On The Road To Orandegied
Production Notes from Ambassador Service

The series was a bit of an experiment. Most spoken-word audio products being sold these days are books on tape. Multi-voiced audio products, similar to the radio plays of the 1920s through 1950s, exist in a niche market. Most are now being produced for public radio stations, and there are very few shows being produced. In addition to that, I had limited resources for production, distribution, and marketing because I work a full time job and a part time job.

I realized early on that I would need to exploit the internet as much as I could. Instead of seeking a radio outlet or a book on tape publisher, Ambassador Service would be distributed on the internet. This resulted in a significant change in the development of Ambassador Service. To take advantage of the short attention spans and the low amount of bandwidth available to internet users, I decided to create a series of episodes of five minutes or less that would be available on a weekly basis.

This created the opportunity to build an audience through "appointment" listening, jump-started development of a franchise type of series, and gave me the ability to do some character development in individual episodes that would not be available in a one-shot long form show. Plus! I could still re-edit the completed series as a CD.

Finally, most comedy on the internet is not what I would consider family-friendly. To a lesser degree, Ambassador Service was an attempt at creating a funny show that everyone could enjoy without having their ears burned.

With all that in mind, I sat down to do some serious writing beginning in late July of 2001.

"All of us learned to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things"
former Indiana basketball Coach Bobby Knight talking about reporters

Writing was not the longest part of the production process, but it was the most difficult. As a journalist I write for a living. But fiction is not the same beast as a news story. For me, writing fiction is quite torturous. I can't remember who said it, but I read once that the successful writers are the ones who complete their manuscripts.

The story was fairly well outlined in my head. It was a matter of fleshing out the plot and characters. While working on the outline, I realized that the story I had in mind would not work as a ten episode series. I ended up combining some plot points and trimming it to nine episodes. Fortunately I was not required to fill X number of minutes, so I was able to allow the show to develop naturally.

Because of the limited time I had available, I couldn't sit down and write the series within a month, even as short as the series was (it totaled about 45 pages). I was about two thirds finished when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This very nearly killed off Ambassador Service.

Just as with the rest of the nation, I wondered whether anything could ever be funny again. Not only was Ambassador Service a light comedy, it also dealt with U.S. foreign policy to some degree. Would it be appropriate in light of what happened on September 11th? After much soul searching, I decided, obviously, that yes, it was okay to laugh again. But this came after a month and a half of consideration, and I had to rebuild my momentum.

I finally finished writing sometime in early November. It was now time to start looking around for a cast.

I had no experience at all in this area, and I don't like to trouble my friends and associates with my own projects. So my talent pool very quickly dried up. Once again, I turned to the internet.

My first attempt involved sending out a news release essentially saying, "Hey! Here's this spiffy project I'm working on. It doesn't pay, but it's going to be fun." Response was tepid at best.

I was about to abandon the series when I happened to stumble across a whole colony of "Fine Looking Aspiring Voice Actors" as they like to call themselves. Mostly it was a bunch of teens and young adults who were producing what are called "fandubs," which are fan-created English translations of Japanese animè. The copyright issues had the hair on the back of my neck raised.

After wading in and making my presence known, I went ahead and sent out the casting call, and was almost immediately deluged with applicants. I quickly discovered, though, that there was a significant shortage of male voices and a specific type of dialect I was looking for. I ended up having to eliminate the dialect, voice several characters myself, and give a major role to my 10 year old son.

Cast members lived throughout the United States, Canada, and even New Zealand. Bringing them all together physically was an impossible feat. The plan was to have them email their parts and I would edit them in a multi-track editor. For the technically inclined, I use the Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer, which can be found at acoustica.com. It will import wav and mp3, and save as wav, mp3, and RealAudio.

But I still wanted to have a watering hole of some sort where we could touch base with each other, trade information, files, and anything else that might be needed. After evaluating several options, I settled in establishing a group at Yahoo! because they provide a large shared file section area, group messaging capabilities, and many other features.

The files section proved to be even more crucial than intended. The plan was for me to upload scripts, a few graphics files, and rough edits of the episodes. But it turned out one of the cast members couldn’t email very large files. He ended up uploading his voice tracks to the group file section.

A minor crisis occurred when one the voice actresses had to drop out. She was to have played a major role. Fortunately this happened shortly before I went into production. I was able to re-cast the role quickly and forge ahead.

All the music was created by Instant Access Music in a production library I won in a drawing a couple years ago.

I had established specific parameters for sound quality. While the specific parameters where indeed met, there were some little quirks that came up. I suspect some of the problems occurred because the voice actors were mostly young amateurs and quite frankly didn't know better. Unless a problem was particularly distracting to the average listener, I decided I could go with something less than perfect. If you listen closely you can hear some buzzing, popping, and hissing.

Despite the fact there was no real interaction between the voice actors, they all did exceptional jobs with their parts. Other than a few notes in the script, I provided very little direction. If I had been in a studio setting with them, I probably would have tried to mold them a bit more. I think the lack of specific direction actually help them to develop the characters a bit more.

Even though I'd been dealing with the script for a long time and hacked and whacked and edited and re-edited for hours on end, I still laughed out loud on occasion. Especially when some of the lines went in directions I never imagined.

From an acting standpoint, I think Ambassador Service was a big success, especially considering the limitations I had.

As I began production I also began the search for an internet host for the series. I wanted to be in a well populated artistic environment where I could get more feedback and have resources available that I wouldn't normally have if I opened up an independent, stand-alone website. I evaluated probably ten online music distributors, four or five seriously, and selected mixonic.com. They have a fast approval process and, I believe, the best CD program.

The approval process was especially critical. My plan was to create "appointment listening." That means people would make a point to listen to each episode on a specific day. Because the approval process at Ampcast is mostly automated, most episodes were online within minutes. By having that capability, I developed a release schedule making it available for weekend internet surfers, the people who don't get much opportunity to spend time online, or at least recreational time, during the week.

My plan was to have more than half the episodes on hand so I could release one each week, but have a buffer in the event production slowed for some reason. Sure enough, I ran into several delays. Among other things, I was working at two jobs at the time, which significantly reduce the amount of time I had to work on Ambassador Service. Plus there were the usual missed deadlines by cast members. Most would have their lines finished within a few days, but there was an occasional straggler that I had to cajole from time to time. This was especially evident in the later stages of production. Once the first blush of enthusiasm cooled, it took a bit more prodding on my part to get people to do their lines. Especially considering I wasn't paying them.

One day as I was slaving over a hot keyboard, I glanced up and noticed that the Fox network was planning on running a series called The American Embassy, which was about a fresh faced American girl going to work at the U.S. Embassy in London. Ambassador Service was still at least month away from releasing the first episode. While the approach of the Fox series was going to be different from mine, I was worried that Ambassador Service would appear to be a parody of American Embassy. I ramped up production a bit so I could have the first episode of Ambassador Service out before the first episode of American Embassy. I recorded the first episode of American Embassy, but never got around to watching it. Turns out nobody else watched it either and it was canceled after three or four episodes. (To be honest, it's likely more people have watched American Embassy than have heard Ambassador Service.).

As I had suspected, the production schedule slipped. Episode 6 ended up being completed the day before I released it. But I moved quickly onto Episode 7 and had it done in short order.

Due to some scheduling conflicts of my own and missed deadlines by one of the voice actors, Episode 8 was delayed by nearly a month. Episode 9 was edited within a couple days. While it was tempting to release them both at the same time, I decided to go ahead with the one-per-Friday schedule I had been following before. I wanted to extend the suspense just a little bit more.

The plan all along was to distribute a CD. A disaster of Irwin Allen proportions was about to happen.

During production the shortcomings of my old computer became quite apparent. It would pause while I was using the multi-track editor, rendering the files into mp3s took forever, there was no CD burner, my son wanted a 3D card to play the great new games, and a host of other issues. So I decided to buy a new, significantly faster, computer.

Despite the fact it was a slower computer, I figured since everything was already on the old computer I would go ahead edit out the credits and upload the new CD-listening versions to Ampcast.

I followed the instructions to set up my little home network between the two computers and crashed the old computer in a big way. Whatever I did broke it badly enough I had to take it to the repair shop to fix it, especially since I was planning on donating it to someone who had no computer.

Fortunately I had already uploaded the re-edited episodes. Unfortunately, I lost the original voice tracks, which meant my ability to further edit the series (if I chose to do so) would be extremely limited.

Most of the other files I lost were either easily replaced or were not critical. Which I suppose shows you how much important work I actually do.

I loaded my desktop publisher onto the new computer and discovered a compatibility problem. But there was a fix for it and I was on my way. I created a cover, interior, and back for the CD case, uploaded it to Ampcast but did not finalize the CD for a few days. If I was burning the CDs on my spiffy new computer I could just toss the things out if I didn't like them. Even though they don't manufacture a CD until someone actually orders one, it's still a big hassle to make changes once it's finalized. I did indeed need to make some changes, primarily to the interior art. I needed to fix some names that I had misspelled and add the opportunity to buy Officially Licensed Stuff (OLS).

"Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price."
Robert Orben

The Amazing Newsbob Industries Extrusion Process was underway. I made some minor adjustments to the CD cover and opened up a store at www.cafepress.com/amserv. Listeners who are so overwhelmed by Ambassador Service can now order shirts, flying discs, and coffee mugs. (I talked to your wife. She says you need a new shirt). For the record: the OLS at cafepress is at their minimum prices. I'm not making any money on. I just wanted a golf shirt.

It wasn't planned as part of my marketing, but I was offered the opportunity to submit Ambassador Service to an internationally syndicated radio program. I'd rather not say more until I get that particular deal nailed down.

Over the next few weeks I hope to develop an advertising campaign that will rival X-10 in ubiquity. But I suspect I'll likely have to move more slowly through word of mouth and less obtrusive marketing methods.

For now, I'm concentrating primarily on marketing Ambassador Service. But I am evaluating plotlines for a second series. I still have plenty of surprises up my sleeve.

Otherwise, I'm in the process of writing my next magnum opus: Invasive Species. So far this is being structured as a long-form program. But I'm looking into rewriting it as a serial. If all goes as planned I hope to begin casting in late August and release it by the end of the year.

Stay tooned.

Robert Parson
Creator / writer, Ambassador Service