it.

That's so exciting.

So exciting.

Excellent. Well, in that case, case we will catch the audience back in hopefully two weeks. And that sounds. That would be good. That would be nice. So, bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Sam. Ram.