I spent this week recording three episodes of TOTM and, not surprisingly, it took whole bunches of hours to get it done (OK, I'm not done). A surprise along the way: the hardest part wasn't what I expected it to be. It wasn't the 'writing' , such as it is, nor was it the editing. It was the voice-acting that stood out as the biggest challenge. The narration is pretty straight-forward but when I got to the various dialogue parts, I was suddenly faced with a decision I hadn't anticipated having to make: do I or don't I do 'voices'. Well, I settled for... sorta/kinda. I didn't do full voices, but I did try to make them stand apart from the narration. Oddly it was one of the male characters that was the hardest (I'm male, btw). Overall, I don't feel like I nailed it, but I did get new respect for the Critical Role team.
Anyway, I am making progress and doing the episodes taught me a few shortcuts to use in the future. The most important thing I learned was how many pages of writing I need to prepare to fill 25-30 minutes airtime (my per-episode goal). Yes, there's a script. It's not something that can be done off the cuff. Still, despite the existence of the script, all the dice rolls & subsequent interpretations of them are absolutely real. I won't waver on that. The whole point of the experiment is that the story evolves largely outside of my control.
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