Interview about Cryptids – a fiction podcast developed by a film company

Last updated on October 30th, 2019

Imagine this. A company that makes films adapts a play to become a seven-episode fiction podcast. Talk about breaking artistic boundaries.

On September 29^th, Wild Obscura Films, a Brooklyn NY film studio that has won several film awards, released its first podcast called Cryptids.

In a nutshell, Cryptids is a scripted sci-fi podcast that follows Eve, a pediatric hospice nurse, and Trevor, a late night conspiracy radio show host, go in search of the truth and a purpose for death. But The Ones in Charge have other plans in store for them. 

Cryptids was created and written by Alexander V. Thompson, who also stars as Trevor. Originally written as a play, producers Nora Unkel and Devin Shepherd of Wild Obscura Films, worked with Thompson to adapt the visual material into a completely audio medium. Says Thompson on the process, “It was a unique challenge. The audio medium allows the imagination to take over in ways than no visual medium can, so there was a lot of fun and tension to be mined in letting the listener fill in some of the blanks for themselves.”

Cryptids was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter where it achieved “project we love” status. Cryptids was also one of six projects incubated in the Made in NY Media Center Fellowship Program by IFP in 2019. 

Discover Pods sat down with Cryptids author and actor Alex Thompson and Wild Obscura Films Director of Cryptids Devin Shepherd.

DISCOVER PODS: Let’s start with the most obvious question: Why would a successful, New York City-based independent film company develop a podcast?

DEVIN: We first got into podcasts as a different way to develop high-budget vehicles. For our vision, we saw Cryptids as a TV series or a feature film and we wanted to keep more creative control and ensure that the artist’s view comes through

Alex and I are such huge podcast fans and we pay attention to what’s working in the podcast space. There are a lot of podcast producers but not a lot doing fiction podcasting so we wanted to explore that format in podcasting.

ALEX: Podcasting offered us a lot of artistic freedom and a lot of room to play quite frankly at a lower entry point. The podcast format gave us the ability to tell the story in its entirety.

DP: Serialized fiction is not a genre that has attracted that much attention among podcast content developers as of yet? Did that “open area” attract you since podcasts have been drawn into true crime drama instead?

DEVIN: There’s so much you can do in the podcasting space with a fiction podcast. The audio medium allows you the budget to tell the story without cutting. With a film, location shooting and special visual effects are extremely expensive. Plus, fiction podcasts are gaining listeners, just like true crime podcasts a few years ago.

DP: I understand that Cryptids was originally conceived as a play. What was the process of re-purposing the script to become a podcast?

ALEX: It was a fun process and there were some growing pains. I conceived it as a stage play but it never was produced so I never saw it live. But I had all these visions of what it would be like and then I had to take those concepts and re-purpose them for the podcast. My background is as an actor, writer and technician and when I wrote the play, I envisioned lots of aerial effects. I come from a rigging background. But there’s not a lot of aerobatics in podcasting. (Alex chuckles) So I essentially had to tell the story with one sense – the visual – entirely stripped away. But, of course, when one sense is gone, the others can become more acute to compensate. So we found some strong storytelling elements that wouldn’t be possible on the stage.

DEVIN: We have a fantastic sound designer, Gina Zdanowicz, who is magnificent. She added sound based on Alex’s script that fill the scene with tone and emotion and that’s been fun to manipulate.

ALEX: Gina created a depth of sounds for the podcast that I didn’t realize even existed.

DP: The project and script harken back to the Golden Age of Radio before TV when fictionalized, serialized shows attracted huge ratings among listeners. Was the intent to underscore that connection to old-time radio programs?

DEVIN: Alex and I are huge fans of old-time radio. Now there is so much advancement in technology and how sound can be manipulated so we saw new ways to tell a story through fiction audio.

ALEX: Even with technological advances, it’s still an actor, a director and a microphone. It’s fun to play in a world that’s been around over 100 years. We are, in essence, doing the same thing Orson Welles did with the famous radio broadcast in the 1930s with War of the Worlds. Those great, old radio shows like Lights Out, which is a horror-based radio show in the 1930s and 40s, attracted a large and loyal audience for 15 years.

DP: The podcast space is now attracting big production companies such as Sony, Spotify, Luminary. Are you trying to forge a link to one of these larger podcast networks?

DEVIN: Yes, we would like to hook up with a podcast network because we think there is an audience for fiction podcasts and we’ve found podcasting to be a very collaborative space.

ALEX: I think these larger podcast networks would be interested in a fiction piece like Cryptids. After all, Limetown and Welcome to Night Vale are two of the most popular podcasts in circulation today and they are both fiction.

DP: Tell us about Cryptids. The plot, the genre, the episode arc and the characters?

ALEX: I conceived it driving cross-country listening to some of these late-night, crazy conspiracy talk radio shows. Cryptids introduces the audience to Eve, a pediatric hospice nurse, and Trevor, a late night conspiracy radio show host, go in search of the truth and a purpose for death. But The Ones in Charge have other plans in store for them. 

Trevor is a celebrity leader of the cryptozoology community. Eve is a true believer. She uses Trevor’s radio show to escape from the death she faces at work every day. Eve finds faith in believing Something Else is out there. Something better. But Eve needs to know, needs to prove, that Something is real. She forces her way into Trevor’s off-air life and together, they set out to find the truth behind a well believed conspiracy: aliens on the moon are orchestrating Death and harvesting human souls. On their search, the two are forced to face their greatest fears as they are on the cusp of not only proving the existence of Gods and Monsters, but unveiling one of humankind’s darkest and most profound secrets.

DP. How did production go in this audio medium? Was “acting” in the podcast medium that much different than acting in film?

DEVIN: As a director, it was definitely different. A lot of the actors haven’t worked in the audio space before. Our actors are based in theatre so with a podcast these actors are now working in an enclosed visual space.

ALEX: As an actor, I’ve done some voice-over work so I’m comfortable with the mic in front of me. The continuing challenge was to make sure that the acting came through in my voice. So in the visual medium, I can use acting mannerisms and physicality to get into the role but in the podcast that had to be channeled into my vocal chords. Even then, is the story you’re telling in the room the story the audience is hearing on the tape?

It was more akin to a theatrical performance than film acting.

DEVIN: To expand on that, I would have to turn away from my actors while they were performing to ensure that my eyes weren’t influencing what I was hearing. Often, I would listen to the actors with my headphones on looking away. In the audition process, we found that the actors we loved in the audition room while watching them, we didn’t love as much when we listened to just their voice later on. Their physical performance would give us a totally different read than the audio performance.. That was hard to adjust.

We recorded over five days and we did do different takes and in terms of editing and the podcast was much like a film where I could edit scenes and add or delete lines.

DP: How many episodes are there? How long is each episode? Does each episode drop weekly?

DEVIN: There are seven episodes with each episode ending with some kind of climax. The run time of each episode varies from about 15 to 22 minutes over the seven episodes.

ALEX: There is an individual arc in each episode with it all coming together into a larger arc in the entire seven-episode span.

DP: Could there be a second season? What would you like to see happen during the first season of Cryptids?

ALEX: Of course, we hope the podcast audience responds positively. I’ve written a second season already and we are planning for it.

DEVIN: Our hope is that we can do a second season and that we can do more podcasts in the fiction space.

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In today’s world where conspiracy theories abound, (anybody remember PizzaGate?), Cryptids is a fiction podcast that is infused with much truth about our culture today. The podcast itself resounds with the variety of skills and expertise that ranges from playwriting to podcast scripting, from directing a film to directing a podcast, from acting in a visual medium like the movies or TV to acting in a purely audio medium like podcasting.

Cryptids has the right DNA for successful drama regardless of the medium – a compelling script, characters we care about, a dramatic arc that keeps us in suspense and strong acting.

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