The Aftermath

That all took place in 1993. Since then, even to this day, Adam and I and others still enjoy listening to Galactic. The show did turn out very well, and although it does have problems, it’s still fun to listen to. I had always toyed with the idea of continuing the series, but could never gather the energy to write more stories and create more productions since I was a busy student working a part time job, and working at the radio station. It was just too unfeasible, and besides, I really didn’t know where I wanted to go with the series. Brett and Lee would chase down Barth Hornet and retrieve Lisa, but then what? I wasn’t sure what would happen next and didn’t want to think about it too much (with work, classes, exams, papers, etc.), and just decided to leave the story as completely stand-alone.

However, I was fully aware of the problems with the production, and they have bugged me ever since I finished the final edit. These include:

• Some dialogue needed more development.
• Some bad acting that I really couldn’t do anything about.
• A bad final mix with some harsh sibilance, due to improper equalization when I did the final recording transfer.
• And I thought the story was really underdeveloped.
• Some of the editing wasn’t as tight as I had wanted.
• Adding additional sound effects on the second track to mix with the already-recorded track created some problems. The biggest problem I hear is when Brett, Lee and Harry arrive at the Space Center cafeteria. I had to overlay cafeteria sound effects to add Harry’s modified voice segments, and the cafeteria sfx on top of cafeteria sfx just created a cacophony of noise. Also, the office sfx include the clackety-clacking of typewriters and older-fashioned telephones ringing, from more of a 1970s office environment.
• I wasn’t satisfied with Lisa’s character. I should have made her character serious from the beginning, rather than a “pretend bimbo.” I think the humor possibilities would have been greater if she was serious all the time.
• Rebel Empire? Why was that the best I could come up with?

When I listened to it later, after it was turned in for the grade, I thought it wasn’t edited as tightly as I had wanted. I never saw a real need to improve it, though, since only some close friends and I were the only audience. But today we have digital editing we can do on our very own home computers, thanks to the awesome freeware program Audacity, a simple and but effective graphical audio editing program. Audacity is kind of like a completely stripped-down ProTools. It lacks most of ProTools’s bells and whistles, but accomplishes the same thing. Audacity is available here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I have always thought it would be cool to improve Galactic, similar to the new versions of Star Wars episodes 4, 5 and 6, or the Directors Edition of Star Trek the Motion Picture. But I don’t have any real need to re-record dialogue or improve the sound effects. Galactic is what it is. However, when I recently recorded Galactic onto my computer, I was finally able to tighten up some the editing using Audacity.

The episode of the Galactic Star Force Power Squad available for free download on this website is exactly as it was when I turned it in as a final project in the class, EXCEPT that some of the editing is tighter, with fewer gaps in between scenes and lines of dialogue. Call it the “directors edition” if you like, although I am probably the only person who will ever notice the changes.

So that’s the story. I hope you enjoy listening to Galactic as much as I still do today, over ten years after I created it. When you are finished listening, please email me your comments, so I can post them here.