Okay, hello, welcome everyone to unbelievably our fifth behind the scenes special. I'm j Michael Dangelis, co creator, co executive producer, co writer and co director, but sole marketing manager of mission rejected.
Thank god, you don't want me messing around with.
That marketing now, Good God, I truly don't. And I'm joined today by my two partners in the porch room. I've got Pete Barry, Hello, universe, and I've got John P. Dalgan.
Greetings, all, greetings, all this fine, sunny warm where I am Spring Friday.
And of course, also a core part of the writing and creative team is Paige Klinecki. We'll be hearing from her, as well as a whole bunch of our cast members later on in the show. So, after five years of doing well, after four years of behind the scenes shows, we weren't quite sure what people wanted to know anymore.
We had been interviewed, we had interviewed each other, we had the cast interview each other behind our backs, we had we interviewed other podcasters, and we were just not sure what we could talk about in this fifth year. So we threw it out to the audience. We put a poll out there. We asked our Patreon members, we put a poll out on our social media, put out a call for questions, and we got a lot of great questions from our fans. So today we're going to
do our best to answer our fan questions. Well, we're gonna dive into some specific questions, but we also got some great questions for our cast, and they were kind enough to record their answers. So I'm gonna throw it over to our cast, who all have some thoughts about what their characters look like.
Hey, everyone, this is Dave Stanger. I play Bowden Moncrief, and the first question I see is how do you view your own character physically. I think I might have mentioned something along this line in a previous behind the scenes episode, but I tend to picture him as sort of like this amalgamation of a couple different celebrities that I know, and the one that is foremost in my
brain for Boden is Rob Low. You can google who he is if you're not sure, but he's definitely who I picture any time I'm trying to kind of get into character for Boden, and sometimes maybe a little bit of a younger Alec Baldwin and maybe to a lesser extent John Ham, but someone of their ilk. I think for Boden, someone I tend to picture some guy with dark hair, chiseled, looks kind of an aging pretty boy.
But yeah, I think Roblow would be a great touchstone if you're if you're wondering who I picture for Boden w And.
So this is a really good question. I don't think I really have very clear pictures for any of the characters.
In my head.
And maybe that's because I don't Maybe that's because I don't think I have the most visual imagination. I think it's more conceptual. So the characters for me are are kind of like in dreams, when you have like a general, wiggly outline of a person with general features emerging, but they're not like fully formed. And I think Glory is even harder for me to picture than any of the other characters, because I don't really see myself as Gloria, Like in my head, she's just a fully separate person
from me. She has different dreams and different fears and different tendencies, and I'm just playing her. But at the same time, it's also weird to think of my voice coming out of someone who looks very different from me, so it's just hard to picture.
And I don't know.
Maybe that's a cop out, but I don't think I have a clear answer. But that's why I really love seeing the fan art so much. I really love seeing how all the fans and how you all see her and bring her to life, because that really helps me fill in these gaps that I have in my imagination, and it's fun to just see all the very different versions of her that come out.
Wow, this is Faith Dowgin and I play Zelda Anders. These are really fun questions. So the first one from Jace from the Philippines is how do you view your own character physically? I think i'd have to say that Zelda is definitely taller than I am, because I am only five two and I have always wanted to be taller. But she's not super tall, maybe five six, a nice
average girl height. And she's fit because even though she hates going to the gym, she hates pilates, she hates cardio, she knows that she probably will be in some sort of situation where she should probably be strong and tough. She does love kickboxing. Zelda's a big fan of kickboxing. And she wears amazing clothes like Calvin Klein and basically Calvin Klein. Basically her entire wardrobe is Calvin Klein because it's always in fashion, it's comfortable, it's practical and yeah shoes,
oh shoes. So she wears converse a lot and practical shoes. Zelda's a practical goal.
Wo.
Hey, this is Bob Killian. I play the Admiral and a host of other characters Jase. For me, the Admiral is as big and as imposing in person as he is on the podcast in his voice. When I do the Admiral, I do a lot of hand gestures and moving around and a lot that just to throw myself around when doing the Admiral because I feel like the Admiral is so imposing physically in my mind. And so Yeah, which is really fun to play. I really enjoy it.
I'm pretty sure there's a picture on the Mission rejected website of me doing facial expressions or something with the Admiral.
Wow.
Hi everyone, this is Nozla and I am the voice of Mackenzie McGrath. So how do I view McGrath physically? I think McGrath is an enigma hard to figure out. Physically, I think she is surprisingly fit and strong and quick, even though she does absolutely nothing to train herself. Like train physically, she does nothing. I don't think she works out.
Her workout is grabbing another bag of chips. But I don't think she ever has trouble as much as Skip does whenever there is an exercise wond So she's everything I wish I was. Basically, I think McGrath is genetically gifted that she doesn't need to lift a finger, but she's so strong.
Wow.
This is Chris klinecky. I you see him as pronouns and I play Skip Grainger, who also uses him as pronouns, And I'm very happy to be here answering some of the questions that we received for this special episode. Jason, That's a great question, really fair one too, especially since we exist in the audio world. Honestly, for me, I am so delighted and humbled every time I get to see one of our listeners who has some artistic flare do a rendition of any of our characters, including Skip.
Every time I see a new Skip, I think this is fantastic when it comes to how I view my own characters. Skip Grainger physically. Honestly, at this point between seasons five and six, it's essentially the conceptual midpoint between the various iterations of Skip Granger that I've seen in the artwork getting from season one all the way through recently. I just kind of picture, you know, a hodgepodge if you will, of those sorts of features altogether. That just
makes me smile. That being said, if there are any listeners out there listening to this particular episode who have some artistic flare and are thinking, I haven't seen a version of Skip that agrees with what I have in my head in terms of the image, this is of course not a request, not by any stretch of the bine. But if you're looking to change how I viewed Skip Granger, I would say, add your own take on Skip Granger
to the mix and we'll go from there. Now, I'm not asking you to make pictures of Skip Granger.
I promise.
I just if you do, it will certainly be incorporated in my own sort of mental image of the character. That's a guarantee.
And we're back.
Well, thank you cast for those insightful answers. We're gonna be hearing again from them. Shortly. But let's uh, let's take a question for us. Uh So Wedge from Minneapolis asks us what's changed in production process or pipeline since between season one and season five?
Well, a lot, we know we we we didn't know what the hell we were doing when we started, and if we had, frankly, would we have started this.
No, And there are some lessons we still haven't learned.
Like there there are a lot of There are some lessons I refuse.
There are a lot of creators who we talk to who are just a guest that we do not have a complete season written before we before we start releasing episode.
I was like, what, who's a guest at one? And everybody's a gas all the time, dismay.
The other thing is the division of labor has changed quite a bit. Seasons one and two. Pete edited and mixed every episode, every every single and three.
Three. Don't take it away from me, man, for sure, the season four you started sharing.
Was season four. I could have sworn. I could have sworn the c I A at the CIA episode.
In my memory, it's all good, You're right.
That was season four. So yeah, so Pete, Pete edited and mixed all of the first three seasons, which was rapidly becoming.
A completely that was fine, right, like, yeah, it was, it was, it was a lot. Yeah.
But but then John, uh, you know, stepped up really really well.
Well.
Season three was when I started, was when I started editing and mixing the Patreon bonuses to take off. That's what I was thinking, and after I had cut my teeth on Reaper doing that. Yes, the the c I A at the CIA episode was the the first one that I had that I mixed entirely on my own. Uh. And since then we've gone into an alternating mostly alternating Pete does one I did.
Yeah, this year, I think you you gave me some some leeway to like grab a couple of episodes.
I was, I do this.
Yeah, so if you if it's an episode that you wrote that was would normally have been me to edit, Like what was which one was it?
I think I wonder so I'll have to think back on this, but I think five o nine might have been the first episode that I wrote and I'm like, okay, John, you can you can take us one.
I put me wrong on that one though. There might be another one.
But there was one that there was one that you wrote that you definitely edited to in a row because.
There was one clear right five O nine I did. I did take five, which one was a different one. Five and nine was the Cornfield one.
That's right, that's right, because you had the you had the idea for what the sounds of mission of the missile base, where.
Yeah, I didn't want to have to be to like burden you with creating a north By Northwest spoof where I was like, I know, I have some plugins that maybe it'll make this plane sound like it's coming yes, right at you, and I don't know.
Well, I mean, let's so uh. There's a huge change between season one and season five that we've not mentioned, which is every episode from the first episode through two O two was recorded in my apartment with the cast as many of the cast members together as possible, and then we would grab and even then, so like if if a Philadelphia based cast member couldn't come to the record, they would still come to my apartment to record at
a later date. So if Dave couldn't come on a Sunday, he would come like the next Tuesday after work and do it. Or if actually had to miss one or whatever, we would get to get either and record at my apartment.
Except for the few unlucky ones who recorded at your place of work, like poor Natty Leech who almost got arrested Hilarian fighting Zelda.
A motor boat.
Yep.
And when that was reported, the response.
Was no, no, that's just Michael and Natty. It's fine. So yeah, and then our guests would have to record in uh that. You know, that was a challenge, particularly when we you know, early on, because we would have you know, clean or at least equally uh equal, I was equally bad, but everybody sounded the same because we all recorded in the same place on the same kind of mice, and then we would have guess that maybe
had much lower quality. So yeah, so everybody in the room would be of you know, sort of balanced because it was all in the same room and on the same kind of mics. But a guest coming in early on, some people were recording into their telephones and it was
just it was very, very noticeable. So we learned, all right, we've got to be able to get if they don't have equipment, we've got to be able to bring them to my place or John's place, repeats place where we have equipment and then of course, and I remember I had all huge problem being like we I could hear the echo in your apartment.
I was like, how do we get rid of this echo?
And I won't go into the details of what I did when I came to records episode three and four, but I was like, can we stop the echo in the apartment?
We learned to live with it. It was like, yeah, you know what, it's fine.
Right, particularly on when like ninety nine percent of the cast had the same echo, right, so it was like they're all in the same place. But you know, then, as you know, I was sure everybody knows. Like we went to record, uh, the third episode of season two and the word pandemic was in the air, and only a handful of us got together to do that. One Swinefeld was Swinefeld. Yeah, so John you were there, Kayden
was there, I think was Bob and Paige. Paige, who had already moved to la was back visiting and then got stuck on in Philadelphia because she couldn't travel back because of the pandemic for a long time. So we had to scramble to decide how to go on. Everyone had the will and desire to go on. So we shipped everybody microphones and we taught everyone how to use audacity or Reaper, and that's how we and then we all just got on. We would still get together and
it's still the way it works. We get together on our discord channel, and we recorded as many people together as possible, even though everyone is in their own place. And there's a question about this later, so we'll put a pin and we'll come back to how how that process works. And it's a double edge it's a double edged sword. I think it's I think we absolutely do lose a little something. It's a little intangible something when you're all in the room together, right, It's just it's
like John Saiswitz. You know almost everybody in the cast as a stage actor. They know how to play off each other and they do it well virtually, but something else happens in the room. You can see each other's faces, you get that energy that that can be very helpful. Now, this is not to say that it's just different. It's just different. It's not better or worse, it's just different. I miss seeing everyone. I miss the camaraderie.
But once you move to the remote version, we have been able to incorporate a lot more like just have the mindset to incorporate people from all around the world. Oh for sure, Oh for sure, people from England, people from you know, like we get people from all over to be on the show, and it is a little more standardized when everybody's talking into their USB Mike. Then it's like I got to balance the environment of Mike's
apartment versus someone who recorded this in Ontario. Right, So there is like some you know, I would like to say that there is a positive that comes out of it that you're like, yeah, you sort of broaden your horizons in terms of what this recording process could be.
And in certain cases you were.
Like, well, the recording didn't come out quite as well as I would hope from this person across the country. But you either learn techniques to sort of overcome that or you start to realize, like I always strive to get the best possible audio into an episode, but there are a couple of times where you're just like, you just gotta thread the needle, and you know, and and and like you said, John, like sometimes you're like, there's a work around.
This person's always on comms.
Yeah, like we'll just do that more and dropping in. If you drop in a sufficiently loud background ambiance, that tends to as long as it's not drowning anybody out, it tends to cover a lot of Also, I have found audiences as long as it's not egregious, as long as you're not actively like having to change the volume of whatever you're listening it on every time a different character comes on, if it's audiences are very forgiving. I've
noticed it with myself. Like some of the other shows that I listen to, they don't record in the same room, and you can tell. And like an episode of a show comes on and I'm listening and a new character shows up, I just go, oh, I bet that. I bet that actor was recording remotely or on their own one day. And then I think goes out of my mind and I go right back into the illusion of the show.
There's no one way to do this, and uh, a lot of people we've talked before, there's different ways to do it too. Some people say just put it all on the actors and say, here's the script, give me three different versions of each line, and I'll pick other people get on and direct. So it's different and this is a nice dovetail because we've actually started to address
this already. But here's our second question. Kim from Virginia aka Liz Lemon asks how does recording from different locations impact your process and what do you adjust?
So I am going to try, I am going to try and stop and I do this at least once in every episode, and I'm going to try to stop writing lines that multiple characters say and sink at the same time. Thank god, man, No, no, no, that's always if the characters aren't if the actors aren't in the same room reading together. That never, that never.
Works out, that trick never.
So to Mike's point, yes, sometimes we put it all on the actors. Like you said, we give us, give us three, three readings of each line.
David S.
Deer is the best at that.
David David S.
Dere is absolutely an a is just a master.
Of the three.
The three because they're all completely different, they're all completely valid, and it's never more than three. It's never more than three.
I'll tell you an amazing David S. Dear story. He because he featured so prominently in five point twelve. He right, he said, I'd love to I'd love to do it with you if you could direct me my pleasure. I love hanging out with David. So we got on and we did it, and we spent a long time, not an hour and a half, two hours, going through all five twelve and I gave him direction and suggestions, and then we got to the end and he went none of that recorded like he was. But he was like,
no problem, I'm gonna let you go. I'm gonna reset up my recording. I remember your notes and I'm gonna I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna do it just like we and he it was exactly like we did.
Say I don't remember, I remember it. It was pretty traditional David.
It was he just and he he and he knocked it out in about thirty minutes. He texted me, Okay, it's done because he just retained. But he's John absolutely pleasure. I can hear it in his voice.
He is he is a Vulcan. I'm convinced David Astier is a Vulcan.
What I've noticed in Pete.
I don't know if you've noticed this either, is David. You gotta obviously you listen to everybody's whole track before you pick the shoes. Yeah, David's David's best stuff can cut out anywhere. It could be the first read, it could be the second read, it.
Could be the third read.
Chris is almost always the third read.
Oh, Nozla.
Nozla is almost always the first read. Like it takes it takes Chris. It takes Chris to to read. Well, not if you're if you're directing them.
If you're directing them, it's.
Usually the last lead. But if they're recording on their own, it takes Chris two reads to get into it, and Nozla just nails it immediately and then overthinks it.
No, And I'm serious, like I have definitely like had people that I'm directing and I'm like, do it exactly Like I can be a very exacting director.
Sorry everyone, but.
Like I'm like, okay, no, it's just like this. And then I get back to the thing and I'm like, no, God damn, I was.
Wrong the first one. No, I screwed them up entirely. But yeah, just like yeah, I mean.
There's you know, I guess I'm trying to get back to the back to the question of just like what are the problems in general? Of like getting all the of all the voices to match. I you know, obviously levels are your first are your first basic issue, right,
how does everybody sound? You can't you know some just trusting your own ears and not necessarily trusting the levels on your your thing, because sometimes people have qualitatively you know, if I was standing way back here and yell at the top of my lungs, that might not sound as loud as.
I go right up in the cabra just start talking it.
So like like there is a perceptual process that you have to do right, not just like make everything the exact same level, especially when you're doing drama. Right, if you're doing a podcast that's just an interview podcast, like I don't know this one, you're probably gonna want everybody to you know, you just sort of level them out. People tend to talk to each other at a at a single level. What so you can yeah, exactly just like that. But like I went to uh into Gordon
cole terror there for a minute. But like the yeah, they're the best advice I ever got on that I ever read on recording was from someone quoting George Martin the uh not George R. R. Martin, but the Beatles who said, all you need is ears and that's it.
You just have to listen very carefully to everything and be like and unfortunately in the day and age that we're in, like you got to kind of listen to it on different things, like listen to it in your car and on your you know, to make sure everything is like so let's sounding the same is where.
Mixes go to die.
Let's talk about that for a second, because experience that and I have two thoughts about it. One it actually goes back to another change in the production process when we were all recording in person. Will have season one fans will remember a credit additional mixing additional live mixing
by Karen Yang Karen doctor Lagrangiang. People will may may remember, but if they don't, Karen was my student assistant when she was a college student on my work podcast and when we started mission rejected, particularly because Pete you weren't available to come and do the first episode right, and I was like, I can't direct it and listen, so I need I need Karen, So I said, Karen, I would you know, I'd love to hire you on the side if you want to come and do this on
the weekends once a month, and she was, you know, excited to do it, and so we always had Karen on headphones and she could be there to say to you or me, I don't know, Chris sounds too distant, or you know, that didn't sound quite right, the levels look off. That was so helpful, right, just to have a second pariers. It's something I struggle with when I'm directing over disc because of course, then you know we're hearing it all through which is not which is not
what the recording is going to sound like. Discord is compressing it. There's a delay. So sometimes we get a recording and it's much softer than it sounded on Discord. It's much hotter, it's right. So that's a challenge, h for sure. But I had a second point. I wonder,
I wonder what it was. Oh, just the whole idea of so when whenever Pete and John are working on an episode, they'll be close to final draft or they'll be a first listenable draft, right, and sometimes we can have three different reactions to it depending on So I'll be like, well, I listened on my really nice stereo speakers and it sounded great, and John be like I listened to my car and it sounded terrible, and Pete'll be like, I listened on my computer and it was okay.
Or sometimes it'll be like, oh, I listened on my really nice stereo speakers and it pointed out all the flaws, or but I put it on my headphones and it sounded great. So let's I know it's not it's it's sort of a mystery, but like, how how do we try and adjust for that? Because our audience are all going to be listening on different things. A lot of people will be listening on headphones, a lot of people
will be listening in their cars. Some people might put it on their stereo or their computer or their TV. It's like, how do we adjust for all of that?
So do I optimize it for the car, which is where many people are gonna be listening, or optimize it across platform, or do I just keep it the way it is and be like, if you're listening on headphones, you're really getting what I was going for. And I gotta be honest, I don't land on one side of
that argument or another. Sometimes the show is a little it's a little all over the place because like sometimes the episodes are streamlined to go in the car, and sometimes you're like, this is an effect that I really want you to hear if you put on headphones and listen to this whole show. I want you to hear Minnie Magarette land on your shoulder.
And I don't want to lose that because it's too cool.
I know that that is probably counter to like I mean, I don't want to call it like a studio mentality or like a mentality where you're like, I want it to be the broadest possible audience. We want a broad audience. We want this to reach as many people who enjoy
the story as possible. But sometimes you have to make little compromises like that and be like this sounds better on headphones, and I'm just gonna let it go because it doesn't sound bad in the car, right, But maybe it sounds a little too loud, or it's like something disappears or something like that. You can't have something disappear entirely, right.
But these are all little compromises you have to make in the fact that we live in an era when not everybody is I guess if we go back to where we started, like loving things like the time that I think the three of us have a little bit of a love for before we were born. Like not everyone is sitting down with the family, turning on the radio and like hearing it through their I was gonna say, Magna box, what the heck do they have back in
the day? But you know they're not listening to the the trolla right around the So people are listening in different ways. And there's the world in which you optimize for all of them, or maximize for all of them, or optimize for one.
This is all to say, I am pushing very hard and I'm just making this announcement to the two of you right now. Season six mixed in Dolby Atmos every episode.
Okay, yep, we'll take it under thank you.
Those are some of our challenges. Let's throw it back over to the cast because someone had a question for them about what was most challenging or most memorable about their character in season five.
The second question is from August from Scotland. August asks what is the most challenging part of playing your character this season and what was the most fun thing you got to do with them? Without a doubt, hands down, I didn't even have to think about it. My most fun thing my character did this season was the Christmas
Eve episode. It was absolutely delightful to record the episode of Zelda getting Ebenezer scrooged, and as always, you know, there was some there were some light emotional moments in it, and I always love when I get to do that. The most challenging part of playing my role this season was actually had nothing to do with the character or the writing, because the writing is always fantastic in my humble opinion, and Zelda is always a delight to play.
The most challenging part actually was finding the time to do the character and the writing the justice that I felt it deserved this year. In particular, over this past season, I have started traveling a lot for my job, and I'm super lucky that I get to do that. I love to travel, It's something I have always wanted to do, but it has put a little bit of a crimp in my style as far as having the time to
do recording sessions. I don't always get to join the the online read throughs that we do, and I missponding with the cast, so that's really been the hardest part. My schedule has left me sort of doing things in a vacuum, sometimes feeling like I'm very last minute, and if I had more time, or if I could go to the read through with the cast, I'd feel more connected and would be more satisfied with what I'm sending out to the guys and to their end to page
and to their credit, no one has complained. They're all very supportive and they give me awesome notes that I can use whenever I get the time to sit down and record something. And I hope that I'm able to organize my life a little better in the future.
Wow, August, I get to play so many characters on Mission Rejected, and that's one of the wonderful things about my role, and as the Admiral, I think one of the big challenges is finding the balance between the admiral silliness and his seriousness, because he is certainly very silly.
He's a ridiculous character. He's always cracking jokes, he's always like making a little sides, but he's also trying to get revenge and he's very serious about what he does, and so sometimes that just works, like he can be silly and serious and that's maybe what makes him scary.
But finding the right balance is always a tough thing with the Admiral and August for you and all of our Scottish listeners out there, I loved playing Lord duncan Land this season on episode five eight, Lord dunken Land. I loved playing that and I loved I definitely took I definitely took Sean Connery as a you know, an influence for that, and you know, as like a sky like spy. It seemed like it was right there to do, like a Sean Connery. That was a really fun episode to do.
I think that a big challenge for me this season was playing Zelda's father, thrash Anders, and instantly it's the similar challenge that I had with playing Gannon, which was also a character from Zelda's past, which is that both of those characters really had a strong, you know, an outlook that I didn't necessarily agree with and that's difficult
to play as an actor. And both of them had their things that were kind of silly about them, and normally I'm you know, kind of playing silly characters where I can be very animated, and they have that too, but they also have to be very serious about their position and in a way that sets them apart from the other characters, especially Zelda, particularly Zelda in these scenes, and that's difficult to do, but it's a challenge that I really like and something that I think is, you know,
really powerful for me as an actor to try to do.
More So, I think the most physically challenging part of playing Gloria in any season is the fighting and the action sequences. I always feel a little self conscious doing it because I usually record in my apartment building and I'm sure that my neighbors can hear me being very loud. And also after five seasons, it's kind of hard to come up with new ways to grunt and like yell
and karate chop. And also the scene in Golden Ear this season on top of the Plane was tough for similar reasons because, like I said, I live in an apartment building, so yelling without like really yelling is challenging. Yeah, and then the most fun thing, it's tough because it's really all fun. Yeah, it's all really fun. But I think I'll say to answer the question in Noos is Off, when Gloria is standing in for Cresceda and Boden's play, it was fun to just kind of make her bad
at it. Like Gloria has become really competent over the years, which is great, but I've always felt really strongly that she should always be bad at some the things, no matter how smart or trained she gets. And so one of the things I've tried to do consistently is that she's just a not a great actor performer. And I really like that because acting is kind of Boden's things, so their skills are just really well balanced and they
don't step on each other's toes. So if you listen back, usually when Gloria is undercover as someone like other than someone who's super similar to her, she has like a really over the top accent or like a ridiculous voice, kind of like that's where Snazzi's splenda came from, or the Lady the Old Lady in the season one finale, like these are just kind of caricatury voices that aren't like real people, and like that's just the best she
can do because she's not a great actress. So in Noos is Off, I got to explore this even more
because she's not approaching acting as like undercover work. She's approaching acting is like kind of an art and a craft, and she knows what good acting is and she really respects it, but she just like really doesn't have that in her in my head, so that was a fun line to walk of her trying her hardest to be a good stage performer, but she's just really out of her depth, and so it comes out as like broad and overacted, and she's just she doesn't have it in
the same way that Boden does, and that's one of the things she loves and respects and admires so much about Boden too.
Wow.
I think the most challenging part for me was the tail end of the season, meeting Orville Granger for the first time. This is a moment that we've been building up to, I think, not just across season five, but there have been kind of like, you know, little breadcrumbs in previous seasons hinting that Skip the character has this sort of estranged relationship with his father, but clearly you know, it has very fun memories of his mother. So there was kind of a lot writing on this, and I
did a lot. Pete Barry, who does a lot of our sound editing, and other folks in the port know that there were a lot of takes of a lot of those lines between Skip and Orville, just doing my best to make sure that our producers had a rich palette of things to choose from to hopefully stitch something together. The most fun thing I got to do with Skip this season, I think has to be the Live and
Let Dice. The Dungeons and Dragons episode especially gratifying for me because on the side, in my personal life, I am a dungeon master for an actual campaign that has been running since twenty nineteen. It's at this point six years old, going on seven. One continuous campaign, one continuous story from the cast here, j Michael and Paige have
both been characters in it since twenty nineteen. So it was really really fun, invigorating, enjoyable, and satisfying to be able to bring my love of that game and what it brings to my own friendships that are really near and dear to me to the show. It's just something that I hope Skip and the rest of the crew would actually enjoy together once they work through their kinks, and hopefully it is something that some of our listeners you know, that resonated with them too. What makes that
game so special and so fun. Thanks for the question. I also recognize, August, that episode took place in Scotland and you're asking from Scotland, so it didn't mean for it. Obviously, that would have been my answer regardless, but hopefully that answer hits home for you, if you will excuse the pun.
Wow.
I think that my answer for both parts of this question are the same. You know, Boden is a ball to play. He's this larger than life character and he gets like twelve jokes an episode and it's phenomenal. But it's also really interesting when he's afforded opportunities to be vulnerable.
You know, he he does have this very guarded personality about his insecurities, and I think, like a lot of celebrities, he wants to present this very successful front and it's played to great comedic effect too, with all of the name dropping and the embellishing of his credentials and everything. But you know, when he does drop that kind of actory facade that he greets the world with and gets
to be kind of real with people. Unsurprisingly, most of them are with Gloria, who is closest to But that's that's a joy to play because you get to explore a facet of a character and you see this very well rounded person underneath all that. It can be challenging. I think in that you got to work a little bit harder as an actor and dig a little bit deeper to strike the right chord. But you know, I think nowhere else was at a parent than when Bowden
and Gloria decide to get married. I love that scene as I understand it. Page handled most of the dialogue in there, and I think she knocked it out of the ballpark. I hope my acting rose to the level of both the writing and the acting in that scene. But yeah, I think that scene in particular in this season was both the most challenging but absolutely the most rewarding.
I don't I want to say there are a lot of challenging parts because we have so much fun. I love the absurdity of the things that our characters are doing. But there was one part. It was the episode where they found all these missing objects from the theater in the underground sewers. I thought that was so gross, just even them talking about it. Just the image of being calf deep in human waste, that's exactly how it was written, was just gross. Like truly, and I'm pretty sure McGrath
was gagging throughout those scenes. It was real. The more I thought about it while we were recording it, the more I felt sick. So even though it was funny, I couldn't wait for that part to be over. But it was really funny. But even listening to it, I was like, oh God, we really sold it. They sound nauseated, all right, And what was the most fun thing you got to do with your character this season? So the most fun thing I got to do with McGrath, I think it was the whole episode where they went to
the Olympics when they were in Paris. I personally love the Olympics. I always get super giddy and excited every four years when it's time again. I love the fact that she hated the Olympics, and she had her reasons. I totally understand. But I also always love when she gets the torture Boden and all the scenes where she was totally overtraining him and over extending him and he had to practice with all these professional athletes. It was
just really fun to boss him around. And I don't know all the jokes were I think landing pretty well at least in my head. I hope everybody feels the same way. Yeah, I would say that was one of the most fun moments, even though again I could pick so many others, so many even like the first episode of this season where McGrath gets to execute her plan with Skip without the others knowing it was it was really fun to know that they have a little secret
code language between them. They know what's going on, but they can't really reveal it to anybody else yet. That was so fun. I mean, all of it is so fun, so so fun.
I love it.
Wow, Oh my goodness, how can I forget Mini McGrath. It was one of the highlights of the season. Minie McGrath was one of the highlights of the season with all her cuteness. And I think we left after every line of Minie McGrath all of us.
Wow, all right, well, sounds like we really put the cast through the ringer as usual. We've got two more questions for us. One I think is really for me. Remy from New Jersey, ass what came first? The baby whale song on Mission Rejected or the baby Whale quest In Chris Kleinecki's D and D Game. Yes, So Remy is a friend of ours who participates in Chris Klinecki's Dungeons and Dragons game. Chris is an amazing DM I play. His game page is in the game, Bob is in
the game. So it is a mission rejected heavy game. And as a nod to that, we have had a long running side quest for my character to raise enough gold to buy a baby whale that's going to take us to tor Atlantis. So yes, rebby the gag on mission rejected came first. Mission rejected predates the D and D game by about two years.
So I had no idea baby Whale made it into Christmas D and DA.
Yes and Chris put that in as a little mission rejected Easter egg for for me and the other players.
So that is you want to hear the origin story of baby Whale itself?
Go back to the season one. Well right, we did, and well you'll hear all of this.
Well, well this is not a fan question, but this conversation, uh does make me think, Pete, you have, as always had to write some additional original music this season. So what what special songs we have? You did Dungeons and Dragons music.
The Dungeons Dragons was fun.
You did Christmas music?
Is that? Is that it? So I'll go through it an order because that's how my brain works. Five one, five or two.
Pretty much recycled the old songs, despite the fact that some people were like, shoot, be a dark emf.
Theme sight and I'm like, I don't know what.
In five o three I had to write the theme song to uh Naked in Dismayed or whatever the heck the show was after a couple of jungle drums and whatever, you know it was. It was cheesy, like, you know, whatever it was.
I also write and add I think for the music are.
Oh five oh four wrote the Murder she plays your Murder yes, which you know again I don't want to maybe you cut this for the Patreon bonus, but like Mike and I are trying to figure out a way to maybe write the you know, the spin off that was promised of the Murder. She wrote, you know, spoof with test Thatcher. But I was like, well, I kind of really want to have a good theme song for that show if we go to it, and you know,
it's very murder. She wrote rip off, But like that was the idea that they just supposed to be envisioning that then forgot wrote. You know what, there's not much of it. I think I wrote a little bit of a Oh no, I'm wrong, I'm entirely wrong.
John.
Did you get a fanfare for uh Campbellton the musical?
Which I completely Oh yeah, that overture we pulled.
We pulled that, So I'm not gonna say credit for the overture. I didn't write. I just remembered it was in there.
Uh five oh six, I'm pretty sure we used the usual stuff, right. It was action music, but but it's the same old cann stuff I believe.
Uh.
Five oh seven was the wait the Sergabian national theme song. John Anthem gave me the assignment, can you write the national theme song of ser Gabia?
Also make it the worst song you ever heard? Its thumbs up and I had that I wrote it in a made up Sergabian language.
Uh.
My favorite part of the song is where I just decided that they were just to degenerate into going.
Fight fight fight, fight, fight, fight.
Which I decided the word for in Sergabia was brought, which I did not realize was German for bread bread. So someone later was like, did you know that you're just singing bread, bread, bread, bread, bread.
Over over again.
If they were Germany, that's right, yes.
But this is I did you know.
You wouldn't believe how meticulous I got with that. By the way, I was like J. R. R. Tolkien like, and the etymology of the word in Sir Gabian comes from the web.
Yeah, so it sounds like a great blog entry.
Pete, absolutely, yeah, so and then oh wait, it was the D and D one, which not only came with the songs, but like I also that I usually either go to freesound dot org or I go to or I make my own sound effects, Like I'm very passionate about making our own sound effects for the show, except in the cases when we can't really get them. But in that case, I actually wanted a different quality of sound effect because I wanted the D and D sound effects to be like more cartoony and more sounding like
they were canned sound effects. They were free, they were they were public domain sound effects, but they were much more of like pro and sound effects that to get those those sword slashes.
And spells and whatever.
Because I wanted a qualitative difference between the sounds that were going on in the D and D universe as opposed to.
The actual world.
And then yeah, five oh nine, no extra music, five ten I might, yeah, I wrote a little write. I wrote a little museum theme, right John to go into the spy Museum. And then five eleven was, oh wait, there's one more. So five eleven was that great Christmas music. I you know, I thought it was great. I hope you enjoyed it, but I enjoyed making the Christmas music. And the one thing I like about always doing the alternate mission rejected themes is that mission rejected theme itself.
Is in two sections.
Right, You've got the the orchestra section and the like the big band section, and then you've got the marimba section, the quieter one. So every time I do a new theme, I have to decide what are the two parts of yes, right, so like the Halloween theme is like big, you know, booming haunted house thing and then stranger things, right, that's the that's the contrast of like what.
Exactly.
And then the Dungeon and Dragons one I had to write a theme, right, there was a dungeon dragon theme song. So I think it's like very like again, Goblin army coming for you, and then like the the the angelic like creepy crypt like right for Christmas. I think it's like a sleigh bell right, It's like it's like sleigh.
Ride that that.
That and then the second part is like Carol of the Bells.
It's Carol the Bells. That's right, That's what it was, Carol the Bells.
Okay, but then I forgot also the last part of the season, Uh that I had to write the Admiral playing.
The orchid.
And Mike, Mike put so many he's like, and then we play all public debate Christmas call. So I had the admil play.
And the thing.
It was very Yes, I can't say exactly what motivated me, but when I was writing five or eleven, I wrote very specific music cues for the transitions. There was a certain method to my madness because we were traveling in time, much like we did in the other Zelda flashback episode Les right where we had Boden was what was switching us back and forth. But this is Zelda hallucinating that she's moving in and out of time, and then we're
moving between scenes within those timelines. So I had to come up with a way to kind of signify what was what, and so the scene transitions I said should be Christmas carols, and then I just then I just started dictating what I wanted those to be right, and we stayed. You stuck pretty close to it, and I was really happy with it.
But oh right, so there's a there's a Rats Dominion version. It's not Rats Dominion, but there's like.
A yeah, yeah, so I also that's that's right. That part of it was you had to establish what time you were moving into. So when they go to Zelda's punk rock past, it's a punk rock version of got Rescu married John. Yeah, it was. And then when you're moving into the present and you're underwater, it's the Admiral on the organ.
Right, which is one of my favorites, because I like it's a it's it starts off real dramatic, because I wanted to be like the joke being like, oh it's an It's like it's you know, twenty thousand leagues of the sea. It's like he's playing the organ, and then it goes into this like as much as the best I can describe it is it is a baseball park
version of Hark the Herald Angels sing. It's just like, yeah, dude, did I'm like, I imagine the little old man at the with his hot dog at the ballpark being like.
It was. And then there was there was Studia Baker's Lab has a fish fish.
Version of Oh my God, what was it? God?
RESHI Mary Gentlemen or something like that was also amazing. Yeah, that just like it's so much fun. And I want to say amazing. I'm not saying the product is amazing. I'm saying the process of making these songs is like, Okay, what is Studi Baker's theme party?
I think we I guess we actually did. Uh. There was The other one was the opening where Chet's at the White House Christmas tree lighting. It is the US Marine Band. We actually thought those.
Really good actors, uh impersonating Quaid brothers.
You know. John recently sent something to me from one of those pod tracking sites that list last lists Randy and Dennis Quaid as a pure as themselves as guests in five five eleven.
Do we need to do something?
Well?
Someone someone nailed it.
We need so good that they couldn't tell so but so for that we actually, because it's in the public domain, we were able to use the.
Relay.
You can use it because the song is in the public domain and it's the answer.
All right, Well, we've come to our last question. I think this one will be fairly easy to answer. Now watch two hours later, we'll see, we'll see if I was right or not. Once again, Kim from Virginia asked, how long does it take to record an episode? You know, we block uh, four hours to record with the main cast.
Sometimes we do it, unless sometimes we run over. But let's say four hours and we record on the penn ultimate Sunday of the month, the second to last Sunday of the month, and it comes out the last Friday of the next month. So essentially it takes a month to put an episode together. That's not counting the time
it takes to write it and get it. But from the record date to the release date is about a month, and so four hours with the cast, an hour here or there, two hours if it's somebody like when we did Og we spent two hours with him on five twelve. It was a bigger thing. I spent you know, an hour or so with David doing Terry Millionaire. But it all adds, it all adds up. So it's it's I would say ten hours of recording time and then at least you know, multiples of that in editing.
So yeah, so it depends, it changes from episodes of the episode, but it is a lot of time.
Well, I think that the care that both of you put into the post production and really shows the show sounds great. It was another delightful year. I can't wait to dive into season six. Thank you all for sending in these great questions. Thanks to our cast for their thoughtful answers on those the questions that were aimed at them. We've got a bit of a hiatus still to go. We've got a lot of exciting things planned to fill the hiatus, none of which are in a place to
be announced yet, unfortunately, but we are trust us. We are working on some really fun things that are going to launch us into season six, things we've been wanting to do for a long time, and some new ideas that we're looking forward to. So please stay tuned. There's going to be a lot. We'll announce it on our socials and of course on our Patreon. So thank you both for your time today, Thanks for your hard work on season five, and we'll see you season six.
Everybody out there.
I can't wait to do the behind the scenes episode of season six, all about how we adapted Dolby at most can't Hey, everybody, Michael was one more quick thing. Just a reminder that.
Patreon Networks got a forty five minutes longer version of this episode, So if that's the kind of thing you're into, be sure to join us there at www dot patreon dot com.
Splash mission richected.
I'm just here to look pretty and tight and answer questions jon Zy Eye can't
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