Curious Matter Aftershow - Star Hunter Part 4 (with show creator Jonathan Pezza)
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Everyone, welcome to the Curious Matter After Show. I'm Alison Hayslip and my co-pilot here is Alyssa DeVries. And we are going to be your hosts as we take a deeper dive into this season's episodes. We are going behind the scenes to learn a little bit more about these stories and their authors. And of course, geek out on our collective love of all things sci-fi and horror. Tonight's show is live on Twitch every other week. So all of you out there in podcast land, come join us over at twitch.tv slash effing funny.com.

And you can ask questions there and interact with the team and us. It's a lot of fun. Now, tonight on the show, we have the Curious Matter creator, Jonathan Pezza himself. Welcome, Jonathan. Hello, hello. Hi. Okay, so. That was an episode. That was an episode. Yes, it was. I mean, I'm glad that it finally tied into...

how exactly Elise is there. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Cause I know some clarity. I know. And then the whole talk last episode about, about, uh, uh, I forget the, the verbiage you guys use, but basically like putting her, what was it? Her LP, her LB. What is it? Thing with all her memories, right? The implant. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the N gram N gram. That's it. Uh,

I didn't quite put that together like from last week's episode because I was like, what is this thing that they're doing? And now it finally came to fruition. And I was like, oh, I get it now. How much of this is actually from the source material and how much is your own crazy sci-fi brain making this up? Well, at this point, we're off the rails, I think. Yeah.

I, you know, I, I loved all the twists and turns. I, as we talked about like early on, like, you know, Andre Dorn did so many amazing things, but she didn't really have the lexicon. She didn't really understand, like, obviously she was writing in the 1960s. So she didn't know the world that we're in today and the kind of educated audience and the technology that we have today and the, the, the verbiage that we have ultimately to explain it. So,

You know, I really expanded on what I thought were the core ideas and the things that she was imagining were possible and then tie that in to like what we know today and kind of our cultural relationship to technology and like where that's going to go, not from her perspective in the 1960s, but from like our perspective right now. Right. And like try to move that ball forward. But yeah, the...

Basically, from the point they get into the cave, we're in a different place. In this episode? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we've done. We've gone. I mean, the characters have been changed and the way things are revealed is different and scenes are different in how to get there. Because I think she was really insinuating at ideas that didn't come around until Cyberpunk. Yeah.

Because we didn't have internet technology. We didn't have the conversation. We didn't even have that lexicon until like Gibson came around, you know, years and years. Debbie.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. And yeah, so, you know, like Neuromancer kind of like set off that whole thing. And then, and so you're just building on the conversation that exists inside of science fiction so that it kind of stays relevant. Right, so...

Once we entered this cave, we are basically like post book five of Game of Thrones. It's the rails are off. We went a different way because ultimately the way the book ended, I didn't think was it was fantastic for the 1960s, but I didn't stand up to like today's wasn't a story. Yeah, it was.

it fell more into the kind of tropiness that we're trying, that the rest of the story didn't have, which I found so surprising. So one of the reasons I circled it for so long, because the end was like, oh, okay. But the ideas of what were going on in the cave were so interesting and they didn't quite get explored. And I was like, oh, we're going to explore that. Our,

Are you able to tell us what the original ending is now without spoiling next week's episode? No, I can't. Yeah. Okay. Then we need to revisit this. We can. And by next week, I mean in two weeks, we go every other week. Yes. What a final episode. We need to revisit this because I want to know the original. Because we're doing a whole extravaganza where we bring in a ton of people to interview. Well, that's the hope. Yes.

we're gonna do what happens damn yeah it'll make sense why why i changed it um

The end falls into the pulpy tropes. And I didn't want that. I wanted to be character driven. So, yeah. All right. Let's talk a bit about AI because we've touched on this briefly in previous episodes, but you use AI to create this world, this soundscape that you're doing. Can you go, can you go more into depth about what exactly you're using the AI for? What aspects of this podcast are there?

Totally. Well, um, it's been like a slow progression. The first like AIs that were in, that were introduced were, um,

were sound plugins that assessed audio. So our mastering system is Ozone, which you can build out without it, but the AI mastering system kind of taught me how to master. It showed me like what the sound was doing and ultimately how to take something that feels really flat and make it something that feels really like punchy and real and in your ear and in your head and not like...

Not like that wide stereo sound. So that I actually kind of learned how to master because the AI was teaching me the different steps by assessing the audio we're doing in the early episodes. We started mastering using that tool after the third episode of season one. And that was like the first thing that we started introducing. But this season we've integrated audio.

into the main show we've integrated AI voice performances and the really interesting thing is is that in this episode the all every character of all the voices in the first scene except for Yachty C are AI including the whoa she's having a conversation with the tech

in that first scene. - Really? - Yeah, they're all, the whole first scene except for Yahtzee is AI. - Wow. - How crazy is that? - That's shocking. - That's both amazing and sad to me as a performer 'cause I'm like, where does my job go? - AI is taking our jobs. - You don't have to hire people to do those voices. I'm out of work.

For me, it's we don't need to do it. But I as a as someone who's so into technology and into science fiction and into where like culture and technology meet, integrating that into the show is fun for me. It's like, oh, I can I can try this new thing keeps it interesting and and really interesting.

try to evolve what we're doing in a fun way. It's it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't affect, I don't know that it's like making it better or worse, but it definitely is like a fun thing to be experimenting with because those tools are out there. Yeah. And actually this ties into another aspect of the show. Cause you've, you've started posting show artwork on the social media accounts and

And if I'm correct, these are also things that you were creating with AI. In AI, yeah. So if you've been following social media for the last like three weeks, everybody's been freaking out about the AI art systems. My friend was just showing me this this weekend and I had the same thought. I was like, this looks incredible, but why will we need artists?

anymore. It's, you know, that's actually kind of the question. It's mid journey is the name of the AI. Everyone, it's mid journey.com. It's so interesting. Because you really kind of, you have to learn the language of it. And it's constantly evolving. But you you're ultimately having a conversation with an AI artist, and that artist is spitting out ideas. And

It's learning, which is what's really kind of crazy. Like the, each version of it like gets better and the morphology of the people and like all of that stuff. It's still a little weird. Like all of the eyes have to be fixed. Like,

That's freaky. I mean, but didn't we learn that with the Polar Express? Like, they just can't get the eyes right. Yeah. Well, it's funny that it's another neural system that fixes the eyes. It's Photoshop's I use Photoshop's

So we just can't ever let these two AIs talk to each other because then we don't need humans anymore. And they're going to figure that out. And now we have Terminator. Well, we have the artistic representation of Terminator. Yeah, I mean, you're right. If Terminator was really pretty, maybe we'd all be okay with it. Yeah, true. Well, actually, there's like something really interesting in that, in that you got to wonder if the...

if our cultural aesthetics are going to change over time as AI art comes into it, because the way they think and the way they think about like morphology and beauty, it thinks about morphology and the concept of beauty. When you say like, make a beautiful person, like, what does that mean? Make a beautiful picture. Like, what does that mean? Cause it understands those kinds of generalized, like feeling based. Wow. Like prompts. It understands traditional beauty standards. Yeah.

That's wild. I don't know how it processes that, but you can say, make me a happy tree. And it will understand that you're asking for an emotional context connected to that image and it will create things that are crazy. Wow.

I'm uncomfortable with this. We have a, we have a question in chat that sort of relates to the AI stuff from Critter Nation 3000. When you come up with your audio sounds, are you doing that after the story is written to fit it in? Or are you coming up with sounds you want to use and then working them into the story at all? Or a little bit of both? It's,

It's, well, you write the script and in the script you write direction. And so it has all the same direction you'd have in a screenplay. It doesn't really look any different except for that when I describe action, I'm describing from a sound standpoint. I don't necessarily say this sound is here. I still do it in very like literative, normal kind of screenwriting format. But

And anyone who's interested in reading the scripts can get them by joining the Patreon, even the lowest level. Everybody gets access to the scripts. The sound, ultimately, when I get into it, I start thinking about it like a scene and like blocking a scene in filmmaking and start basically just thinking about all of the elements that are in there. And you have to, I mean, you get good, I think, at thinking about

What does a flitter sound like? What does a crash flitter sound like? And what are all the components? And so you actually, you look at people like Ben Burtt and you start researching like, okay, how is the Millennium Falcon built? Like, what are those sounds? Which we reference and actually use that sound in a previous episode, the sound of the hyperdrive failing is in our show because it's the 1929...

biplane starter sound is what it is wow another easter egg by jonathan wait and this was something we talked about off show last week or last time oh we talked about it off show i'm pretty sure we did we talked about the wilhelm scream yes being in last week's episode which i think is something people need to know we didn't talk about that on the on the after show you snuck it into last i put

I posted it on the Instagram though. So put it on the podcast. It's here now. Yeah, exactly. But you, you like putting in, it's pretty cool that you can still incorporate sci-fi Easter eggs into an audio podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I will go searching for stuff if I'm like, oh, I want something that's like, okay, what's that light? I want to hum. I want to force field hum. But well, okay, what's the light? What's a lightsaber built out of sound wise? Yeah. And then you start trying to figure out, okay, so part of it's like a TV hum and part of it's this and part of it's like a cable like being banged on.

like so there's like those things since it what what what you really get good at is like saying okay so like let's talk about how the flitter crash sound was because there's actually a lot there even though it's not there's like wind whistling in the broken window like that's a component there are like ticking sounds from like an engine after it's cooling off because I was like this engine needs to be ticking because like

that's what happens when you, when something crashes. Like when you, whenever you, if you think about the sound of after crash for me, it's always like the engine ticking or the wheel spinning, like in a movie, like that's always the sound you hear. And so I was like, there's like this little fan that keeps trying to start and failing to start that's in there too. So it's like this, like the, like the flitters, like on its last legs, like,

its last heartbeats are going and it stops actually like as you're going, but you don't know that you just feel the sound of what's going on. Right. Everything's built to that level.

Okay, this is something that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't even notice until this episode. And it's something that listeners, you'll only experience if you actually watch it, quote unquote, watch it on Twitch while we're doing this live. But the animation of the Star Hunter logo, actually, the sound waves actually go with the story, right?

Like they actually are getting louder when people are speaking and they, they, when it's completely silent, they go still. And I just didn't notice it until this episode. And that just seems like such an incredible little addition to something that's only going to occur if people are watching it.

live or listening to it live with with us and how did you is that another ai like how did you create is that happening live just after effects yeah so i mean as a you know my day job is as a is as a video editor and so i bring a lot of those tools into things that's why the teasers are so fun and and um yeah that's every show goes into i built it's a build template for each for each um

And so all the episodes in that story go into that template. Like there's, there's a reactive animation in, in our first story of the season, which is active animation. Got it. Yeah. It's audio reactive animation and you can, there's like plugins for that and stuff. And, and after effects.

I mean, it's just, it's really incredible speaking with you because this is such like, this is like your second language. And I am like a small child when you say these things where I'm like, okay, but what does that mean? But then you explain them and I'm like, oh, I got it. But it's just funny to me how like,

it's just second nature to you to know all this stuff about audio engineering when I'm like a microphone record sound. It's like 20, it's 20, gosh, 25 years of filmmaking at this point, including like post-production production and writing. So like,

I basically just took everything from filmmaking, took away the picture and have been approaching it that way. And then building out the marketing and all that stuff. Like it's just me. So that's why I don't sleep much. Yeah. My gosh, this is incredible.

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Okay, so let's talk a bit more about the episode specifically. Okay.

I mean, clearly the biggest twist, at least to me, was Yaktisi knowing about Rass's plot with Was. So why is this the episode that you revealed it in? Because honestly, like once that was revealed, I was like, this is the final episode. How do we go anywhere from here? And now we still have more to go. So why was it revealed in this episode? Because this is the episode that's about a man's

Ultimately, it's about taking stock of what got them here. Because the world has now shifted by order of magnitude. It's like they've now found this thing that is so huge and so much bigger than they are when you think about it in the big questions of things. It's like in those moments when you can't help but take stock.

And so for me, this was the hardest episode to write. It's also the smallest, kind of smallest episode in the sense that like it was all character driven, this episode. I was thinking about that. Sure they get thrown through a wall, but. Right. But there's less like, what creature is this that might murder us today? And oh, we're crashing multiple ships into the ground and all that. We also had the very cool moment of Elise's

realizing that she's been fighting with vena's own memories in this body that she's in a way borrowed how did you make sure the dialogue between these two characters since they're played by the same actress were still understandable for the podcast listeners

Well, I mean, we worked out early on that Veena had our backwater space accent, which has basically been like Southern and Creole and South African, like mixed together and things. Yeah.

And and so she's got her backwater accent. And and then Elise has kind of like it's like ultimately it's a Prince of the Pauper story. Ultimately, if you think about it, right, it's really about those two things in conflict with each other. The whole thing, Ross, everybody. It's it's all about it's all about the cultural conflict of that.

of the haves and the have nots. Right. And so she is the embodiment of those two things. So ultimately when writing the dialogue, it was just about Vena. Isn't a whole Vena inside of her mind. Vena is this fragmented kind of trapped version of her psyche. And, and so she's boiled down to like the raw emotion. And so she,

She's just this creature of anger and rage. And so you're kind of separating them based off of almost emotional...

Like their emotional, their emotions like separate them as much as any performance element. And Tiffany pulled it off so amazingly. Like I like texted her when it came out. I was like, your performance is amazing. Because she pulled it off. There's a tiny, tiny, tiny pitch shift just to give it like Venus just a hair lower, like huskier sounding, like morning sounding. But really that's it.

And they're kind of always dancing around each other. And it's funny because I remember when Vino was introduced, I remember thinking, why did he have Tiffany do this voice as well? Like, you know what I mean? Like it didn't back then. I didn't know he was going to turn out to be the same. I mean, the same person in a way, you know, I just remember thinking like, man, he really couldn't grab another actress for this role. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah. Now it makes perfect sense. Yeah, every prologue is meant to... Every prologue is really meant to kind of give you this peek into the truth. But like...

Like my favorite stories do that. They just, they don't roll out all the information out at once. So you have to put that like prologue against the prologue against the prologue against the prologue. And then, oh my God, you have the whole backstory kind of basically. It's like, it's like that. Is it the first season of Better Call Saul where you get to see these like.

He's like, yeah, you're just seeing him with these little clips in the future and you don't realize what it's all like tying into. It's very, very good storytelling. Westworld does that all the time where you have no idea where you are in time. Listen, I love Westworld and now I still want to love Westworld. And sometimes I'm like Westworld, get over yourself because you could be so cool.

And sometimes you're just like too much. Anyway, can you tell us thoughts about the current season? I'm not caught up yet though. So maybe that'll help. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm at least an episode behind in this season. Yeah. Yeah. It, it,

It's it it's set up such an unbelievably amazing first season of questions. And it's and it's and all I got to say is like the one thing you got to give it is like each season has tried to like delve into it from a different direction and ask different questions. Yes. And I love it. So it's you know, it's.

I think my biggest complaint is they set up this amazing park and then they left it in season two. And I was like, I'm not done with the park. Why did we leave the park already? Let's go. Samurai world. I just was like, yeah, I know. I know. I just wanted to see every other aspect of the park. I just wasn't ready to be put into like real world, quote unquote real world.

Anyway, this is not about Westworld. Let's hear what chat wants to say. As long as it's not an opinion about Westworld. It's not. It's more about sound. They're loving the sound. Everybody is very excited to learn how Jonathan created this amazing world. And our fabulous TD, Death Queen Vex, wants to know, what's the strangest sound effect you use? Ooh, I like that question. Yeah, it's a cool one.

Strangest sound. God, I don't know. Oh, it's probably the animal stuff. Like there is definitely a like Galapagos tortoise mating in there somewhere. Love, love. Like-

Yeah. Like actual mating. Like it's like, it's a mating call. Cause that's a, cause that was, I was looking for sounds that I could like morph in different ways. And so I started researching like what went into the Raptor in Jurassic park. And I was like, just to see how that was built out. And one of the things was a Galapagos tortoise. And I was like, Oh, let me search that. And I found like, like this thing. And I was like, okay, yeah, that's a good, that's a good, um, it's a, it's one of the sounds for the, for the, uh,

for the uh the pit dragons yeah oh nice how is creating star hunter compared to the uh other episodes of curious matter anthology i mean especially this is a five part series is this the longest one you've done well no we did a five part last season um for uh we did uh philip k dick's second variety which you guys should all listen to it is awesome yeah

This one is more complicated because the sound design is just more complicated. It just requires a lot more creature design across the board. Like second variety is kind of like a Terminator. It's the story that inspired Terminator for the people think. Two Terminator references already. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, you know, you're dealing with like robots as the fundamental sound source. And that's not the most complicated thing. There's a lot of stuff that's like people know that the transformer sound in the race. But this one, like what does a Xeno rodent sound like? It's actually more organic. It's more nature based. So.

Yeah, so you had to like, okay, what is skittering? How do you do skittering? Like, how do you do a swarm of aqua spiders? Like, I animated the blocking of like a hundred different spiders. I felt like I was in that scene for like two days. Just this one jumps, this one jumps, this one jumps. I don't need to be involved in the animation of any spiders. So that sounds...

Like my nightmare. Yeah. I should probably post some scenes without score so that you can just hear. Oh, that'd be really interesting. You definitely should. Totally. I might skip the spider one, but yes, you should post things that people can hear the animals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be very cool. The, I like the strong jaws. The strong jaws are such an interesting sound. So it's a,

There's like two things in there. There's like the strong jaw has, I don't even remember what it is. It's like a giraffe or something like, not a giraffe. It's a zebra like slowed way down and reversed at one point. And then there's also like- Slow motion reverse zebra. Exactly. There's also like chimpanzee, a lot of chimpanzee sounds in there just like super morphed.

Wow. Do you ever come up against roadblocks or anything? How do you solve problems? Because it seems to me like you're pretty good at just figuring it all out. I think that's the editor mindset in the sense that like... And I think actually that's why I can write this stuff fast and I don't hit those blocks is that there's something about when you learn to professionally video edit that you...

You just like work it. You work the problem until you fix it. You just sculpt and sculpt and sculpt and sculpt. And you don't you don't stop to think about like, am I making the right choice or am I making the wrong choice? Actually, that's kind of I was talking to somebody about this the other day. My entire way of doing this was that, you know, you can spend a lot of energy in your life trying to find perfection and trying to find that. But that's not what filmmaking is. That's not what storytelling is.

storytelling is trying to make as many effective decisions as you can. And you try, you make the best first effective decision. And in this, it's like, okay, that works. All right. I can make that work. All right. This is where it goes from. I'll start morphing off this idea. I'll start iterating off this idea. And you just,

you just work the problem consistently. And so you never run into a block because you're like, okay, I'm not finding something I like. Let me search more animals. Let me do whatever. Let me try reversing it. Let me, you just work it until it becomes effective. And then once you hit effective, you move on.

I love that reversing animal noises is like a common, I'll try reversing it. See what happens. There's a lot of reverse sound in editing, in video editing. Wow. That's fascinating. So, Elise, anything with the chat? Do we want to announce our shirt winner? Yes, I'm happy to announce it. By the way, you called me Elise, which is so funny. You know what is so funny? That came out of my mouth and I was like, that's...

that's it. That's not my brain like mashed up the show and you. You're too into the story. It's because I'm a princess. I know you are. Yes, we do have a winner of our raffle. Congratulations to Zyle the Eager.

expect a DM from us because you have won, I believe, a t-shirt. Very cool. It's what Jonathan's wearing. Is that a skull? You're going to be twins. This is Jamal. This is the planet. It looks like a skull? It is. You've watched four episodes of the show in video. This is the logo. Did I not just tell you I only today realized that the audio was moving with it?

Listen, it is a joke. We have a joke in my family that my mother likes to tell me, my brother, that we have eyes like our father because we can stare at something and ask, where is this thing? Not realizing we are looking right at it. It is a terrible trait, but it is an ongoing joke. It mainly happens when you open the fridge and you ask, where's the ketchup? And the ketchup is in front of your face.

So clearly I did not. I mean, I was so just enamored today with the moving sound lines. I didn't even look what was in the center. Yeah. Anyway, the logo.

anyway congrats to what was our winner's name? Zyle the Eager and I hope you're eager to get this t-shirt congratulations there you go alright Jonathan before we wrap this up can you give us anything about next week's finale any little hint any little tease any little it's gonna be good

It's, you know, I think everyone's going to be satisfied. There's a lot to wrap up and there's a lot to understand still. So there's still another twist. Of course there is. Of course there is. I'm still like at this point now, I want both actual Elise, not Alyssa Elise and Veena. I'm like, how do we keep them both?

Like finding out that Elise was actually dead. I'm like, no. So I'm interested to see how you wrap that. Yeah.

we will see i'm not gonna we put elise's uh uh uh mind chip whatever i can't why can i not remember the name of this but we put and graham we put that in an aqua spider there you go it's all the show for you jonathan done the alt ending

The alt ending. Love it. There you go. You can make it like Clue. Have five different endings where at least this gets put into a different weird creature that was discovered on the planet. Fun! We'll just have and vote for it like the Death of Robin. It's not the worst idea. It's close to the worst idea, but it's not the worst idea. Well, I think you will be...

You'll be pleasantly satisfied, I think. Ooh, I like that. I hope they fall in love. Listen, I love pleasant satisfaction. Who doesn't? Maybe pleasant's a strong word. Coming for me. Perhaps not pleasant. I don't know. What's the tragic word for, I'm kidding. Frustratingly satisfied. Yeah, frustratingly satisfied. There we go.

That'll be the tagline for this podcast. Star Hunter, frustratingly satisfied. Love it. Awesome. I love it so much, I threw my TV. Well, no, you threw your headphones. Oh, yeah.

There you go. Okay. Well, that about wraps things up. Of course, I would like to thank our guest and friend, Jonathan Pezza, joining us tonight. It is always so wonderful chatting with you. You are so knowledgeable with things that I am clearly not knowledgeable about at all. Please make sure to like and subscribe wherever you are listening. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook under the handle at

CM Anthology, or check us out online at www.curiousmatterpodcast.com. Our technical director tonight is Death Queen Vex. The Curious Matter After Show is presented by F and Funny and the Knightsville Workshop and distributed by Realm Media. So until next time, I'm Alison Hayslip. This is Alyssa DeVries and we've been your hosts. Keep your memory and plant close and thanks so much for listening. The Fable and Falling Network, where fiction producers flourish.

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