Anarchist86ed is back with a new audio drama! This time, he’s set his sights on Predator after fans on Twitter asked him about remaking Predator in audio drama form! You can find a short snippet below.
The full production is available to download here. I’ve always been impressed with Anarchist86ed’s Alien audio dramas, particularly when it came to his sound engineering and his Predator remake is no exception!
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Joshua, who plays Dillon had to do his lines twice. His first try was far better than his second. But the quality of the first was awful. Sadly he didn't recapture his first performance, but he's a busy guy. He kinda rushed through the second take, but since this is 100% non profit, I was never going to ask him to do it again. He still did a great job.
We were looking at a much larger cast, but none of the prospects returned emails so I stuck with three people to do everything. Chase Cuppo does the most voices, including the only "spoken" words by the Predator, which is more of a joke really. Since he voiced everyone, he might as well have voiced the Predator too.
There is a twist ending to set up our version of Predator 2. I decided Dillon was too good a character to simply throw away as fodder. He will now head the "OWLF" and replace Peter Keyes.
The post credits scene reference both Aliens and making X-Files a part of our non official canon as it's mentioned as a real part of the FBI.
It is not set in 1987, and there's one major reference that confirms it's modern day.
Joshua, who plays Dillon and Blaine had a strange problem with a line I changed for Dillon about slack-jawed you know whats. I removed what he says in the script and used an equal modern reference, but Joshua didn't like it and wanted to record it like in the script and film. I told him if I kept that F word in, I'd be getting lunatics cancelling me and the 4 people who will ever listen to it complain. In the end the new line stuck and the F word is no more.
Long Tall Sally remains. Joshua was convinced it would get the production blocked on YouTube, it was not the reason as I told him. I test uploaded it and YouTube was convinced it was basically an upload of the entire movie, which is flattering in a way if the algorithm couldn't tell the difference.
Due to the lack of certain sound effects, I lifted quite a few from the film. These include the flares when the pig breaks into camp. When they trap the predator and it fires its cannon wildly. The log hitting Poncho. Dutch kicking his trap and crushing the predator. Injured Predator and spitting blood. And a bit of it arming its self destruct. Dropping its helmet in the water didn't work, until I shortened it and added my own water splash sound. Some of the sounds I lifted had to be altered, or background sounds increased to cover up mismatches in movie music. I added a heavy breathing sound to the predator in one spot. I also used the blades in wood from the movie when the Predator catches Dutch.
Removed from the audio version and changes: The predator healing its self. I wanted to keep the focus on the Humans. "No sport". Tobe didn't record "it didn't kill you because you were unarmed" but I still left in him kicking the gun away. The cast, in fact, did not record a lot of lines and I had to work around it. This helped shorten the length of the production. There is no female character. I didn't want to go through a process of finding one female actress for a small role, so the character was changed to a Russian named "Igor", a character in another project of mine. There is one scene from the film in the audio version, that's when the American is shot in the head by the gorilla and he walks away mumbling. I was going to change it and have Tobe, as the Russian, say "then you are of no further use to me, American." But I didn't want to burden him. No one yells, screams, or gets loud like in the movie. Tobe couldn't scream "run, go, get to the choppa!" So I asked him to do a pained version. They all likely live with family or whatnot, so of course they can't be screaming like lunatics. Even Tobe's "Mac!" as Mac runs off to find the predator is extremely subdued. Hawkins has ONE line of dialogue. Only select scenes of predator vision remain. I cut most of them out. You can't see what it's looking at anyway. I also removed the Predator shooting the log when it can't see Dutch. It doesn't sound right, but I left the sound of Dutch and Dillon's dude-bro arm smack.
Mess ups: Tobe calls mac "bull" in one scene. This was in the film script. I didn't change it. Oh well. After Joshua re-recorded Dillon, I had to work around the change of pace and sometimes dialogue doesn't sound as natural as it did when I used his other version. To fix it would have been a nightmare. I saw no need to find several different jungle sound effects, so I used the same one and it's pretty obvious. Not that there were many to choose from anyway. Joshua flubs a line pretty bad "what'll you'll try next, cheese?" I was able to fix it to "what next, cheese? It works surprising well as Dutch then steps out as the bait for the trap. In some helicopter sounds you can hear what sounds like a woman whisper something, but I didn't try to remove it because, ya know, I wanted to see if anyone would ever mention it. No one ever will. Some scenes are taken too literally from the movie and don't make sense in audio.
All the gun sounds are from fallout 4.
The Predators plasma caster sound effect is from when he shoots the log. It was the cleanest I could get.
The fight between Dutch and the Predator is significantly cut down. It was his goal to challenge it and lure it to his trap, not run around chasing it.
In the interest of pacing, the Predator simply slaughters three of Dutch's men as revenge for the trap
I looped the truck wheel spinning.
There are no spanish men screaming during the attack, I couldn't find anything useful. I COULD have cut all the dialogue from the film and used that in the scene, but it really drags on and I can't exactly match the gun sounds for other scenes.
Mac screams too much during the jungle mowing scene for it to have been useful anyway, so I remade it with new sounds.
A lot of music had to be cut and spliced to accommodate the pacing.
Dillon calls the helmet "one beautiful mother f**ker" referencing the predator, which I consider to be an incoherent mess of a film.
Though it is now set in the modern day, there's still that "Russia, Russia, Russia" thing going on.
I had to match the predator eye flash to music, otherwise it didn't sound right at all.
Tobe didn't think he could pull off Dutch, as he sounds too young. His voice is slightly pitched to make him sound more mature. The goal was never to replicate Arnold. It really makes no sense an Austrian man is leading an elite American special forces unit anyway, so I wanted a corn belt quarter back type.
Val Verde is a fictional country used in Commando, Die Hard 2, and is sorta maybe kinda according to someone where Predator takes place.
Our Predator 2 will take place in 2030, ten years after this.
The reason I made this was for friends of mine who work essential jobs and are bored out of their minds. Some stock shelves, others do the grunt work. One of them asked if I could remake Predator to listen to while doing that kind of job. I also do projects for a friend of mine who is basically blind. They both absolutely loved this and though I'll never get many people to listen, they're the reason I do it.
I visited your YT and gave a listen to Ice World pt1. Is that still going or another casualty?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/199YU0r98ZKSENIU_1wJwg4SPMz_zXhCN/view