Archive 81 · Dead Signals

OUT OF UNIVERSE - A Conversation With Ella Watts

May 29, 2019·1 hr 2 min·5 clips

Mark argues that audio drama is a sound designer's medium, not a writer's medium, the same way movies belong to directors and plays belong to actors.

Mark owns the delay right away. He is not in character here, just the writer of the show trying to make the missing episode feel a little less empty with a conversation. Ella Watts arrives ready to play. She introduces herself as an audio drama person, a podcast consultant, someone who works with the BBC, and someone involved with The Orphans. She is also a superfan, which changes the feel of the interview. These are craft questions from someone who already cares about the machinery. Mark keeps it relaxed. When Ella asks about process, the answers keep coming back to the same practical problem: acting, sound designing, writing, and directing at once wears a person down. So the show has been moving away from that. Mark says each season tries to put fewer creators on mic, partly because that pile of jobs gets heavy fast. Then the road trip idea clicks into place. Left of the Dial came from the weirdness of tuning the radio while driving, when voices, songs, and religious language slide in and disappear before you can catch them. That image carries a lot of the season's mood. Mark ties it to old preachers, unfamiliar songs, soft banjo music, Americana, and the fun of hearing something that feels almost reachable but never quite settles. The conversation stays casual even when it gets structural. A craft point shows up, then the practical reason underneath it. Nicholas and Static Man get their turn too. Mark says the special gave their relationship a story beat before season four. Sponsor Bot pretty much takes over when Ella asks which character is most fun to write. Mark goes straight to the voice he has the most fun writing. By the end, it still feels scrappy and generous. Mark thanks Ella for good questions, jokes about how much he talks about sound, and gives her room to send listeners toward The Orphans and her audio fiction work.

As heard by us

A stopgap craft conversation that shows how Archive 81 builds its eerie atmosphere through sound.

Archive 81 uses this stopgap episode to show how much of its identity lives in the sound. Mark opens with an apology for the delay, then talks with Ella Watts about audio drama and the writing process, and the best part is how often the conversation comes back to making…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want Archive 81's weirdness unpacked by the writer and an audio-fiction super fan.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Archive 81