Student Radio Association

The Super Hero’s Girlfriend

Synopsis

There is a general consensus that it’s not easy being a super hero.  There’s even a song about it.  But do you know what’s even harder? Being a super hero’s girlfriend.  You have to deal with the fragile hero ego, and tights are tough to clean.  Alice has been dating Captain Wonderful for three years now, and what she hates most is constantly being kidnapped. Like today.  She thought she would do the shopping, but instead finds herself hanging upside down over a pit of lava exchanging barbs with the lamest wannabe super villain yet.  Will she escape, or will she convince Dr. Awful to re-brand to something more menacing?

Concept

I started writing this sketch over the summer while I was working at a rarely-visited help desk in the middle of a mall, and therefore had vast swaths of time to kill.  I’d watched a super hero movie where the hero’s love interest was kidnapped and used as bait, which is what always happens, and I got to thinking how it must get tiresome, being constantly kidnapped.

I felt this reversal perspective had a lot of room for sillyness and satire, and the situation of a nonplussed super hero's girlfreind dealing with an inadequate villain conjured up strong characters in my mind immediately.  This lead to one of those rare cases where it feels like you're taking dictation.

As a result I knew what the characters should sound like, which made it easier to cast and direct the actors.  My friend Marie Horner, who is also works as a broadcast journalist, had the perfect dry tone for Alice.  While watching an episode of the children's tv show "Knightmare" my friend Martin Lane emulated the voice of the dungeon master, which was such a perfect mix of sinister patheticness that he unintentionally cast himself.

Production

I wanted to create a nice sense of space, as the I imagined Dr. Awful’s lair to be in an underground cave or the heart of a volcano.  This started while recording the actors.  The auxiliary mics in our studio needed to record multiple actors at once were over-sensitive and had a tendency to have a strong hiss, so I recorded at lower-than-normal levels, and also panned one mic to the right and the other to the left to give a sense of location for the actors in the recording.  For the voice over at the beginning of the piece, I wanted a differentiation in sound before joining the action, so that was recorded on the main presenter mic.

I found boiling water noises which I then used the “stretch” tool to both slow down and lower in pitch so that is sounded more like lava and added sound effects such as typing and rustling papers to make the action to create a vivid audio environment. 

Although I wanted the sense of space that adding an echo to a recording provides, I was concerned that this would become grating. Ultimately I did use a light echo to give the proper sense of space and location.

It was so satisfying seeing a project from beginnging to end, and really exciting when I receieved such positive reactions from those who listened to it.  Everyone laughed, some people continued quoting lines from the sketch for weeks and asked when I was going to write another "Dr. Awful" sketch.  This great reaction, combined with the strength of the characters and situation, has lead me to consider writing a serialized story that could be a recurring sketch a comedy show or stand on its own.

Thanks for your consideration!