So I’ve talked about it many times in the past. Our cast records remotely. They upload their recordings with 2-3 takes of each line to our Google Drive, then I download them and edit them all together. However, for “The Great Gildersleeve” we tried something new! We recorded two actors at once! 🤯 Whaaaat?
I have also mentioned before that we are based in LA and that I started this project to include my local LA actor friends. Let me introduce you to Steve Jun and Brian Cunningham. In 2015 I produced a play for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. It was a show I’d written and produced in Chicago back in 1996: “Wombat Man.” This was a superhero comedy based on the Adam West Batman TV series. What can I say? I was a fan of adaptations all the way back then. When I brought it to Hollywood nearly 2 decades later, I had already decided on Brian for Wombat Man. We were both taking improv at the same theater, although on different teams. But I’d seen him perform a lot and knew he’d be a good fit for my bungling hero. Then I ran auditions. In walked Steve Jun. His natural performance on stage was absolutely engaging. I do comedies, sometimes even zany ones, but I love things rooted in realism. And his character, the sidekick to Wombat Man, needed to be the straight man. And he nailed it.
When I started Madison up in 2020, Steve was at the top of my list. And he has appeared in a ton of episodes all the way back to the first one, Dragnet. Brian has a busy life as an editor for scripted and unscripted TV (and films). But we have stayed in touch and I was able to get him in to a few episodes as well. Unfortunately, both of the guys have so-so audio recording set ups. As Madison has gotten better and stronger, I’ve been trying to stick with actors who can deliver good quality recordings (and Jeremy prefers that since he’s tasked with trying to fix the audio!) So I started having Brian and Steve record at our place. And then came “The Great Gildersleeve.”
The comedies of OTR can be tricky recording remotely because we don’t get the benefit of everyone playing off of each other’s timing. But for Gildersleeve, I looked at the two silly cops, and threw it out to see if Brian and Steve would like to record together! Bring the old duo back again! And we did. 😊
Our recording space is tight, no doubt. Thankfully they already knew each other! And we ran through all of their scenes together. I did notice the energy was stronger and I think they both were more comfortable, as well, since it wasn’t all on them in the scene. They got to share the scene.
Now, this was tricky to edit their dialogue. Because rather than giving 2-3 takes of each line one right after the other, we ran the full scene top to bottom for take one, then back to the beginning for take two, etc. I was able to give notes in-between, which is great, but then I had the monstrous task of pulling the best take for each actor out of each scene performance line by line. I didn’t play the scene as recorded. I still want the best performance from each of them. Then I had to separate their characters onto different tracks in the editing program so they could be worked on individually by Jeremy. Thankfully both Brian and Steve were good about pausing before speaking their next line, so there wasn’t any overlap so I could cleanly separate the lines.
It was a fun experiment, and in future work, I would like to be able to record with the cast together (since I do produce comedies!) But for now, Madison will stick to its original production format. I need more hours in the day to do that all the time!
-Chrisi (aka Madison)
