# Proceed with Caution - Pascal's Guide to Podcasts

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 14 Aug 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/13eb4eac-7da6-4b82-8c6e-b4a50108939e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

How does a story on Cautionary Tales come to life? In this episode of our subscriber-exclusive series, Proceed with Caution, sound designer Pascal Wyse shows Tim how the audio magic happens. He explains how he picks the music in an episode, why it's best to avoid 'Mickey Mousing', and how to sound design some of the stranger moments of Cautionary Tales. To subscribe to the Cautionary Club and hear more like this, go to patreon.com/cautionaryclub. Dumm und Dümmer : Hitler Invades Florida is available now on Patreon, or will be released on this feed on August 28th. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin.
[0:18] Speaker 2: Hello everyone. The Cautionary crew were on our summer vacation
[0:21] Speaker 2: at the moment, but rest assured. We're still busy cooking
[0:24] Speaker 2: up plenty more Cautionary tales for the rest of the year.
[0:27] Speaker 2: Usually we'd play some of our favorite classics from the archives,
[0:31] Speaker 2: but this year I've got a treat from behind the
[0:33] Speaker 2: curtain of the Cautionary Club. Once a month, we release
[0:37] Speaker 2: a bonus conversation to Cautionary Club members in which I
[0:40] Speaker 2: discussed the podcast with another member of the team, exploring
[0:44] Speaker 2: tangents and behind the scenes details from a recent episode.
[0:48] Speaker 2: I thought it might be nice for everyone else to
[0:50] Speaker 2: hear one of these chats too. The conversation I'm about
[0:54] Speaker 2: to play is with Pascal Wise, our beloved composer and
[0:57] Speaker 2: sound designer. It was released just after the episode about
[1:01] Speaker 2: Incompetent Nazis, Dumb and Dummer. Pascal showed me his workspace
[1:06] Speaker 2: for that episode, explained how he builds up a sonic atmosphere,
[1:10] Speaker 2: how he decides what type of instruments to use, and
[1:13] Speaker 2: also talks about his most hated sounds with which to work.
[1:17] Speaker 2: These interviews are all released in video and audio on
[1:21] Speaker 2: our Patreon, and there are plenty to listen to. If
[1:23] Speaker 2: you'd like to hear more, head to patreon dot com
[1:26] Speaker 2: slash Cautionary Club enjoy. In the new year, we have
[1:38] Speaker 2: a special treat view. I am joined by Cautionary Tales Maestro,
[1:43] Speaker 2: audio Wizard, sonic scholar, our multi award winning sound designer
[1:49] Speaker 2: and composer, the one and only Pascal Wise. Pascal has
[1:54] Speaker 2: been on Cautionary Tale since the beginning and we are never,
[1:57] Speaker 2: ever ever going to let him go because what he
[2:01] Speaker 2: does in his studio is what brings our stories to life.
[2:05] Speaker 2: And Pascal has kindly agreed to take me through how
[2:08] Speaker 2: he does what he does to show me what an
[2:10] Speaker 2: episode looks like when he's building it. Hello Pascal, Welcome
[2:13] Speaker 2: to proceed.
[2:14] Speaker 3: With caution Hello Tim, I mean, what a glorious introduction.
[2:18] Speaker 3: I mean we could just stop now, can't we?
[2:21] Speaker 1: You?
[2:21] Speaker 3: You deserve more.
[2:22] Speaker 2: You deserve more, But I'm not going to let you
[2:24] Speaker 2: go until you'll answer some questions. So broadly speaking, what
[2:31] Speaker 2: is the job of a sound designer? What is it
[2:33] Speaker 2: that you do.
[2:36] Speaker 3: In the podcast world? Sound designer really can mean, you know,
[2:41] Speaker 3: practically anything from sort of making tea to cleaning up
[2:44] Speaker 3: arms and ours to writing bits of orchestral music. It's
[2:48] Speaker 3: a really big umbrella, I think in the origins of
[2:52] Speaker 3: it in film, and the most one of the most
[2:55] Speaker 3: plausible stories I've heard of where the term comes from
[2:58] Speaker 3: is Walter Merch having a high speed to fill in
[3:02] Speaker 3: a visa application when filming Apocalypse Now, for which he
[3:07] Speaker 3: was editor and sound design, and he literally just needed
[3:11] Speaker 3: to put something on phone. Why you here? What are
[3:12] Speaker 3: you doing? Oh? Sound designer? So I think the term stuck.
[3:17] Speaker 1: You know.
[3:17] Speaker 3: A sound designer, I think is someone who is often
[3:20] Speaker 3: involved with creating worlds of sound, and maybe even creating
[3:23] Speaker 3: sound for things that you know don't really exist yet,
[3:26] Speaker 3: or perhaps particularly in things like science fiction.
[3:29] Speaker 2: The Star Wars, lasers but which or whatever they are,
[3:31] Speaker 2: phases or blasters or whatever.
[3:34] Speaker 3: Hammers on telegraph wires. You know, it's a great sound effect.
[3:38] Speaker 3: But in terms of you know what happens on cautionary tales,
[3:41] Speaker 3: I'm taking the words that you've beautifully recorded and have
[3:46] Speaker 3: them been beautifully edited down by Marilyn, and I'm putting
[3:52] Speaker 3: everything else in everything else you hear.
[3:54] Speaker 2: So Marilyn Marilyn Ross, one of our producers. She's there
[4:00] Speaker 2: in the studio with me while I am sitting in
[4:02] Speaker 2: front of a microphone and I'm reading my script and
[4:05] Speaker 2: she's saying, you know, do it properly this time to
[4:08] Speaker 2: him that kind of thing. You will have delivered to
[4:11] Speaker 2: you an audio file which has a fairly clean take
[4:14] Speaker 2: of me reading the script without arms and without errors.
[4:19] Speaker 2: But so then what good question?
[4:24] Speaker 3: What I would do next is what I think traditionally
[4:27] Speaker 3: would be called spotting. What that involves is just sitting
[4:33] Speaker 3: listening to the story. And at this point I don't
[4:36] Speaker 3: tend to read a script at the same time. I
[4:38] Speaker 3: just listened to it and I will start putting. I
[4:42] Speaker 3: don't know if my screen is already shared, is it?
[4:45] Speaker 2: I see these green bars kind of like, yeah, expanding
[4:48] Speaker 2: and contracting like a concertina what.
[4:50] Speaker 3: I'm showing you there? And this is interesting because you know,
[4:55] Speaker 3: the idea of spotting a show is it's very simple.
[4:59] Speaker 3: It's sitting down and this will often take place, say
[5:02] Speaker 3: with a director or something, and deciding when it needs
[5:06] Speaker 3: music and where that music should be. And in this case,
[5:11] Speaker 3: I'm also deciding when does it need sound, sound effects,
[5:15] Speaker 3: sound design, and where that should begin and end it.
[5:19] Speaker 2: I mean, it's an interesting question. Then when when does
[5:22] Speaker 2: the music come in? When does the sound effects come in?
[5:24] Speaker 2: Because I was I was listening to a recent episode
[5:29] Speaker 2: when Hitler invaded Florida The dormund.
[5:34] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I really enjoyed that.
[5:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoyed it too. But I was struggle. There
[5:40] Speaker 2: was a moment where I've described a U boat stuck
[5:46] Speaker 2: on a sand bank and it's revving its engines, and
[5:49] Speaker 2: I don't think there was a sound of effect for
[5:51] Speaker 2: revving engines at that particular thing. I think you decided,
[5:55] Speaker 2: or if there was, it was a very subtle.
[5:57] Speaker 3: Oh there is, yeah, but it's subtle.
[5:59] Speaker 2: It's an interesting question as to when you really want
[6:02] Speaker 2: to go hard and make the sound of put the
[6:05] Speaker 2: sound effect right in the foreground, and when you want
[6:07] Speaker 2: it to be very subtle or maybe nothing at all.
[6:10] Speaker 3: While I'm completely in favor of the idea that all
[6:15] Speaker 3: rules are there to be broken, there are one or
[6:18] Speaker 3: two little things that we have tended to do in
[6:22] Speaker 3: this show. One is that you will hear something before
[6:28] Speaker 3: it is mentioned, rather than after it's mentioned. Now, that
[6:32] Speaker 3: process I think of hearing something that has been said
[6:36] Speaker 3: is sometimes referred to as mickey mousing, in reference to
[6:41] Speaker 3: the extraordinary musicians who used to play against the cartoons
[6:46] Speaker 3: such as Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry and all that,
[6:49] Speaker 3: where literally what you see is what you hear and
[6:52] Speaker 3: you get this kind of synesthesia, you know, and that's
[6:56] Speaker 3: something that does happen very occasionally in cautionary tales. But
[7:01] Speaker 3: I feel like it's something that should be reserved, should
[7:03] Speaker 3: be in exception rather than a rule. And I think
[7:06] Speaker 3: that you know, you are, in a sense the singer
[7:11] Speaker 3: in the band. You know, it's I think it's a
[7:13] Speaker 3: mistake when you're dealing with the spoken word to not
[7:17] Speaker 3: appreciate that in terms of the overall band, all of
[7:20] Speaker 3: the sound and the music, you're sort of like the
[7:22] Speaker 3: central character. You're delivering the story. So what we've got
[7:26] Speaker 3: to try and do is is kind of help you
[7:28] Speaker 3: out and make the world for you, illustrate that world,
[7:32] Speaker 3: but not not just dumbly replicate what you're already doing
[7:37] Speaker 3: very well for us.
[7:38] Speaker 2: Something one of one of Frank Sinatra's arrangers said, and
[7:43] Speaker 2: I'm now I'm now comparing myself to Frank Sinatra and
[7:45] Speaker 2: comparing you to Frank Sinatra's ranger. So it's enormously vain
[7:50] Speaker 2: of me, but I need a different hat. Yeah, but
[7:56] Speaker 2: what he said, is or when Frank's moving, get out
[7:58] Speaker 2: of the way. And when he's not moving, you've got
[8:00] Speaker 2: to get in there quick. And I wonder whether that
[8:03] Speaker 2: resonated or not.
[8:04] Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's really interesting.
[8:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, can we talk about DOM Yeah, I mean spoiler
[8:13] Speaker 2: for those because it's fairly recent. Those who haven't heard it,
[8:18] Speaker 2: you might want to pause and listen to it before
[8:19] Speaker 2: we before we go through it, because there might be spoilers.
[8:22] Speaker 2: But this is a story about eight idiot Nazis who
[8:28] Speaker 2: try to sabotage the US and do not succeed. But
[8:33] Speaker 2: there's a lot of potential sound effects the doors slamming
[8:36] Speaker 2: and phones ringing and U boats and yeah, so talk
[8:42] Speaker 2: us through that process.
[8:44] Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting, And I have that particular session in front
[8:48] Speaker 3: of me. What a great start to twenty twenty six.
[8:51] Speaker 3: You know, I opened up the computer rather rustily on
[8:56] Speaker 3: January five or whatever it was, and was immediately presented
[8:59] Speaker 3: with a scene involving a man injecting his penis with
[9:04] Speaker 3: diluted by carmen of soda. H Yes, interesting, I thought,
[9:10] Speaker 3: here we go, hits cautionary tales again, start helping how
[9:16] Speaker 3: to deal with that, you know, what what to demonstrate
[9:21] Speaker 3: or illustrate, and what not to So I decided on
[9:25] Speaker 3: this that I liked the idea of starting the episode
[9:29] Speaker 3: with this, you know, slightly ordinary fumbling around in the
[9:34] Speaker 3: kitchen or whatever. Let's just hear that first bit.
[9:40] Speaker 1: Joseph Schmidt drops a spoonful of baking soda into a
[9:44] Speaker 1: glass of water and stirs until the powder dissolves. He
[9:50] Speaker 1: takes a swinge and draws up some of the solution.
[9:56] Speaker 1: Then he pulls down his pants and carefully injects the
[10:01] Speaker 1: baking soda into the tip of his penis. Desperate times
[10:07] Speaker 1: call for desperate?
[10:09] Speaker 2: Was this literally you in the kitchen? Kind of Yes,
[10:12] Speaker 2: it was some kind of effervescent thing in a glass. Yeah,
[10:16] Speaker 2: hopefully your penis was not involved, but you know, if
[10:19] Speaker 2: it is, there's no judgment.
[10:20] Speaker 3: No, no, no penises were harmed in the making of
[10:24] Speaker 3: this episode.
[10:27] Speaker 1: No.
[10:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of like method sound, isn't it. Yeah.
[10:29] Speaker 3: I literally brought some baking sod and water into the
[10:34] Speaker 3: into the studio and did that. Now, the practicalities of
[10:39] Speaker 3: making a show that's thirty five forty minutes long and
[10:42] Speaker 3: needs scoring and sound designing in a certain timeframe means
[10:47] Speaker 3: there's often a lot of you know, there's there's certain
[10:49] Speaker 3: kinds of corner cutting, and there's a lot I have
[10:52] Speaker 3: lots of sound libraries, but there are certain things that
[10:54] Speaker 3: are just they're not going to be in there, and
[10:57] Speaker 3: so in the quality that you want or the style
[10:59] Speaker 3: that you want, and it's that sort of quicker to
[11:01] Speaker 3: do it yourself, and I really want I wanted to
[11:03] Speaker 3: illustrate that.
[11:05] Speaker 2: So a sound library would be, oh, I'd like a
[11:07] Speaker 2: sound of someone messing around in the kitchen.
[11:08] Speaker 3: Or some sound libraries are full of all the all
[11:11] Speaker 3: the classic stuff, whether it's cars crashing or buildings falling
[11:14] Speaker 3: down or you know, arrows, bullets, screams, all kinds of stuff.
[11:20] Speaker 2: And presumably of a car crash or a building falling
[11:24] Speaker 2: down is not I'm sure you could have a go,
[11:27] Speaker 2: but that's not the kind of thing it's easy to
[11:29] Speaker 2: generate at home.
[11:30] Speaker 3: Yeah quite. I mean I love to record my own material.
[11:34] Speaker 3: I do lots of field recording, and it gets used
[11:36] Speaker 3: a loss in cause to me tales. But yeah, when
[11:38] Speaker 3: we're in the business of crashing airliners or having tankers
[11:43] Speaker 3: run aground, I just like, oh, yeah, darling, I'm just.
[11:47] Speaker 2: Going to go and run an oil tanker into the
[11:49] Speaker 2: seven systems.
[11:50] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to go down as seven four seven.
[11:53] Speaker 2: There was one particular plane crash episode, a very harrowing
[11:59] Speaker 2: story of air France four four seven, where an airline
[12:01] Speaker 2: pilot wrote to me and said, you even got the
[12:06] Speaker 2: correct cockpit alarms from the right kind of plane. So
[12:09] Speaker 2: there is attention to detail there. I do admire.
[12:12] Speaker 4: Yes, I think or I think it's this one.
[12:26] Speaker 2: Yes, that's the episode. And he was like, no, you've
[12:30] Speaker 2: got you didn't just make that one up. That's the
[12:33] Speaker 2: real alarm anyway, Sorry, I interrupted.
[12:36] Speaker 3: No, not at all. So in that I decided with
[12:39] Speaker 3: that that once you once you sort of start to
[12:42] Speaker 3: hear the fizzing of the bicarminate of soda, I felt
[12:46] Speaker 3: like the imagination kind of takes over. And I liked
[12:50] Speaker 3: the way that sound was, yes, illustrative of what was happening,
[12:54] Speaker 3: but it was also it created almost just like a
[12:57] Speaker 3: nice field of sound, you know, like a sort of
[12:59] Speaker 3: a fizz that was just illustrative of the whole situation,
[13:05] Speaker 3: not just you know, what is actually doing and knowing
[13:08] Speaker 3: that I really didn't want to mickey mouse a sense
[13:11] Speaker 3: of like, oh, you know or whatever.
[13:15] Speaker 2: And the sound of a swinge anyway. So yeah, so
[13:18] Speaker 2: that's where the music comes in. Yeah.
[13:20] Speaker 3: I think what's really interesting is this really good example
[13:23] Speaker 3: of where the music takes over from what you might
[13:26] Speaker 3: call sound design. It almost it hands over, and I
[13:31] Speaker 3: felt that the point of sort of him puncturing, if
[13:35] Speaker 3: you like, was was much better handled musically.
[13:39] Speaker 1: Injects the baking soda into the tip of his penis
[13:45] Speaker 1: desperate times called Yes.
[13:47] Speaker 3: It's something that's sort of like yeah, but it's it's
[13:51] Speaker 3: slightly removed from the practical, you know, and that I
[13:54] Speaker 3: wouldn't know we do it workshop on that later. That
[13:59] Speaker 3: also gives me something that can be recalled later in
[14:02] Speaker 3: the episode that hopefully what you've done then is you
[14:05] Speaker 3: planted the idea of that note being a moment of strange,
[14:09] Speaker 3: you know, desperate discomfort. And then later if I just
[14:13] Speaker 3: plock that note in, hopefully there's a sense of, you know,
[14:16] Speaker 3: recalling that I've got a note up here of engines. Now,
[14:20] Speaker 3: let's see it's interesting what your memory is of this.
[14:23] Speaker 3: Let's see what I did do.
[14:25] Speaker 1: They followed the young coastguard through the fog to where
[14:28] Speaker 1: he'd encountered the men. The men weren't there, but they
[14:33] Speaker 1: could hear the roar of engines and smell diesel fumes.
[14:38] Speaker 1: The fog briefly eased, revealing a long, dark shape a
[14:43] Speaker 1: U boke.
[14:46] Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've sort of hedged it. It's not a
[14:48] Speaker 3: big raw. I've gone for a sort of a bit
[14:52] Speaker 3: more of a putter. Were obviously in cause detales, we
[14:58] Speaker 3: sometimes have aspects of it acted, and I think that's
[15:02] Speaker 3: a really interesting conversation of its own. You know when
[15:04] Speaker 3: to do that and when not.
[15:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, because often I will just the lines that could
[15:10] Speaker 2: potentially be given to an actor, and it's partly a
[15:13] Speaker 2: matter of budget, and it's partly a matter of taste.
[15:16] Speaker 2: Sometimes it's great to hear an actor and sometimes you've
[15:19] Speaker 2: got like three words.
[15:20] Speaker 3: And so this was really interesting. You know, the coastguard
[15:24] Speaker 3: is shouting at them, and it felt important. You know,
[15:28] Speaker 3: the perspective of this felt important to me. You know
[15:33] Speaker 3: that this person should sound distant to them. This is Jamal,
[15:37] Speaker 3: who I think is going to be in the next
[15:40] Speaker 3: Star Wars film. That's what I've heard. Very exciting, and
[15:44] Speaker 3: I know that in this, for instance, Marilyn with a
[15:47] Speaker 3: keen ear for what's probably going to happen further down
[15:49] Speaker 3: the line, ask Jamal to stand off the mic, stand
[15:54] Speaker 3: away from it, which is really important actually, and it's
[15:57] Speaker 3: so easy not to forget that kind of stuff, you know, people,
[16:01] Speaker 3: there's such a different sound when someone is shouting from
[16:04] Speaker 3: a distance, and the way the perspective with you and
[16:07] Speaker 3: the mic is really important. So there's a little bit
[16:10] Speaker 3: of reverb still on this, but we go.
[16:12] Speaker 1: Who are you?
[16:14] Speaker 2: Which is close that's close to but not quite but
[16:18] Speaker 2: close to what was captured in the studio. So Jamal's
[16:20] Speaker 2: in the studio yelling at a mic from across the room.
[16:23] Speaker 3: Yeah. Then we put on something in this case which
[16:27] Speaker 3: it's almost like a quick and easy artificial thing to
[16:31] Speaker 3: give it a sense of distance. Who are you? Now?
[16:36] Speaker 3: It hasn't given it a sense of distance yet in
[16:38] Speaker 3: terms of it sounding further away. What it's done is
[16:40] Speaker 3: it's taken off some of the high frequencies which would
[16:42] Speaker 3: tend to be lost. And then I'll put it into
[16:46] Speaker 3: this thing, which is a kind of binaural encoder, which
[16:53] Speaker 3: has a very good sense of placing something off to
[16:56] Speaker 3: the distance. And I've there's a head here which and
[16:59] Speaker 3: where I've placed him is demonstrated by the two dots here,
[17:04] Speaker 3: So if you put it all together, it sounds who
[17:08] Speaker 3: are you? Like that? And then more distance and then
[17:14] Speaker 3: are you? And again once it's mixed with the background
[17:19] Speaker 3: it it helps it sound even more distant.
[17:23] Speaker 2: And there's so much going on, and that's that's just
[17:27] Speaker 2: that's one and a half seconds or two seconds of audio,
[17:30] Speaker 2: and you've got you've got Marilyn in the studio with Jamal.
[17:35] Speaker 2: They're working together to create a certain performance recorded in
[17:39] Speaker 2: a certain way. And then you're then thinking, Okay, how's
[17:44] Speaker 2: how does this sound? How's this How does this fit
[17:46] Speaker 2: with the sound effects? Do we want to sound like
[17:48] Speaker 2: we're next to Jamal? Do we want to sound like
[17:49] Speaker 2: we're a long way away from Jamal? There's so much
[17:51] Speaker 2: and this is just a couple of seconds.
[17:53] Speaker 3: Of and then we've got it's incredible exactly. Yeah, We've
[17:57] Speaker 3: got three layers of water one plus a more of
[18:07] Speaker 3: a distant seed one, so we know that that's the
[18:12] Speaker 3: close stuff. There's the more distant seawashed, and then we
[18:15] Speaker 3: know that there's also going to be some way. I've
[18:18] Speaker 3: got a few of those. Quite a lot going on,
[18:24] Speaker 3: even in a bit of the show actually, which is
[18:27] Speaker 3: fairly calm.
[18:28] Speaker 2: Calm, but there's a real sense of place there.
[18:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's there's a actually got a foghorn and
[18:38] Speaker 3: played around with it, changed its pitch quite a lot.
[18:41] Speaker 2: Interesting because because there's no I don't think there's a
[18:43] Speaker 2: foghorn actually in the episode, so this is subliminal.
[18:46] Speaker 3: There's a gong in there as well. Forgot about that.
[18:55] Speaker 3: That's giving us a sense of something quite ominous, hopefully.
[18:59] Speaker 1: You know.
[19:00] Speaker 3: One of the biggest problems you face when you sit down,
[19:02] Speaker 3: particularly with the extraordinary technology technologies that are available, not
[19:08] Speaker 3: to mention you know the huge resources in terms of instruments,
[19:11] Speaker 3: is you just face with the infinite. And it's almost
[19:14] Speaker 3: a cautionary tale in itself. You know, how how on
[19:16] Speaker 3: earth do you start making decisions in a in an
[19:19] Speaker 3: infinite space? It's like, because you could do anything. So
[19:23] Speaker 3: I'm always hunting for ways to narrow my options down
[19:26] Speaker 3: and and I just find it very satisfying to try
[19:29] Speaker 3: and build the music from instruments that just have some
[19:34] Speaker 3: some relationship to the story. And that could be something
[19:38] Speaker 3: really simple, like if we're at sea and constantly talking
[19:42] Speaker 3: about vessels that are larger metallic than I might aim
[19:46] Speaker 3: for you know, big metallic drums or in this or
[19:50] Speaker 3: like in this, you know the foghorn, And even if
[19:53] Speaker 3: it's not sounding like a foghorn, there's a kind of
[19:55] Speaker 3: DNA in there that I think hopefully travels through, you know,
[19:59] Speaker 3: to the final thing.
[20:01] Speaker 2: Tell me more about about how you use music and
[20:05] Speaker 2: how much you use music, because I mean, potentially you
[20:08] Speaker 2: could compose music for every second of audio, but actually
[20:12] Speaker 2: you want to be much more sparing than that.
[20:14] Speaker 3: I remember Mike Figures being interviewed the film director and
[20:17] Speaker 3: saying that applying music to film, and I think it
[20:22] Speaker 3: could be said also of you know, podcasting or any storytelling.
[20:26] Speaker 3: So he said, it's it's sort of addictive. Once you start,
[20:30] Speaker 3: it's very hard to kind of rein it in, and
[20:32] Speaker 3: before you know it, the whole thing is covered in music.
[20:34] Speaker 3: And I think you then lose, you lose the power
[20:37] Speaker 3: of it. You you end up with something that never
[20:42] Speaker 3: really never really sort of surprises, never really makes the
[20:48] Speaker 3: best of itself, because it's just become a constant presence,
[20:51] Speaker 3: and it's constantly illustrating or even trying to instruct the
[20:55] Speaker 3: viewer as to what to hear. So I tend to
[21:00] Speaker 3: look It's almost like I'm hunting more for places where
[21:04] Speaker 3: I don't need to use music, and that's part of
[21:07] Speaker 3: that's just practical, you know, we've got certain amount of
[21:09] Speaker 3: time and budget to make the stuff.
[21:13] Speaker 1: You know.
[21:15] Speaker 3: Rather than thinking, oh, we can have music here, I
[21:17] Speaker 3: try and be really disciplined and go, this doesn't need anything,
[21:21] Speaker 3: you know, because you've got to really force yourself to go.
[21:24] Speaker 3: You know, what do I add here? What do I
[21:26] Speaker 3: flesh out for the listener? I suppose my feeling is
[21:34] Speaker 3: use it as sparingly as you can and try and
[21:39] Speaker 3: find spaces around the emotion that the words are already conveying.
[21:45] Speaker 2: So, Pascal, are you ready for a couple of quick
[21:46] Speaker 2: fire questions to wrap up?
[21:48] Speaker 3: Yeah? Go on, then I should have a sort of
[21:50] Speaker 3: bell or something, shouldn't I okay? So what is the
[21:53] Speaker 3: hardest scene that you've ever had to work on?
[21:57] Speaker 1: For?
[21:57] Speaker 3: Caution me tales battles, things with lots of footsteps do
[22:02] Speaker 3: my head in Although for the marathon episode, I just
[22:06] Speaker 3: literally went out running and epping for it and hung
[22:09] Speaker 3: a mic, you know, in front of me. So that
[22:12] Speaker 3: was quite a nice solution to that problem. But yeah,
[22:15] Speaker 3: the really tricky bits are where you have a lot
[22:20] Speaker 3: of human activity that needs choreographing, and I've decided we
[22:24] Speaker 3: should hear it. You know, the sort of shuffling from
[22:27] Speaker 3: one place to another, doing something like opening a bag, whatever,
[22:31] Speaker 3: closing a door. Footsteps and that kind of stuff are
[22:34] Speaker 3: really tricky. There are time sink and they're hard to
[22:39] Speaker 3: get right, hard to get believable. Footsteps, particularly if I
[22:42] Speaker 3: can nominate anything, it would be footsteps. They are a
[22:44] Speaker 3: real pain. And do you have a favorite episode. I'm
[22:49] Speaker 3: really fond of Jaws. I have to say I really
[22:52] Speaker 3: enjoyed working that through.
[22:56] Speaker 2: You had to pastiche the famous Jaws soundtrack, which we
[23:01] Speaker 2: weren't allowed to use. You needed to kind of call
[23:04] Speaker 2: it to people's mind how to be.
[23:06] Speaker 3: John Williams in One Afternoon. Quite often face with that challenge,
[23:19] Speaker 3: which is, you know, we are referring to a composer,
[23:22] Speaker 3: so it would be ridiculous for you not to somehow
[23:25] Speaker 3: nod to it. But you can't do it. You can't.
[23:27] Speaker 3: You know, you have to try and satisfy your own
[23:29] Speaker 3: creativity by doing something that resonates, but you also need
[23:32] Speaker 3: to make that person think of that composer. So you know,
[23:34] Speaker 3: the same with Keith Jarrett and the Coln episode trying
[23:39] Speaker 3: to do my own John Williams impression. I mean, yeah,
[23:43] Speaker 3: fools errand that, but really good fun to work on.
[23:49] Speaker 3: Lots of lovely sort of terms in that episode.
[23:52] Speaker 2: We feel very lucky to have you Passala. I'm sure
[23:55] Speaker 2: I'm sure many of our listeners feel the same way.
[23:58] Speaker 2: It's great because the show resets every week.
[24:01] Speaker 3: There's not a set. It's very difficult to tire of
[24:04] Speaker 3: it because you know, that sense of reset and the
[24:08] Speaker 3: knowledge as I open up every new episode that's I
[24:13] Speaker 3: have no idea where we're going to be and what
[24:15] Speaker 3: time we're going to be is what keeps it amazingly
[24:18] Speaker 3: fresh for me.
[24:20] Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Pascal. We've barely scratched the surface,
[24:24] Speaker 2: so I hope you'll come back and do this again
[24:26] Speaker 2: for us very soon.
[24:28] Speaker 3: But yeah, we could do a walk through of an app.
[24:30] Speaker 3: That would be quite fun.
[24:31] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that would be great. That'd be great. I
[24:33] Speaker 2: love that, Pascal. Your website pascal wise dot com or.
[24:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, pascal wise dot com or dot net. And that's
[24:40] Speaker 3: why is w y s E. That's sort of my
[24:43] Speaker 3: memory bank, the website. It just reminds me what I've
[24:46] Speaker 3: done so those things I've worked on are up on there.
[24:50] Speaker 2: And if you have any questions for Pascal just what
[24:53] Speaker 2: do they say on YouTube? Just stick them in the comments. Yeah,
[24:56] Speaker 2: I think that's possible on Patreon, so please do that.
[24:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very happy to answer any queries, however small
[25:03] Speaker 3: or obscure. Obscure ones the best Pascal wise, thank you
[25:07] Speaker 3: so much, lovely to see thanks to him

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