The Golden Age : Starlight Park
During the Golden Age of the 1930’s, families would gather together around the flickering vacuum tube of an old radio, waiting for those first eerie notes of the “Shadow” to begin. For the next forty-five minutes, they would be transported on an adventure of imagination. Last summer, we decided that we wanted to reinvent that style of storytelling by creating our own radio drama following our favorite themes of ghost stories & fairy tales!
Our youngest lead actor, Azure Irvin.
We began with writing a story about a brave young boy named Evander who runs away from home and ends up in the deep dark forest where he stumbles into an abandoned amusement park that comes to life under the moonlight. There he meets a cast of magical misfits and soon learns that Starlight Park is in grave danger and only he can save it! Once the story was written, we had to find the perfect voice actor for each character and we were so fortunate to assemble this amazing team!
Scenes from the table read with our talented team of voice actors : Buster Balloon (the Strongman), Ron Roberson (our narrator) , Kelsey Irvin (Freya) , Azure Irvin (Evander), Mike Lyster (Evander’s father) , Karen Michelle Nutt (Dragon Hair Delight Vendor), Greg Nutt (Price Wheeler) and Carol Latham (Helka the Wise).
From there we were blessed enough to partner with the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton to have access to their recording studio set up for us by their gifted technician. It took a lot of sugary snacks and cold drinks to fuel us but we were able to capture all of the footage in one week.
Scenes from our recording studio days at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center.
Now with all of the scene takes ready, the next steps were editing, sound design and composing the soundtrack music. Geoff Mitchell spent close to a year composing all of the music, sound effects and editing for the final show. Please, enjoy a few of the original compositions below!
Of course, it wouldn’t be an old-time radio show without vintage style commercials! The main show sponsor is “Honeycomb Miracle Elixir” formulated by one of the characters, Price Wheeler. Below you can listen to a commercial for the “Dream Parlor” voiced by Michelle Richards and another for the “Penguin Club” voiced by Brian Sommer. Enjoy!
“Strange Secrets of Starlight Park” episode one will be released later this summer and we’ll announce how and where you can hear it soon. There will also be some beautiful vinyl records of the first episode available in our online Emporium!
The collectible limited-edition vinyl album cover (front and back).
Follow Evander along his adventure to “Strange Secrets of Starlight Park” here or at any major podcast provider.