The latest weekly podcast by our friends Matthew and Robert at Yap Audio Production explores why audio is a particularly powerful medium for fantasy. One of the guests on the show is Domien De Groot – “the Tolkien of audio drama” – who shares the story of how his career began.
“Fantasy is really what got me in to doing audio drama in the first place. I discovered it because of the BBC dramatisations of the Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. That’s when I fell in love with the medium. I thought ‘what is so wonderful about this is you can create this whole world, and you can see things, without actually having to film them, or create them.’
As an audience you can just experience them in your own mind’s eye, and I’m sure a lot of people will point out that that’s the same thing a book does…but a book doesn’t allow you to close your eyes. And I think when you close your eyes, your imagination just becomes that much more powerful. So I think fantasy is a natural way to go when you’re doing audio drama.”
Domien De Groot
Yap’s Audio Drama Production Podcast is an invaluable resource, whether you’re interested in experimenting with the medium or have been producing for years.
Matthew and Robert are currently working on a fictional VoiceMap in Edinburgh.