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Hi folks,

It has been a long, cold month (at least in the UK) but we have finally made it to the end of January! We know that the post-holiday blues can make the month a tough one, so we’ve gone through the archives and made a list of our favourite paid member-exclusives that are guaranteed to lift your spirits!

(Knights+) Enthusigasm is a true comfort listen – pick a topic you’re interested in, or start at the very beginning with EGSM 1: Taking the Cake, where Helen and special guests discuss their love of baking

(Knights+) A Stellar Firma earworm, courtesy of Tim Meredith, Ben Meredith and Katie Seaton: Golden Robot Gondoliers

(Knights+) Meet Casper, RQ’s Mascot in Chief, in Rusty Bits #5, Rusty Bits #15, Rusty Bits #23 and Rusty Bits #26

(Knights+) Behind the Scenes of The Magnus Archives Season 5 recordings

(Knights+) RQG Pirate Outtakes

Meanwhile, in news from the RQ Network, the finale of Malevolent will be releasing this week. Created by Harlan Guthrie, Malevolent is a dark cosmic horror where P.I., Arthur Lester, attempts to unravel a mystery of monstrous proportions. Unable to see, and with no memory of who he is or what has happened, he must trust a nameless, eerie voice to guide him through the darkness.

Part 60, “The Final Act”, will be released on 30th January. Join Harlan and the community to listen live on YouTube at 8pm EST at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHFB87Nf84Y

If you haven’t yet listened to this incredible show, start from the very beginning by searching for “Malevolent” wherever you find podcasts or by visiting www.malevolent.ca/.

Finally, following on from last week, we have another look at what a typical day is like at Rusty Towers! Today, we welcome Nico Vettese, a composer and Senior Dialogue Editor for RQ.

A Day in the Life of Nico Vettese, Resident of the Editing Dungeon. 

My day starts by chanting smirke’s 14 to myself, and coughing the 15th one in there just in case for good measure. It’s really important to make sure I’m ready for the watcher’s crown ritual as you never know if you get to become the lucky little soul Jonny and Alex pick this week. Also, as I live in Scotland, I tend to drink irn bru to perk myself up with breakfast (I have no idea the flavour, it’s neon orange and can’t even say iron or brew due to false advertising rules).

Mondays mean we gather round the editing trough to see what lucky deadlines we get this week from our chief editing dungeon rep, Cathy - usually this is odd-numbered magnus episodes to do vocal cuts for if we’re in magnus season, or for myself I also do music for the bonus content and neon inkwell. But dear reader, I hear you say, what on earth goes into a vocal cut. Why do I hear you say it? Beholding or something, I don’t know, no more questions.

A typical magnus protocol episode is 3 scenes, with around 3-5 voice actors per episode. Each episode is recorded scene by scene, with a separate audio file per person per scene. So you’ll be looking at minimum 7 separate audio files. This is about 4 hours of audio for a typical 20-minute episode. If it’s a particularly gruelling episode for an actor (I’m looking at you MAG 185) then that length of raw audio can skyrocket quickly. My job is to process the audio (take out background noise, unused takes, and any chit chat which is mostly Billie doing puns or Shahan singing to us), sync up the tracks, and micro-edit the pacing and splicing together lines from the preferred takes. As this is remote recording sessions, there is always a delay in actors reacting to each other, so you need to watch for that, but also it is my job to think ahead for what the voices will sound like in the final mix once it’s lensed (the scene's audio whether it's coming from a computer, or a mobile phone...etc.) and soundscape is added. This means that I’ll do around 500-1000 micro cuts to the pacing in any given episode. I’ll also splice together takes, and in some cases splice together the start of a word from one take, and the end of a word from another (e.g. Stu-pid). Once rough cut is done, I’ll get feedback from Alex, and then go on to do the final cut, and clean out the audio thoroughly so there’s no unwanted noises such as mouth sounds. I currently spend about 50 hours per normal episode of Magnus Protocol to do this. My day ends with hugging my cat, and saying goodnight to my alter of Jonny and Alex. Also blasting Chappell Roan.

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team