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From About.com

Local Custom: A Novel’s Journey & Michael Shanks (james marsters mention)

By Marla R. Reed

Saturday 26 February 2005, by Webmaster

"Local Custom truly is romance --- I think Michael Shanks is a great fit."

Joy Poger, Buzzy Multimedia

In the Liaden novel UniverseŽ two words exist that sum up the narration of this book and actor Michael Shanks role in that process. "Eldema-pernard’i," which means "first speaker-in-trust," and "Prena’ma," which means "storyteller."

With Local Custom being the first of the Liaden UniverseŽ novels to become an audio novel, Michael Shanks certainly is "the first speaker in trust" to bring a "voice" to them and for the duration of the narration, he is the "storyteller" the listener has come to hear. So what does Michael Shanks say about his foray into all of this?

“It wasn’t necessarily anything financially feasible about it, it wasn’t fitting properly into the schedule and quite frankly everyone who had done book narrations in the past were telling me not to do it because of their experiences with it and that made me more curious then ever for their reasons for it and what it would actually entail and you know, you never really know until you actually do it. And I understand now both of sides of the coin. It was a great learning experience and great cold reading practice and certainly a baptism by fire and at the same time was incredibly frustrating and difficult as well”.

Michael Shanks goes on to candidly discuss what it is about himself that sets him on a course such as taking on the narration work of Local Custom despite the cautions from fellow craftsman who have gone this route before him. Finding projects that challenge his versatility and hold his attention are two things he looks for in any project he undertakes.

“It’s always been my desire about it and I find with myself and as frustrating as it is for myself, it’s just who I am and I’ve just learned to accept that I get kinda bored very easily and then when I’m bored....well I know when I’m on, I can do good things and when I’m bored and my heart’s not in it nothing gets accomplished and I’m useless. When you know that yourself about yourself, you sit there and go ‘well what do you do then to pep up your game or keep your attention’ and for me it’s always been about variation and keeping things interesting and change all the time and finding some new aspect to focus on. Even on the years of doing ’Stargate:SG-1’, it’s always about what’s this year’s focus gonna be and what can we do to sort of change life this year.”

Shanks, who wrote the Stargate:SG-1 season 7 episode "Resurrection," uses this accomplishment as an example to explain what motives him to take new challenges on.

“You know something, I didn’t want to write an episode particularly, but I knew that would be a great challenge for me to do and it’s you know, not even about the task of writing that I learned so much about in that regard. That itself writing "Resurrection" was more about getting inside [the writers’] heads and inside their rooms as well and learning how the other half lives. It was more interesting to get into the politics of that world and all aspect of that was fascinating to me, and I found it equally so doing the narration for the book. I found it fascinating to get inside the publishers’ heads who were right there in the looping studio with me or getting inside the sound tech’s head and the people who actually own the sound studio and finding out why they do this for a living. It’s just very interesting. So I think to get back to the narration of the book that was my notion.”

Then Shanks adds with his refreshing candor, “And especially since the worst thing in the world for me is for someone to tell me not to do something,” he laughs. “It’s like ‘Thank very much, I’ll be thinking about you saying that while I’m doing that.’" This is followed by another personal revelation about himself.

“I was a very bratty kid that way. It was like, ‘Oh really don’t play in that sand box...well I’ll be in it.’ The best directors know that about me as well. Someone like Peter Deluise [of Stargate:SG-1] has learned incrementally that the surest way to get me not to do something is to tell me to do it or try to force me to do it. Now he’s trying reverse psychology. [laughs] Between him and me it’s become this big mental chess game. It’s completely unnecessary but at the same time it’s a lot of fun as long as you’re friends and stay friends while you’re doing it.”

Touching upon the fact that it is Buzzy Multimedia who takes on the task of matching narrator to novel, Shanks is made aware of one of the reasons they chose him for the narration of Local Custom which is that they felt he could personify the romantic nature of the novel as well as the scifi aspects. Shanks took this compliment in bemused stride.

“Well God bless’em, whatever that means. That’s an interesting compliment. I’ll have to look into the annuals of my psyche and see what that entails exactly [laughing] I’ll take the compliment for lack of understanding, but ok, that sounds great.”

“And thus it was spoken.”

While Sharon Lee and Steve Miller left the choice up to Buzzy Multimedia, they were excited about Michael Shanks being chosen and stated they had no problem trusting his instincts when it came to taking on the narration. Upon hearing this, Shanks laughingly responded, “Oh boy, they might after they hear the tape, be going back on that a bit.”

Local Custom authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are looking forward to what they felt that his portrayal Dr. Daniel Jackson on eight seasons of Stargate:SG-1 and the character’s dealings with tricky cultural issues and missteps could contribute to the narration of this particular novel, Shanks had this to offer.

“Well it’s hard to say, I’m not entirely sure how to gage the quote from them since I’m not quite sure what that means in regards to my portrayal of Daniel Jackson but I can’t necessarily be as objective about it as they do. But I can see why this is a good marriage. The thing is called Local Custom and it is definitely about the difference between cultures and the romantic bent in it as well and I can understand why I was thought of for it, but whether or not I was the best match in the universe for it.” At this point he trails off into gentle laughter.

With preparation for the narration process being left up to the actor, Shanks talks about what his approach to the subject of preparation was based on.

“What was really funny about it is I read the book in its entirety and in all honesty I read the book through once and I reviewed it several times in chapter format and I certainly reviewed it the night before we were doing it and the stuff we had to do the next day. But I only read the book through once.”

Even having read the novel through and doing the chapter review, Shanks found that the experience of narration Local Custom still came a lot closer to a process he describes as ‘cold reading’ that all actors face in auditions and with script changes.

“What ended up happening and the biggest challenge for me is that cold reading for actors is, without knowing too much about a scene or too much about a character, you pick up a script and go with what your instincts tell you to go with and that teaches you to trust your instincts...or not. Or shows what you have to do sometimes when you walk on a set where they hand you fresh pages and you don’t know what’s happening or what’s going on and you’re just suppose to go with it and just trust your instincts and let them appraise the situation and just go with what your gut says to go with. For the entire 307-page book that’s essentially what I was doing, just picking up things by instinct.”

Shanks goes on relating his narration experience and going with his instincts, talking about how all of us read books and even further likening it to a particular type of reading task that can cause a lapse into ’tuning out’ what is being read.

“I think it’s kind like reading homework, where we know we are reading the words, but is it really impacting that back part of our brain where we wake up three pages later and go ‘what just happened?’ and it’s no different when you are narrating a book or reading to narrate it, you tune out and so when you are reading it again out loud you have to be very focused and very on and all of a sudden you’re going ‘I don’t remember this.’ You are basically cold reading it and if you are using different voices or copping different tones or attitudes, if you will, with the different characters, which inevitably happens, you have to follow your instincts.”

Of course the above leads to the most obvious question of did he create or use different "voices" for the characters.

“I didn’t mean too and this is what happened. I didn’t mean to do characterizations or different voices for it. I though that would be a bit hokey, but what inevitably happened is it just came out that way.”

Shanks likens narrating an audio novel to having a conversation with yourself and that this ‘conversation’ gives you an understanding of the people’s arguments and their points of view which inevitably means different rhythms and tones which are also in the writing as well, will be picked up when the book is read aloud in a narration process...

“Sometimes you don’t even know it. Your voice just starts doing certain things when X character is talking. You know it’s them talking when they talk like this because that is the way they are written and this is how your brain recognizes them speaking.

“And thus it was spoken.”

"The voices just kinda start to come out and you would know it because what I would do then sometimes is I would be reading right along and it wouldn’t be clear that another character had started speaking. You’d thought the previous character was still speaking until you recognized something and the little red light went off in the back of your head going, ’Oh no, no, no that doesn’t sound like them and that doesn’t make any sense for their argument.’ You stop and go, ’Ok, I dropped into the wrong character.’ Where your verbiage was fine, where your use of the words were fine and clear, but in your mind it wasn’t clear because you were thinking it was a different character than that.

“That was constant and the blind corners of cold reading were like if you think a sentence is going to end like this, if you think they are talking about this, ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,’ and then you realize ’the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s feet’ in such a way that you go ‘Oh God, I was about to end that sentence and I’m still going!’ And so that is what I call the ‘blind corners’ of cold reading that you think it’s going this place and it’s not and you have to sort of ‘in progress’ go with it and that’s very frustrating I found.”

Discussion of the process through which a narrator for an audio novel is chosen continued on in the direction of Buzzy Multimedia’s criteria of classical theater training being important. Shanks admits to being uncertain at the onset of why this was important, but quickly came to understand why and when asked if he agreed with the need for classical theater training to do narration work, he had this to offer in response.

“I would say absolutely, yes. My first instinct when they said that was I just thought they were just justifying hiring a science fiction actor to do a book reading in an absurd kinda way. But then once we actually started the process I figured out very quickly why that was necessary and that these people weren’t just talking to hear themselves talk."

Michael Shanks acknowledges that Buzzy Multimedia has worked with actors and there are a lot of actors out there who come across great on screen and they’re good personalities, but being able to narrate an audio book and keep the listener tuned in is a whole different skill.

"I’m sure there are some great actors out there on camera, very funny comedians, but to get them through even their first, second or possibly third script reading, even a script written for them can be clunky because their reading skills aren’t that great or they’re not able to communicate so quickly from the page to the voice.”

Shanks is also quick to point out that this is especially true with material like what is found in Local Custom, with his reasoning being this.

"Because it is so cold a lot of the time you really need that ability, in my mind, that survival instinct ....that part of your brain that goes ‘drive through this’. Because you can’t keep stopping and going back though it cause you will be lost. The listener will be lost and you will be lost and it will be very unhelpful for either party to be having you go back on every line because you want to get it just so. You need to get some flow going both for yourself and for the listener as well or else it’s just going to be stilted and I totally got that, especially in this case with this book.”

At this point, Michael Shanks laughingly confesses. “I think I’ve actually made the quip about Steve and Sharon are actually a couple of independently wealthy people who don’t really publish these books for public consumption. They actually are just science fiction fans who write these books to mess with science fiction actors and they wrote this book specifically for the purpose of making me do an audio book so they could mess with my head.”

Michael Shanks elaborates a bit more on this theory, touching on all the use of apostrophes, which he called ‘consonant abuse’ and with all their mythological references.

"You know ‘yos’Phelium’ and things like this. I was going ‘what... who thinks like this’ and then tying them in with six S sounding words in one sentences it just sounds like one big head trip.” Agreeing that sometimes there is just trouble enough dealing with the language you normally speak, Michael Shanks adds with a laugh, “that’s what I was thinking...I was saying ‘who thinks like this, I want some of what they’re smoking’.”

Michael Shanks admits candidly that it was that frustrating sometimes and that he recognized that there is not a lot of actors that he knows of, that he work with in the film medium that would be very good at this.

"I can understand why a theater background was necessary, specifically a classical theater background where I actually bought into their original argument of why they chose me for this thing. I’m going, ‘Yes, absolutely’ because there is a lot of foreign language here and there’s also a lot of use in this specific book of heightened text.”

“There are different manners of speaking which are representative of different classes and cultures. And even when they are talking about "Oh, she said this in High Tollan or High Whatever the Hell it Was, I can’t remember the names [comes back to him] — High Liaden and this from master to servant she spoke in this tone."

Shanks says there is point where you are sorta going "What the hell does that mean?" However, all of a sudden, because there is that point of reference from classical theater training and familiarity with this type of text

"You’re going, ok, well, I understand that because through the understanding of classical literature and the speaking of it a loud in school you understand, you know, the differences of speaking master to servant. It’s a generalism but at least you have a context in which to draw from.”

Shanks offers an example in the form what his Stargate:SG-1 castmate, Christopher Judge’s reaction might be to the challenges of the narration process for a novel like Local Custom that has such an elaborately created language all its own.

“Where I do know and I immediately thought I was wondering if Chris Judge were here and he was reading this aloud he would absolutely be throwing shit around the room and he wouldn’t do it. Quite frankly he would give up and stop doing it. I know that about him not because he is a quitter, but just because this is very difficult. It was very difficult for me and I can’t imagine someone like him trying to step into this thing, he would become very frustrated and disillusioned with it.”

Shanks continues on with discussing some of the "language challenges" of taking on the narration process for Local Custom and he is very honest about his struggles with the highly unique character language that Miller and Lee had created and made abundant use of throughout Local Custom.

“Oh, trust me, the publishers and I had a good laugh and we had gotten into so many discussion about pronunciation so many times we had talked ourselves in full circles on ‘this is how you say it...this is how you don’t say it’ so that we actually believe the reverse by the end of the book in some cases with some words.’

"When I read the book I was sitting there going, ’What the hell are they talking about?’ I think even still the editor or whoever manages to string together that trail of obscenities intermixed with the text of book will find there is few inconsistencies with the pronunciations because I think even by the end of the day the publishers themselves where as lost in a lot of the...what is the best way to put it...the mythological diatribe as I was.”

Shanks, however, is a very dedicated professional when it comes to any task he takes on and this one was no different and he knew exactly what was expected of him in his role as narrator and what he had to do to accomplish the task to the best of his ability.

"I did the show with a hat on my head and headset over my ears. I’m there to read. It’s my job to get over those humps and hurtles and if there is a point where I was being negative in a very caustic way, I tried being as humorous as possible by going on these rants that are akin to something out of Saturday Night Live as oppose to actually being angry about something. I respect the fact this is my job and this is what I am here for.”

Shanks is aware, though, that he is not the first actor to narrate a novel for Buzzy Multimedia who has gone through this situation and that he is in good company.

“I know the publishers have done a few books and they’ve done work with Ben Browder and James Marsters as well and both of those actors in the publishers mind have professed equal frustration with the task of reading. I think it’s one thing to read a book, to narrate an audio book and just do it straight...like to read the Bible... is a challenging effort, but to base it in words that are fictional and suppose to be said like they are matter of fact that was the most frustrating part to me.”

“They always said at the beginning that by page 50 that I’ll want to throttle them, that I’ll be looking to quit and I was going ‘no, no I’ll be fine’ and sure enough by page 38... I started out being very polite sort of trying to be very professional... but by page 38 I was swearing my head off. I set the cussing record in the room for the sheer number of expletives that came out of my mouth and uh, it was one of the more challenging things I’ve ever had to do because you have to be on and it gets physically taxing and because it was my first time I think probably it was a bit exaggerated, but the physical stress of being ‘on’ for that period of time and being that frustrated so many times during the course of the reading was hard.”