There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our new column Pod hunters, we cover what we’ve been hearing and what we can’t stop thinking about.
I recommend not listening to the latest QCode podcast while driving. When i queued Carrier For the first time to listen to while running errands, I jumped out of my seat when he began with an intense presentation that bounced sound from speaker to speaker and slammed on a trailer truck’s horn.
That was a good example of the tension that the rest of the series would bring. The serialized podcast introduces us to Raylene, an African American truck driver who was stopped by a state trooper. The traffic stop takes her off the schedule and into a tight spot, and when the opportunity arises to pick up a sealed trailer for a mystery company, she seizes the opportunity. Her cargo has some strict requirements: The trailer must be kept cool at a certain temperature, and she must drop it off at 5 AM in Chicago. It’s strange, and shortly after hitting the road, he begins to have doubts, especially when he realizes that his cargo could be some kind of strange creature.
The series comes from QCode, the studio that launched Blackout at the beginning of this year. Like its predecessor (which featured Mr robotIt’s Rami Malik), features a lineup of high-profile actors: Cynthia Erivo (Widows, Bad Times at the El Royale) Raylene voices, while Martin Starr (Silicon Valley), Lamorne Morris (New girl) and Lance Reddick (The Wire, Fringe) are also part of the cast. But while the actors bring the intense story to life, what really sets the series apart is the studio’s attention to sound design, creating a world that made me listen to the edge of my seat and, at times, jump straight out of it. .
You can listen to Carrier on Apple Podcasts, Player.FM, and Spotify.
Image: QCode
Carrier creator Dan Blank says The edge who worked for years in Hollywood and had been working on a lot of ambitious feature film projects. “It had become somewhat frustrating,” he says. “It takes a lot of factors to make a movie.” Explained that Carrier It came about because I wanted something that was “very, very small, a story that could be a location, with few characters and nothing that could break a budget to produce.”
He settled on the idea of a trucker picking up a disturbing load and would have considerable trouble asking others for help. He says he wanted to focus particularly on how African-American women made up a small fraction of drivers on the road, and how the industry has changed rapidly with new regulations and technology. “It’s a very different industry than what we know from the 70s country movies and songs.”
While working on that story, film agent Rob Herting left CAA to found his audio production studio QCode. The two had already been talking and decided to change the project from a movie to an audio drama.
Blank noted that there were things he could do with an audio drama “that you just can’t do in a TV series or a movie.” Specifically, he felt that an audio drama would allow him to better develop characters in a way that the feature film just wouldn’t, and that good sound design could enhance the story.
Sound design was a big part of the production.
The emphasis on sound design was a big part of the production, Blank says. He and his production team worked to make the show as immersive as possible. “I worry about people doing surgery or riding bikes or something like that because there are definitely some things that are meant to scare you.” The sound moves from side to side and adds a visceral level of tension as you listen.
To get that effect, Blank says they used a technique called binaural audio, a process designed to simulate how the ears capture sound. “It’s a bit different than using two microphones to create stereo sound,” he explains. “What we really did was use the fake head of a mannequin with two microphones in the sculpted ears.” They had actors perform against the head on stage and took it out alongside roads to record sound, giving listeners the impression of space around them. “We also did some things in post-production, where you simulate that effect.” The result is an immersive soundscape that adds depth to the story that you don’t normally find in an audio story.
Blank says he has fallen in love with audio as a medium and plans to continue pushing the experience even further in future projects. “We’ve done this, so what is the next thing we can do to push this further? Much remains to be explored.”
