『Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4』のカバーアート

Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4

Interview with William Stuart – S. 12, Ep. 4

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This week’s guest is William Stuart, executive producer and director of the popular scripted podcast American Afterlife. Imagine, using a scripted podcast as a proof of concept. Because we talk about that here Download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest is a veteran entertainment executive with extensive industry experience. As president and CEO of Aurora Productions, he oversees its slate of film, television, and podcast projects. He’s also executive producer and director of American Afterlife, a highly successful scripted podcast adapted from the best-selling YA trilogy. (01:23): It’s my great pleasure to introduce my guest, William Stuart. Hi William, how are you doing today? William (01:29): Very good. How are you? Glad to be here. Debbi (01:32): Very happy to have you on. I’m very interested in your podcast. I’m interested in scripted podcast in general, but what’s the logline for your show? William (01:43): Yeah, I don’t know that we fall quite in the crime drama, but we’re going to get there. Debbi (01:48): Okay. William (01:51): The idea is based on fact, but then becomes fiction. So Pedro Hoffmeister, who lives up in Eugene, Oregon, has been writing about the big earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, and everyone up there is sort of bracing for it. And as a writer like yourself, he sort of said, “How do I fictionalize this and what would happen if?” And he wrote his novel, his book based on the fact that the earthquake happens. And one girl, a 15-year-old girl decides she doesn’t want to get rescued by the National Guard and be skirted away, but she decides she has to look for her mother. And as you can imagine in this post-apocalyptic world where authority is gone, electricity’s out, dams have broken, that it’s a new world. In terms of visually, we’ve been talking about The Last of Us or Station Eleven, this sort of post-apocalyptic world where many of the rules are thrown out and you just have to survive. (03:15): And that’s what our heroine Cielo has to do or tried to do. Debbi (03:21): Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very interesting concept, frightening concept. William (03:26): Yes. Debbi (03:27): Also very suspenseful. I think it falls pretty well into a thriller genre in any event. William (03:37): Well, there’s two aspects to it. One, it’s certainly a thriller and even a bit of a psychological thriller with her, a young girl in this new world. But then it develops into a crime series. There’s been a number of murders and we don’t know who’s responsible. And at first she’s even blamed for them, but then we find out it wasn’t completely her doing, but she was involved. Debbi (04:10): Interesting. How does adapting something like that into a podcast differ from adapting for film and television other than the need for sound versus visuals? William (04:25): Yeah, it’s a very good question. Something that was a challenge for us, but we knew from the beginning this really had to feel like a movie. I hate to say that, or a TV series, as if you closed your eyes and were watching it. Debbi (04:42): Exactly. William (04:44): So the performances, and especially that of Scarlett Estevez, our lead, and Josh Mesnik and Ted Owens had to be spot on. And then with the soundscape that we designed, that brought the audience into it. So you can imagine Scarlett, who’s done a lot of voiceover and animation, was very comfortable with it because she’s usually just reading from a script and not acting with other people. But there is the advantage that usually they will show you the picture and the character you’re voicing, and you’ll look to that. In our podcast, I had to ask her to create a whole new persona. There was no Scarlett, no Cielo in real life. So Scarlett went away with the scripts and came back with what she thought the character should be and should sound like. And she was really great and I think got it 99%. And the other 1% or what have you, we worked on in the room, in the studio. Debbi (06:02): Wow. It sounds like you really had a collaborative process going with the actor, that actor at least in particular, and others, I assume? William (06:10): Yeah, all of them. Debbi (06:12): All of them. William (06:12): Yeah. It was an interesting process because of scheduling and such. In the beginning, they were all in the studio with us separately, and they were doing their own pieces. And I had heard obviously Scarlett’s piece, so then I could tell Josh what he was reacting to. And then we could tell Ted Evans where he had to be. And then eventually we thought it would be really cool to get all three of them in the room, which we did. And that was amazing. I mean, we went back and fixed some stuff. I was able to put Scarlett sitting opposite Josh, which is what they’re doing if you know the podcast. It’s an interrogation in that sense. So now they’re sitting opposite each other and we got even better performances, ...
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