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Interviews and conversations with the most prolific and talented audio drama creators.
Welcome to Audio Drama Insiders,
the podcast giving you the lowdown on the most
prolific and talented creators in the industry.
And now, here your hosts, Craig Hart and
Trisha Rose. Now welcome back to
another episode of Audio Drama Insiders. I'm your host, Craig
Hart, here with my indefatigable cohost, Trisha Rose.
I actually don't know what that means. I just wanted to see if I could
pronounce it. So hello there, Trisha. How are you doing? I'm doing
well. At least I think I was until you
called me fat. Did you just call me fat? I'm pretty sure you guys didn't
call me fat. Did I? I take great umbrage at that.
Umbridge. Now you have to have the umbrage.
We have a special guest today, Daniel Hancock. We've been meaning to have him on
for quite a while and he got caught in,
shall we say, hiatus again of Audio Drama Insiders. So he was
really patient and was willing to come back and help us out. But
Daniel Hancock is a multi talented creator and the founder of Terminus
Media. With a passion for storytelling across various
formats, Daniel has made contributions to the worlds of comics,
audio drama, and more. Recently, Daniel has expanded into
film production, directed a true crime featurette, and relocated
to Florida to work at an animation studio. Through Terminus
Media, Daniel creates original content and offers creative
services emphasizing storytelling that is entertaining,
educational, and enlightening. Daniel, thanks for joining us. Man, that
sound good with all that stuff. Look at you, Trevor. Right? You can use that.
That's free. Thanks for thanks for that. I really appreciate it.
It's good to be here. Thanks. Absolutely. So
I wanted to ask you initially. I mean, this show typically is about audio
drama. So let's start off, with that even though you do a lot of other
things that we'll get to. But tell us a little bit about end of
darkness. What inspired you to make it? Some of the process that went behind it.
Because I was just looking at some of the production shots you did, and it
really looked in-depth, you guys. There's a lot of attention to detail. So take us
through that maybe from the beginning of the inspiration into how you,
got it finished and got it out there to the to the waiting public. Awesome.
Yeah. End of darkness is a great project and, really a
long long time in the making and planning. Originally, it
was written as a stage production, so that kinda goes back to, Bible
actress productions and a small correction there. I actually am not the founder of Terminus
Media. Oh. I, I'm I'm came alongside of them later,
but I was the founder of Bible Actors Productions, which was a theater,
production team. I actually started that group when I was 14 and
we kind of continued to grow from there and got bigger and bigger and
kinda culminated in that end of darkness audio drama as
everybody got, married and had babies, and we couldn't
tour the state like a vagabond group anymore. And so we
decided to, settle down into adulthood and do an audio production.
And, and so that's how that kind of translated from
stage, which was a very, very ambitious stage, production as it
was. It just a huge cast bigger than we had attempted before.
So we never did stage that play, but it was, exciting to try to work
out that story and work get it together. An audio drama was a good fit
for that because with the large cast, we could have people come in for a
much smaller commitment than months of rehearsals and touring and and doing
everything to do a project like this. So there's actually 50 voice actors
that performed in there. Yeah. A lot of them are smaller parts, you know, but
a good amount of them are throughout the entire thing. And so that's a lot
of voices to juggle, a lot of talent to to just to audition and
cast was a big deal to try to figure out how to have everybody. But
and we didn't even have, you know, obviously all the things that Jesus did and
and everything. But it's the story of the gospel, you know, and kind of
a unique perspective as far as the scripting goes. You know, we we
took a a nonlinear approach to the storytelling, kind
of brought some focus to some of the characters that you don't
always get to hear from and see. Put them put us in the
shoes of those characters and let us kind of experience the gospel story
through that. And then, like you mentioned, we had we did some photography work.
We did a bunch of still I think we did something like 40 still
photos that go along and correlate with the audio. Those
looked great by the way. Yeah. Very cool. And it really one of the
reasons why we were thinking to do that, it was just experimental. All of this
was experimental. We had never produced an audio drama before. So this
was a theater troupe, all volunteers, nobody was everybody was
doing this on a ministry basis, you know. So,
it is, you know, a great project for that reason as well
just because the people who are a part of it were very committed, very dedicated
to the work that we were doing, to the message. And you
can feel the, you know, you can feel the love and the commitment in that
in the performances and in the, you know, in the end product there.
And then brought in, musicians to create original score
and we did a fully cinematic style sound design,
huge dynamic range, which causes all kinds of problems for mixing and
mastering. And, retailers have a problem with that sometimes.
Right. But yeah. But it, yeah. It turns out to be quite the project. It's
a it's a great rendition of the gospel stories. It, is
powerful. I think it's got some great, moments with
characters in there. And, another great thing too with
with it as we moved it from the the stage script to the original,
one to the audio drum, we expanded it. So it's 3 and a half hours
long. So it's like binge watching a Netflix series or something like that
when you go through it. And even then we didn't cover everything. We didn't cover
all of the gospel beats and every single miracle and all the things that happened.
But, but a lot of them. A lot more than would be covered in a
typical film, for instance, which has to hit, you know, you know, an hour and
a half, 2 hours, you know, and then that's pretty much what we usually get
is kind of a a very truncated, presentation of the
gospel story. And so with audio drama, we said, why not? You
know, long form audio is coming back into style again. We said, let's expand this
out. Let's expand this out. Let's do more of it. And so a couple of
the things was we we did include more of the scenes, more of the beats
of the of the gospel narrative, but also a lot of the teachings of Jesus
are included in the audio kind of uncut.
You know, where instead of, you know, you get three lines from the beatitudes and
then it fades to the next scene, you know, or what you have to do
with a movie, you know, you kinda can't you can't expect people to to watch
an entire sermon, you know, in a movie theater. It gets a little bit
challenging to do that. I believe, you know, shows like The Chosen TV
shows and and things are starting now to be able to do that over a
television. It's a little easier to spread it out. Mhmm. But normally,
a lot of the previously the gospel stories couldn't really incorporate all those things
that Jesus said, but we did in this. So I would say we didn't include
every word that he spoke to everybody, like, so every interchange with the
Pharisees or things like that. They're not all included, but all of
the general teachings of Jesus are included. So if you listen
to end of darkness, you basically heard the things that he taught, you know,
which is good. I I like it for my kids, you know, because they can
pop it on and listen to it and and, you know, you kinda it's
kinda rare that we do that, you know, like, listen to the entire thing that
he said, but the whole the whole thought, you know. And so
there's a lot of that in there as well. So and then, of course, it
gets really dramatic and cinematic, you know, in the style that
we do, the the crucifixion, resurrection, and all that too. So it's a lot of
fun. Well, that's really fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing that insight. As again,
as I was listening to it and as somebody who has, you know, produced
some audio dramas, it's just the amount of work is stunning.
Like, I don't know that I think when you see a movie, you get, like,
a it's easier to understand, I think, the amount of work, and certainly audio
dramas can be produced with a lower budget and what or whatnot. But
they still are very technical, and they take a lot of work. And,
the detail that goes into them is pretty incredible. But your work is not
just audio dramas. And I should say, by the way, that I asked Daniel if
he was going to produce any more audio dramas. He said, maybe. So maybe
if everybody who listens to this hassles him enough, he
will grace us with another one. But Well, I did I
did get to work on another one recently, actually. So Yeah. Tell us about The
Happy Place. Yeah. The Happy Place. That's another audio drama. So I I,
you know, end of darkness broke me. No. I'm kidding.
Well, you started out big. You started out Yeah. It's one of those
ridiculous bit off more than you can chew crazy stupid things that we did.
Right? It's like, why don't you try our hand at audio drama? 3 and a
half hours 50 voices original score. It's like, you
know, we don't know what we're doing. And so we found our way through it,
you know, and it but it took a long time, a long road of doing
it, and a lot of it was me. My name's on the in the credits.
Too many times, it's embarrassing. But but the point is is that, you
know, it can be done, but it just is an an enormous,
commitment of time really and and of talent as well, but
time, you know, really a lot of time to, to produce something like
that. So thankfully, I, you know, I wasn't really anticipating doing more
audio drama right off the bat. But, almost immediately upon
finishing it, it got around and I was hired by a veteran
director, Barry Cook, who is the director of Disney's
Mulan, Roger Rabbit stuff. He did,
you know, a bunch of you know, he worked on Tron all the way back.
You know, he's like the the the old school awesome days
of Disney. He was the guy. Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, those ones.
You know? And so awesome guy. He's become a great friend of mine.
And, I actually just got off a call with him before this week because we
just, minutes ago, published his, new
book, the gumdrop ghost. It's a children's book,
where where a ghost gets stuck in a kid's gumdrop on Halloween. Hilarious.
And tiny little ghost, and he's stuck in there, and they're trying to figure out
how to get him out. So we we've had fun together. We've done a lot
of projects now. And, but this one that that he had at the time, he
had heard end of darkness and was looking for someone to help him
complete, an audio drama that he had, written
during COVID. And so I came alongside of him and the happy place
is, not as family friendly or faith based as end of
darkness, but, it still has kinda undercurrents of
faith in those tones in there, but it's more grown up. And, it's it's
about a a hippie on his way to Woodstock who gets murdered by an
angry Vietnam vet for talking to his wife, and
then he turns into a ghost and you got a whole, like, kinda hijinks comedy
goes on from there, you know, as he tries to haunt the guy into
confessing. Yeah. No. It's got a classic
rock kinda soundtrack going on. We had a great time, and I did the sound
design primarily and did a lot of editing and planning and stuff with that. There's
a novelization of it as well. It's a little novella that that was on
Amazon as well. So those are both fun to check out and the gumdrop ghost.
You know? Cool. But that was my other little entrance into, into audio drama.
But you were saying, I I think you're trying to switch to something else.
No. No. That that's totally fine. So your work
spans comics, audio dramas,
and now film and animation. How do these different media
forms complement each other in
storytelling? Yeah. I mean, each medium has its
own strengths, I think, you know, with
stage. And I know I I thought read about this, talked about this a
while ago, you know, stage and see it, you know, theater work, but
then novelization and film all kind of have their
own distinct focus with film. It's very
visual. Stage tends to, funny enough, be kind of
auditory. It's all about the dialogue that the back and forth between
characters, kinda, Shakespearean influence there. And then novels are all
inside the characters heads. It's all about the pros and the descriptions
and thought processes. It's very different, like, more than we might think. It's not
just a difference of the medium itself, you know, it's a book versus a play
versus a movie, but rather the whole approach to the storytelling
changes. You're thinking visually, you're thinking conversationally,
you know, conflict, you know, interpersonal in in the theater
space and then internal. A lot of times novels do a great
job of internal conflict. Sometimes that's why they struggle to adapt
novels to film for instance, because they're all about the
internal conflict in the person's journey, and they're like, how do we make that
into a visual you blockbuster. And sometimes it
works and sometimes it doesn't. And it it takes a bit of craft, you know,
to be able to do that. And it takes a bit of, creativity. You know,
you gotta kinda get clever with how are we going to move that into that
other medium. So audio drama and comics are kind of fun for me because
they're they're kinda like these, you know, hybrid mediums where
you've got in in audio drama, you have both
the audio that you the the auditory conversational
kind of nature of theater, but then the
more cinematic effects of music and sound
effects and the other things that come from usually traditionally with film. So you're
able to bring some of that in. So for me, that was great because I
love that part of the filmmaking process of being able to do music and
create interesting, emotion through those things. And
so with writing novels, which I've never really gotten into writing
novels, I edit. I have edited novels and I help with that. But
I haven't written novels because of that, I think. I'd be I feel like it
strips away too much of my my need for emotional,
you know, lifelines of music and sound to be able to do that
in visuals, you know. So but, yeah, audio dramas like that in comics is
interesting too in the same way because it's kind of a
hybrid, without the audio and the music and the things that you
normally would use there. But yet it has the the conversational
aspects of theater or what you might see in audio drama, you know, where you
have this kind of back and forth dialogue stuff going on, you know, and
novels where you can have the internal journey kind of being, you know,
drawn out through a comic book story. But it's very visual,
you know, so it's all about these you can make anything
in a comic book which is what's great about the ones that I've done. I
do these science fiction series and and, you know, kind of
reimagining biblical stories, things like that. And that
allows for a lot of of room to be able to do it because
there's no budgetary difference between drawing a guy sitting at a
diner and somebody blowing a ship up in space. You know,
like, it it there's no there's no difference in, you know, whereas with
film, you know, there's a huge, you know, disparity between these. But with a
with a comic book panel, I can say, I want the guy to be, you
know, trying to fix a weather vane on that barn, you know, or
launching off of a planet or, you know, ripping the Java lion
open or, you know, like, whatever thing we want it to be, we can make
it. So so it's a beautiful medium for me because there's just no restrictions.
It's write what you wanna write, and it's really immediate too. With the turnaround,
I can write something and within a few days, working with the art team, and
there it is. It exists. You know, the visual crazy thing that I
come up with is is there on the page. So the immediacy of that is
great. In that way, I actually find comic books to be tied to theater as
well because, where with film, you've
got this long road of you you putting all these
pieces together. This is very, very, collaborative. There
are a lot of moving parts, a lot of personnel, you know, that are doing
different aspects of something like that. And then you don't really see the
end product for for years, you know, before it finally
comes out, you know, and so many hands have touched it and it's very different,
you know, by the time you see it. With theater, you have that kind of
immediate, reward of the audience reaction. You
get to go out there every night. We had a great time with our theater
troop on those types of things. It's a great kinda kinetic energy that happens when
you're performing a a play, and comics have been that way for me too
because of the turn our turnaround speed and our ability to produce things quickly.
It happens to, like, to be a similar feeling. You know, you get that immediate
response of, hey. Check this out. You know, we already got it done. But, yeah,
audio drama, film, they take a little longer and, you know, you're kinda doing it
in booths and in, like, little side groups, and you shot that then, and you
weren't there the day that we did that. And, you know, and then it kind
of all has to slowly come together. But so just different things, different
strengths. But the one thing that stays true is they're all
storytelling. You know, you're you're trying to tell a story. You're trying
to elicit emotion, you know, communicate
experiences through any anything that you're,
you know, any one of these mediums can be done effectively. But it does take
a little bit to learn the, conventions of that medium,
you know, the expectations of the consumer who's going to be receiving that.
Theater audiences are not the same as film audiences. Comic books and
audio dramas are very different crowds, you know, and they have different,
expectations, you know, what they're gonna see with that and and different
storytelling language. I've, with comics, you know,
there's things like the, number of panels on a page about
how the pacing goes because of that. How many verbs I can put in
my script. My co creator for the Dominion comic book series,
which is our main one that I'm talking about, Dominion, Fall of the House of
Saul, which is a a sci fi adaptation, sci sci
fantasy really adaptation of the story of Saul and
Jonathan, David and Goliath in space with anthropomorphic
animal characters. So you get to yeah. I mean, it's it's
crazy, but it's pretty cool. You know, think Star Wars, Marvel kind of
space, like, that's kind of where you would imagine to see it. And, and so
it's very fantastic, you know, planets and space. So it's planet Gibea
and Bethlehem is this little backwater planet where David grew up
and all of these, these different characters
like Samuel is a crow Wow. You know, from the ancient priesthood
that shows up, you know, and rips the robe. You know, Saul rips his
robe and the kingdom is torn from him. You know, so there's spaceships going back
and forth. I'm working on the witch at Endor right now who opens a portal
to speak to Samuel, and it's just very, very like, that story in
and of itself is just waiting to be done like that in this kind of
big grand Yeah. Thing. So we've been having a great time with that. But,
yeah, very visual, very, very exciting to be able to bring those things
out. My cocreator is doctor Baron Bell. He is a
professor of art and design at Liberty University, and so he's the
primary artist for our books. And so I would write the script pages for
this this series, and he'd come back and be like, dude, you can't have
14 verbs on a page because a verb is a panel.
Right? A verb is a is a drawing. Right? It's a an action
is a it has to be drawn. So I had to become really conservative with
how many like, with the screenplay, you want as many verbs as you could fit
on a page. Right? Like, things happening everywhere. Like, that's how that's how I'm, you
know, trying to write all the time. I like a lot of things happening, but
I had to get kind of selective and be like, okay. What images do
I actually need to see happening on this page? And so that's been really
helpful. But there's just a whole language to it. You know, there's a whole, like,
thought process to page turns, for instance. Like, how do you turn the
page? What happens at the end of a page that makes you turn the page?
What happens at the top of the next page that surprises you? You know? And
so there's, like, even the layout of the book, you know, has a
language to it. You know, it's the same way as audio drama. You know, they
they all have their own their own kind of conventions, their own kind of way
of of bringing that story out. So very fun stuff. That
that is fascinating. And it like, each medium, as you mentioned, has
its own conventions, and things don't always translate. So it's
that when you have somebody who's multitalented, like, you work you work in different
things, the education behind that is pretty impressive.
So you've worked in all the different things, but what I have
wondered is the commonality is story, as as you mentioned.
But what do you think it is about story
that keeps people coming back for more regardless of the medium?
We're talking about story that people have sat around campfires for as long as
humans have been around telling these things, these stories. What is about story
and humanity that brings people together do you think? Going
deep and going home. That wasn't even on my list of questions either.
Well, it all goes back to my childhood, really. No. I'm kidding.
No. No. So yeah. I mean, I think it's inherent in all of us
that, you know, I think we think in stories. We dream
in stories. I think that our lives are stories, you
know, and that we are on a journey of sorts. Each
person is kind of on their own journey. And so in a lot of ways,
these stories that we tell, the whatever medium they end up coming
through, they help us to to think about where
we're at in our own journey, to face things and to
contemplate things that we might not have come across. Maybe we never
will or maybe we will in the future, you know? And, and
so reading good good stories, watching great
movies, listening to awesome audio dramas,
reading comic books can kind of prepare us, you
know, in advance to be able to think through issues and ask
ourselves big questions that we wouldn't necessarily have done. It definitely
enriches your life to do so. I told my niece this a
while ago, we were talking, I said, you can extend your life. You can live
multiple lifetimes inside of one life. If you could do that, would you do that?
Would you live the would you live life a 100 times over from a 100
different perspectives? That's what storytelling does for us. Right? We
we go, we sit down, we read a book, even if it's like a non,
like an a non fiction book, like a a biography or something like this.
I'm working on the Frederick Douglass material right now. We haven't talked about that yet,
but great one. Hero Autobiographies is
this thick. You know? And, that story, I sit
down, I read that book. How long does it take me to read that? Maybe
a couple of weeks if it if I'm slow. Right? But I just went
through the guy's life. I just lived an entire life of of another
person in 2 weeks, you know? And and so I have
extended my life, and I've done that many times over as I've read
books, as I've watched movies, listened to things. So
it's immensely powerful because you're learning all the wisdom, all the
mistakes of those people, all of the challenges that they've overcome, and
it can be extremely rewarding and strengthening to your own life. So I think
that's part of the reason why. But then, of course, there's the entertainment value too.
Like, you know, we wanna be thrilled. We want to, you know, have fun. We
want to go on adventures, go to places we've never been before. And so it's
like, yeah, you go to you go to Italy or Spain or, you
know, Australia, you know, all from the quiet of your home. Right. Right? Or
you can go to middle earth or, you know, wherever you whatever you need to
do. Right? Like, go go go to new places, go to planet Gibea,
you know, and experience it and be, you know, just enraptured by
a new a new story, a new place, an imagination. And,
speaking of imagination, I think CS Lewis talked about,
I think it was maybe Tolkien or Lewis or maybe the 2 of them at
the table together talking about the baptism
of the imagination. You know, I think it was Lewis, he said,
that reading fantasy stories baptized his
imagination and the rest of them took a little longer. Yeah. And so a lot
of what I've been trying to do with my books and stories and and work
is to even through the gospel story, the the end of darkness audio drama,
in the way that it's being presented is to baptize the imagination,
is to bring that out, that ignite that fire in your chest,
that thing that makes you go, you know, wow, rises up in you and you
go you're looking for something greater, something bigger. And that can be done through
the storytelling itself. Not just with inspirational stories or
spiritual content, but with just through the storytelling itself can do that. You
know, it can it can elevate your thinking. It can elevate you to a place
of being able to to contemplate things in a deeper way and be fun at
the same time. You know, that's what that's that's the challenge is to try to
do both. Going back to something else you're you were talking about, you know, for
example, you can only have so many verbs who are paid for a
comic. Do you find the cons that those kinds of constraints
on creativity freeing, or do you are those
confining to you? I would say the the more confined
the sandbox, the better the sand castle you'll make. Yeah.
Right? So, you know, like, that's the way I like to think of it. Yeah.
The the the tools that you have to tell your story with
being limited have produced some of the greatest
stories in history. Right? And so we and and definitely in
my own my own work, that has been the case. It forces
innovation, it forces creativity, to happen. For
instance, you know, you mentioned the verbs on a page with the comics, definitely that's
a constriction. How much space you have, how much I call it real estate
you have on a page, forces you to make sure that the things that you
are putting on the page deserve to be there. You know, if I had
unlimited pages, I might have a very fat and un unappealing
story by the time I got done. Right? But the the knowing that I
have 100 pages to tell a story, right, and I have to
fit all of this in there, it means that I cut the things that don't
need to be the the things that are not necessary. So that's great. Audio
drama is another one where the, where
sometimes those things are the the seeming constraints are
actually freeing. Mhmm. For instance, with film, you have
the control, complete control over the visuals of what the
audience sees. So if I want them to see I was just talking about my
Frederick Douglass short film that we're working on called The Runaway Plot.
Mhmm. And I took a a napkin here, and I said,
you know, this is how I want the cotton to be, and I want the
hand to come in and they take it like this, you know. And when I
do that and I said there's nothing in the background, it's all depth of field,
you know, you can't see that. And so I'm talking to the animation director here
about this. This is how that shot's gonna be set up. What are the audience
is gonna be seeing when they do that? Exactly and only what I want them
to be looking at. There's nothing else there's nothing else to do that that
is I'm controlling that. But the interesting thing is
is that that's a that's a constraint. They can't see everything. They
cannot see everything. So it can be both at the same time freeing
because I have the control, but then constraining because you can't really
capture everything all at once. Whereas with theater, you're in
the theater and you may you you don't have that kind of control to
be able to say you have to look here. You have to do it creatively.
You have to say, how do I force them to pay attention to the the
character that I want with lighting, blocking, with
expression, with with dialogue that forces them to look at the
person that's key in this scene. Right? How do you do that? So there's the
constraints on that side. With audio drama though, there's a kind of
freeing element which I like, which you guys will probably appreciate. But it's
that the audience gets to decide what they're seeing. And so while
I get to guide it and direct it, and I definitely do that with the
with the spacing of sound design and music and other things like that
to in to inspire it. The perspective, the blocking of a
shot for instance, like, when I want Jesus and the thieves to be
talking on the crosses, I I I can mix and master that
a certain way so that you feel the
spatial blocking that I want you to I want this is a wide shot. Oh,
but now we're zooming in on this guy. Right? Like Mhmm. And so
you're guiding the camera in the audience's mind to do this,
but each person has experienced end of darkness differently. They
all have blocked it in their own minds. They've all put those those
images together. And somebody actually wrote in and said
that they felt like listening to that audio drama was like watching
an m Night Shyamalan movie where you can't see the monster and you never see
it. Oh, wow. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. You know, you
never you never see the monster, and so it's more terrifying in your mind because
you you couldn't ever get a good look at it. Right? And so they
said that the crucifixion sequence was beyond what anybody could have
done on a film a film set because of the
imagination of the viewer. They they're taking it and your mind is running with
it. It creates a better movie than you could ever make and,
you know, and isolate into one shot. You know? So it, it's
interesting how that works, you know, because, yes, everybody kind of has
their own movie playing. So it's both restricting.
You don't have any visuals to work with. You cannot, you know, you you don't
have that that luxury of being able like, I want them to see this. I
want to to show that. You had to find a way to do it. But
if you can, it actually is a is a beautiful thing because they can
they can piece that together for themselves as they and it really becomes
personal and experiential at that point. I think that's why, you know, I've
talked to some people about audio drama, how it can
feel so visceral to a person. Mhmm. Because as
you you said, it sort of attaches itself
to if, say, if it's a horror story, it attaches itself to their specific
fears because everybody has different fears. Right. It's all that unknown.
It taps into this for each person. It's so personal, and it's going
right into your ears, and it's like, you know, it can be as exciting
and terrifying and freeing. And it's a great medium.
I want to talk about collaborative efforts, because I see this happening
more. And I think it's generally a good thing. With
indie producers getting together. And with the rise of technology
now, people with lower budget can do more things, and I think that's
amazing. You've clearly are experienced in collaborative
efforts. What do you think are some of the keys to doing that
successfully? Well, I think each project is different. Each
collaboration and relationship is different. It really just
depends on what you need, but I think the the main the
main key is to do what my friend,
Jason Kipper always says and put the aces in their places. You
know, and, finding the right people for the right jobs.
If you can get that, the even a very small team is actually my
preference, to work with a very tight smaller team
with really, really focused and talented people who know what they're
doing in that area. And, I've tried my best in my
especially in my theater days working with very large groups, you know,
sometimes 50 or more people working on a project. End of
Darkness actually with all the musicians and all the extras in the background, we
had over a 150 people that volunteered on it, to work on
the project. So there's that, but then the theater productions would often have 40 or
so, maybe 50 people working on a on a given thing and being
able to delegate the right to the right person to say
I I had I had found, thankfully, an amazing team of people
where I would not have to worry about the aspects that they
were in charge of. You know? And so definitely, I would say that's the the
primary thing is really finding people who you click with, and coming
together on the vision. And and having a clear vision is probably the
other major factor, and that's the, you know, the primary
role of a director is to be able to present that vision to
cast a a clear image in the mind of the team
of what we're trying to attain. And once you get those
talented people in the right places on the team, and you can if you can
create that vision and make sure that everybody is kind of pulling
in the right direction, that's where it really starts to sing, and
everybody will bring their own strengths and giftings
to that process. Yeah. I heard somebody say one time that, you think he
was talking about specifically about leading collaborative efforts. It's like the one of the key
is is to as you were saying, find the right people for the positions
and then get the heck out of their way. Yeah. Exactly. Say heck. But,
like, you get the point. Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely, I agree with
that. And and, you know, I also you know, one of the other things is
I try to give as much authority to the people who worked
under me in those roles as possible. You know? So I would
say if it's a problem that you can fix, then fix it. You know?
Like, you don't need me to to be involved unless I need to
be. And if you do have to come to me with something, I always say,
come with your plan, you know, the solution to the problem, and we'll
talk about that, you know, rather than coming to to the table with problems. So
as a person who, you know, I've worked in every imaginable
role in in the hierarchy of projects. And currently, right now, I'm
working at an animation studio here in Florida. So in that position, I'm,
you know, kinda came into a a major movie production, a a huge
feature animated film, and stepped in on a, you you know, more of a
production management role doing things that were, you know, not director,
producer, writer type stuff that I normally do. Mhmm. And so being able to be
that person that's the one that's, helping, you know, just bringing your your
talents and giftings in that role, solving the problems, bringing
those solutions to the table. That's what I always encourage everybody to
do is is try your best, to understand the vision,
the goal of the project, and then solve as many
possible problems as you can, you know, before
they before they become a problem. Right. You know, you know, get ahead of
it. Get ahead of it. Absolutely.
Last question. What what's next for you, Terminus Media? Any
exciting projects on the horizon that you can share with us? So right
now, Terminus Media has the Dominion Fall of the House of Saul series, but
we've also got other projects as well. One of those
that's about to come out is my, spin off of the
Dominion series called Border Wars, and
that is about young David being trained
in secret by the exiled high priest Samuel.
And he gets quantum leaped into the book of Judges where he gets
mentored by Samson and Gideon and Joshua
and, trained and and learns all the ways of the force to
be able to go back and fight Goliath and Saul and everything
else. So it's a great series. Very cool. Never been done
before. Nobody's ever even attempted to do what we're talking about here, And,
a lot of room for awesome stuff. My, primary collaborator
on that project is Matt Baker, who's a brilliant
artist. He's, an animator, a former, Disney
employee. He's worked at, all kinds of he's a paint a fine art painter,
like, brilliant artist. And so hit the work on that. If you wanna go and
check it out, you know, all of these projects can be found on my website,
danielhancock.com. You can find them all. It has all of these that I'm
talking about, but you can see the visuals for Dominion and Border Wars that are
coming out. But we've also, together with Matt Baker and Daryl Pennington, we
worked on another comic called Samson Rise. So that's, a
kind of reimagining of the Samson story. That's more directly done, but more
of a superhero, you know, stylization to it. So that's a cool
one. But recently, we've been working with the Frederick
Douglass, Leadership Institute on
a series of comic books on his life from the autobiographies.
And so that, the first one of those that we put out last
year called The Runaway Plot. And it's a short comic, and it's
been used kind of as a a community outreach tool. They've been
giving these books away, but they printed, like, 35,000 copies of it. It's
all over the place now. They're really using it a lot. Got popular, and now
it's been gaining interest as a short film. So I'm now working at
with the Premise Entertainment here in Florida. And so between Terminus
Media and the Douglas Leadership Institute, Premise Entertainment, and my friends
over at Brainy Pixel Studios, we're all kind of converging
here to bring that comic book into the animation space.
So that's my that's one of my projects that's happening. Like, right now, we're working
on everything's kind of going, but we have original music for that. We
have a a hymn as my friend who's a
incredible songwriter, Elizabeth Thomas, is working on a song for me for that.
We have a men's acapella group that will be performing it. But
with that animation, funny enough, I've come back back around
to, you know, voice acting, of course. You know, an audio drama and
animation have a lot in common. You know, there's, there's some crossover in that
space too. So, you know, unlike film, you end up in a booth,
you know, recording very much like you would for an audio drama. The performances
tend to be a little bit stronger like you would do for an audio drama,
you know, the animated, readings. Mhmm. But yeah, it's gonna be
it's gonna be quite incredible. The book itself is great and, you
can check that out on the site as well. The animation that we're looking at,
the stylization of it, the power behind the story, It's,
it's gonna be unlike anything that's been done before in that on that,
topic. So, yeah, pretty pretty excited about that. And then lots of
other things too. I I it's kind of the nature of being a producer director
as you kinda always have lot of projects at various stages.
You know? It's it's kind of a sticks in the fire kind of thing. They're
all getting shorter, slower, you know, at different different rates.
But, yeah, I've got a whole bunch of other things too. I'm doing a lot
of publishing through through Premise Entertainment. So we've got children's books, kinda
like the Gumdrop Ghost 1, but, that's with director
Dom Carolla. And so he and I are co producing the the
short film that I'm talking about, and and he is, the founder of
Premise Entertainment here in Florida. An amazing veteran in the
industry animator, worked on every big movie you can think of
doing all the awesome stuff that I grew up watching. So it's kind of a
dream job to work with these guys down here. But, yeah. A lot of talented
people, a lot of talented artists. And the network just keeps growing and the
opportunities just keep growing, you know, as more as more
creative people join together to, to work on these types of things.
So as well as this, you know, you get to meet awesome people like
yourself and and hopefully from this, this interview, you know,
we'll connect with with even more people who are working on awesome
projects and see what we can do together. You know?