A Podcast Years in the Making

By Scott Murray

I've always been a very conceptual and visual person.  Anytime I wrote something, it would always be based on the images in my head.  Anytime I read something, my brain would attempt to produce a visual representation of it.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this, but one major benefit was that I was never limited in the way I could tell stories.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and long before I was attempting to make movies with my parents' video camera, I was producing content on audio cassette.  I recorded over 50 tapes full of stuff, ranging from 1-2 hour stories to comedy skits.  I did this using:

• Multiple tape recorders (some for recording, others for music and sound effects)
• Cardboard boxes, books, metal objects, kitchen items and anything else I could find to make sounds
• An SK-1 Keyboard (to record and produce explosion sounds)
  
  

Oh, and I did all of the voices.  The biggest challenge was making them without my parents shutting down the production.  I guess it was like a kid practicing an instrument in their room, only I was crashing things and playing music.

Then I would listen to them for entertainment.  I would laugh a lot.  While it may sound conceited for me to say I loved my own stuff, it wasn't like that.  When the audio played, it triggered images in my head.  Those images included different people playing the parts, as well as scenery, action scenes and more.  So, my mindset was never that I was listening to my own content.  However, I loved making them as much as I did listening to them.

Later on, I got to play these for other people.  This included teachers letting me play them in my classes in high school.  That was the biggest distribution I ever got.  Many (including my parents) probably wondered, "What is the purpose for doing this?"

Well, maybe now we have an aswer.

Thirty years later...after producing content and stories in a variety of other ways...the audio realm is back in my life again.  This time I have digital elements that include music and sound effects, and a cast of great people to voice the characters.

I've completed the first episode of the first season of The Crimson Files, and I'd love to know what my teenage self would have thought about it.  Granted, a lot of this wouldn't be possible without some of my professional work in script writing, radio and video.

However, it seems like it all started in my room so many years ago.  This is definitely a more sophisticated project, but the story still originated the same way.

It also plays the same way, and I really hope audiences will enjoy this new audio story experience.