S1E1 - Introductions and Explanations

Sa.

All right. Hello and welcome to behind the Locked Doors. A. I don't even know what to call this kind of podcast. It is a productivity trick that we're doing to ourselves to make ourselves more productive. I am Scott Paladin. You're one third of this podcast, and my project is a yet as yet unnamed werewolf noir audio drama. Sam, who are you and what's your podcast?

I am Sam Stark, and I'm currently, among other things, working on a podcast called as in west, and it is a spinoff of the Unspeakable Distance podcast.

Awesome. And Jack.

Hi, I'm Jack. I'm also working on as in west because I'm as and Sam is West. So we're making that together because Unspeakable Distance was a great project and we were like, you know what? I think there's more juice in this to be had. So we're squeezing some more juice out of it.

So much juice.

So much.

It's a hilarious image.

Wringing those boys out like wet paper towels.

So to further explain what this feed that y'all are listening to right now is, we have all been talking about these projects for several months, and it is so easy when there isn't a driving force behind a creative project for it to get pushed to the back bur and for things that have due dates and timetables to get done when the thing that you want to work on doesn't get done because it can get done later. Right. So we have created this little space which is basically just a conference call that we're going to do every two weeks to talk about our projects and check in where we are on them, what progress has been made. Technically, I run the network, but I'm not setting due dates for these people. They can manage themselves, but it's mostly about having a little bit of accountability of, oh, this is what I got done this week. And as well, a creative space where the three of us can talk about these projects with other people who will maybe bounce ideas and cheerlead us a little bit and maybe spurn a little bit of healthy competition. That's something I know I need. So we're going to talk this particular episode because we're just establishing things here. We're just going to talk about what the projects are and so that you, the listener, have an idea of what's going on and what we're talking about. I will warn you, if you're listening to this feed, then you have explicitly opted into all spoilers.

All spoilers, all the time.

All spoilers all the time. We will not including things that we're just speculating about having ideas for. But there are things. We're going to say things and give you explanations of stuff that will happen in these projects. If that is not your bag, go. Bye. See ya. Sorry. Go listen to the actual things. But this is a place meant for sort of a creative freedom and we can't do that while protecting spoilers. So let's start off with just introducing what these projects are. And like I said, we'll start with mine, which is an as yet unnamed werewolf noir audio drama. I've been so struggling with finding a name for this thing because it is really hard for me to find one that sounds both suitably noir but also very clearly communicates werewolf.

Yeah, that's a fine line to walk.

Yeah. As for the scope itself, it's going to be a 10 episode series narration. So the main hook, it's hard to explain this project without saying the main hook which is that the narrator, it works sort of like the genre of noir where you've got the first person narration of it was two glasses of whiskey past 2am blah blah blah blah, explaining what's going on. That is going to be. There's going to be two actors handling that basically. So you have the internal monologue and the person who actually speaks when the character speaks in the world diegetically. And then when the werewolf comes out, those voice actors switch. So. Oh my God. When.

Awesome. Oh, King Square.

Sorry we hadn't heard this. This is all new information listeners for me and Sam as well. Oh yeah.

So that's the main idea. So the idea is that whoever is the internal voice becomes the external voice when the werewolf comes out. For practicality reasons, that makes the most sense for me to be the internal narrator because that means I don't have to pay myself. I can do all of that extra work myself. And because of my voice type and the sort of narrative quality of a werewolf, I'm like, oh, that means that it would be so cool if the other person is not a man, either non binary or feminine or something like that. That creates a bunch of interesting gender implications. So that's kind of where my head is at.

We're doing gender, baby.

Yeah. And I mean you can't do a werewolf story without talking about gender and masculinity and animal nature and all that stuff. There's a whole bunch of fun things that come along with that. And then where I'm at in the project right now is that I've got about 500 words of episode one written, which I might have to throw out. Although I read it just the other day and I was like, holy crap. Past Scott was off the hook. There's some lines in there that are totally like when you write genre fiction, you can sometimes just go completely balls to the wall with the dialogue, and it fucking works.

Well, great.

Okay, so what is Yalls Project in more detail?

So AZ and West is a spin off. AZ and west were both characters in the podcast Unspeakable Distance. And basically what happened was in West's. Oh, my God. So in West's storyline, his whole thing was he was kind of like a. A DJ in space, or he had like a podcast in space. And there was a. Basically a space janitor on a ship that was listening and he started sending in messages. That guy's name is Simmons, and he is played by our wonderful friend Mike, who really just brings so much depth and so much character to everything he plays. And so, of course, literally everyone in existence who, while listening to the show, fell in love with this fucking character Simmons, including West, of course.

And who could blame him?

Yeah. As one does.

Right? So bad things happened to Simmons off way, way, way far away where nobody can reach him, because hence the title of the podcast. And so west is like, holy shit, I gotta save him. Because the big bad corporation behind everything, it's kind of just like, yeah, let's leave him out there. Let's see what happens. Bioweapon, blah, blah, blah. It's always summarized. Yeah. To summarize that.

Spendable assets, blah, blah, blah.

Right. Yeah. So one of the main kind of fun things, one of the themes of Unspeakable Distance is there's all these different people kind of just sending messages out into the void. And AZ is one of those people. And I thought it was very hilarious, Jack, that AZ wasn't getting any other messages. He was just.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, he's only sending out messages.

He's only receiving messages from the people who he's not trying to communicate with. He has, like, one friend back at, like, Mech Pilot Space Boot Camp who he's trying to get messages to. And those messages, we don't know if those messages are actually getting to that person or not. He's never received any back. But he is hearing other people's. Male only.

Yeah. So west is very, very kind of like, I don't know, Space MacGyver. And he can put together a spaceship basically with spare parts and chewing gum and all that kind of stuff. So he Decided that he was gonna go help Simmons. The problem is he's not actually trained to fly. He's not a pilot. And so he can sort of get places if it's, you know, specifically charted courses, stuff like that. But he doesn't know exactly where Simmons is. Exactly. So he's like, hey, I need a pilot.

Well, Simmons is moving. Simmons is on a picture very slowly.

But he is moving. Yeah. And so he's like, all right, I need a pilot. I've been listening to this pilot who's stuck on this place. And so he's like, I'm gonna go see if this pilot wants to help me save this other person. Obviously, Wes does not think things through to completion. He's more of a doer.

Yeah.

Well, also because Azariah has only heard select messages from all these other people. Azariah does not know who Simmons is. Azariah doesn't know who west is.

Doesn't even know who west is.

But totally the kind of person who, like, when somebody shows up and says, we're gonna go save some random person, they're like, let's do it.

Okay. I guess it's better than sitting here on my butt on this asteroid. I hate.

Exactly. And that's kind of the main driving force of why Wes decided to go pick up AZ is because all of AZ messages were like, hey, I'm stuck here.

So I hate it here.

Yeah. And he hates it. But I do. I did make a point when I was writing that, my part of that episode to the whole thing where he brings the part to fix the transporter.

Yeah.

So, like, if Azariah didn't want to go with him, he can leave.

He could have gone back to Space Boot Camp.

Yeah. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to use that in some of the writing. Like, if, as ever, is like, oh, my God, why did I come with you? He could be like, I gave you an out. Yeah. But that's basically it. It's starting. This new podcast starts when the two of them have gotten together and are going to be heading to a space station, where they're basically gonna either try and get somebody to give them a lift or they're gonna steal a ship or something. They're just.

Oh, yeah. The other important sort of narrative component here is that both AZ and West have said state secrets on the microphone. So that is why AZ can't go back to Space Boot Camp, because Space Boot Camp is part of this, like, megacorporation that owns everything, and Azerai has just Been sitting in front of this microphone on this asteroid, saying, like, military secrets into the microphone for however min.

Extremely heavy. Extremely heavy military secrets.

Yeah.

So like, from abroad, from a high level point of view, this is a podcaster and troubled 20something pilot off on space adventures to go save their friend.

This is a road trip story, basically.

Yeah, we were calling it Trans Buddy Cop for a while.

Yeah, Trans Buddy Cop's good. So do you have any. Have you scoped out, like, what you think the total season is going to be? Or is it just sort of we're going to write until we're happy or.

What I have in my. Yeah, we did talk about it a little bit, but because I'm having so many issues with starting it and that sounds terrible, but what I mean is I want to be able to write it and start this podcast in a way that you could theoretically just listen to this podcast. Because I don't want to start a podcast and be like, hey, here's these two characters. Guess what? If you want another backstory, you gotta listen to this whole fucking podcast over here. And that's annoying. So we have to write it in a way right in this beginning section that will explain what the hell is going on without, you know.

Yeah, the first episode is gonna be the hardest part. Yeah.

And we've gone through a bunch of different ideas on how to do that. But the point is that depending on how we start it, I think it's gonna be eight, but it might end up being ten.

Gotcha. Yeah, that's a good size for the season. Probably. You guys have already brought this up. Have you thought about just doing a Previously on Supercut. Kind of idea from pulling stuff straight from unspeakable distance?

Yes. And I'm going to probably have to do that. There's so much, like, Simmons stuff that needs to be in the show. But also, I talked to Jack a little bit about this, and we were thinking. Because both as and west are these sort of high, high profile fugitives. Well, maybe not. Yeah, yeah, I think they both are. Cause West's podcast got real big because of Simmons. So he's a little bit of a celebrity. Not as much as Simmons, but he's a little bit of a celebrity. And now as is also going to be a celebrity because they've been listening to this whole thing unfold. But because they're so high profile, I was thinking maybe the beginning would be bits of news broadcasts of what's happening with them, what's happening with the evil corporation, blah, blah, blah.

Because that would also catch up the listener on everything they missed if they didn't listen to Unspeakable Distance.

For sure. I wonder if. How. What's your sort of stylistic thoughts? Like, is it. Are you going for like low? Like, what's the word I'm looking for? Is it supposed to be sort of down to earth sort of expanse style sci fi, or are you going for more like high space opera? Ish.

Kind of campy. We're gonna have to go space opera because I'm not good at sci fi stuff.

If you're going space opera. Sty. The thought occurs that you could totally just do like just my head say.

Previously on.

Yeah, I was thinking like the serialized shorts that appeared or movie things that appeared in like old theaters, like they used to use in the 20s and 30s, where it's like you have the. You just start off with the announcer explaining stuff where it's like our heroes, as in West Went Back, you know, are now on the run from the. Like, you could just. You could almost get away with just.

Like you do the Clone wars, like, oh, yeah, yeah.

Section.

Yeah, we're back on Christophsis again.

Yeah. If you're. If you have the. If you just did that. That almost leans into the idea of like. Because there's, there's. I love the. I love pieces of fiction that have like a. An established world, but that they never show you what it is. Like, they just kind of start in the middle and they're like the character constantly referencing stuff that didn't ever happen. Like thinking of Buckaroo Banzai, where they set out to write the movie as if it was like the ninth in a long running series. And then they just started at episode nine. So there's all this history and stuff that's layered in. They just never properly explained. You might be able to get away with something like that too.

Yeah, probably.

So you're thinking about eight to 10 episodes. That's about right. I'm gonna guess something like 30 minutes an episode. 30 minutes to an hour.

Yeah. I don't think we want to run them super duper long.

Yeah, you wouldn't. You would. I wouldn't think so. And that. Although that does give you a lot more narrative space than we had on Unspeakable Distance, because those episodes were running about 5 to 10 minutes most of the time.

Yeah, well, and for the listeners who maybe didn't listen to Unspeakable Distance, this was like an epistolary actual play. So everybody was just leaving messages almost exclusively with one actor per oh, yeah, yeah. And it was just like monologues. We had some where we were like, back and forth because somebody would show up in somebody else's episode, but usually it was just one person delivering a monologue, and that was it.

And as in, west is going to be more traditional audio drama. You know, multiple characters splitting through scenes. Cool, cool. Are you thinking that, like, any particular episode is sort of like one location, or is it really road trip style? It's mostly in the. In the ship with just the two of them, or.

It'S literally one of those kind of road trip things, because the first one or two episodes will be on this station where they're going to acquire their ship somehow, and then there might be a couple where they are actually traveling. But we kind of were thinking that it was going to be just not calamities, but like shenanigans after shenanigans after.

Shenanigans of the week.

Hijinks. Yeah, hijink of the week. And so it's going to be like they'll stop somewhere not to get gas, but you know what I mean? And that kind of thing. Like, they'll end up on this weird planet where they got a resupply, and then they'll end up on a space station where they have to resupply, that kind of thing.

And it's like, oh, no, the preservation is, like, on this station and there's like, people looking for them.

Yeah.

It's like, well, we have to refuel this ship and not get picked up by the local sheriff or whatever.

Okay, yeah, that sounds very fun. And then just to sort of establish, where are you guys at with. Is it mostly just been talking, planning things out? You don't have anything?

Actually, yeah. Disclaimer. I work three jobs, so I have so little spare time. Like, my last day off was the first of this month. My next day off is tomorrow, and it is the 12th today. So I'm like, my brain is a scrambled egg right now. I don't know where I am. I don't know what's going on. But we have spoken a little bit about, like, yeah, like, how we want to structure it and, like, what other actors we're gonna need, because we may need additional voices to just me and Sam. Like, me and Sam can do a good variety of, like, quote unquote, NPC voices, but we probably can't do every voice just the two of us.

Yeah, well.

And thankfully we have access to a fair stable of people through breathing space. Yeah. I similarly am having that same trouble of trying to figure out how many people I'm going to need. I learned the hard way on Breathing space that if you can keep the number of actors for any particular scene, basically, overall, you can have a larger number. But if any particular scene has a fewer number of actors, everything just gets exponentially easier. Scheduling gets easier. Even just being on the call gets easier. So limiting your cast is. Is really nice. I don't know how I'm going to find my other principle for the werewolf thing, because it'll be, like, me. Okay, that's easy. I'm going to be a cast, and then I need somebody else. Like, okay, you. I need one person for a ton of work, and then, like, everybody else a little bit.

Well, yeah, it really sounds like you're going to be casting for one other principal actor and then just a whole slew of supporting cast.

Yeah, yeah. And it's entirely cast. It's entirely possible. Most of the. I might be doing, like, a couple of synchronous recordings with the main person, and then it's. I might be able to get away with independence for almost everybody else.

Yeah, that's kind of nice.

Yeah. Just because there's. There's so little. But, yeah, I have the overall structure of the plot set out. I just have to sit down and actually do everything. Also, I need. Okay, so I didn't mention this before. There's 10 episodes, eight to 10 episodes, something like that. The overarching plot is this whole thing about clearing the name of the main character's best. Not best friend, but old friend from the war, trying to figure out if they killed the person, and if not. So there's an overall plot for that, but there's also a sort of monster of the week, Each episode split between the main arc and a monster that the main character has to kill because that's how they justify their existence in a world that hates them. We kill monsters, that sort of thing. So now I have to think of eight to ten monsters that I specifically want to feature. Right. And it's like, oh, man. Like, I have. It's. It's the plethora of ideas. I just need, like, people to, like, throw out, like, spitball ideas of things that can be. I can throw things just so that I have, like, some ideas. Like, I can't do. I can't do werewolves and vampires because that's my two. My main character and the. And the rich family that they're dealing with.

Okay, so I need, like, monsters besides werewolves and vampires.

Yeah, exactly. I just need, like, things that I can have. I can throw away, basically, for one off. So there's, like, you know, there's trolls and ogres and kobolds and stuff like that. Although probably one of these kobolds, I'd probably want to steer away from the D and D races for the most part.

Okay, quick question, because I know nothing about this project other than there was werewolves in it. So are we. What's the setting other than it's noir? Like, is this, like, present?

Yeah, I was going to ask.

No, no, no. Thank you for asking, because I. Otherwise it wouldn't. I've been living in the space for a while, so I don't say these things. It's an. It's basically fantasy. 30s and 40s or 20s. 30s, 40s era.

Delicious.

Yeah. The idea is that it's an alternate reality where, like, for example, monsters exist. And also, like, the US Is still part of the Commonwealth. So, like, they were introduced into World War I early. And then because monsters were real, they're like, what if we tried to solve trench warfare by making a bunch of people werewolves? And then that made the war longer and worse because nothing solves anything. And so our main character is a World War I vet who's come back, and because they're now a werewolf, they had the choice of, like, well, you can, like, continue to work in the army, or you can be a bounty hunter. And so they've decided to go back to the city. I haven't named the city yet.

Okay.

And then the plot starts from there. So, yeah, so like, fantasy, you know, jazz era, basically.

Sick. Cool. Love this.

For your Monster of the Week, they have, like, comprehensive lists of all the Monster of the weeks in series is, like, supernatural. You can just go through and, like, look what they have.

That's an excellent idea.

Or just, like, find another podcast that has a Monster of the Week, like Magnus Archives or Ghost Wax or something, and, you know, just sort of take ideas from that. Cause then you can kind of get a more, like, around the world monster of the Week and not, like, all white people monsters. All the white people monsters.

Yeah.

We ran into that problem a little bit with the white people monsters on Monster Mechanics. Although we did that a little bit deliberately because it was like, we're gonna rewrite these things and put our own spin on them. And we're like, it's super. There's a bunch of implications when two white guys do that to, like, oh, yeah, let's take the Thunderbird and make it better. And it's like, no, let's don't do a colonization.

Yeah, don't do a colonization. Words to live by.

Okay, well, I think we've given a pretty good idea of what to expect in the future. I am going to ask y'all one question, which is, do you have one thing that you'd like to get done before we meet again in two weeks?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I have several things I'd like to get done.

Is there one that you're willing to say and sort of. Because I will ask about it.

Okay. This is our homework. This is the, like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is. There's no consequences if you don't do it.

I just except that, you know, we get on this call in two weeks and we're like, we didn't do it.

That's like, that's life. I mean, like, you work three jobs and are also on the Breathing Space team. And like, Sam, you're also like this. Like, I'm also busy. Like, it's fine. I just. The whole point of this is for us to get stuff done. So, like, I have to have some mechanism for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Sam, what do you think? What's our two weeks from now?

Okay, so I also have more than one job and I have young children also. I regret all my decisions sometimes.

Your children are wonderful. Don't regret them.

I do actually really love my children. Jack has actually met one of my children. So I actually have a real life deadline in two weeks. I have a. What are they called? The shorter books? Novella. There we go. I have a novella that I am narrating for a promotional thing and I have to have it done in two weeks because they are going live with the full book on Kindle, the audible version, all that, all at the same time. And so I have to have it all done and edited and ready for them before their launch. And so I have a very hard deadline of two weeks from now. So if I come onto the show and I have not done my thing that I'm trying to do that is really bad. As to specifically AZ and West, I would really like to nail down what we're doing for this first episode.

Yeah, I would be happy if we came back two weeks from now and we're like, we know what the first episode is or at least have a more solid idea than we do now of what the first episode is. And again, we have discussed it a little bit, but if we could kind of lock it in, I would be.

That's a completely reasonable thing, especially if you're just. You have to start Somewhere.

And that's gotta start. Yeah.

For myself, I am. I need to have at least a couple of monsters for the Monster of Week.

Okay. So if you want a monster resource that is a human person who you can ask questions to. I have seen all of the 15 or however many seasons of Supernatural. Yeah, I don't know what that says.

About me, but, I mean, I have to. Dude, it's totally fine.

Good company. So, yeah, you can. You can just say, hey, what were your. Your dopest, sickest monsters from Supernatural? We can just sit here and tell you.

Yeah.

And I might. But if I haven't. How about this? If I haven't got. If I haven't got to start on it by next week, I'm gonna be that. Maybe just the next episode is you guys talk to me about.

Maybe we just talk about monsters for an hour.

Yeah, dude, but I mean, like, I've got resources. The thing I need to do is just, like, sit down and do it. You know, I can open the encyclopedia of things that Never were and just look at the pictures and be like, oh, yeah, fucking giants, let's do it.

But you need a short list.

Yeah, I just need to have a thing. Because right now I'm in that big nebulous space of, like, I haven't. I've thought about it, but I haven't looked at something that gives me ideas. So I just need to sit down and do that. And if I have a few of those ready to go, then I can start writing after that, because I'll know where to take. Because like I said, each episode has to intertwine a bigger plot that I know the structure of with these things. So I can actually start piecing together episodes of that.

So that's my thing.

I'm going to have at least a couple of monsters.

Okay. How much do you want those monsters to have something to do with the overarching plot? Or is it literally just, I need to fight a monster this week? Here's a random one.

That's a really good question. In an ideal world, they are, you know, at the end, by episode 10, you're like, oh, this whole thing's connected. And, like, all but that. I haven't nailed down exactly how that connection could happen yet. It could just be thematic, but it would love it if it was some sort of actual, you know, the evil rich people that, you know, the main character's investigating, turns out that they're behind everything the whole way. I don't know. I'll have a better idea once I have some actual idea of what those things are, because I'm also not sure when I say monsters, it's like, are these people monsters or are these monsters monsters?

Yeah.

That's a big question.

Okay, so that's your homework. Two weeks from now, you tell us if we're people monsters or monster monsters.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just have to start figuring that one out. All right, cool. Well, that is our first episode. We will catch y'all in two weeks. Hopefully, we'll have made some sort of progress.

We'll have done something, probably well done.

Many things, whether or not they were on these projects, I don't know, but. All right. Bye. Bye.

Thanks.

Bye.