Hi folks,
Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!
We hope that you enjoyed the first Rusty Fears story that we shared last week! If you haven’t yet listened to this eerie, atmospheric short story by Nairis Santini and read by Shahan Hamza, you can do so here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rusty-fears-7-by-155580469 . As a reminder, we’ll be sharing new episodes of Rusty Fears every two weeks, so the next instalment will be coming to you next week.
Every episode of Rusty Fears 7 is directed by April Sumner, who is currently nominated for Best Producer in the Women Podcasters Awards 2026! If you love April’s work on Rusty Fears, The Magnus Protocol, Neon Inkwell and so much more, please do consider casting a vote for her before 30th April – you can do so at this link: https://www.womenpodcasters.com/april-sumner .
A few months ago we started a new series in these weekly newsletters: A Day in the Life at Rusty Quill. In these, we speak to various members of the team at RQ to find out more about the work they do and how our shows get made. We’ve had a busy few weeks in the newsletters, but there’s finally space to return to this series. This week, we’re hearing from Meg McKellar, a sound designer for The Magnus Protocol and Neon Inkwell.
The week starts strong for me at Rusty Towers with a 7AM production meeting. As we’re an international company, we have to get funky about meeting times as the start of my day is the end of others’! Though it’s an early morning, I love getting to see everyone and to hear how things are going with different areas of the production.
It’s at these meetings that we get our assignments and tasks for the week ahead and discuss upcoming projects. We also have a little social time as well, which I find to be so lovely. When working remotely, it’s really easy to feel like you miss out on coworker relationships, so I’m glad that there’s a chance to chat without it having to be business talk all the time.
Once we break, I sit down to work on whatever projects I have. Between seasons and arcs of Magnus, I’ve been learning the arcane art of mastering on some of our Neon Inkwell shows, but the bulk of what I do at RQ is sound design!
Once I get my grubby little hands on the vocal cut files (shout out to Nico), I give it a listen-through and make notes in my editing software of where and when things need to happen– footsteps, doors opening, add-ins or changes to music, everything you can possibly think of! Then I go through the process of putting everything in. Everything from layers of background atmosphere (cars passing, pedestrians, air tones, rain against awnings) to cloth noises of people moving and emphasizing points, adding panning to everything that needs it (changing how much sound comes out on each ear to fill out the space and ground it in reality), and adding in reverb so it doesn’t sound like it’s happening in a vacuum. So much of what we do as sound designers is about subtle detail and painting a picture through sound. I get a little giddy whenever something particularly exciting happens in a new scene or episode as it gives me a chance to run wild with fun and cool design choices!
Once I finish an episode, it goes off for review, and then comes back to me to fine-tune and correct anything that may have been missed or doesn’t sound quite right. It’s a very fun job and pushes me to be creative and detail oriented, and it’s such a dream to get to help tell such fun stories!
Finally, a quick reminder that The Magnus Archives Mysteries board game is still open for late pledges, meaning you can still pre-order your own copy of the game! To make a late pledge, just head to The Magnus Archives Mysteries Kickstarter page now.
Have a good week all!
The Rusty Quill team