“WHILE REASON SLEEPS,” 
Popular New Audio-Theater Series Turns Reality On Its Ear 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Elizabeth D. Bickford
April 5, 2005 (804) 683 - 6114
edbrnwi@yahoo.com

It’s the morning drive-time commute and you’re ready for the freeway. On the road, you pop a CD in the player, ready to enjoy one of the new audio stories from Lion’s Den Studios’ ‘While Reason Sleeps’ series. As the traffic and scenery rushes by, the corners of your mind are filled with the unique sounds and stories created for just such an occasion--stories that transport you onto a space-ship; into the future on another planet; to the scene of a crime, or into the life of someone like yourself, but now dealing with the bizarre, the unusual, or the terrifying. Long drives and trips in the car or motor-home seem shorter, easier and more enjoyable as you enter the fictional and exciting world of the mind’s eye. 

Hearing is believing, and now audiences can enjoy this excellent series, with the release of ‘While Reason Sleeps’. This on-going series is now available on CD from Lion’s Den Studios in Virginia, where professional actors, writers, sound engineers, and producers are working to create just those types of sensual sounds and way-out stories, much like radio’s Golden Era. Even for those not old enough to remember “The Shadow,” or “The Green Hornet,” these audio productions will be a discovery modern audiences will treasure, too. Production of new stories will continue indefinitely for fans of the genre to enjoy into the future.

Not an ‘audio-book’ or ‘spoken word’ product like ‘books on tape’, each CD has two half-hour stories, and are sold in sets of two CDs. They are currently available for purchase over the web, at www.whilereasonsleeps.com or by calling 1-888-289-9770. Each set retails for $19.95. Unlike TV or film, these presentations are ideal for hands-free listening--while working around the home; on long drives, such as your morning commute to work, for truck-drivers, or as an interesting diversion for your daily workout. They are also wonderful for the visually impaired or the elderly. Original, first-run stories are created as theatrical presentations that are solely intended for the audio medium, utilizing voices, music and amazing sound effects. Programs are mentally engaging, interactive, and are also good for students learning English.

“The ‘While Reason Sleeps’ series is designed to have unique and intriguing stories with the main function of having a ‘twist’ at the end that the audience doesn’t see coming,” said Lion’s Den Studios’ Darryl Cheek. “ While our roots are in the suspense-thriller genre, we are branching out to include virtually any type of genre, as long as it has our two main factors. One, a story that is well-told with plot and character development to keep the audience’s attention, until they get to our second main factor of the story, the twist.” 

The first step in production of each story is the development of a script that fits the criteria of a good yarn, and a good twist. In general, the head writer goes through a number of re-writes with the author of each submission, to get the best story possible. “It’s a very challenging style of writing, because you have to get a good, involved story across without any visual cues, in a very short length of time,” said staff writer Ward Compton. Once a script is finalized, casting for vocal actors takes place. “The majority of our actors are involved in local theater in the Richmond area and have a wide variety of acting credits, from stage, to television, to motion pictures,” Cheek said. “We also have several voice professionals that regularly do voice-over projects for business and corporate interests, as well as a handful of radio personalities.” 
Each story also has a completely new group of actors, he added. “It’s all about getting the right actor for the role, and having different voices for the series in its entirety,” he said.

The series is recorded and produced at the LDS sound studios and facilities in Ashland, Virginia. The audio studio is a 1700 sq ft. space that was custom built for production proposes. It has a 9x10-foot drum pit (which is also used for vocal work if needed) and four isolation booths that can be used for vocal or instrument recording. The whole thing is brought together by a custom patch-bay system that lets engineers direct any signal to anywhere within the matrix. 

On production day, LDS producers bring in all the actors for one scene at a time, set up the tone levels, and roll. A normal recording takes roughly three hours to get the vocals down for the script. The next step is post-production, which is where the sound engineer puts the tracks together, as well as adding sound effects. 
“To define any sound we first try to find something that either sounds very close to it without being the original, or create an effect via electronic manipulation that serves the same purpose,” Cheek said. “We create many of the sound effects manually, especially those that have some physical aspect to them, such as a punch, or someone falling down. If it’s feasible to do physically, we try it. If not, we let a little electronic magic do the job. The main thing we try to watch out for is repetitiveness of the effects, meaning we don’t want a punch in one episode being the exact same punch in another. Same goes with specific sound effects in terms of altering the human voice.”

Cheek points out that the pinnacle of radio-drama was in the 1930’s and 40’s when radio still held sway before television. There was a reason the original ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast caused so much panic in the country, because it was aired over the most popular and wide-spread media format of the time, he said. But in today’s world, radio drama is best described as ‘the media that time forgot.’ There are so many choices for entertainment in the modern age, that there is barely any room for a type of media from the past. But this is something LDS would like to change. For information on the series, stories, writers, actors or Lion’s Den Studios, or to order, log onto http://www.whilereasonsleeps.com, or call 888-289-9770.