Solar

More Information About Solar

The show description is, Solar is a journey to the heart of the solar system and an exploration of the vastness of the human spirit disconnected from earth and trapped on separate parts of their spacecraft. Crew members must fight for survival following a disaster on board the ill-fated Aon, a man solar research probe sent to explore temporal distortion around the.

As painful memories, forgotten dreams, technological challenges, and blunt realities collide. They must work together to keep their hope alive in the face of growing darkness. The length of each episode is about 40 minutes. With some episodes being as short as three minutes. This show has strong language, so keep that in mind If you want to listen to it around littles. It is a limited series with 29 episodes in total, and all of the episodes are available now. 

Rate or Review The Friendly Podcast Guide

Before we learn more about the vibe of the show, we’re going to take a quick break to talk about leaving a rating or review for the friendly podcast guide. Would you rate and review the friendly podcast guide as a gift to me for my birthday?

The two main places to do that are on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It would mean so much to me if you could give me a positive review. I read every single one and they all make my heart so happy. 

Introduction to Jenny & Solar

I’m Jenny Curtis. I’m a, like you said, a podcast producer with Kurt Co Media. I’m also a director, an actor writer. You know, name it, I’ve probably tried my hand on it.

And that all came into play with Solar because solar is a scripted audio drama that I directed along with the creator, Chris Porter. And I’m one of the voices in it and I produced it, . So basically I’m a, I’m a crazy person who never stops working, but currently my, my passion is creating in the world of podcasts cuz it’s been a lot of fun.

How Solar Came to Be

So Chris Porter, who I just mentioned, and I actually worked together or worked together in an immersive theater company called The Speakeasy Society here in Los Angeles.

And when Kurt Co Media made the change to podcasting Chris was Top of mind for someone we wanted to work with. And solar was sort of a foggy idea in his head of this pitch of what if there’s this possible premise of a disaster in space? And he kind of pitched it to the company and then. A week later, he came back with a fully formed pitch that had many of the characters, many of the ideas, and we were like, Great, let’s, let’s go with that.

Because Kurt Co really wanted to make scripted podcasts but had never done so, so it was a two and a half year process of developing this show. And so it was a really intense experience with a show that. An incredibly intense experience on its own. It’s a long-winded way of saying it came to be because at our heart, those of us who work at Kurt Co are creatives who love telling stories and audio drama is a really, really fun way to immersively tell a story.

It’s amazing. And we say this a lot of like, why tell a story and audio? It’s because people’s imaginations are set on fire by listening to a story. You’re coming up with the visuals yourself and you’re like seeing the movie cuz you’re hearing it or whatever, but It’s a very exciting medium. We like it a lot. 

What to Expect from Solar

I think when you make something, and this is coming from the brain of a creator who is myself, who is constantly in some kind of creative, existential crisis, but when you make something, I think the only thing you can hope for is that somebody gets something from it. I. Anything, the fact that our story is out there and moving people in one way or another, whether it be an escape like you just mentioned from your reality while you’re doing something or a cathartic release because you’re emotionally invested or inspiration to make your own or just.

The feeling of hope or of resilience or whatever it is from our story, like anything you get from this story is a win for us because I think that’s the reason people make art is they hope to affect people. So I hope people take something from it. 

The Vibe of Solar

It is a story that you can get lost in. I like to say it’s darkly poetic and deeply hopeful. It’s sci-fi thriller. And so it’s very exciting, but it is a character drama where you really fall in love with these characters and you spend time with them and you get to know them.

So I feel like it’s a deep, dark drama with a whole lot of hope and a whole lot of mystery and this might not fall under vibe, but we, you know, using the buzzword of like 360 degree audio, it is an immersive event where if you’re wearing your headphones, the sounds are happening. Not just right and left or anything like that. They’re happening all around you. We have, you know, the AI of the ship placed above your head in some scenarios and placed down the hall in other scenarios. And you can do that in audio where in the way we did it with the, these. We use to Doby Atmo and a thing called Dear VR to mix the show. So it’s, it’s truly a cinematic experience. So it feels like going to the movies in your ears.

Jenny’s Favorite Characters in Solar

The thing about this story is that, what I love about it is it’s a real story about humanity and people as a whole are deeply flawed, but they are of worth. They have worth anyway. So there’s so many things to love about our characters. I can say selfishly, the voice that I am in the show is the AI, the voice of the ship, and I love her. She was such a challenge to figure out how to do this trope that is in sci-fi of having an AI but not make her. I mean, for lack of a better term, tacky. I mean, I think she, she has an arc and she has growth, but she’s not, I, I can’t explain it other than like, it, it’s really well written and I had a blast playing her. And then there is another character, actually, now that I’m saying it, there is I don’t know if you’ve listened to much of the show, but there’s a character that’s referenced a lot.

Her name is Chelsea, and she is Our lead Jamal’s back best friend who he’s left back on Earth, so she gets talked about a lot. She’s barely in it. She leaves a few messages and we hear these monologues from her. And I will say those monologues we hear from her are two of the most powerful monologues that I think. I’ve ever heard, and if I weren’t playing Allie, I’d wanna just be this tiny little part of Chelsea because she’s such a beautiful, like, hopeful, genuine soul.