Understanding Audio Drama and Creating Characters with Phil Lollar

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Hi there, and welcome to Vox Talk, your weekly review from the world of voiceover. I'm your host, Stephanie Cicerelli from Voices in the Studio. With me today is award-winning writer Phil Lollar. Phil has created, written, produced and performed, formed in dozens of audio video series, to name just a handful of them. Everybody Adventures in Odyssey, Jungle Jam and Friends, The Wilson World of Dr. Seuss, The Mr. Men's Show, Olivia and Tom and Jerry. He's also an adjunct professor in the cinematic arts and communication studies departments at Azusa Pacific University. Welcome to the show, Phil.

Phil Lollar:
Oh, thank you very much. Wow. I didn't read that thing. It sounds like I'm impressed. I'm impressed by me. Wow. That's amazing.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
It's so funny. I think whenever anyone looks back at their bio, especially when they've been in the business for any length of time, like, Whoa, this thing grew, like, super huge. As I say, I have just scraped the tip of the iceberg with Phil's background here. So I'm hoping over a number of episodes we'll have you come back, Phil. What I'd like to focus on is audio drama, and that's really how I got introduced to your work in the first place. So what can you tell us about your love for writing for audio drama?

Phil Lollar:
Well, I have to tell you, I think that audio drama is the best kind of storytelling there is. I love telling stories through audio drama. I've written videos, written film, written for television, written animated shows. But audio drama is the best for me. And the reason why is because we're just providing the soundtrack. You get to provide the film, you get to provide the visuals in your head. And what's lovely about that is that everybody's visuals are different. So it's got to be active participation by you. When you're watching a film, it can be very passive. It can just be in the background. And you really don't have to engage in it if you don't want to. It can just be there. But in audio drama, you've got to pay attention. You've got to really be engaged with it yourself. It's theater of the mind. That's why I love it. I think it's just a wonderful way of telling stories, and that's exactly it.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think an audio drama in particular is just so personal, and it comes right into your mind. You have ideas of what the character looks like or the setting and all that. So, yeah, writing for that kind of experience is very different, I would think, than writing for other mediums. Sure it is.

Phil Lollar:
The reason why is that film and television are visual mediums, of course, and books are something different in and of themselves. Audio drama is you have to do everything through the voice and through sound, obviously. And that means that the picture that you have to paint through words, whether it's dialogue or whether it's sound effects, has to be very vivid. And so you have to figure out how to do that to paint that picture in your listeners minds without telling them everything. So audio drama is really all about subtext if you're doing it right. In fact, I just had a conversation with a couple of students who want to write, and they were asking me about this. And I said, we try to avoid what I call ‘the gun I'm holding in my left hand is loaded’ dialogue, because that's the tendency that people will have, because how else am I supposed to tell everybody what's going on right now? So you have to figure out how to make that happen. How do those action sequences work? What can you do in order to not tell everybody, blatantly, this is what's going on right now, and instead do it through dialogue and do it through the sound effects and the music. And that's what makes it really exciting for me. It's difficult to master. We've had a lot of folks come in, for instance, on Adventures in Odyssey who want to write for the program, but they're used to writing for film. And we have to go where they'll send in story ideas or they'll send in an outline or something. And we'll say, this is really visual. What you have here is very visual work on film easily. But in an audio drama, how are we supposed to present that?

And so it just requires a little mind shift. You have to as a writer, you have to mindshift and say, okay, I'm all I have the tools that I have to write our dialogue and sound effects. And then for mood is music. That's how I can tell the story. That's all I've got. How do I use those to tell stories? And so it's fun. It's the reason I love it so much. It's pretty hard, but yet it's very rewarding. I am thrilled every single time this works. Every single time. It's amazing to me how when you listen to something that's done in playback, how you realize we just created something out of nothing. There was nothing there. There's not a room there. There's no room. There's no doors. It's nothing. We're just creating stuff out of thin air. And that's the other thing I love about audio drama. You can do anything. You can do anything in it. And you don't have to have a trillion dollar budget in order to be able to do that like you do in films.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Exactly. You do have to have the know-how, though. As you said, this is a medium to write for. That is not like you have to think really hard about sound effects, but music and how that informs the emotional aspect of the storytelling. But then also the voices would also play a big role in that because the actors are just like every other component in that production. They bring with their instruments something that complements what you're doing as storytellers. So that is another area I wanted to talk about, just creating characters. So when you're writing for this world where people are creating images in their mind of what a character looks like or how they walk and talk, then how do you have to think differently about that? Can you give us some insight?

Phil Lollar:
Well, I'll use the main character of Adventures in Odyssey, John Avery Whittaker, everybody calls him Whit. And when I created that character, I wanted to give him some distinctive audio trademarks, basically. So he walks with a limp. You don't really notice it very much. And we don't make a big deal out of it. But it's because he was in the war. I won't say which war because everybody goes, what, that war? Why? But he was in the war and he got wounded. He was wounded. And so he walks with a slight limp. And also a shell fragment actually took off. This is a very visual thing, but a shell fragment took off part of his ear. So in any artwork that we have, we always make sure that the artists understand, wait a minute, you can't do that kind of an angle on him because he's missing an upper part of his ear. You have to either hide that with his hair or you have to reveal that. But as far as that's concerned, yeah.

And then we also listen, of course, for the voice, what is it that we want the characters to sound like? How do we want them to portray their character and how do we want them to say the lines? And it's really interesting. You can get a person with a certain type of voice into the studio, and they will sound if they don't have a distinctiveness to their voice. We always look for distinctiveness in voices, especially depending on the type of character. And if they don't have a distinctiveness but they have a really nice voice, then it's kind of like, okay, well, the edge may be what's distinctive about the voice?

How does that work when we're doing casting? And so we just have to go through, I have something in my head when I'm writing these characters out in the dialogue with that, I want them to say I have something in my head. And I kind of described that to the people who do the casting for the show for Adventures in Odyssey, for instance. And then we send out the sides to the agents like everybody else, and then they read, everybody reads and based on the description, and then we start going back and saying, okay, can you redo this one? Try it this way for me. Try it that way for me. And it's similar to it. I'm sure it's similar to every other process of casting than any other medium. But the voice is everything for us. So if you've got a distinctive way of delivering the lines. That gives us a plus for me in casting that gives me a plus. I would go with somebody who's distinctive over somebody who's polished any day and like having that distinctive sound, like it's just something you have or you don't, I suppose. Right, sure. Yeah. Katie Leigh, who plays Connie on our program, and she has been in a billion and a half. She's been in everything during her career. She's another one who has a long, long list of credits, but she talks a lot about how when she was young, she had a very high voice. She still has a very high voice. She can play a teenager, but she's made a career out of having this very high voice that she thought, of course, when she was younger, that it was a drawback. Why do I have this high voice? Why am I being cursed with this high voice? Oh, dear, oh, dear. And then she realizes, no, I can make a whole career out of using this voice. I can make a career out of having a personality. Her personality is such that she likes to talk. She likes to talk a lot and she likes to make jokes and have fun and that sort of thing. And all of a sudden what is a drawback, say, in an elementary or junior high or high school setting is a plus when you're out looking for work as a voice actor because you want the distinctive voice, you want that. So if you have that kind of a situation going with you, anybody who's listening to this, you have a voice that seems like, oh, my voice has this weird thing that goes, I hate the sound of my voice. It sounds very strange. Well, maybe it's exactly what a voice casting person is looking for. So don't give up on that. The things that can seem like drawbacks in normal life are really pluses when you're talking about animated and audio drama voices.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Well said. I know that's true. Regardless of what it might be. Maybe it's a physical injury that someone's had or for whatever other reason, just like, well, I don't meet the specs for most things on camera, but off camera, that's a whole other ball game, right? Knowing exactly. You can be a talking squirrel. You can be any number of different things. An inanimate object like animation, the sky is the limit.

Phil Lollar:
We all have. We've all been all of those things. Yes, absolutely. I think that's really interesting as a writer that obviously you're very hands on in designing how the voice should be spoken from your written words, a queue, all the sides and so on that you're sending. But just how involved in the casting process are you? Is this something where you attend these or you actually help to narrow down and pick the person who will cast for each role? Yes. It depends. Usually I get involved at the end game of that. So we'll send out the sides to all the agents, and then, of course, you get just dozens and dozens and dozens of voices of auditions. And then usually that goes through a process. There are other folks who listen to that. The producers, some of the other producers will listen to that and then say, okay, this is not really right. It's not that the acting wasn't any good or the voices weren't good. It's just not really right for us. And so they call those down to about ten or twelve voices that then they send to me. And so I'm on the end stage of that process. And so I listen to those ten or twelve voices and say, okay, this one's good. This one is not quite right. This one's pretty good. And then I go through those a couple of different times and to just try to weed out by process of elimination which one, I think will work the best. There are some, of course, that you just hear once and you go, yeah, I don't need to hear anybody else. This is the right guy. This is the right person. Rarely, rarely, rarely happens. But it has happened on occasion where you just hear this person reading thing. Yes, they got it. They understand what I'm going for here and let's go ahead and cast them. I don't need to hear anybody else because I just want to say this. I'm a writer director, so I direct on Odyssey, especially I do the voice direction on all of my own shows. And so that's another reason why I'm involved in the process of casting. But I think that I would be involved in it even if I weren't directing my own shows. If I were just doing the writing of them, I would still have a say in the casting process. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's work. It's not easy. And the other thing, of course, is that I've been on the other side as an actor myself. I've been on the other side of the audition going, oh, I know I got this part. This is my part. And of course, you don't hear back or you hear back and say, well, you were close, but sorry, that's just part of the business.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Right. And that is definitely part of the business. Anyone who's listening just take to heart what you're hearing Phil say, they have something in their head. They already know what they're going for. That voice, whether it's finalized or not, is moving around and breathing and having its own life inside the head of the writer. So if your voice actually matches what they are looking for, then that's awesome.

Phil Lollar:
But if it isn't, then don't worry about it because you'll be right for something else.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Exactly. I think that's really important for everyone to understand and to hear because you could see a script and think, I would be amazing at this. And who hasn't said that, right? Like, this is my job. I'm going to land this, and then all of a sudden you find out so and so in the other room has just booked it, and you're like, oh, but that's just how it goes. You can't be sad about it. You just have to be happy for everyone. And really, ultimately, what the goal is that crew, that production crew, they need to find the right voice that is going to breathe life into that character and connect with an audience. And you have done that so exceptionally well with the programming that you've been part of Odyssey three, two, one, Penguins. There's a whole host of other shows here that we could go on for days talking about them, but these are shows that I know I've personally been impacted by and have admired the work that's being done on them. Not only are you hiring really fantastic, talented actors, you are hiring amazing people. And I think that goes as part of it, too, is like the cast that you've put together with your teammates are not just people who show up to work, record, and leave. Like, they have community, and they're really excited about the work. And Odyssey is now in its 35th year. So when you think about the continuity, just the energy that the actors are bringing, but also just the feeling that they are part of something bigger, I think that that has been a hallmark of the productions you've been involved with.

Phil Lollar:
Well, we certainly try to create a family atmosphere in the studio that's been so damaging for us with COVID, because the regulations now in the studio keep everybody apart. We recorded a place called Salami Studios, and Salami has isolation booths that they use for different things, but now they've come in really handy because of COVID regulations. And so usually we would just record what we call family style with everybody in the same room, and everybody is interacting with each other, and it just makes for a more lively and engaged kind of a session. But everybody has to be so everybody has to be separate now, and their voices are all piped into everybody's headphones, which is fine. But sometimes you really kind of want to look across the room at the person that you're playing opposite of and kind of get their read on things in the facial expressions. And it just helps. It helps a lot to have everybody in the studio together, and then it helps with that camaraderie that you're talking about, even off mic, even outside of the studio, where we try to go to dinner with everyone afterwards, and we want everybody to stick around and we want to hear about your lives. We want everybody to know each other really well because that just helps with the recording as well with recording and interpretation of the scripts, the types of shows that we do are adventure shows and our family drama type of shows. And because of that, we want everybody to understand each other a little better, and we want everybody to play off of that with each other. And the only way that you can do that realistically is to get to know each other a little bit more. So we like that. And you're right. We've all worked on different kinds of shows throughout this industry. And it's always very gratifying to me that the actors kind of want to stick around after they've finished working on whatever they've done, whatever we've hired them to do, they like sticking around. They want to talk. We have a very good relationship. We try to get as good of a relationship as we can. We want everybody to feel a part of the process. And I just have to say, the actors, they take the scripts that we write, and you all do. You've been there. You just take the characters and just make them wonderful. I will tell you, as a writer myself, there have been so many times when I've written what I consider to be, if I may say so, in all modesty, a great, wonderful script, and then I get it into the studio and you guys take it and just make it sore. And that's what's so wonderful about this whole process and the whole business of audio drama. Your voices and the things that you all add to the characters are the special moments that make the show continue on and have made the show run now for 35 years. And hopefully it'll continue on with that. We're almost at 1000 episodes. We're just 1000 episodes now.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Oh, my goodness. Wow. That is wild. Like, it's just been such a joy to interact with the various actors you've had on your show. Like Katie Leigh, of course, has been on Vox Talk. She was a wonderful guest. I know I've always loved the work of any of the gentlemen who have played Mr. Whittaker like that. Yeah, I think that those would be one of those ‘we knew when we heard them’ type voices and yeah, Townsend Coleman, another amazing actor, too, who has been involved in and Jess Harnell are just the best.

Phil Lollar:
All these guys are just the best. They're so wonderful. All of them. We were one of the other ways that we've just been blessed in so many ways. I grew up in the 60s, that's when I came of age and I grew up with 60s television. And I saw when we started doing Adventures in Odyssey, we were able to get all of these actors who were on television shows that I grew up with, and they weren't really doing a lot of television appearances anymore, but they were more than willing to come and do this show on the radio. And it was like, wow, this is amazing. I'm with Hal Smith here and Walker Edmondson and Dave Madden and Parlie Bear and Kenny Mars and all of these great actors who were on all of the shows that I grew up on. And they're on our show, they're here. Wow, this is so amazing. And what was great about those guys is they had such a breadth of knowledge, too, and experience in show business. Janet Waldo, she played Judy Jetson and just wonderful, wonderful actors and actresses who had been around forever. And they had this wonderful knowledge, this breadth of knowledge. Alan Young, who was on Mr. Ed, just great stories. And you didn't have to really explain a lot of stuff to them about what you were looking for and what you wanted to do. Just let them do what they do. And they just made it brilliant.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Wow. I can't stop saying that word with you, mister. Like the number of people credit so on like that alone is just, oh, my goodness. But just the impact that the shows have had as well, and that continuity. The people who've wanted to be involved, I'm sure they approached you the way you said, oh my gosh, they're on the show. Some of these things. When you are working at a certain level which you're working, then you'd be amazed at the people who are interested in wanting to be involved in the show. So I just think that's beautiful. That happens too. Speaking of which, the show has been running for 35 years now. How do you keep things fresh? Like there's people who start listening now who are new, and then there's people who remember growing up on Odyssey. How is it that you can both keep that sense of what the show was in the beginning and then introduce that to new listeners at the same time? Well, the short answer is I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know how we've done it. The longer answer, I would think with a little more analytical answer would probably be all of the shows are there. So we also have a streaming service, the Adventures in Odyssey Club, that you can log on to and you get almost 1000 episodes. They're all there. So everybody can start from the beginning and you can hear how we did it way back when versus how things are going now. And I think it's just we try to deal with universal themes, but deal with them in accordance with the times as well. We try to change certain things. We believe on the show that there are certain things that don't change about life, universal themes that don't change about life, about why lying is wrong, for instance. It's wrong to lie and it's wrong things that are right and wrong. And we try to stick with those kinds of themes throughout the shows, but then it's just a matter of how we're going to present that. What more clever way can be used to present that. And part of it is new characters, some kids, obviously, when you've been on the air for 35 years, they're going to age out. So there are some kids that we've had who've gone on. As a matter of fact, just as a side note, two of the kids that started out on the show 35 years, 35 years ago, they got married, they have kids of their own, and now grandkids. Wow. And they started when they were fairly young on the show. So that just shows how long the show has been on the air. But it's stunning. They and their family have two generations of listeners now that they're raising on this show. And my own son was born the year I was creating Adventures in Odyssey. So he is as old as the program is. That was a real fun thing to watch him get old enough to be able to listen to the program and understand it. And then he bought right into it. And it was so much fun to watch that. But I think going back to your question, I think it's just a matter of trying to stick with those universal themes. We want people to be equipped to deal with matters of courage and matters of faithfulness and matters of Cardinal virtues, if you will, in their daily lives. How does that work? How does that play out? And I think that's how we try to stay as fresh as we can, just new ways of presenting those old values and those old virtues, those solid things that we all kind of have inside of us and that we know this is the way we should behave. This is what we do. So I think that just resonates with people. I think that's how new generations come into the listening audience, the listening family. There's a lot of fun fan sites out there that argue, no, the old ones are better than the new ones. No, the new ones are better than the old ones. And I'm like, I think they're all good. Of course, they're all my children. So, hey, 35 years worth of kids.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Wow. Yeah. Keeping things fresh, I think I'll go back to that old Broadway song. You've got old situations with new complications.

Phil Lollar:
Exactly. All it is, right? Exactly.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Yeah. It's like writing for a series. Writing for people is like what you're doing is you're writing to the human experience and you're helping people to go through different things in their lives and to show them that they're not alone.

Phil Lollar:
Right. Exactly. That's exactly it. You have family and friends around you. For me, also, the thing that I've learned a great deal about is mainly a function of teaching more than anything else. When I teach writing and I teach these courses, I just learned that story is everything. Story is all we have. Life is story. And when you think about your own life on a daily basis, if you think about it in terms of story, if you think, oh, I'm just going through a terrible time and I'm stuck in a rut and I'm never going to get out of this rut. Well, that's just not true at all. Just wait a little bit. The story changes. Remember where you are in the story. The stories have an ineffable quality about them. You can be really high and this is great. I'm on top of the mountain. This is fantastic. And we know what happens next in stories. Usually that means you're due for a trip down to the Valley. And when you're in the Valley, you can be slogging through the muck and it's terrible. And my life is awful and I think my life is over. But really, what happens next in stories? Nobody really stays in the Valley. They kind of climb out of it. They climb out of it a little bit or maybe fall back in and then they climb out a little bit more, and then they struggle and struggle and overcome obstacles, and that's it. Then they get to the top of the mountain again, only to be able to go back into the Valley. But each of those successes just prepares you for going back into the Valley. And each of those things in the Valley should prepare you for how you handle the next success that comes along. Well, that's exactly what story is, isn't it? I mean, you are the protagonist of your own story. You have your dramatic need and you are in a dramatic situation. And now there are obstacles being set in your path preventing you from achieving your dramatic need. And how will you overcome them? That's story. That's it. And story is everything. That's all we are.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Exactly. There is nothing to add to what you just said. That was brilliant. Wow. So, Phil, while we've got you here, I know you're in the midst of working on something new. I think you're going to teach some writers about how they can do what you do. So can you tell us a bit about that new project?

Phil Lollar:
Well, I've been teaching for about ten years now at the University level, and I've been teaching courses in writing and teaching courses in popular culture. And I've been going on and off. I'm an adjunct professor, so I'm not on staff anywhere. I'll teach at any place that'll have me teach. But then I thought, you know what? Maybe I should take these courses, especially the writing courses, and make them available to people outside of the University. It's a University level course that I'm developing that I teach, and what I'm doing is retooling it so that way I can make it available to people who want to understand foundational elements of story and what makes a story quick and how you can recognize those elements of story in your own life. And so that's what I'm working on right now. In addition to still writing Odyssey, still directing Odyssey, still doing other audio drama projects for other people. I've got a couple of books that I've got to finish up here. They're obviously related. Our main character is John Avery Whittaker. And we have a book series out that is him as a boy, how he became the big character that he is right now. They're a lot of fun. They just finished book five. That's the first series of books, books one through five. So I just finished book five. And then there's another series of books for the main villain on Odyssey is a guy named Blackford. And there's The Blackard Chronicles. I've got about three more books in that series to get that out. So I got a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun, but at the same time, I totally get that it's work. Now I know one of the characters calls them Whit. And then there's like, other ones just say Whit. So what is the right way to say Whit, Mr. Writer? It's Whit. There's no (puff of air) in it. It's just Whit.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Okay. It's always best to ask the writer, because you never know what it is that they have.

Phil Lollar:
You'd think that's true? But then everybody will argue. I've never had so many arguments with people online about things that happened to me. You get the fan base coming in and they're going, you know, when this happened, this thing happened here and that happened there. And I said, really? Because I was there, and none of that happened, really. And then people go, ‘oh, come on. Yeah, it did. It really did. Because I have authority from somebody,’ I'm like, ‘yeah, but they weren't even there. Those people weren't there. How would they know what happened? I was there’. I can tell you exactly what happened, but you hear these stories of folks, and it's really funny how when they actually happened to you. Rowan Atkinson. I saw an interview with him just recently, and he was talking about how people will look at him and he plays Mr. Bean and people will look at him and he said, I came across one guy in particular who looked at him and he said, you know, this guy looked at him and said, you know, has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Mr. Bean? Rowan Atkinson said, Well, Yes, I'm actually the guy who plays Mr. Bean. I'm Ron Atkinson, who plays him. And the guy looked at him and said, ‘yeah, I bet you were. I bet you do wish that you were that guy. He probably has a lot of money.’ They just don't believe that you're you don't believe it's. Very funny. It's a strange and fun and wonderful situation to be in this. Quite amusing sometimes. So on Jungle Jam, I used to get a lot of people who would call up and say, ‘hey, you know what? I did play the character named Millard the Monkey. He sounds kind of like this this is the way he talked, and people would always call me up and go, hey, you know, if the guy, whoever plays Millard the Monkey ever quits this program, I do a great middle of the monkey.’ And I'm like, ‘oh, really? Go ahead and do them for me.’ And of course, they sound nothing like Millard the Monkey, but it's really fun to talk to them. So those are the fun things that we get to do in our lives, I think, as actors.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Totally. Yeah, I think so. But you know what? We're going to have to have you back because there's just so much more that I think we have, like, there's questions that I have left unanswered here in the doc. I think Geoff can attest to that right there. But that always happens with great conversations that there's always more to be said. So with that, Phil Lollar, we will bid you adieu, but thank you so much for being on the show today.

Phil Lollar:
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure to talk to you again. I haven't talked to you in a while, and it's been a great pleasure to talk to you again. Thank you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
You, too. So, Phil, if people want to follow your work, where can they go to find you?

Phil Lollar:
Oh, boy, I wish that I could say, oh, just go to this website. I don't have a website. I'm in the process of making one. If you want to follow Adventures in Odyssey, you can get onto the Adventures in Odyssey fan club on Facebook. There's a bunch of different Adventures in Odyssey fan sites out there that you can do, and I'm on those. I'm usually being really snarky with the fans on those things. That's not what I'm really like, honestly. Well, maybe it is. I don't know. At any rate, you can follow me through there, and then you can follow me on Facebook, too. I have my own Facebook page, Phil Lollar on Facebook. But I'm getting some websites together for the books that I'm writing and for some other stuff that I'm doing. And then also I got another little video series that I'm wanting to put on YouTube. So I've got a lot of stuff in the works, and hopefully it'll all be coming together soon. And then maybe you can have me back on and I'll tell everybody where to go.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
Absolutely. That's just exactly what I was thinking. Well, thank you very much, and we'll look forward to having you back sometime soon.

Phil Lollar:
Thank you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:
And that's the way we saw the world through the lens of voiceover this week. Thank you for joining us here on Vox Talk. This is so awesome to talk to Phil Lollar and to hear all about the work that he's doing. I hope you were taking notes because there's some great tips in there for those of you who want to work in audio drama have a better understanding of what goes into it and also the role of what a writer director does. They are very, very different sorts of people. I don't know how common it is that someone is a writer and a director, but you have heard from the best combination possible today on Vox talk. So for voices. I'm Stephanie Ciccarelli. Our producer is Geoff Bremner. You've been listening to Vox talk. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next week.