Leading audio producer DIRK MAGGS, speaks to Crazy Dog's Roger Gregg.

Dirk Maggs is internationally recognised as one of the greatest audio theatre producers working today.  His many awards include a Writer’s Guild Award and a Talkie for his production of An American Werewolf in London and an American Audie for Superman: Doomsday and Beyond.   Maggs combines the populist sensibility of American OTR entertainment with state-of-the-art digital production and cinematic soundscapes.   On hearing his work, the late Douglas Adams chose Dirk Maggs to adapt and direct the last three novels of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy for BBC Radio 4.    Many of Dirk Maggs’s outstanding productions are reviewed in our Masterpiece Gallery.

Recorded Friday 5 December 2003.

THE GOOD SCRIPT.

ROGER GREGG:  What do you think are the signs or indicators of a good scripts for audio?

DIRK MAGGS: Speaking personally, for me a good sign is any script in which there are few if any scenes in which characters just talk at each other, relating action which could be shown. 

ROGER GREGG:  Could you explain that ?

DIRK MAGGS: If you’re recording ‘talking heads’ with minimal background to explore ideas, or which relate third party action, there ought to be a reason you are limiting your palette – maybe because the voices are of people isolated or trapped together in some way. Long scenes of pure dialogue or monologue can be very effective but should be arrived at for logical creative reasons.

To tell a story in which the protagonists exist in a 360 degree world, you should show them interacting with it. If you’re going to truly use a storytelling medium, particularly one as flexible as audio, then it’s not enough just to have people relating things that could be ‘shown’ unless there’s a good reason for it. If you’re going to do that you might as well have a single voice reading.  

I like to see something where the script includes ideas which help create a sense of time, a sense of place, creating characters who do not just exist in one setting, but are living and moving through their worlds.  It creates a feeling that a world exists around the characters, often regardless of their concerns.  And that those characters are moving in some way from spot A to spot B and progressing the plot, their story, and their character development.  

If I hear something on the radio that is simply two people talking to each other in what could almost be a vacuum, even though they may be progressing the plot and their own characterisation, I’m less inclined to want to listen further because I’m not drawn into the world in which they are supposed to exist.

ROGER GREGG: What of  Sit-Com formats like ‘FRIENDS’ ?  Basically set in a flat with people around a sofa, or in a coffee shop with the same people sitting around a different sofa ? 

DIRK MAGGS:  Exactly.  That sort of stuff should be done on TV because TV is such a limited medium.

JUDGING A SCRIPT.

ROGER GREGG:  How can you tell if a script is over-written or poorly written ? 

DIRK MAGGS:  You read it!  You can tell within the first 3 pages whether you are reading something that a person with talent has written.  There are other signs, too. Generally speaking the good writer will not try to sell you everything at the top of the script.  They will lead you in gently.  You will smell something nice that will lead you into the kitchen.  This is one of the marks of a good script.  It will tease you in.  

The basic question is: Is it something where you are intrigued into listening further?   Does not just the script but the whole production give you a sense of being in a time and a place and wanting to know more?  Part of this intrigue is the writer not telling you too much.  

This point came up when we were doing an early episode of the new Hitchhiker series [Tertiary Phase].  We were discussing a line change from a scene which Douglas Adams hadn’t actually written out, which I had to expand.  In the discussion, Mark Wing-Davey said: ‘Actually, when we were doing the originals, quite often we’d agree to leave a question mark, rather than answer the question.  And let the audience enjoy figuring that out for themselves.’  I think that this is a very important point.

If you give the audience everything you’re spoiling their fun.  But if you let them do a little bit of mental leg-work, then you are engaging the listener in the process a bit more. 

CLARITY.

ROGER GREGG:  What is your conception of ‘Clarity’?

DIRK MAGGS:  Well there’s technical clarity and script clarity. Technically speaking the early stuff I did was very complex and fast moving.  In the early Adventures of Superman  we’d lurch from the foyer of The Daily Planet to the skies over Metropolis to a jungle in south east Asia  and back.  As a consequence there’d be an element of; ‘Oh hang on a minute! Where are we ?!’   I think the trick to clarity here was to make sure that there was always a very clear change of ambience.

For example, when I was working on episode two of Hitchhiker’s and I had to go from the Cricket ground where Ford and Arthur are out on the playing field, into the commentators box, where two sports commentators are commenting on the action.   I realised that the transition wasn’t clear.  It sounded like all these guys where standing next to each other.  So I had to really push up the exterior atmosphere on Ford and Arthur and then very much sell an interior atmosphere on the announcers in the commentary box.  In the studio we’d recorded the actors very clean and dry and in the end I added quite a big acoustic to them.

Talking about clarity in terms of the script, I think the writer should not be afraid of saying what they plan to do and then doing it.  Tease people in by all means but don’t overplay the hand of trying to intrigue them too much.

If you over-rely on making the listener wonder where they are, you can very quickly lose them.   You might put a little teaser at the top where you intend the listener to react by saying: ‘Ooh! What’s going on ?’  ‘What is this strange sound effect?’  ‘Who is this character?’  or ‘Why is this familiar character in an unfamiliar situation ?’   But you then very quickly have to lay down an agenda, and make it clear so that the listener can follow it.   If you’re trying to surprise the listener all the time, you are paddling very quickly up the wrong creek.

ADVICE FOR WRITERS

ROGER GREGG:  Have you any general advice for aspiring writers ? 

DIRK MAGGS:  Be very aware of the need to not only to engage the audience but also to engage those involved in the production.  It’s very important to write for actors so that cast will enjoy playing the scenes.   

If it’s all stolid conversation, which start, have a middle and then finish, you’re not only writing bad drama but you’re also writing boring dialogue.   And boring dialogue won’t lift a cast. 

A cast needs to be lifted and excited.  If the actors are interested and having fun, the audience who are listening will be interested and have fun.    I get sent so many unsolicited scripts that I read and by page 3 I’m thinking; ‘Well, if I’m bored, how will the actors feel ?’  And worst of all: ‘How will the audience feel?’

So at the end of the day it’s a matter of coming at something and trying to be original but at the same time trying to be clear about things. 

THE AUDIO ACTOR: HAVING A GOOD EAR

ROGER GREGG:  How do you know a good audio actor when you hear one? 

DIRK MAGGS:  It is very hard.  We have a daily afternoon Radio Drama weekdays on Radio 4 and you might hear an actor playing a part very well indeed.   Then you can engage that actor for another job and find that actually they were cast because that was the one thing they can do really well.  Or they were directed very skilfully to give a performance that belied the fact that they are actually not too radio sensitive.

There is an important point raised in your interview with Norman Corwin, the elder statesman of American radio drama.  In that interview Corwin says that ‘An actor must have a good ear’.   Immediately when I read that I thought: ‘Gosh! That is such a great quote!’  Because that is so much the truth.

The actors I come back to time and again, are the ones with a really good ear.   The kind of actors that really understand what the microphone is capable of picking up.   You know the supreme example of really great radio acting is Peter Sellers. 

If you listen to Sellers on The Goon Show, he and Milligan and Secombe, knew exactly what worked in sound terms only.  And actually some of the funniest parts of the Goon Shows are nothing to do with the scripts, it’s what’s happening off mic.  I mean Secombe would say something and in the background somebody goes ‘Eeh’.  Just dropping in some funny little noise like that, dropped in at the right place and it just collapses you. 

It’s so important to have the kind of  ear for a sound that embodies the idea.  It could just be a straight reading like Richard Burton in Under Milk Wood, but just listen to him wringing every drop of juice from the lines.

A QUESTION OF TIMING.

There is also timing.  I was talking to a French guy that does the French Hitchhiker’s website the other day and he was talking about the fact that I play drums and he asked if that influenced my work at all.  And it’s funny he raised that because once when I was having a drink with Dennis Main Wilson (who produced the first Goon Show series and went on to invent things like Hancock’s Half Hour and Till Death Do Us Part), a man who knew more than a thing or two about both radio and television comedy – I told him I was a drummer and Dennis said; ‘That’s very interesting, all the really successful comedy producers and performers were musicians, but more particularly drummers.  Did you know that Peter Sellers was a drummer?’  Well I did, but then he said the interesting thing, ‘It’s important because drummers know where to drop the bombs’.  

Knowing where to drop the bombs is an important point about timing.   For example, from Hitchhikers, there is a scene where Ford and Arthur appear at a cricket match and at one point Arthur getting overcome by the reality of everything says; ‘Right, I think I’m going to go and faint over there’.  And you hear Arthur walk away and then Ford starts a new conversation with a policeman and in the background you hear Arthur fall over. 

I was tightening this scene on the multi-track and I pulled up the next bunch of stuff but the actual collapsing sound that I had had immediately after Arthur fell down, stayed where it was.  The result was Ford starts the conversation and then the collapsing sound came several beats later.   I hadn’t meant this to happen – but it was very funny precisely because the collapse sound was slightly late.  It was something that had been set up by Arthur’s line, then you’d forget about, then later you hear the collapse behind Ford.  Immediately the drummer’s sense of timing kicks in and you think: ‘Ah! Funny!’

An actor who works well in the audio medium has a good sense of an appropriate delivery of sound, whether it be lines or just in general reactions to something, and also has this sense of timing. 

ADVICE TO ACTORS

The comedy greats have got it.  There are people like Hancock who had their own way of timing things out.  And I have to say from my point of view working with people like Chris Emmet, Roy Hudd and June Whitefield  on News Huddlines,  taught me more about acting on radio than any amount of going to the theatre.

In terms of radio comedy I don’t hear a lot of the newer performers on radio getting as much juice out of the lines as people like Sellers could. The radio comedy ‘classics’ are not classics for no reason.

THE ACTOR PREPARES.

ROGER GREGG: What do you think an actor needs to do to prepare for an audio role?

DIRK MAGGS:  It’s difficult to say.   Read the script at least once. You’d be amazed at how many actors don’t read the script before they come into the studio.  They rely on a read-through and if you haven’t got time for one they are completely thrown. 

So prepare by reading and thinking about the lines and thinking about ways to suggest action even though no action can be seen.  This is thoughtful preparation for a role.  I know when I’m working with an actor who is prepared because I’m getting something much more than a line read.

We did The Night Listener,  Armistead Maupin’s book and Stuart Milligan was in it.  Stuart played Superman in my Supermans and he is a damn fine actor, on stage, in television and on radio.  In The Night Listener, Stuart played the lover of the Maupin character, and there was a scene in the script where he had to get something out of a fridge.   The line was something like; ‘I’ll just get you some orange juice,’ and saying this he bent down, as if the fridge was down low, below the worktop. 

Stuart did the bending down action unbidden on the first take, and it told the story beautifully. I didn’t ask him to do it or tell him that was the location of the fridge – I hadn’t really given it much thought! But he had prepared – he had thought about it.  Immediately this action ‘read’ on the microphone that he’d bent down to get something from a fridge. 

This is an example of an actor who’d read through the script and thought; ‘Oh, I’ve got to do something there.  I can’t just stand to the mic and deliver the line. I’m going to portray the character living a tiny piece of his life’.   Because the magic is in those details.

This is a kind of pre-visualising that an actor should do about what the action is in your mind’s eye.  The actor asks: ‘What are these people doing ?’    It’s not listening.  It’s seeing.  Because the microphone will pick that up.  Being able to do this as an audio theatre actor is a guarantee of lots of work!  

ROGER GREGG:  Right.

DIRK MAGGS: You’d be amazed at the actors who think; ‘Oh, this is radio, I’d don’t have to bother’.   Yet I think that radio is the hardest medium of all - made even harder because we have to record half an hour in a day in order to make the thing pay for itself.   So you’ve got to hit the floor running from read through.  And if not in read-through certainly from 11am till 6pm.  You’ve got to be giving it everything. 

Yet sadly there are actors who haven’t read the script.  Or they have read the script and they think they don’t have to do anything more than just say the lines. 

ROGER GREGG:  I work a great deal with Morgan Jones and he’s just brilliant.

DIRK MAGGS:  Morgan is wonderful.

ROGER GREGG:  Not a day goes by that people don’t rave about his performances with Crazy Dog – especially his portrayal of Cyril the Pooka.

DIRK MAGGS:  Very funny.

ROGER GREGG:  Yet Morgan never looks at the script until we do the read through.  It amazes me and he always pulls it off!  But I always warn young actors who’ve worked with us on occasion and who are impressed: ‘Don’t follow Morgan’s lead because Morgan Jones is one in a million.’

DIRK MAGGS:  Ah, but that need not be laziness – it can be self-knowledge. Maybe Morgan learnt early on that he’s one of the few people in the world who is much better coming to material fresh!

ROGER GREGG:  Precisely.

DIRK MAGGS:  There are actors out there whose best performance is take one and there are actors who’s best performance comes in take five. 

ROGER GREGG:  Well they say always record take one.

DIRK MAGGS:  Of course and speaking personally, I always do. But then there is the actor who doesn’t do his best performance until take five.  There are takes on Hitchhiker’s for example, where I’m using take one for some actors and take five for others. 

THE REHEARSAL PROCESS:  EVOLVING A SCENE.

ROGER GREGG: Typically how do you conduct your rehearsals ?  I know in Hitchhiker’s we had a morning read-through followed by working out the blocking and choreography in the rehearsal of each scene.  You cover a number of rehearsal aspects are simultaneously, choreography, blocking, line delivery and so on.

DIRK MAGGS:  This is a very interesting point.  I never used to do read-throughs because there just wasn’t time.  On the Supermans and Batmans,  for example we were so tight for time and although we were doing half an hour a day as we do now, we were doing tiny scenes of about half a page each and this meant also resetting the soundboard and everything between scenes.  It was all we could do to get the half hour done in a day.  So I learned to rehearse a scene just before we took it. 

A read-through is a great thing to be able to do with a cast.  Afterwards I might give script changes.  But I don’t tend to do any directing  during the read-through.  I don’t tend to stop people and say; ‘Actually can you read it like this…’ -  unless it’s something that really materially effects the way that other people play against them. In a read through I just let the cast walk the course before we run the race. 

But once I get into studio and I have a scene to record, I might do it in sections if for example 3 characters begin it and then another 2 join them. 

I do tend to rehearse-record things because first of all there are actors who will give me their best performance on take one.   Secondly surprises can creep in, mistakes can be made that actually improve the scene.   Now if you missed recording that, that would be a shame.  So I record everything, even though I’m blocking and rehearsing.  

In rehearsal, I’m looking to evolve a scene.  There are directors who like to go for specific line readings.  You know, they’ll say  ‘Go to Scene 2, page 5, line 78’ and say ‘I want you to stress the word ‘and’ in this line.’   These type of Directors are very oriented towards directing the language.   I’m much more into directing the action.   I am much more into helping the actor find what their ideas are leading to. More often than not it’s the same result.  

To me the lines will be read with the correct emphasis and inflection if the actors know where the scene is going.  So I try and shape the scene.  It’s like throwing a clay pot on a wheel.   You gradually tease it into the shape you want it to be. 

I try and evolve the thing to the point where I feel everything is now running in harmony -  the idea of the scene, the characterisations, the way the plot is progressing and so on.   So I just don’t tend to look into individual line deliveries until very far down the road in the rehearsal process. By then it hopefully shouldn’t even be necessary.   But of course there are times when you do have to do it. 

I also want to listen to other creatives on the job, be they the producer or scriptwriter – if I haven’t written it. There is consultation in rehearsals.  I like to work collaboratively.  I don’t believe I have all the answers.  A director should trust the actors and I mean not just if they know the parts inside out – which obviously with Hitchhiker’s for example they do – but generally speaking if you’ve employed really good professional actors, they will come in with an idea and you must let them run with it.  Very seldom will their instincts lead you astray.

THE PRODUCTION PROCESS:  STUDIO-BASED AUDIO THEATRE.

ROGER GREGG: I’d like to talk about the production process, what we might call the ‘Live Element’ of the human actor’s ensemble performance in a studio based production.  Marvin the android, springs to mind as an outstanding example of using studio recording technology purely to serve the performance.

DIRK MAGGS:  Yes.

CREATING A CONVINCING REALITY.

ROGER GREGG:  Your sound engineer, Paul Deeley, with whom you’ve worked closely on many productions, says that every element of the studio production process, technical and human, is about: ‘creating a convincing reality for the listeners’.   What do you think he means by that ? 

DIRK MAGGS: One of the first things that Paul Deeley and I discussed and decided was creating a convincing reality.  Paul is my absolute partner in realising things technically.  I work in the studio with the actors and he records it.  I don’t go into the Control Room to listen unless there is a specific technical reason.  I leave him to do his job and I do mine.

‘Creating a reality’.  That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.  It is interesting if you listen to the original Hitchhiker shows – which are brilliant and I’m second to no one in my appreciation of the art of Geoffrey Perkins, Alick and Lisa and Paddy and everyone involved – but if you listen to them it’s clear they are at times trapped by the limits of the equipment and having to take technological short cuts. 

For example Marvin’s’ treatment on the voice was added later in Radiophonics and then it had to be cut back in.   And you can hear that Stephen Moore playing Marvin, isn’t actually able to act with the others in some of those scenes.  These are the bits that were done completely separately. So we wanted to find a way around this.

In terms of Marvin and characters like you playing Eddie the computer, where there is a character that has to be removed from the action because they are not human or because they have to have a specific treatment on the voice and so on, we wanted them still to be able to play the scene live with the other actors.  Because the only way to get a convincing reality going is when the actors engage with each other. 

It’s very interesting having worked on some animations where actors have to work separately from each other.  You do the whole script with one actor playing his or her lines and no one else for them to act against.  And in my experience actors hate this.  It’s away from the ‘evolving’ approach and back to ‘please stress the definite article in Line 56’.

THE MAGIC CHEMISTRY OF THE LIVE ENSEMBLE.

Actors like to work with other actors playing the other parts, giving them the inflections that they are going to deliver them in, so that the cast can altogether begin to get a rally going.   It’s like a tennis match.  The cast like to get the rally going, get the scene going.   I totally understand this and I think you get a better result when actors can work with each other live in the process.   The magical chemistry is best generated by the linear process of real people doing the scene together. 

So in order to perform a scene with Marvin the android, where you can actually have him working with the other characters we had a little loud speaker on a stick with Stephen’s voice channelled into it, to make it possible for Marvin the character to move naturally around in the scene, literally among the other actors!

Ken Humphrey, our effects operator, was moving Marvin in and around the other actors as they were walking around having a discussion in the scene.    So there was no need for any actor to think about Marvin as anything other than as just another character right there playing the scene with them.   This way we could all get on with working together to make this whole soufflé rise – rather than getting bogged down in cutting dialogue together later which is always a highly artificial.

You see many films nowadays that rely a lot of CGI effects and so on. It’s all very clever, but somehow it often comes across artificial.  There is no flow.  I’m thinking of certain big Sci Fi Epics.  Although you want to believe in the characters, you’re held up by the artificial, eerily unnatural, special fx.   

The human brain is very hard to fool when it comes to viewing something that just doesn’t move naturally. It’s equally hard to fool when it comes to listening to stuff in a spatial environment (i.e. anything that’s not mono, and often in mono too!).  The human ear knows damn well when a scene isn’t being played naturally or when a scene has been created in the cutting room with edits rather than live in the studio. 

PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES: THE LIMITS OF EDITING.

ROGER GREGG:  This is so true.   I can think of several contemporary things that are put together by producers using different actors in different places and assembled afterwards - and they largely do not work well.   They don’t work well because most commonly the actors are not interplaying properly.  So you get things like artificial interplay or subtly inappropriate reactions which jar.   Then there is the technical aspect where the lines are simply not sequenced properly in post and therefore the timing is wrong. The gaps and responses are too short or too long.  They are not letting things gingerly overlap as happens in natural dialogical intercourse.  This adds an artificial stiltedness that your ear subliminally does detect.

DIRK MAGGS: Of course.

ROGER GREGG: And there is another rudimentary technical aspect where one actor in the production was maybe recorded in Indiana while sitting in a small room with a Sony microphone and the guy he’s supposedly talking to was recorded standing in a sound booth in California on a Neumann and they are meanwhile in a scene with a woman from New York on a Rode condenser.  When spliced together they are somehow supposed to be in the same scene together and it just doesn’t sound right.  The end result is very hard to keep listening to.

DIRK MAGGS: Even if you have everything technically perfect with every voice beautifully balanced against each other, there is a natural rhythm to speech that is very hard to edit artificially together. 

It’s a well known thing in sound editing, but if I’m doing dialogue as I am right now editing Hitchhikers, if I need to cut to another take, I will always look to the natural rhythm in the scene and then cut after the breath that an actor is taking to the other take of his line.  I try never to change the rhythm of what he’s doing after the last actor, unless I felt the scene was playing a little slow or I needed the actor’s line to interrupt somebody slightly.

As soon as you start playing with the natural speech rhythms between the actors you are taking a step into a world where you then have to start artificially changing everything.  And that is one slippery slope which starts a chain reaction where though  it might sound technically correct, it’s actually difficult to follow for the ear. Why ? Because the listener knows damn well it’s a fake. 

THE SPOT EFFECTS.

ROGER GREGG:  Speaking of capturing the live ensemble performance in a studio-based productions, you have of course the human actors present but you also have other ‘actors’, other ‘voices’ present. I’m referring to the spot effects. 

DIRK MAGGS:  That’s right.

ROGER GREGG:  Spot effects are performed live in the studio with the action.  Should one always try to do as much of the spot effects live with the actors ?

DIRK MAGGS:  Yes.  In terms of immediate personal sound effects as made by the characters that move around and interact with items, props, inanimate objects: Yes.  I think it’s delaying a decision and it’s creating more work and adding a degree of artificiality to do these types of  sound effects any other way.

I know that there is a passion for doing voice-by-voice separately and bit-by-bit separately and then going and sitting at Pro-Tools, or Cool Edit or Nuendo or whatever, and stitching the performances all together in one kind of orgy of computer manipulation.  But at the end of the day, if it’s done with the actors in an organic way, it will breathe and live.  And if you’ve got an effects operator with the instincts of another actor, another cast member, as we had on Hitchhiker’s with Ken Humphrey, you get a result which is much more than the sum of its parts.  Now one can argue that both techniques work.  But one actually lives and the other don’t.

CAPTURING THE CHEMISTRY: STUDIO-BASED RADIO DRAMA.

ROGER GREGG:  I think you’re sort of hitting on kind of a historical point there.  In America especially, the professional jobbing Radio Theatre people are, with a couple of exceptions like Tony Palermo, by and large, long gone.  And very importantly their ‘Old Time’ mode of working is also largely forgotten – or simply dismissed as outdated techniques of a bygone era.  

The consequence is that nowadays an audio group might form and say: ‘Hey let’s do Radio Theatre and record ourselves’.   So they contact a qualified Sound Engineer or Producer and say; ‘Hello, we’d like to record our radio theatre’.

Now this cutting edge expert probably hasn’t heard of  ‘Radio Theatre’ except maybe seeing pictures of Jack Benny laughing on stage in history books.  He or she is technically qualified because they’ve most likely recorded a lot of rock bands or maybe produced advertising voice-overs, talking books or animations.

DIRK MAGGS: So I hear.  

Norman Corwin, the 'Poet Laureate of American Radio Drama', in rehearsal with audio producer Tony Palermo. photo taken 2003.

ROGER GREGG:  And so the Sound Engineer or Producer automatically thinks:  ‘Well, the best way to record anything is this: Record each element separate and clean.   Get it nice and clean and separate so that I can then post-produce without hassles for a few weeks in Pro-Tools’.  The expert Sound Producer then advices the Radio Theatre troupe, saying: ‘For your audio drama, the main thing is to record each actor speaking their lines separately and clean. This way we can really use the technology to produce your thing.’

DIRK MAGGS:  Right.

ROGER GREGG:  But it’s flawed.  It’s applying state-of-the-art recording techniques developed specifically for music or animation voice-overs, to the recording of what should be an ensemble of actors performing in a production. 

DIRK MAGGS:  Of course and the stupid thing about that is that if you play in bands as I do and are recording the band, you will find that the engineers and producers who really know what they are talking about will never go down the road of trying to artificially separate what each member of the band does.  Unless the band can’t really play to start with!

ROGER GREGG:  And that happens!

DIRK MAGGS:  Yes, but any band that can really play is recorded ensemble.    You might then overdub tracks to finesse what you have done or to fix a mistake. 

This techno-geek approach only works up to a certain level.  I mean some great work is done in a separated multi-track environment in audio theatre.  I’m not saying it isn’t, but the fact is that the more you try and control it in post-production, the less natural it sounds. 

ROGER GREGG:  And the natural element is important because… ?

DIRK MAGGS:  Well if you want to create a story about artificiality then maybe this techno-geek approach is the way to go.  But if you want to create a reality of living-breathing people leading living-breathing lives, generally speaking you’re going to have to employ actors.  Even if they are playing mattresses living in a swamp!

You’re also talking then about working with a script.   And immediately when you are talking about working with actors and a script, you’re putting a bunch of people together, putting together a bunch of things which in this dramatic test tube is potentially very powerful and explosive.  A chemistry arises as they interplay this thing together. 

You can’t make explosions if the match is burnt on Tuesday and the gasoline is there on Thursday.   Or having the gasoline in one room and the match in the other.  You will get some type of result.  You may even get what is technically a polished result.  But you won’t get the magic, the living-breathing thing.  

Perhaps you can construct perfection in computer terms but real life does not consist in perfection.  Evolution relies on imperfection in order for things to develop. And what you do in the artistic disciplines has to reflect how life works - or - if you’re going to react against it as a statement, then you perhaps purposely make something artificial and unreal.   But we’re striving for a reality of some kind, even if we are in a totally fictional universe, we’re still striving for an engaging reality.

For example, Marvin the robot, stuck in a swamp talking to a mattress.  A living-breathing mattress that lives in the swamp.  So we set about to create the reality of a mattress that lives in a swamp, with sound effects and so on.   Now to an extent it’s an artificial construct because there is no time in the live recording to add all  of the effects.   But at the same time, the basic scene between Marvin and the mattress is played live between the two characters.   So they can bounce off of each other.

It is the reality of that scene, the way the two actors play it, this is what grips the listener.   This is what creates a believable engaging reality.   Everybody in the end has to make it as real as possible and to make the decisions as early as possible about the sound effects to create a reality as you record it. 

Post-production is a vital part of the process. But post-production is not the creative moment; it’s not the spark of life.   The big bang has happened.  Post-production is then imposing some kind of order after that initial creative chaos.

THE DIRECTOR.

ROGER GREGG:  In a technical sense the focal point of that production process is mostly the stereo microphone in a room.  In practical choreographic terms you’re talking about actors directed to move and perform around a stereo mic.   This leads to the role of the Director.  How do you prepare as a Director ?

DIRK MAGGS:  Directors usually have a very personal way of doing things.  I am slightly of the school ‘Don’t analyse too much or the magic might go away’. 

In preparing to direct, if I haven’t written the piece myself, of course I’ll read it closely.   But my immediate concern generally speaking, for a studio session with actors is not worrying about things like big fx sequences.  I’m not particularly worried about backgrounds – unless there’s some specific environment that I might be able to create with the actors on the day or take the actors to.  

My real concern as a Director is to help the cast work their performances up to a really terrific level. To use their spark to generate the heat, to reach critical mass and end up with that golden take that gives a well-written scene all the vibrant spin, all the powerful imagery and life it deserves.  

So the first thing I’m looking at is the words on the page and any effects directions that can be made live as we do it.  People moving about, objects manipulated and so on.  I mean if the object is highly technical like the electronic Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book, then I don’t get too worried about that.  I’ll add that later.  I will be looking specifically for anything that adds to the performance by helping the actors play the scene.   I don’t waste my time worrying about big sound effects, big backgrounds, anything like that.  I note them for later and forget about them.  You’ve got to be selective.

Prioritize what you’re going to go for.   The first and most important thing is the actors.  They are expensive and so is the studio time.   You’ve got a limited amount of time to get a heck of a lot recorded, so concentrate on getting great performances.  And concentrate on factoring in as much as you can as early in the process as you can.  Making decisions early is an important part of the process. 

I try to get as much as I can recorded at one time in terms of not having to go back and add stuff later because:  A. it will sound artificial, and B. it’s just adding more work later on.  I can spend that post-production time polishing other elements much more advantageously.

CINEMATIC SOUND DESIGN.

ROGER GREGG:  How would you react to the statement that: ‘Dirk Maggs’s heresy largely consists in taking his lead from the fast paced and layered sound designs of populist action movies rather than following the approach of traditionally ‘profound’ Radio Drama ? 

DIRK MAGGS: Guilty as charged.

ROGER GREGG:  Is there a right balance to the elements of  sound design in audio theatre ?

DIRK MAGGS:  Firstly there is an awful lot of great people working in radio who don’t do it the way that I do it.  There are an awful lot of listeners who are very discerning and intelligent people who don’t like too many sound effects and too much music.  That’s fine by me. 

But personally, I like the sound design approach that involves layering sound effects and music in such a way to not just help tell a story but to create a world in which that story can exist.   And I mean it could be just a story set in contemporary real life. But a real life created in appropriate layers is the way in which you craft something that endures and actually transports the mind to the setting which the writer is trying so hard to evoke.

INFLUENCE OF CINEMATIC SOUND DESIGN

Movies have the technology and the budgets to spend a lot of money on sound.  The realisations of lush sound designs only came about with films like Star Wars with sound designers like Ben Burtt and Randy Thom and people like that.  As the sound technology moved up along with the picture technology, the idea in film of literally interpreting everything you see on the screen with an appropriate sound equivalent, was a revolution in the late 1970’s and early 80’s.  

Looking back, when I had the opportunity to do Superman,  I had been watching films like Terminator 2 and Thelma & Louise.   I had been listening closely to what these sound designers had been doing with the sound tracks.   It made me think: ‘These sound designs are the sort of stuff that really tells a story well.  It’s exciting. It doesn’t just tell a story, it augments a story.  It creates its own reality.  So why on earth aren’t we doing it on radio ??!!’   

And as soon as I started talking to the terrific Studio Managers in BBC Radio Group Four, the first thing we all agreed was: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our Superman radio series sound like one of these movie soundtracks with really clear and crisp sound effects ?’   Now this was flying in the face of 50 years of radio sound effects where you got your big effects off a little scratchy 45 rpm disc kept in a plastic sleeve guaranteed to make it full of static and covered in bits of cigarette ash and chinagraph shavings.

The thing we were trying to do was going to require getting to grips with the digital technology becoming available.   And the powers-that-were had been a bit resistant to adopting the technology. And so it was only by ignoring what some people were saying that Superman was made.  And thankfully I discovered that yes, there was an audience for this kind of audio-movie thing.  Fact is I’m still getting emails now from people saying how much they enjoy listening to the early stuff we were doing, The Supermans and so on. 

By the mid-90’s we were really going for it big time, stuff like Spiderman and Judge Dredd.  I was really going for it in the sound designs, doing things like trying for camera angles and cutting from character to character within a room and changing acoustics.   I was trying to find out what works and what doesn’t.   And as I understood it, a lot of listeners liked what I did.   The kind of people whose opinion mattered to me, liked what I did.  And I liked what I did. 

That said, since then, I have found that it has been necessary at times on later productions to pull things back.  For example, if I do an Agatha Christie, I will tend to be less ambitious because I know that the listeners are older and therefore their ears are less able to differentiate between background sound and foreground sound.

Generally speaking when push comes to shove, and I’ve got a big effects sequence, I will go for it and treat it in a cinematic way.   I believe at the end of the day that most people’s brains are perfectly capable of sorting things out in order to give a clear impression of what is going on.

SEEING THE IMAGE vs. HEARING  THE WORD.

ROGER GREGG:  So it’s more about seeing the image in your head rather than hearing the word?

DIRK MAGGS:  It’s always about that image in your head.  We are in a Visual Medium here, make no mistake. And if you get it right, you create a kind of telepathy.   There are scenes where I’ve done effects sequences with no dialogue to create a mental image.   I have asked people what they see in their minds having listened to the mix, and it’s almost always the same thing I saw in my mind -or very similar.  There are sequences in Judge Dredd for example, where there was dialogue but equally, the FX mix was telling the story as well.  In these instances there’d might be  loud noise which might drown the dialogue, but the noise equally told the story and was sexier than the dialogue.  I’ll go for sexy noise as quick as I will for dialogue, if it tells the story.

ROGER GREGG:  Orson Welles was once criticised by a network executive for making the background too loud in an action sequence too loud.   Welles retort was an indignant ‘Who told you that that was the background?!’.

DIRK MAGGS:  Ha!  Very good.

THE FUTURE OF RADIO DRAMA

ROGER GREGG:  What does the future hold for radio drama ?

DIRK MAGGS:  The future of radio drama is very bright as long as people have to drive long distances in their cars.  That’s the fact of it.  Radio drama and audio theatre will only die when they invent the Star Trek type beaming device.  Because until then, there is a captive market for it.   Quite apart from the devotees who understand that when you are doing the ironing it’s a great thing to listen to.  Or kids at bedtime who tuck in with their headphones on.

Publishers and broadcasters must encourage young people to listen because otherwise they’ll be looking at a dwindling older and older audience.  This is why doing a series like Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and the Supermans and the Batmans are so important.  And doing them with budgets that allow multi cast and plenty of post production time.

Some people may look down their noses on popular material, and it hasn’t always been an easy business selling populist productions to would-be broadcasters.  But the fact is that, done well, this is not just sugar coated pap - this kind of material can deal with profound issues. It attracts people.  It attracts kids to listen. And kids are the future of everything. 

Seriously, though, I don’t think it will ever die for as long as people make good productions. It’s up to us to do the best work we can - otherwise what we do will die and that would be the ultimate tragedy because audio is the best medium to tell stories in – bar none! 

ROGER GREGG:  Amen. 

DIRK MAGGS:  Bless you! [laughs].