Giving Screenplays New Life With Immersive Audio Dramas

More stories get written than make it to screen, so what becomes of these lost narratives? In this episode, host Candice Bloch sits down with producer James Walker to dive into a project he and his company, Velocity Studios have embarked upon to revive some of these scripts in an exciting new way. You’ll learn how they produce immersive experiences that envelop a listener in a rich audio-only world. Hear about the benefits and challenges faced when adapting a story intended for screen into a medium that requires its audience to flex their imaginations in a different way. In this interview, they focus on the first project put out in this “Greatest Scripts Never Made” series, a cyberpunk noir called The Metal Detective. You’ll even get a taste of The Metal Detective during this exploration of audio dramas and what they could mean for projects that deserve to be shared with the world.

You can learn more about James, Velocity Studios, their Greatest Scripts series, and The Metal Detective, at: https://www.velocity-studios.com/

The Metal Detective is also available wherever you find your podcasts.

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Transcript

00:01 - VO (Host)
Quiet on the set, all together and action. Welcome to Media and Monuments presented by Women in Film and Video in Washington DC. Media and Monuments features conversations with industry professionals speaking on a range of topics of interest to screen-based media makers. 

00:30 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, candice Block, and today I'm here with James Walker, a prolific producer whose career has included award-winning documentaries, breakout indie films and trend-setting podcasts. He's also the founder of Velocity Studios, a collective of industry-leading creatives and producers based in Burbank, california. Today, we're going to dive into one of Velocity Studios' projects, an audio drama series called Greatest Scripts and their latest production, the Metal Detective. Welcome to the show, james. 

00:58 - James Walker (Guest)
Hi, candice, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 

01:01 - Candice Bloch (Host)
So first can you give us a little bit of background on your personal journey into producing and the birth of your company, velocity Studios? 

01:09 - James Walker (Guest)
Sure, it's not, I guess, a typical journey. I did not go to film school, though I think we're all students of stories. You know, we grew up in a civilization and in a species that shares stories, so we all connect to stories and, having been a kid of the eighties, movies was something that I do every Friday night. So I kind of fell into the finance side of film business out of the business school and and got a job out of college helping little indie companies figure out their books and that kind of stuff. 

01:40
And I just fell in love with the, with how the deals were done and stuff came together and over time was able to work my way up and work for some other producers and eventually produce my own features. And then found a group of people I love working with and formed Velocity Studios and said let's just go off and do what we are very passionate about and see if we can tell the stories we believe audiences want to experience. 

02:05 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Excellent. Well, and speaking of those stories that you want people to be able to hear, can you tell us more about the Greatest Scripts Project and or you know the full expanded title, the Greatest Scripts Never Made, and tell us more about how and why it came to be? 

02:21 - James Walker (Guest)
Sure, sure. So as an indie producer, I'm constantly little David fighting Goliath, trying to find and champion what we believe are great stories that should be made. And one of the challenges in the film and television business, which is where the majority of my work happens, is that a lot of the deals are driven by what's called IP or intellectual property, and we've had deals go really quickly. They were based on books, and then we've had stories and screenplays that we just believe were need to be told. But they would. They would get challenged, they would, they would run into some some closed doors when, when certain buyers didn't see them as IP, they wanted an established fan base already behind it. And it's just the reality of the business, of where it is today. 

03:10
So, with podcasting as big as it is and audio dramas growing and I'm a fan of audio dramas and all my team are a fan of audio dramas we had an idea a couple of years ago well, why don't we chase down some of these great original screenplays that, for whatever reason, um never got made? You know, they were on the track to being made. They they had something going for them. They they did have a green light from the studio, they had a director attached, actors attached and, for whatever reason, the winds of Hollywood turned against them. And it just happens. 

03:42
I mean, there's so many stories and folklore stories in Hollywood about projects falling apart and sadly, frustratingly, unfortunately, is when the cats scatter, when everybody goes off to their other projects, the likelihood of everybody coming back again together to make that picture becomes virtually never again. And it's really tragic because there's so many great original screenplays that are living in the proverbial filing cabinet and everybody outside of Hollywood says how come there aren't any original stories? Well, I'm screaming at them. There are thousands, there are tens of hundreds of thousands of brilliant original stories that at one time were destined for the big screen or the silver screen or the TV screen or whatever have you, and they just didn't get there. So by acquiring their rights and turning them into audio dramas, my hope is I can share with these audiences these stories and we can develop some fan bases and I can go back to those studios that once said yes and then said no and say can you take another look? 

04:41 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Now there's people who wanna see it. Yeah, that's so great. So it sounds like uh, you're, you're giving, you're resurrecting them and giving them another chance at it and proving that you can, you know, show that their, their story and their concept is something that has an audience and and yeah, that's, that's a really clever way to to bring new life to them you know it's an entrepreneur's approach to how do I turn one man's trash into our treasure, do I dare I say they're trash or not? 

05:07 - James Walker (Guest)
They're a great screenplay. But one thing I do want to kind of frame is that I'm calling them the greatest scripts never made. It's kind of a marketing hook. It's subjective. You know, there are different stories. There's thrillers, there's rom-coms, there's action and what one audience likes another audience may not like. And just because we make these an audio drama doesn't mean they will get back onto the big screen. The buyer still has to say yes, but maybe they'll find their way to a graphic novel or a comic book, or maybe nowhere. But that story now found a way to live in a creative creation. 

05:43 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, Well, that's beautiful. Found a way to live in a creative creation, you know, yeah, well, that's that's beautiful in a way. You're letting those stories see the light, whether it's. It doesn't have to be behind a screen necessarily. It could be on a stage, it could be in a book, it could be, yeah, like you were saying, or it could live in this beautiful audio format and and have a huge fan base there. 

06:01
And you know, people take their imaginations and it is so subjective. So, because it is subjective, how do you select which scripts to revive this way? And yeah, is there any thought process of what's going to be good for this format and all that? 

06:20 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah. So we have to have some credibility. It can't just be hey, I wrote this screenplay. Will you turn it into audio drama? Sure, not yesterday. It had to have been written a little while ago. Maybe it was two years ago, maybe it was 10 years ago. It doesn't have to be an ancient screenplay, but it just had to have been out in the marketplace for some time and then it had to have some going, some things going for it. It had to have a reputable producer attached. It doesn't have to be an A-list producer, but a reputable someone who's in the business. 

07:05 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, it was vouched for. 

07:07 - James Walker (Guest)
Not just someone who claims they're a producer at a bar but, someone who's actually producing films for a living and you would have to have credible discussions with buyers. So it had gotten to the pitch phrase, the phase, and that happens so many different ways in Hollywood. There's no one path to get there. There's all different types of ways. So maybe it was repped by a manager or a lit agent or a production company, but somehow there was credible discussions and it was on its way, in a very real way, to getting made. We've had people reach out and say, hey, I just wrote this, will you make it in this series? And I'd say, hey, we'll take it out to market first. Give it, give it a chance to find its own path, and if it doesn't find its way to a buyer, then come back to us. 

07:53 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, that's smart. I mean it has that filter system and at least it gives it. Yeah, it's like already starting from somewhere. So it's proven a little bit that enough people thought maybe this could be something. It's funny you said the older, older projects. That kind of made me think it's like it's like adopting the older pets. You know some people. They want a shiny puppy or a kitten and you're like no, sometimes the older ones. They're just as good and need to be loved. 

08:20
And that's kind of funny. Anyway, as I mentioned at the top, the greatest scripts project that's out right now is a cyberpunk noir limited series called the Metal Detective, based on a screenplay by Andrew Hilton or something like that. But can you shed some light on why that story was chosen to be the debut drama for the series and then maybe like a brief overview or setup of what it's about? 

08:51 - James Walker (Guest)
Quick answer is I've been a fan of that screenplay for years and other producers have been trying to get it made for years, and Andrew is a prolific writer, he's a prolific reader, he's been in the business, a lot of people know him. I'm a fan of his work and when we first thought of doing this project, we were looking for a screenplay that didn't have too many legal entanglements, because that'll be. One of the considerations is how many cooks were in the kitchen and how many people have a claim to the project. That sometimes is what happens when this project falls apart. 

09:26
There's just all these liens kind of like a house lien. It's all these people who put liens on the project. So there's ways to clean that up. Just how much legal would we have to go through? And this one didn't have much, so it was an easy transaction. Second, as a film producer and TV creator stepping into the audio drama space, I didn't want to do anything that was safe. 

09:51
I'm going to tackle a screenplay that was big. Yeah, us as creators, and the artisans that we were bringing together to say can we turn what is a visually designed screenplay into an audio masterpiece? 

10:13 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah. 

10:14 - James Walker (Guest)
So we kind of got a little overambitious and took on what we thought would be one of the more challenging screenplays to tackle, which is, you know, big visual VFX driven sci-fi, futuristic, cyberpunk, noir, you know. So that's how we picked it. 

10:33 - Candice Bloch (Host)
That's cool. What also sounds like it's. It then makes it a little bit more enticing to want to see it again on screen or to see more of it. So then it helps with the intended idea of this project of bringing it to screen, so it's not just like oh, I heard that lovely story, that's all I need it's. I've heard this and I really want to see it now. 

10:53 - James Walker (Guest)
Candice, what I have. I've fallen in love with audio dramas and it's been a refreshing experience. Working in the, you know, with film is great, but what I love about the audio drama space, and especially what we experienced with the Metal Detective, is your mind will build a VFX world bigger than I could have ever put into a budget and convinced a studio to underwrite. And though each of us have our own imaginary experience from all the audible cues throughout the story, um, and they're subjective. So when we make the film, it's just like reading a book, it's the. The film will now become an adaptation of the audio, right, um, and there'll be some director and and that that's their, their interpretation of the material. So it's kind of interesting how this evolves. But yes, um, the, the imagination of what we can do with sound is so exciting. It's been, it's been a true joy to do this and kind of find a new playground for storytelling, for me it's been around for a while. 

11:56
Audio dramas are not new, but for me it's been this fun playground it's true. 

12:00 - Candice Bloch (Host)
I mean, you mentioned that it plays into the viewers imaginations a lot, so it's kind of nice giving them the the tools there as well to use them a lot more and not just see one person's interpretation. They can do it themselves. And these, these dramas, these audio dramas they like harken back to the old radio dramas and shows that we had. So it's not an untested kind of way to get stories across, way to get stories across. There are obviously things that need to be considered when adapting something from something intended to screen to audio. Only Could you talk a little bit more about what some of those considerations might be and things like you know, the different types of exposition that are needed to kind of explain, yeah, yeah, so it's not a literal reading of the screenplay. 

12:45 - James Walker (Guest)
I know there are other podcasts that do table reads and those are great. Those are fun experiences. You can close your eyes and hear a movie be played for you in an audible experience. This is an audio drama adaptation of a theatrical screenplay intended for the movies. So first we had to ask ourselves does it work, the way is it written? And we had to rewrite the screenplay into an audio drama play. So I'd say about 40% of it had to be reconstructed so that it would make sense in an audio drama production. And then we had to ask ourselves are we going to do this in one read, one experience? Is it going to be a two-hour audio drama or do we break this up? And who are the audio drama listeners and how do they consume these shows and in what time lengths makes sense so that they can listen to it in the most convenient place possible. It's not as if they're going to be sitting in front of their TV and sitting down for the evening or going to a movie theater. They're going to be in their car, on the subway, um, on a plane. So we had to. We decided to break them up into 20 minutes minute ish episodes and then that gave us the framework to rewrite the screenplay as an audio drama play, a four part series. Um, I know a lot of other audio dramas go a lot longer. You know they're written more like a serialized TV show and they'll go on for multiple seasons. But the source material we're using is a 115-page screenplay and we weren't going to add any additional writing of character or storyline or anything like that. So that gives you kind of the structure breakdown writing of character or storylines and things like that. So that gives you kind of the structure breakdown. 

14:27
We spent about a good two, three months just with our writers restructuring the material into a way that it makes sense for an audio drama and then we can budget the audio drama and cast the audio drama that way and then, going through there, you have in a theatrical screenplay you have very large sections that are written for visual interpretation, scene descriptions. So how would you hear this scene? We have an action scene that's written like in the opening sequence. That's an action scene written into the theatrical screenplay. So how would we now adapt this into a, into an audible experience? And so we had to take those scene descriptions and now write in we hear this, we hear this. And then we will work with sound design and sound our sound team to say, okay, how do we, how do we plan this out? Um, so they could start pulling those sounds and start building the world. 

15:22 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Do you do um like test listeners to see, like, what is it that you are envisioning here when you hear this? 

15:29 - James Walker (Guest)
So our approach with this was very much how you do a movie and that's what we know how to do. So we had test audiences and if you want to sit on the next one, you're more than welcome to be part of the test audience. And we actually had questionnaires. So before it came out, it came out about a year ago. A few months prior to that, we actually had test listening on a private, secure server. You would get a link. You would be given an online questionnaire. We wanted to know did this work? Did you understand this? Did this make sense? We wanted to see if our translation of the theatrical screenplay made sense in an audio experience and did you follow the storyline and fall into all the little plot traps that we had set for you? 

16:16 - Candice Bloch (Host)
that's very cool. Um, yeah, and you, you did mention a little bit um, and we'll dive into some of it more, but like budgeting and and how this can save a lot because obviously you're not building elaborate sets or paying for a ton of vfx tell me about it yeah, so that's another great thing to consider, um, and and casting I want to get into in a in a little bit, because, or but to set that up. 

16:39
um, so the metal detective is kind of a near future. There's humans and robots and numens, which which are like synthetic humans, and it's it takes place in a, in a hotel. So these are just things that for to set the scene a little bit, for for stuff for audiences to understand a little of where we're coming from and some of the upcoming questions, but also you should all go out and listen to it yourself. But so it makes sense when we're talking about. So this next question I have is the series itself. It opens out by pointing out that the audio drama uses AI actors and is, you know, the first known production where human and artificial intelligence performers play their roles opposite each other? Can you explain that a little bit more? And was the AI used only for, like, the robot or synthetic people or how I like? Dig into that a little if you could, I'd love to. 

17:32 - James Walker (Guest)
It was a little surreal because as we were doing, the post of this and the production which was the whole thing with chat, gpt was kind of taken off and I'm sitting here going. 

17:43
Are we in the middle of a zeitgeist or did I swallow the wrong pill in the matrix right now in here going. Are we in the middle of a zeitgeist or did I swallow the wrong pill in the matrix right now? Because this is almost a little too like tied in with the movie or the. You know the audio drum we're making, because there was all this big talk about AI. So it's not sentient AI, obviously. I mean it's. We used AI tools to play the AI characters Right, so humans played humans, and then we used AI voice generators and AI systems to help us create the AI performances and we just felt that that and we could do that in a very believable way in audio It'd be a lot more challenging at that time to do it in video very believable way in audio. It'd be a lot more challenging at that time to do it in video. And there's a lot of discussion going on in Hollywood about the use of AI in creation. 

18:34 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, I was going to ask that. 

18:35 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, but we didn't replace any human actors. 

18:38 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Right, you're not stealing jobs from people, no. 

18:42 - James Walker (Guest)
But it was also an interesting and really enlightening experience in these AI tools because they're here. They're here to stay and I think artists can use them appropriately and ethically in the creation of art where it's purposeful. And here we had AI characters. Yes, we could use a human to play it, but we could use the AI voice generator and have the AI system create its dialogue and play against what the humans are. This could be kind of cool. 

19:17 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, and they can keep that like a certain inflection and do it as many times exactly the same way. 

19:23 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, so we played with it and it was a safe place to play with. It wasn't as if we're doing a hundred million dollar movie and we were replacing a whole category of SAG background. No, right yeah. 

19:37 - Candice Bloch (Host)
So that's good to know, that's good to know you are very considered when you do it and it's for in this situation. So also, playing opposite them are humans real, real actors. Yeah, so what was the casting process, uh, like for this project? Um, and do you open it up to everybody? Are you trying to focus on people that already have kind of audio only experience? Um, great, question. 

20:00 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, great question. Um, our director, forrest robin, his wife is an off-Broadway performer. She does amazing musical theater and we were fortunate enough to bring in some stage performers and in our experience and not to take this away and we actually had some other VO actors, so we had local VO talent in LA and then we had other stage talent in LA come into the sound recording booth and it was a true joy to work with some stage performers because they went there Like they all actors can go there. No, any professional actor can, but we we had a combination of professional voiceover actors and stage performers. Yeah, we used we used all working actors. Some were SAG and some were equity, but this was a non-union show, a non-union audio drama, but they were all working professionals. 

20:54 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Was there any consideration for if someone would be able to continue to play that character Should it find another platform to grow into? 

21:02 - James Walker (Guest)
I'd love to. Yeah, I mean Chelsea Spirita, who played Jack Irons killed it, killed it. She's by Jack. Now, if Universal comes calling, let's make this a movie, you know, I don't know what to say. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. These are good problems to have Exactly, but Chelsea will definitely have an opportunity to audition. 

21:24 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Gotcha gotcha yeah, so I mean, that's the thing, obviously, when you're finding people for these roles, you can say, and you know if it goes on, you know if you love the character, it could be more. 

21:34
Yeah. Yeah, I just didn't know, cause it's. You know, some people have a certain look for a certain character and if you're going into didn't, yeah, we, we went with performance, purely performance, um, and uh, yeah, it was great, so, um, so their performances were great and there's also different. You know sound effects and background and setting, the, the scenes and the moods and the tones and all that. Can you talk more about immersive sound and how that's used to enhance an experience and kind of how immersive sound is different than regular sound? 

22:17 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, again, I really wanted this to be a theatrical experience. You're not sitting in a movie theater but when you close your eyes I want you, your mind, to build a movie. I want you to experience this in the grandest visual way possible with your imagination. And that required us to use the best we could get in sound design and sound mixing and sound delivery. It just, it just is the bar we wanted to hit. We wanted to make it feel as if it was a big, budgeted film, so immersive. You know, it's kind of this interesting new world in sound. 

22:57
You have mono, which is one speaker, stereo, which is two speaker, five point low, which is five channels in the bass, and then immersive kind of plays in building a world, a three-dimensional world, and the bar to hit for that, or kind of the standard in that, is what's called Dolby Atmos, and that is a sound design and mixing program that lets you turn your sound into objects and you can move those objects around a three-dimensional computer box to create sound everywhere. 

23:29
And if you ever had the opportunity to watch a movie in a Dolby certified movie theater, which there are more and more of, it's really a fun experience because the sound is not just going left and right in the 5.1, but it's, or even a 7.1,. It's more immersive than that. So that's what we wanted you to experience with this. So, like with anything, the more you put in the front end in terms of the creation, the better the output would be. So we mix this in Dolby Atmos, full Dolby Atmos, and then we, when we output it, we bring it into what's called a binaural mix. It's just looking a little technical. 

24:04 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Don't worry, our listeners are going to love it. I love it. 

24:07 - James Walker (Guest)
So please, just for me, tell me all the technical it could be on wired headphones, it could be on Bluetooth headphones, it could be on an iPhone speaker, it could be on a soundbar in their house, it could be on their Amazon little speaker system. Whatever it is. You can't really control that of this. The sound house we hired actually pioneered a new way of mastering binaural to an immersive audio algorithm that will then create every speaker to mimic a three-dimensional object or a three-dimensional surround sound experience. Yeah, and it's really cool how it can instruct these speakers to bounce the sound waves off my eardrum or my ear canal one way, or how it will then change the levels needed slightly on a soundbar or in the car. 

25:21
What's great about cars is a lot of the higher-end luxury cars are now coming in, dolby Atmos coming and told me out most. But, but that said um that the soundhouse pioneered this, this new mastering standard called iax, which is immersive audio experience. So, um, long story long answer short is immersive audio is giving you, hopefully the best engagement with the audio in an immersive feeling, so that the sound is surrounding you and that you're and it doesn't have to like with with the metal detective, there's big action scenes. I mean it's, it's a. You know it's like a movie, but you can do immersive audio, like with this. Now we're on, we're using a, a software called riverside, and we're across the country, but if we were in the same room we could add in sound elements. Um, I have other shows where the scene description may be in a restaurant, so you'll just layer in the glasses the people in the background. 

26:19
And you can create that space. So the audience has a frame of reference that their imagination can now build around. 

26:25 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, and if there's a bunch of people talking around a table, the direction from where the voice is coming it's. It's a lot more putting people right there in in the experience. 

26:35 - James Walker (Guest)
It's, it's. It's so exciting to me it's really, really is, and it's not to take away from visual entertainment or whatever. But I think the audio entertainment world is going through this really exciting evolution with immersive audio, and we're seeing it not only in podcasts. I'm talking to book publishers who want to put it into audio books. 

26:57 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Wow, yeah, I mean it makes sense and all of the technology continues to improve and that's also why you recommend on the show that people listen with headphones, because you want it to be as much of like encapsulating them in this world when they're listening. So, but speaking of, I'm sure our listeners right now are kind of chomping at the bit to hear this. We've been talking about how awesome it is, so you've graciously supplied us with a little teaser clip trailer, so we're going to let people hear just a taste of the metal detective right now, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the other stuff, like the producing and getting out there. 

27:39 - VO (Host)
Team leader. Four minutes out, heading 140 degrees from the grid, X-ray Tango three niner Prepare for drop zone. 

27:46 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Drop zone inside Listen here, asshats, we're wheels down in less than four minutes. This is a smash and go operation. Ten man will take the lead. Hey, dorothy, it's Jack. You don't take Dorothy's shit off already. 

28:01
Ten Man's been staring at a firearm for the last ten blocks. So His name's Bishop FYI. Hey, you're his hand. This toaster fuck's not been on you. You good, you hear that he's good. Tuck your peckers and warm your weapons. We're going hot in three minutes. Remember the briefing. 

28:23
The lab is combustible. Check your firing zones, watch each other's six and try not to blow up the whole block. Did you forget to plug him in last night? Hey, you know something good Do not act impregnated. Go and capture him Now. What's wrong? You're back, hospital is on board, shots fired Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah Ah. Thanks for watching. All right, so that was a great taste. That was a very exciting show. Now I'm sure you'd want to listen to all four parts, and there's more than just those four parts. I kind of wanted to get into, like marketing, audio only dramas. You have different things at your disposal. You've done some creative things for this one. Can you talk a little bit more about how you choose to market an audio only program? 

29:42 - James Walker (Guest)
Well, I learned a lot in this first one. We did it kind of as a proof of concept, so it wasn't as if we were commissioned by a big podcast platform. This wasn't an Audible original or Spotify original, apple original, for that matter. This is an independent production that we self-finance to kind of say, hey, can we do this, does this make creative sense to us and can we deliver something that audiences will truly enjoy listening to? And then, if we can, and we still like each other at the end of this and like this podcast world, let's go do it again. 

30:17
Yeah, um, but that said, uh, the marketing was very grassroots. Uh, we had a great um aggregator, a great platform captivate. I'll throw a little plug for them because they are great um, and they provided a bunch of resources and and just a lot of dyi instructions for indie podcasters. We created, created a faux New York City hotel website that you can check into that people still kind of it's kind of interesting to look at the analytics and I think people are think it's a real hotel. They go on there and they're like what is this? And then you check in and it takes you to the podcast. So so we create, we try to create the world as if it did exist in cyberspace. And then we had a pretty successful indie launch and we got into some pretty good rankings in the first few months, one thing I'm super proud of and I haven't looked at it recently, but about six months into the release of the show, there is a website called IMDB and a lot of people the Internet Movie Database yes. 

31:24
A lot of people are aware of it and some people aren't. It doesn't matter, but they have a lot of user top 10 lists and top 100 lists and they have a whole section on Dolby Atmos and like immersive audio and they like the top TV shows and you had Mandalorian, you had there's a few other big ones, I forgot. They're like big Disney ones and we came in number I think it was six. 

31:51
Wow, like our little podcast was sitting there tracking with, like the top TV shows for immersive audio and that was just, I mean, it was just proud. There's a hats off to the team and to the people who pulled everything together. And this may sound a little spiritual, but I've been a part of a lot of projects and some of them are paycheck projects. You can tell people are just dialing it in and they get the show done. But others are passion projects and there's something that happens, candice, in creating film and TV or podcasts. When you have a group of people collaborating together, when everybody's involved selflessly and they're all pushing for it, there's like an extra layer of pixie dust that just ends up on the show and you can just hear it, you can feel it. It's hard to necessarily articulate, but it's in the fine-tuning of the editing. Everybody puts 120% into it and that's where I think people really enjoy watching that content, because it feels as if it's been loved. 

32:47 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, I mean you, you can feel. You can feel when people really believe in a project you can. You can taste love in baking even you know, you can tell you can tell when something has been handled with with a lot of passion. 

33:00 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, so when we hit that list, it was just. It was such an honor for our team and for those who went the extra mile. They didn't get any more money because I had a fixed budget. Like this is what it is, guys, and they just they put it at stops as if it was a studio gig and I just really appreciate that. 

33:16 - Candice Bloch (Host)
That's awesome. Well, we're running a little long on time so I want to kind of wrap up. But if filmmakers or people who've written screenplays and they really want it to go to TV or movie or whatever, if they're having trouble getting traction and working and they're in that little indie circuit and desperate for their story to be heard, would you recommend or have any advice for exploring this audio drama medium and format? 

33:44 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, I don't mind connecting and speaking with individuals, so you can reach out to me and I'll do my best to get back to everybody. And it's a journey. It's a journey Work with people you like, you know, you trust. Um, I think a lot of people can sometimes get desperate and we've gotten close and I totally appreciate all my writer friends why they're so bitter because you look at these projects that get so close, not there. I, I, my heart goes out to every one of these writers and their passion projects. But I'd say, if you want to explore the audio space, find a sound team that believes in your story. You know, I think, like anything else, you need a good producer, a director that believes in it and a good, sound team. 

34:38 - Candice Bloch (Host)
The sound is key. It is key it is key. 

34:41 - James Walker (Guest)
It's key whether it's whether it's an interview style podcast like this, or full-blown, immersive audio drama. Sound matters. That's what the audience is going to consume. Um, and whether your story makes sense or not to be an audio drama, I don't know. Uh, we went with, we went with a genre that that works um, thriller, suspense, sci-fi. I mean, that works. That's kind of proven in the audio drama space. We were seeing a lot of that through other, the bigger studios. So we kind of followed that, that path, and that's another reason why we picked the male detective. Uh, if it's a rom-com or if it's something softer, I think it just takes a constructive criticism of how would this word work if it was audio only and why would it work? 

35:28 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, I mean even throwing back to the radio serials and things. 

35:32
you kind of need the cliffhangers to keep people wanting to tune into the next to see what happens and like, really get the excitement of it. But I mean, I think it's. It's really amazing to hear this new medium that has a possibility, for it might it's not going to work for everything, but it could work for for stories, or it could inspire people to to write stories that have a goal of ending up as as audio. You know, audio is a lot richer than some people give it credit for, but audio is always, like you know, the mark of quality in a project. But you could do so much more the uh, immersive stuff. I'm excited to see how that continues to grow and evolve. Um, any, any teasers of, of perhaps the the next of the greatest scripts that's gonna come out we have one in development. 

36:18 - James Walker (Guest)
It's a period piece which is a little ambitious. We're stepping into a period, but it's a story that's near and dear to me. But there's others that have been pitched that may move up in the pipeline Now that we've got the proof of concept done. We are out speaking with co-financiers and others who want to co-own this IP, because there's not. You know, if this becomes a feature film or any other form of content, there's, there's additional revenue there. So now that we we have the mail detective as our calling card, we're broadening our collaboration with those who've got the pocket books to hopefully help us keep doing this. 

36:59 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah, Well, so everyone knows where they can keep an eye on what's to come next and where to see the Metal Detective learn more about Greatest Scripts and all of the other Velocity Studios projects. Can you tell us where they can go online to find out more? 

37:12 - James Walker (Guest)
Yeah, velocity-studioscom or just Google Velocity Studios. We should pop up number one. 

37:17 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Excellent. We will obviously put that all in the show notes and thank you so much for for not only doing this for these scripts, you know, but for talking about all of that with us today. So thanks so much, it's been a really fun conversation. 

37:31 - James Walker (Guest)
Thanks so much, candice, and I expect you to be on the listening team. 

37:34 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Oh, I will. 

37:39 - VO (Host)
Review team for the next one. You've got my promise on that, okay, great, see ya, bye-bye. Thank you for listening to Media and Monuments, a service of women in film and video. Please remember to review, rate and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. For more information about WIF, please visit our website at w-i-f-as-in-frank-v-as-in-victororg. F as in Frank v as in Victor dot org. Media and Monuments is produced by Sandra Abrams, candice Block, brandon Ferry and Tara Jabari and edited by Candice Block, with audio production and mix by Steve Lack Audio. For more information about our podcast, visit mediaandmonumentscom. That's a wrap.