subterrapodcast

When we were putting Subterra together, we wanted the music to be special. Too often, TV shows, podcasts, movies, fall back on generic music score to heighten their scenes. With Subterra, we felt that it was not just a narrative, but a specific place; an immersive auditory location that needed to sound specific and unique. The sounds of the bunker had to feel immersive and real. And the music needed to complement that.

The problem? We have never scored anything. As the amatuer musician of the two of us, I took on the role of composer. I do love listening to music. But I am not an accomplished musician and have limited skills. So the task was pretty daunting and to make Subterra have it’s own ‘sound’ seemed nearly impossible.

During this period, I rewatched a favorite movie of mine from my childhood, “John Carpenter’s The Thing.” I was reminded that John Carpenter scored a lot of his early movies and dipped into the internet to find out how and why. It was less of a creative decision and more financial. His movies were low budget and when it came time to score it, he didn’t want to pay someone. I felt his pain, as we didn’t want to spend money. Carpenter’s scores were heavily reliant on synths, and have a scaled-down, minimal feel. And as a fan of minimalist electronica, I felt a kinship to this style.

“The Thing” wasn’t scored by John Carpenter. It was his biggest budget movie of his career and he had the money to hire a composer. So he hired the legendary Ennio Morricone. And instead of doing a sweeping, orchestral score, Morricone kinda mimicked Carpenter’s style, still adding some flourishes that elevated it. If you haven’t listened to “The Thing”’s score, you really should.

So that was the template for my approach. Very minimalistic sounding synths. Like something from the ambient era of Aphex Twin. But with touches of strings and guitar to make things feel big in the moment. The soundscape needed to feel futuristic and high-tech while at the same time, deeply emotional and organic feeling. Hazel may be a bucket of microchips and motors, but she is a real friend to Ace. So our musical theme needed to reflect this. The world of Subterra is massive so the wide, thick bass synths should give the listener a sense of that. But Subterra is a small, emotional story, and our score should feel intimate and personal. Guitar chords accompanied by piano seemed like a good way to touch the listener’s heart.

As I put the episodes together and started scoring, I found myself listening to the scene and recording instruments live as the show played. Instead of recording a track and then editing the show to the music, I tried a different approach. The result, to my ears, is a looser, more in the moment score that feels organic and, yes, a little unpolished. But to me, the sound of Subterra is rough, beaten up, covered in rust, worn and a little chaotic; the style of the score fitting the series well.

The global pandemic crushed the movie and TV business. As a screenwriter, this had a huge impact on me. Not only was there complete silence from my manager, but I lost my interest in starting another spec script. I still had the desire to be creative, I just wasn’t able to muster any energy for a movie or TV project. Why do all that work just to collect a series of rejections over the following days and weeks and months?

When the pandemic hit, I had a surplus of time but nothing to do with it, not in terms of writing anyway. I have always had some kind of creative outlet or a “project” I was working on whether it was a script, novel or something that involved typing on a keyboard. But now I was stuck in neutral.

Inspiration didn’t strike me, but it did strike a good friend and writer. We met in 2016 in Austin, Texas, after I had left LA for a job. He was living there too, taking a break from LA to enjoy the slower pace of life (and the vast offerings of craft beer) and working at the same job with me. We hit it off and wanted to collaborate on something exciting and entertaining. As much as we tried to push movie and TV ideas on our bosses, nothing ever really got traction.

It was around that time that artificial intelligence was getting embedded into pop culture, and there were news stories and videos galore on the subject. You could almost watch the weekly evolution of the field as Boston Dynamics would post a new video of a robot jumping or running, always higher and faster in each successive video. We both discovered we had a mutual fascination with the subject. We spent our work hours talking about science fiction and Philip K. Dick short stories. We dived deeper into the idea of a robot dog companion.

To us, it was the perfect blend of technology and a human experience. It looks like a dog; a familiar part of both of our lives — we are both dog people. And how it’s within this shell that a bleeding edge technology is being manufactured. It could have looked like a droid from Star Wars. But Boston Dynamics chose a dog. And we found that compelling — what the future looks like and how we are going to have a relationship with technology and what that looks and feels like. We developed a few ideas and even got pretty down the road on a detailed pitch, but the project never really took off and then our year of work was over. He went back to LA and I stayed in Austin.

Fast forward to 2019 and the start of the quarantine, and we were both in our own state of shock from the collapse of the movie and TV industry. He reached out to me a few weeks into the pandemic and that’s when he brought up the idea of doing a scripted podcast. A what now?

He pitched the idea in simple terms: we come up with an idea, break it down into episodes, have one of his actor friends perform our words and release it on some podcast-hosting sites.

Podcasts had been around for a few years and there had already been a few scripted podcasts (“Homecoming” and “Maron,” among others) that had been adapted into television series.

It sounded like a great idea to me. No notes from studio execs? No waiting for someone to say yes? Count me in.

We started looking at some of our ideas birthed in the Austin think-tank and he said that the artificial intelligence space was getting too crowded as there were already countless documentaries and shows that already explored the concepts and stories about how AI might affect our modern world. We had to come out with our own unique take.

As we did more research, we went back to the idea of artificial intelligence in robots, specifically, robot dogs. We were really drawn to those Boston Dynamic robots which were increasingly seeming like they would soon become our Skynet overlords. These canine machines were showing up in workplaces and homes. The future was upon us…

The idea of doing an updated “boy and his dog” story was where we started. It grew from there and the world got much bigger: an outcast boy rescues a robot dog and they find themselves trapped in a vast and dystopian sci-fi world, surrounded by fantastic villains and danger. But at the heart of it there was a very relatable and humanistic story of friendship, loyalty, and hope.

There was only one problem. Neither one of us knew anything about how to make a podcast, much less a scripted podcast.

We forged ahead anyway, with the energy only the truly naive can harness. We went to work on creating a unique setting and a compelling scenario. This was an exciting time because a podcast, we thought, would give us the opportunity to create a really big world with a diverse cast of characters and endless story threads to follow. If we could create a rich world, the characters and stories would flow from that… and they did.

We found our protagonist (both human and robot canine), and then the bones of the story kind of fell into place. We wrote a couple of episode scripts and we readied for the next steps. And that’s where our education and experience hit the limit. We were writers, not podcast producers. So, with all of this time gifted to us by a global pandemic, we adapted and learned. Like so many people who took this unprecedented pause in our lives to hone new skills, we taught ourselves the ins and outs of writing, engineering, producing, and marketing a scripted podcast.

“It was wild, chaotic, manic, and stressful but never boring… “

I learned how to edit wav files and cut together dialog. I learned how to use Photoshop for concept art and creating marketing content. I learned all about social media platforms and how they work to build an audience. It was a burst of creative expression, but it was also a skill-building exercise.

My co-creator was musically inclined and scored the entire season, creating music cues to fit each scene. He also learned how to use advanced audio editing software. He mixed, scored, added FX, cut dialog… basically doing the job of four or five people if this was a TV show or movie. He also directed talent while simultaneously recording the sessions and all out of his garage. To say that this was a DIY project is an understatement. Made in a garage with Garageband.

Season one was a lot of trial and error. There were tons of technical issues and some poor recordings, and on top of all that, neither of us had any experience with any of this. So we made a lot of mistakes, but we just kept going. It was wild, chaotic, manic, and stressful but never boring… and somehow we made it work.

I was a little nervous after Subterra went live on Spotify and Apple Podcasts but friends and colleagues were listening and giving us great reviews. We started to see the numbers go higher and higher and realized that people were listening. We had created something from start to finish and people were digging it. We had created a loyal community who was there for each step of Ace’s adventure, as he traversed the perils of Subterra on his way to the surface of the planet. This was an entirely new frontier and we quickly realized we needed to do more and immediately started working on Season two.

And now, after adding more voice talent, and expanding the scope of the world and the characters, and refining the audio elements, Season two of Subterra is ready to launch.

The pandemic is basically over now and life is shifting back to normal… sort of. But looking back, it was one of the most intense bursts of creativity in our lives. We are now forever changed.

We are grateful for this learning experience and to have been afforded the time to become storytellers again, even under trying circumstances. We also want to thank you, the audience, for exploring the world with us and joining Ace and Hazel on their journey. We are also eager to see where their adventures take them and hope you’ll stay with us.

“Mankind’s survival will depend on our ability to hide in the shadows of the deep and wait for evil to pass.”
Joseph Locke

Author Archives: subterrapodcast

Steve Krueger on Fascination Street Podcast!

Episode 1 available on Youtube

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What We Did During the Global Pandemic

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