Audio Drama Insiders

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?