The Lesser Dead - The Lesser Dead - Bonus Episode - Twists, Turns, and Soundscapes

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Lesser Dead, featuring the team of directors, producers, and writers who helped create the series. In this episode, writer Chris Buehlman discusses how he crafted the show’s big reveal. The rich soundscape created for the season's penultimate episode is also analyzed.

And now, for a behind the scenes look at the making of The Lessor Dead, featuring the team of directors, producers, and writers who helped create the series. Everything you've heard throughout The Lessor Dead is intentional, from our characters. To the music, to the settings chosen for each episode. Precision is important to pull off the world of the lesser dead. And in the pen-ultimate episode, it was equally important to be as precise as possible to get the twist right and build a convincing audio-scape of the battle scene.

But first, let's talk about that twist. I think what you see in this story is that the kids are great vehicle for the duality of what do you do with kids that are both dangerous and in need of your help. Executive producer Mark Stern. And in the beginning of this story, the kids are really victims who need the assistance of Margaret and Joey, the kids trigger certainly Margaret's maternal instinct. I like to read about seemingly young Camilla as an antagonist.

Yes, Margaret is a good queen like our system. She should have killed you there. The weak, broken side. You need too much to be liked. This is the most twisty thing I've ever written. I'm fairly straightforward with plotting most of the time. I will, you know, like any author I want to do. I want to do good reveals and such.

But this one had more than anything else I've written, I think. We give the audience a really great red herring in the Hessian. The end of episode six is the turning point of the whole show, right? And it is that point where you realize holy crap, the whole thing we've thought we've been watching is something different. Hello, Joey.

Alfie. How did you? Yes, it is a lot to think about. Officer whoopsy lips. Yeah, excuse me, I can't watch this part. Shoot my friend Joey in the head please. Wait, wait, wait, wait, what? When they suddenly make that turn,

you want to see that and get keep the truth in those characters. I wanted to explore the idea that instead of just sort of growing up inside but not outside, as we've seen, I wanted to have them simply remain children because children can be chillingly a moral. That's Christopher Buelman, author of The Lessor Dead. Just listen to questions little kids ask sometimes it'll raise the hairs on your index.

The battle in episode seven was the most ambitious moment in the entire series, and everybody was prepared for it to be a challenge. Director Dan Blank. And so he worked with Chris Beelman to ensure that the story was laid out in clear beats that we could spotlight, and we could lean on voice over to help guide us through the most important moments of the action. Camilla lunges for the moon. But Dan, try to just help me cut this. through the most important moments of the action. Camilla lunges for limos.

But then... Drank yourself in the cart. If one blow of Margaret's shovel, she hacks Camilla's leg, fleen off. Billy Bang almost takes the girl's head off with his wrench, but misses when Peter scoops her up and starts running away with Alfie right behind. The action sequences were... were challenging

because I'm in a fight just sounds like chaos. There has to be some description of it. But of course, there is a rather long sort of rolling fight that goes through the subway system. So you just have to interspersed with enough dialogue. It's something that we take for granted because if these were live-action sequences, the actors would be providing that and you would modulate it and you'd move it around and empty. That's Josh Mauer, executive producer of The Lesser Dead.

Here you are manipulating it and creating it from whole cloth. Coming from a television background, when I really didn't realize is that in this particular case when you're doing audio drama, your sound effects are your sets, right? That's your production design, those are your environments, your locations, and so your voices come first. Then your sound effects, because that's your set and then music. And that was an interesting learning experience, personally, for me that I had to kind of adjust my expectation.

When you start to break down a sight scene, you have so many colors in your palette. Much more than you think, you have the sound of, well, what does the fight? There's a kick. The kicking sound of boots or shoes against other feet against ground, bone against bone. Then you have volume in proximity to where the fight is taking place. The fight is taking place on a kitchen table you have broken glass in your place or a refrigerator or a hallway and then sound becomes muffled, depending on the size of the space, and the brilliant sound design and mix teams, made sure that the sounds were all well spaced across the spectrum so they didn't become too muddy and unclear.

A lot of the heavy lifting does get done by the audio team and Salt Audio really stepped up and did a great job mixing. Thanks, Singh. I know best.