Episode 10 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: 2008 and the big mistake

 Episode 10
 

Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 9 is a general overview of launching and publishing the podcast.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 Hello and welcome to the final episode of Joan and the Savvy Podcaster.  This audio series was designed to, primarily, give the aspiring independent podcaster and overview of how to create and produce an audio drama podcast.
I don’t want this to come off as “We had to walk uphill both ways to school with no shoes” instead, I hope it will give some insight to just how far the technology has come in such a short time. The excitement of possibilities I felt in the beginning of podcasting, I still feel today.  
So let me set the scene for some perspective. 2007 was the year the first iPhone was introduced, Craigslist was just getting started, and there was no gay marriage or streaming media. Personally, my partner and I had moved to San Francisco the year before and I was finishing a documentary with Phyllis Diller and nursing the wounds of a failed television show. Failed, as in mercilessly stomped on before it even had a chance. For Christmas my partner had gotten me the new iMac desktop. My first Apple, and 2 things caught my eye, Garage Band and iWeb. After years of banging my head against glass ceilings, brick walls, and unidentified flying objects a creative light blub went on. I was very myopic in that all I saw was a way to make and distribute performance art. How was I going to distribute it exactly and pay for it? Who cares? Let’s go make art! Podcasting was just starting to crawl, stumbling along and back then the big thing to do was to either do an interview show or read a book, that was out of it’s copyright protections, out loud and try to get advertising money. (Not much has evolved from that idea.)
My big idea was to remount the world of radio drama’s. I thought, with these tools available now you could even have a website like a television station, but with podcasts, just like in the days when they had Lone Ranger and George and Gracie and My favorite wife radio hours. And to be honest there was just no one around me to tell me this may not be the very best idea. And I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway, if nothing else this would be a great experiment. This is also the reason I did this how-to series, it wasn’t meant to be in depth but just to verbally walk people through the process.

Writing, Casting, and Recording
Step 1 was to write a series that could sustain several seasons. I named the show after the O bus line at the end of our street that my partner used to take back and forth into the city. The O Line Mysteries. Originally it was going to be a fictional account of the people that road that bus with her. So I set it in the island town we were living on in the San Francisco Bay, I called ithe island Ohlone, which is the historical American Indian name for the island. And like a cat with a hairball I reworked the plot and choked out a couple of episodes and outlined the rest of a 25 episode series. 

Then I sat on them as I cajoled, convinced, and coerced some unsuspecting people to talk the lines into a microphone. Neighbors, partners, work people, random strangers, didn’t matter to me. The first two episodes were recorded in the living room of our old Victorian house on 2 borrowed Shure 57 mic’s using panty hose stretched across a coat hanger as spit guards, transferred to a borrowed Mbox to make them digital and recorded through garage band and into an external memory. I knew the sound would echo horribly but I figured I could at least clean some of it up in the post. In lieu of pay we put out a food spread to shame a craft service truck. Which at the time seemed like a brilliant idea to at least show some gratitude, but y’know, having people eat and do voice over work, not the best idea. The next week we did the same thing to record episode 3 and 4 and at that point it was obvious this set up was not going to work. I was going to need a more sustainable recording situation. But first I needed to figure out how to edit these first four episodes, garage band just wasn’t cutting it for me. It was great to feed the vocal’s through and record into a sound file but I needed something more to actually stitch together the show and add the sound effects and music. I didn’t want to set me sights too high for the outcome and knew this was going to be very rudimentary.

Editing
First, I hired a woman owned recording studio in Oakland to edit the first four episodes, ya’know I was all proud I was supporting a woman owned business. As I pulled up to the studio which was at the back of the house I kept an eye on this guy sleeping in this beat up red hatchback, I remember this so vividly, I took a deep breath and cradling the external memory which held my most precious sound recordings, hoped she would show patience with me and what I was trying to accomplish. By the way, back then, I didn’t have this saved in 3 different places. Buying memory was very expensive, I think that eternal memory was like 256 megabytes and that was a top end deal. This editing session was going to go one of two ways, either I would be welcomed with open arms or it would be a disaster. As I go around back, I hear a car door shut and I go in and she introduces me to the sound engineer who I guess woke up from his car and scrambled up behind me, that didn’t freak me out or anything, we go into the studio and I never saw her again. So much for the sisterhood, right? What proceeded was me explaining what I was doing and needed from him, then what I can only explain as an opera. He gave me the opera of rants. The tirade ranged from “How dare I hire a sound mastering studio to edit – a – podcast?” To, “You don’t even know what you’re doing.” He spared no insult, this guy. I mean it was epic, and by the way looking back now, it was in a sound proof studio, so no one would know if something horrible happened to me. Again, so much for the sisterhood, right? But at that moment all I saw was this sweating, red faced wanker throwing a hissy fit, like a demented character from some Don Giovanni opera. And I laughed at him, because it was funny to me, and I said, “I know, it’s crazy.” And honestly, I would not recommend this to anyone, if that ever happens to you, leave. Leave the precious memory hard drive, just leave. But for some reason after that he calmly sat back down in the editing chair and was like ‘okay, what do you need to know.’ And then showed me the basics of how to edit the show. Not the mastering part but the stitching part. I left an hour later, really glad, A. I was in one piece, and B. I got him to show me some basic editing. 

The second editor I hired, ghosted me. After we met at their studio and I explained what I was doing and what I needed they just stopped answering the phone. The third editors I thought would work out, but I had explicitly asked them to bleep out the cuss words for two reasons, one of the characters is foul mouthed and I think it’s funny to just have one character have to be constantly bleeped while no one else has to be bleeped. Here’s this show that’s a cross of Scooby Doo and Murder, She Wrote and you have one character who’s just constantly cussing. And also, I didn’t want the expletive rating from the Apple podcasts. But they kept leaving it in which meant they were only mastering the show which meant they weren’t doing what I was paying them for. 

Then finally, my upstairs neighbor enrolled in a sound editing school, Blessed be to Tim. I bought the Adobe sound editing suite and he was able, over a few sessions to calmly and methodically, take me through it and teach me what I needed to know. Tim did a quick diddy for the intro music for me and to do the Foley work I used the digital sound editing tapes which is why all the doors shutting, car doors, really all the sound work sounds the same throughout the series. I think I did it once and called it a day. Because by now I’m trying to learn code to build the website and the RSS feed.

The Website and RSS feed

I think there were about 4 maybe 5 podcatchers? Apple was of course the main one. Podcatchers were what we now call distributors. So, you loaded up your podcast to your website and with the RSS feed you directed all the distributors or podcatchers to list on their site back to your website and the pods would get downloaded from there. This meant you needed, at a bare minimum, to know some HTML code. Luckily, there was a used bookstore in town, or maybe it was a Good Will or something but I got my hands on a how to write HTML code book. I wish I still had it to be honest it was the easiest part of the whole website building. Originally, I had used the iWeb app from the Apple to design it, but by the time I finished coding and building the site I scrapped the app and used my own hobbled together code.  I then had to buy the domain name, website hosting service with the most download memory for the cheapest price. The cool thing, and I don’t know if they still do this but, they had this traffic tracker or traffic facts maybe it was called; but it gave you all the information down to the who, when, where and how of information. It was awesome because instead of giving that information to a third party, who could be anybody as in marketers or pollsters or whatever corporation, it was yours. Like it was between you and your listeners. 

The funny thing now is it used to take, I’m not kidding, all night to upload the show. Like hours and hours of downloading it to this software, then editing, then uploading it back again. After I finished editing the show I would start the upload and go to bed. I remember once I woke up at the computer with my head dangling around my neck I literally fell asleep mid-edit.
So I now had a website, and four full episodes, and know how to edit for myself and direct the podcatchers to the show and a general understanding of how to move forward with the show. And I did. 44 episodes worth. I got the cycle down. Write 4 episodes, bring the cast in – which by the way, never got solved, we just kept recording in the echo-y living room. I recast the part I was playing after like the 4th episode when it became quite apparent I could not do that and run the show, so I ended up playing the other bit parts. Edit together the shows and do the load up. I was always running the shows a month ahead of time so I could take breaks here and there and there was always the juggle of when the cast would have time to meet together so I had to have a time cushion for that as well. I had finally had all the moving parts working together and everything was moving smoothly so about half way through the series, I thought it would be a worth a try to see if I could get some advertisers in, I mean, I had the numbers for downloads and the Guardian Newspaper from England had included us in an article about the new Audio Drama podcasts to listen for. After the first season I was inspired to go forward as the downloads were world-wide and especially in Europe and the UK, those people love some Audio Drama. What could go wrong? I approached everyone I could think of from the independent shops, mom and pop shops, to smaller corporations for advertising, advertising agencies. No one. Not a peep. Sometimes just a curt note reiterating their corporate by laws regarding blah blah blah. So, I put it on the back burner for a bit as I was still writing, editing – the whole thing. 

Finally I saw one of the podcatchers were talking about putting advertising into the podcasts and I thought, yes, that’s fine, I’ll do that. But there was a catch, and my biggest mistake, they wanted all the information, all the emails and traffic facts for the subscribers and listeners. Now this was like 2009? I think, there about-s. And I just thought - that would be the biggest betrayal ever to just hand over the personal information of people visited the website and who listened to the show. In the old time radio shows did the radio stations take all that information from people who listened in to the George and Gracey show? No they did not. They just put the show out there for all to enjoy. People don’t expect to be tracked, I’d have to put in some type of disclaimer or record at the very least some type of statement that said, ‘hey listeners just so you know we got some advertising money to pay for the show but you should also know you’re now being tracked by the advertising company that’s paying for it.’ HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA. Meanwhile, like 2 years later people are handing over their information and emails to stores for a 5% discount on a 15 dollar sales item in stores. Turns out, no one cares! It’s just the accepted way of life now. A ruse de guerre, if you will, rules of engagement.
So, I stopped doing the show. All that work, all those hours, all that money (frankly) wasn’t for nothing. I got to do the show, I learned a new medium with Audio Drama, I learned sound editing, I made some great friends. One actor, by the way, decided she loved doing voice over work so much she began doing it professionally, which was the coolest thing. But I just couldn’t imagine having to reformat all those episodes for the advertising and having any kind of audience stick around for it. Silly me.
Which all leads me to the re-boot. I’m again listing the O line Mysteries. I’m not remastering the show or anything fancy, this isn’t the remastered classics in HD. But they are just sitting here like a shadow so why not? The episodes will be listed everywhere you get your podcasts under The O Line Mysteries. The first four episodes are technically dodgy as all get out, because we were still figuring it all out, but I stand by this creation as a whole. And this time, I’m putting in the advertising. Enjoy and thanks for listeneing.

Episode 9 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: Launching and Publishing

 Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 9 is a general overview of launching and publishing the podcast.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

 

Hey Y'all, Welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 9: Launching and Publishing. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about the publishing hosts and launching the podcast.

So let’s all just pretend, for a moment, you have followed my advice and you now have 4 full episodes completed out of 12 finished and ready to start the weekly launch and you’ve bought your one year subscription to a Podcast Host Site. Well then tah dahhhh! You are ready for the limelight. Nope, hang on. I’m sorry, first you need to call your publicist and get your media army on the line. Wait, that’s not how it works? No. No it is not. Podcast hosts do one thing and one thing only, they host your work and you pay them to do that. They don’t distribute a podcast, that’s why you have to have a RSS feed and that’s what places like iTunes or Google or Spotify do, and they also have the listening app’s (also known as directories). The RSS feed is basically the URL where your series lives and it contains the other information that helps listener apps find the show. So really, you’re paying someone to host your work which drives traffic to their own site. You are the content that builds Spotify and Google and Apple. So you ask, why don’t I just have my own website and drive traffic to myself using my work? You absolutely could do that and some podcasters do. It’s what I did in 2007 and let me tell you honestly, if you take that route, it is a LOT of work, like full time job, burn out inducing work. Actually in 2007 I didn’t really have a choice if I wanted to get the O Line Mysteries podcast out into the world. More on that adventure and possibly my biggest mistake in Episode 10. But now in 2021/2022 you do have a choice, too many in fact. The podcasting hosts today are competing for content, your work. Because without your work they have nothing, keep that in mind when you make your choice for a hosting service. However, I’m going to continue here under the assumption that you are not hosting your podcast on your own website but are using a podcasting host. The most important 3 distribution services to get listed on as of now are Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

Podcasting hosts are all the same, they all distribute to the big 3 and 'I just can’t choose one'. Then you need to align yourself with podcasts who would have the same target audience, look at their directories. Just because one podcast host has more that 1000 audio drama’s doesn’t mean you should go with them. Look at your show; Is Betty’s day out and children’s podcast or an adult feature podcast, is Betty’s day out a mystery with a 90-year-old detective or is Betty a poodle? There are different audiences for each of these scenarios, so you’d look on the podcasting hosts website to see who caters to your audience. Let’s say Betty is a cat. And you know there is a famous singer who is known for her love for cats and she also has a podcast on that hosting service. (Let’s face it though, the famous singer probably has their own website and hosts the podcast herself, but you get the picture.) If Betty is a poodle I would go with whatever host has 1000 pod’s about dog training.

I’ve spoken throughout the series about keeping your notes at least loosely together and in Episode 3 I spoke about getting all the work done for your metadata and show notes, cover art, etc. Now, you’ll be glad you did that, because it has to be done before you get too stuck into these last steps. All distributors are going to want basically the same information from you. Show Title, Description, Category, Artwork, Explicit (Adult content), Copyright, and Website. Here, you want to make it easy for people to find your work by staying consistent. If you’re going the 12-episode route then the Show title is the first step. For Betty’s Day Out, make it Betty’s Day Out Episode 1. Then make the subsequent shows Betty’s Day Out Episode 2, and so on. I would use the Description line to describe the entire series. “Follow Betty on her many adventures as she overcomes obstacles and attempts to find a toilet on her days out of the house.” Whatever. This is the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the series. Make sure you have at least 3 Categories in order of importance because some places ask for 1 or 8, it depends on the distributor. So that’s #Comedy or #Mystery or #Poodles. Artwork is the jpg you made for the show. Copyright. Who owns the show. You do. You can put your name there or if you’ve given the production a name, put it here. I list my producing work under Billibatt Productions to keep it separate from other work that I do. But just a note here, if you plan on making money from this podcast and you make up a Production name make sure you’ve got all your legal paperwork in order to cash the check. For most of the podcasting hosts you’ll be asked to fill out the show notes. That’s where you give the episode a name Episode 1, What shoes to wear? Or Will Betty wear a hat. It doesn’t have to be a question, Betty chooses a hat. Who acts in it, further description of the episode, the sound effects credits, website links- all the information you want to include.
Podcasts hosts will not give you an RSS Feed unless you have at least 1 episode. That doesn’t mean it has to be a full episode. You could start with a trailer for the series. If you already have 4 episodes in the bag then you have plenty of content to make a good trailer for the show. On the launch date you could list both the trailer and the episode. Just make sure to title it, Betty’s Day Out Trailer not Episode 1 so it doesn’t get confusing for your audience.

So this is the flow chart for publishing. You’ve got episode 1 and a trailer ready to go. You pay for a hosting website. You upload your shows to the hosting site. The hosting site gives you an RSS feed and sends out your show to the distributors. It is up to you and your budget which host you choose, I advocate nothing, but I can tell you what I’ve used and why.
I’ve done the personal website route, the popular hosting route, but now I have a more nuanced host. The website route, I’ve explained already here and since I don’t intend on running my own content business with 100 episodes and more, I have no use for a website. I recently had one of the popular hosting sites and I was really, really disappointed with it. I’ve actually come to realize something a few things. It may just come down to the fact that with your own website you have more control about the information and statistics you get back. With the website I was able to get enough information to be able to really hone in on my listeners, if I had wanted to really target my audience. However, with the next host it was more generalized information, like on Tuesday, 3 listeners somewhere in Australia who used Apple Podcasts. The website demographics gave me the same information as an RSS feed would give. So it would be more like Tuesday; 8AM; 2 listeners; Perth, Australia; Samsung; Spotify; 1 listen Syndey, Australia; Apple Podcasts; iPhone 7, and how long they listened, etc. I spent a year with the popular host with really paltry downloads. It was akin to the same amount of downloads I would get in a week with the website, it took a year for the host. What went wrong? I have no idea. It could have to do with Search Engine Optimization or whatever; I don’t think anyone actually knows for concrete certain exactly how the distribution cycle works because the SEO processes are always moving and changing techniques. I just moved the podcast to another host. I needed to align The Arc of Joan podcast with where my target audience gets their podcasts. I chose Acast. I looked online at all the other popular podcasts on the different hosts. Who they were promoting and pushing to the front of the line as they all do, whether or not they’ll admit it, and went with the one that I felt like aligns with my target audience. Perhaps that is the reason the downloads for Arc of Joan have tripled or maybe it has to do with the different RSS feed information.

So that’s it for today and for the series. The final episode, Episode 10 is me winging on about what it was like creating a podcast in 2007, and how far the medium has come since then. Only recently since the podcast Serial and really when Covid swept over the world has podcasting become the normal. How many of us had to watch someone roll their eyes at you, “So, how’s your pod-cast? That’s it right is that what you call it?” Remember what I said, there are always going to be a Nancy from Puoghkeepsie out there. Just keep moving forward. Episode 10 is a fun listen which includes the biggest mistakes I made back then. The blog for this podcast is at https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
I really hope this has given you some good insights into making an Audio Drama Podcast. I only have one request for someone out there. Will someone, please, think up a new word for Audio Drama Podcast?  Audio Drama Podcast is clunky and clinical. Something cool like …I don’t know. Just ADP?

And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!
 

Episode 8 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: Mastering and Smashing

Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 8 finishing the editing discussion with mastering the Audio Drama Episode.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

 

Hello and welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 8: Editing Part 2. Mastering and Smashing. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about the final elements of the podcast.

Now that you’ve listened to each moment, each vocal intonation, each sound effect 80 or so times it’s time to listen to it in full again. From beginning to end, you are listening all the way through now for the consumers experience. Instead of stopping and starting just listen to it while taking notes. Note the time signature and the flaw so you can go back and correct them. Then listen to it again in full with the corrected flaws and take notes about the new flaws you hear. Keep a careful eye on the tracks volume and keep them out of the red zone. Then go grab a snack, give your ears a rest, you’re almost done.
Now that you’ve fixed the glaring mistakes, it’s time for the fun part of an otherwise Sisyphus seeming exercise. Mastering, or balancing everything out to insure your intentions are meeting your expectations. I think it’s at this point where you want to scream. “ITS FINE!” But wait, there’s a couple of easy things you can do that make it sound even better. So, I’ve moved some of the traditional sound mixing steps Fade ins, Panning, etc. to the mastering level. I KNOW, I know, fading and panning is not mastering, but I’ve moved it here because I have found that it takes twice as long to do the fades and panning in the editing phase versus the mastering. For me the sound blending is the same as if I needed to get all the paint onto the canvas before I start blending the colors.
Fade ins and Outs: Have you ever noticed when some people start talking it’s lower than when the get going, like the beginning of a sentence is in lower case and the end of it is HERE IN ALL CAPS? I always fade in the shows theme music and fade out theme music at the end of a show. But you may have a reason to jolt your listeners awake, I don’t know. I like to follow the old television shows introductions. It’s always, music, lights, action. I know the famous saying is lights, music, action, but this is my podcast. So it’s theme music, introduction “Welcome to Betty’s Day Out starring Betty as Betty. Brought to you by Sternlicht Productions.” BoombaddaTeedah, fade out of theme music, fade in with the establishing sound effects (where are they?) typing? Outside at night (owl hooting), talking, a slight and quick fade in to voice actors.
One way to keep the show from sounding flat is to pan the stereo. Try to picture the listener in the room with the characters or better yet; if I’m listening to two people talking I’m going to hear them directionally. I’ll hear “Sarah” more in my right ear and “Angie” more in my left ear, then “Tommy” walks in and I hear him equally in both ears. In other words, situate the people in the room. This, by the way, is so very helpful if you have 2 actors that sound alike. So, panning the actors can help differentiate them and situate them in a scene.  And this is why you want to edit in WAV because it’s not compressed you’ll have 2 lines, left and right, in the Voice track. I rarely completely shut down the left or right unless it’s a sound effect that I need to only come out of the right or left side. I just lift up either the left or right track volume line and lower the other volume line through-out the scene. It just leaves the impression that person is standing on my right and when I do the opposite to the other vocal track situating that person on the left.
A lot of people will use the compression filter and hey, if you know how to use it properly then go for it. This is not the same as the compression you do with the WAV to MP3 this is the filter or processor. You have to be careful not to lose the actors lines when you use this filter. It takes the softest sounds and raises them and the loudest sound and dampens it, I do not use it because I have a lot of people using different mic’s and different equipment, it’s just easier to do it manually. I think I used it maybe 3 times in the last podcast series.
Mastering is complex and if you were mastering the music for a CD, you’d need all the bells and whistles that the EQ, Limiter, Gain Controls offer but here I would recommend a very light touch. Just applying a basic equalization will be enough.
You are aiming for an overall loudness for the whole episode of about -16 to about -20 LUFS. You will set that when you do your mixdown.  Hopefully, you’ve been mixing and mastering with over the ear headphones. Grab some earbuds and plug them so you can hear how your listeners will hear the show. Give it a listen, what do you think?

Find a stopping point. You could tinker with this project till you fall out of your seat in a fetal position giggling inanely to yourself. But you need to be okay with where it is and what you’ve accomplished. No one was born with the innate ability to create a highly produced audio drama. You finished! Does it have flaws? Probably! But you have found a spot where you can live with it, and be proud of the work you’ve done. And part of you secretly thinks, ‘know one will know how hard I worked on this’. But people who need to know, will know, and those who don’t will criticize you. Ask me how I know! So before you do the “mixdown” or conversion to the MP3 save your WAV source file in 3 different places.

Remember back in the writing episodes I told you not to throw anything away? This is where it comes in handy. Lastly in editing you are finally going to compress it all down to a single itty bitty mp3 file. So in Audacity, it’s the export process. Anytime something asks you for metadata fill in the blank. Choose wisely here, make sure it’s the Title and has your name on it. I like to visualize this as an apartment building collapsing. All those little windows you’ve been sweating over, all the voices and sound effects living in those windows just collapsing together and safely landing in an Mp3 pillow that I’m going to send around the world to go live in someone’s ears. Mmmwahahaha.
I work on a Mac so I load them into my iTunes, and put them on my iPod and carry it around with me in different situations and listen for a couple of minutes. On a walk, at the grocery, in the car – wherever the consumer will listen, you should give it a listen. And by the way, how cool would it be if, instead of that horrible piped in music in the grocery the played Audio Drama’s? Tonight from 7-7:30 Betty’s Day Out and you did your grocery shopping while listening to an Audio Drama?

A lot of learning to edit is making mistakes, getting frustrated, and doing it all over. It’s fine to do that, just make sure you have your files saved somewhere else besides the editing program so you don’t make any mistakes you can’t fix. Once you finish the first episode the following episodes will be easier. But also after you finish a couple of episodes it might be a good time to put together a few trailers for your series. Start a new project in your editing software and load in show music and the clips you want to use. Don’t use different music, you want to start building recognition with your listeners. Almost everyone knows the first few bars of their favorite shows and definitely the television show “Friends”, whether you ever watched it or not.  You can use trailers for advertising or load them onto your Pod host as “coming soon” updates or use them in a “Next week on Betty’s Day Out,” Add at the end of the show. Trailers can be 1 minute to 5. They should give the listener not just a feel for the series but the who, what, when, where, why and how. But make sure, very sure, it’s good. Even if it’s just a blip, “Next week Betty goes for a walk. Duh duh duh…”

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the final steps of launching and publishing the podcast series.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!
 

Series 2 Episode 2 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster

 

 

Below is the transcript to the podcast for Series 2 Episode 2.

 

EPISODE 2: BACKGROUND RESEARCH, AND THE THREE P’S.

Hello and welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 2: Background research and the three P’s. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/ In this episode I’m going to talk about preproduction planning, researching, and budgets.

As I’ve outlined this series I’ve realized I need to come up with a reference example. So let’s say for a simple example you’re doing 12 episodes at 30 minutes each of a completely new fiction series. Comedy, Mystery, Drama, whatever, 12 episodes with around 4-6 actors. It will be recorded remotely (each actor having their own ability to record and send you the sound files). We will call this show “Betty’s Day Out” and it will be published once a week for 12 weeks.

Two things I cannot emphasize enough to you is this: 1 the more preproduction planning and learning that you do the better your experience and show will be. And 2. the more you learn the less you will know. Hear me out. Let’s say you do all your research on a specific editing software and you’ve looked at it, even downloaded the sample and familiarized yourself with it and you’ve read the reviews and you are positive that Audio Awesome is the perfect match for your needs. Only to find out after you’ve spent hours and hours editing that you can’t use it because it requires some specific plug in that you can’t download the whole program because of some weird torrent or it requires 20 gagillion memory bytes. It happens. So my point is Always, always have a plan B, gather enough background knowledge to cobble together a plan B. If plan A doesn’t work I can use this other thing or plan.  Another example, you’ve got 3 people who can play all the parts of your show. Perfect. Someone gets sick, has a death in the family, gets a job on the other side of the country. It happens. What’s your backup plan? Things change very fast in this industry so you cannot over plan.
So there are 3 P’s in my little podcasting world. Preproduction. Production. and Publishing. The 1st thing I do in the preproduction phase is the research which includes planning and listening. I research everything and if I were just starting out I would hop on over to the BBC at bbc.co.uk and have a listen because they are the be all and end all when it comes to audio fiction. They have an app called BBC sounds that you can listen to almost all of their library dating back to the 1950’s. Then I’d listen to some of the “Old Time Radio” shows. George and Gracey, The Shadow, whatever. Just listen carefully to the sound effects and how they used they music interludes and musical underscoring. Notice how you can visualize what’s happening. The older shows had no way of creating atmospheric sound scape’s so they kept things simple sometimes they’d have an introduction basically saying “Picture this it’s Friday night outside Lulu’s Bar in the docks of San Francisco and Bob Schmob is cutting rough with the dock workers…” then you’d hear a barge horn would bell would ring.  I loved the simplicity of those shows and as a listener you had everything you needed Who, what, when, and where. And an important lesson for us is that they worked with what they had available to them.
Listen to the dialogue and how exactly they were able to do the shows with the least amount of exposition in their dialogue. “Put that gun away Jacko”  or  “Tonight, at the party, we’ll have some drinks but we need to leave early so we can blah, blah, blah” and the next thing you hear are ice in drinks clinking sound and background music and you knew where the characters were in the next scene; that night at the party. But don’t stop there, there are some fantastic fiction shows out there right now.
What are some of the current audio fiction trends? I am not a science fiction fan (no judgement just a fact, I have a very low repitoire that pretty much starts and ends with Star Wars) but I can tell you that the Sci Fi bunch are on point when it comes to audio soundscapes and atmospheres.  Fan or not, if I were just starting out, I would be sure to listen to a few episodes. Also under this listening pre-production heading really give everything around you a good listen. What does the grocery store you go to sound like, a little league game, the difference between the sound you get in a closet versus a living room with a high ceiling. Those are your atmospherics and ambiance background sounds.

Writing can be listed under pre-production, production, and publishing. Writing for audio and your editing script are different types of writing and the editing script is more technical; casting; all the technical equipment, i.e. microphones – or your rig, editing software; sound effects; theme music; podcast host; website or not to website. Basically, everything is pre-production. Don’t panic, I’ll go into it more in future episodes.  Each topic I will take from Pre-production to your publishing. Something that gets overlooked a lot is time management. For your pre-production giving yourself deadlines is necessary.
Taking each element/topic and giving yourself a strict deadline in your research, getting it in, testing it, etc. In the first episode I mentioned rabbit holes you can go down when researching. And if you are new to this then everything is a potential pitfall and rabbit hole you can get stuck in. Giving yourself deadlines is one way to counter this affect. So as far as the listening, the first step, it’s a bit of a habit you can pick up, or you can make a play list, just try to get in the habit of taking things in and a lot of podcasts will put, what to the naked eye looks odd in their show notes. Not everyone uses show notes but sometimes you’ll see words like Shure-57 or soundbible, or T-rex 52 catbutt. (I use Shure 57 as an example a lot, I know, I’m not promoting it but it’s just because it’s one of the most common mic’s used.) But once you familiarize yourself with the names of mic’s and sound effect catalogues and editing equipment, you’ll start to recognize that the podcaster is sharing what equipment they use and they are giving credit to anything they received for free to help make the podcast.
Understanding time management and budgets
While you’re still in pre-production you need to get out a calendar and set out a publishing start date let’s say October 1st is on a Monday and so then and for the next 11 Monday’s will be your episode publish day. (Some people will wait till they have all their episodes finished before publishing, which is totally fine, I just do it a different way, and either way you’ll still need to keep an eye on your time management.)  Using that October 1st date you need to start working backwards. Are you going to do 2 months of production? (i.e. recording and editing 12, 30 minute episodes in August and September) then you’d have to have the scripts finished a couple of weeks ahead because you don’t want to drop the scripts on the actors the night before and expect to get a good performance. Some actors need a table read, there are a lot of factors happening at once in the recording/production phase. Again, here it doesn’t matter too terribly much how you do your schedule just that you keep to it, but for me, I like to work a month ahead of the publishing dates. So if I publish “Betty’s Day Out” 4 times a month. That means the first four scripts, recording, editing, the whole finished episode is done no later than Sept. 1. I get 4 in the bag before I start publishing, many podcasting hosts will let you pre-publish with exact dates the episodes go live. By working a month ahead it gives you breathing room while you’re in production. Also, it is inevitable that something along the way will go wrong, no matter what your master plan is, so now you’ll have time to figure it out without panicking and it gives you flexibility during the production phase. Some people will plan out and make really great flow charts for this but basically you’ve got 4 loaded onto the host to start, then you have the next two episodes written and sent out to your cast. So in the pre-production phase give yourself hard deadlines for your research/learning as much as possible and acquiring your “tools” (mics, audio editing equipment) then in your production phase work ahead of the hard publishing deadlines (Every Monday for 12 weeks) thereby giving yourself flexibility while still sticking to the production deadline schedule.

Real quick here I want to say something about budget’s and professional editing services. When I first started out I literally couldn’t find an editor to hire and when I did, it ended badly. I went through 4 editors before I just taught myself how to audio edit on Garage Band and then latre Adobe. And now 14 years later I look on the internet and there is a whole new industry for it. You can hire podcast editors and there are price lists with various services and service menu’s and honestly some of them are really reasonable considering the amount of work they put in. So, if you’ve got that kind of money you want to invest in this, then go for it. Stitching together a podcast can be a nightmare. It is long and tedious and fun and your hands get crampy but it can be so very rewarding.  Also, beware the price per hour an editor charges because it can really add up quick. Plus, you’ve got 12 episodes to pay for and if you’re paying for the technical why would you not pay your actors? Without actors you have no show. And if you’ve got the money invested to make a technically impeccable and professional show you really, really should get “Betty” out into the world then you need to put money into the marketing budget. “Betty” could very easily start costing you at a minimum 1000 dollars an episode times twelve episodes is 12000 dollars. Plus your podcast host costs. The smart move here to help offset the cost would be to have advertising put into the episodes and the current rate of return is at the very best 50 dollars per 1000 listens (it’s more like 35 dollars unless you have a famous and recognizable name attached). So you have to get at least around 300,000 downloads to get just that 12,000 dollars back. And just FYI if you get 50 downloads/subscribers per episode in the fictional story podcast world you’re doing really well. This is just an estimate and a back of an envelope calculations but my point is you’re going to have a lot of costs to cover and I’m all for supporting this new editor industry. However, remember the really tedious and hard part of editing is stitching -which is lining up the voice actors tracks with the sound effects and the ambiance or atmosphere, making sure every voice actors tracks microphones have the same outputs. You can teach yourself how to remove lip smacks and noise reduction and basically clean up the audio in like 15 minutes. At any rate, you’re going to have to put together a budget. It’s really going to be less of a traditional budget, that is money coming in and going out, as it is going to be a wallet hemorrhage.  If you’re on a serious low cost “budget” I would recommend the beg, borrow, steal format. Less of the stealing however, no one likes a low budget thief. Let’s call it the beg, borrow, trade format. Except for the hard tools like microphones, computer, etc. Everything you see for sale that is Waaaay out of your budget you can find either for free or at least used and low cost. You can make spit screens or more conventionally now called pop screens by taking a pair of panty hose and wrapping it around a coat hanger, and blankets for sound dampeners. You can trade with your actors by offering to put together a voice over for their auditions in a tight well-produced format, in return for their much-appreciated labors. My point here on budget’s is outline in your preproduction all the elements costs. Make a wish list and a need list with 3 rows: Big budget, low budget, your budget then start hunting and gathering.
That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the Preproduction Writing. And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Episode 7 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster Editing Part 1

Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 7 gives the first part of editing the show which is software set up, Actors sides, music and stitching.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

 

Hey Y'all. Welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode: 7 Editing Part 1, Loading and Stitching. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about the first part of editing together the podcast.

I mentioned the tutorials available online associated with learning the tech’s of how to use Audio editing software in previous episodes. But sometimes, when you’re starting out, you don’t know enough to ask the right questions or search for knowledge. So instead of giving you step by step instructions or how to load files into software I want to give you a better overview of how these programs work and what to watch out for. Just as a reminder, I use the Audacity Editing Software and we are using as a reference example a 12 part series, 30 minute episode that is recorded remotely.
First off, the WAV files that you will be editing with are larger than the MP3 files, much larger, like 10 times that of MP3 which can cause computers to crash and which is why I run my Audacity off of my giant external hard-drive. Wav files are uncompressed and MP3’s are compressed. So if you haven’t done it already you’ll want to direct the program to your external hard drive and store your libraries and directories in the external hard drive so you don’t use up all of your computer’s memory while editing. You do all this in the preferences before you start loading things onto the editing software. In Audacity the preferences are under the “Audacity” drop down menu and you’ll see lots of choices. Under the Quality drop down menu is the bit and kHz, choose what bests suits you but I’ve always used 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, those are also Apple iTunes default setting. At least it was while I’m recording this but you never know, things change really fast.

Once you’ve got the software set up, you’re ready to start loading and editing. Just kidding. This is the hard part. Where the rubber meets the road. Any mistakes you’ve made in the pre-production is going to be amplified ten-fold in this next part. You do have to be exacting in the stitching and the editing but not so much as you close yourself off to happy accidents. This is where that second script, the editing script and the spread sheet you made comes in handy. In the editing portion you are going to edit in .WAV (if you are using Audacity) which gives it a left and right signal and then before you upload to the host web-site you’ll convert that to an MP3. If the actor’s send you a MP3 file, that’s fine, just convert it to wav while you edit. You can use the Audacity for that or iTunes, really any sound editing software should be able to do this.
There are 3 thing you need to do after you receive the actors files. Save, Listen, Edit.
When the actors send you their files with all their *sides in them (*sides are the portion of the script with that actors lines on them) I immediately download them onto the external hard drive and the thumb drive then I load them into the audio editing software that’s on the computer and just listen to them all the way through. The first listen is for any anomalies to the track. Hissing, mic pop’s, background noise, reverb, level’s etc. My goal is to fix these little problems and get everyone on the same level as if they are in the same room and to do that I might run them through the noise reduction or mess with the EQ’s to isolate them further. Remember that 5 second sample you asked the actors to record at the beginning of their sides recording, now is when you’ll use that. When you open the Noise Reduction filter in Audacity it will ask you to choose a few seconds to get a noise profile. That is the 5 second sample the filter program is asking for in Audacity. Just a real quick EQ overview here. Every once in a while, someone will accidently bump their mic and not know it but it sounds like a giant thump(!) to you. In whatever editing software you’re using you want to highlight that thump, and just the thump, open the EQ board, on the left of the board should be the low end of frequencies about like 60 to 80-ish you want to lower that down till the thump is muted. Also, on the other end, the high frequencies you can dip any weird wind whistle that pops up. Some actors need to be juiced. Think of it like those old time movie lens gauzes that gave actors that ethereal look. In the EQ Person 1 might need EQ 200 and 400 gently moved until it sounds right.
Generally, I wait till I’ve gotten and listened to everyone’s sides and whoever had the “flattest” or “deadest” room tone I match everyone’s to that. If the scene is taking place outside, or in a “party” scene that doesn’t matter as much. Every room has it’s own tone; carpeting, tile, wood, high ceilings, ceiling fans, low ceilings, windows, all of this makes the room tone. Once you match everyone together you’ll have your baseline for everything else you edit into the mix.

You can do this part in two different ways. First you can load the actors sides files into the editing program and level them all out so that they have the same room tone. Then load them into a separate project, the main Episode # project.  Or you can simply load them into the main Episode project and do it there. I load them all into the main Episode project even though it would probably be easier to do it the first way.
As a side note when I’m setting up the tracks in Audacity, I always load in on the first few tracks the show music, the intro, and the next track is the cross fade to the room tone, I add the character voices and sound effects tracks. But do what makes sense for you and helps keep you organized.

I do a second listen so I can hear the actor’s reacting to one another. Let’s use a 3 person scene as an example. The set-up is: two people are in a room talking seriously about a recent crime. The third person walk’s in: “Hey y’all”. The other two respond, “Hey.” The actors have given you 3 takes each.  The first actor “Hey! Ya’ll.” “Hey ya’ll” or “Hey, ya’ll” So the other actor’s also give you 3 takes, “Hey!” “Hey” and “Hey?” I immediately know I’m not going to use the take that has the “Hey?” in it because it wouldn’t make sense so I delete it. However, make double sure you don’t want that take. I probably won’t use that “Hey! Ya’ll” take either but I’m going to hang onto it for right now because it’s interesting because I didn’t write that character as a suspect for the crime but the way they said that line make’s them kind of dodgy and the other actor’s don’t react to it making it “sound” like they suspect her. So, you see, in a way, you are kind of rewriting the script with the actor’s reacting to one another. And here’s a trick, use someone as the anchor in a scene: If you have an actor who is just a ringer, every side they give you is just dead on what the scene needed, someone who could react to a wall and give a great performance, then take everyone’s reaction line’s to match their lines. And/Or if you have someone who’s just off the wall, on the floor funny with each line reading, make sure every reaction line hit’s a different “note”. That’s another reason to ask for 3 readings per side. “Did you like THAT?” “Did YOU like that?” “Did you LIKE that?”  Now that I’ve got everyone on a baseline and I’ve listened to everyone’s sides, I have a pretty good idea of how I want to proceed with the story.

This is also where I build the room tones, atmosphere’s, and ambiance. The room tones, we’ve discussed. The atmosphere is less tangible. So, I have a room tone that I’m laying under the vocal tracks but if there is a light hearted moment in the dialogue I will lift the ceiling and give it breathing room. That means in the mixing after I’m done stitching it together I will add a little reverb to the vocal track. If there is a scene meant to be scary I will lower it and deaden the other sounds making the listeners ears perk up to even the slightest sound. Or I will add a low droning hum just before something happens. Ambiance is the mood I want to set and I use the scene change music to indicate. If, at the end of one scene, I have a character saying that they are going to drive somewhere and the next scene is at that place I will have the scene change music be a bit longer, just by a couple of beats. But if I have to start ramping up the pace of what is happening I will shorten the scene change music to just a couple of beats.
So I take the music I want to use for the show and I cut that up and save it in beats. Ambling scene change, scene change, and quick scene change. I’ve gone thru all the scene’s in and set the baseline room tones. 

Then I start slicing and dicing everyone’s lines. I’m not lining them up yet I’m just taking each person’s sides and cutting out the portion I want to use and as I go along cutting, I move the track further to the right. This takes forever but you’ll get really fast at it.
I start in page increments to build each scene. Let’s say on page 1 I have 3 people talking. I take those line reading sections and line them up so I can make sure they react and give me a picture of what is happening. And I continue doing that for each page of the whole scene.  And remember the extra page in the script you made? The one with the list of everyone’s sounds, “Katie’s doorbell, Laura’s room tone, etc.” those files that you’ve already cleaned up and are ready to load into the program? Pull it out, this is where you need it. I also start to load into the tracks the sound effects. There are two ways to do this. You can load all the Katie’s Doorbell SFX into one track or for each time you use it you can make another track. I know in Audible this happens, I’m not sure about other programs; just beware that if you use the same track with 7 separate Katie’s doorbell effects when you load each of them in it will alter the track. So you load the first one in at 5 minutes, 2.0000 seconds and the next one happens at minute 7.400 it will alter the 5.2000 to however long that effect lasts like it will alter it to 5.5000 seconds. It’s a pain but I use the same track because it’s less of a pain than making sure I have 7 separate tracks all with the same technical everything else. (That’s just me, you do you.) Now do that for every page, scene by scene, till your dead. I mean done. After your first episode, you will have learned everything you need to learn and the rest is gravy. But it’s a steep learning curve.

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the elusive Podcast Mastering.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

 

Hey Y'all. Welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode: 7 Editing Part 1, Loading and Stitching. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about the first part of editing together the podcast.

I mentioned the tutorials available online associated with learning the tech’s of how to use Audio editing software in previous episodes. But sometimes, when you’re starting out, you don’t know enough to ask the right questions or search for knowledge. So instead of giving you step by step instructions or how to load files into software I want to give you a better overview of how these programs work and what to watch out for. Just as a reminder, I use the Audacity Editing Software and we are using as a reference example a 12 part series, 30 minute episode that is recorded remotely.
First off, the WAV files that you will be editing with are larger than the MP3 files, much larger, like 10 times that of MP3 which can cause computers to crash and which is why I run my Audacity off of my giant external hard-drive. Wav files are uncompressed and MP3’s are compressed. So if you haven’t done it already you’ll want to direct the program to your external hard drive and store your libraries and directories in the external hard drive so you don’t use up all of your computer’s memory while editing. You do all this in the preferences before you start loading things onto the editing software. In Audacity the preferences are under the “Audacity” drop down menu and you’ll see lots of choices. Under the Quality drop down menu is the bit and kHz, choose what bests suits you but I’ve always used 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, those are also Apple iTunes default setting. At least it was while I’m recording this but you never know, things change really fast.

Once you’ve got the software set up, you’re ready to start loading and editing. Just kidding. This is the hard part. Where the rubber meets the road. Any mistakes you’ve made in the pre-production is going to be amplified ten-fold in this next part. You do have to be exacting in the stitching and the editing but not so much as you close yourself off to happy accidents. This is where that second script, the editing script and the spread sheet you made comes in handy. In the editing portion you are going to edit in .WAV (if you are using Audacity) which gives it a left and right signal and then before you upload to the host web-site you’ll convert that to an MP3. If the actor’s send you a MP3 file, that’s fine, just convert it to wav while you edit. You can use the Audacity for that or iTunes, really any sound editing software should be able to do this.
There are 3 thing you need to do after you receive the actors files. Save, Listen, Edit.
When the actors send you their files with all their *sides in them (*sides are the portion of the script with that actors lines on them) I immediately download them onto the external hard drive and the thumb drive then I load them into the audio editing software that’s on the computer and just listen to them all the way through. The first listen is for any anomalies to the track. Hissing, mic pop’s, background noise, reverb, level’s etc. My goal is to fix these little problems and get everyone on the same level as if they are in the same room and to do that I might run them through the noise reduction or mess with the EQ’s to isolate them further. Remember that 5 second sample you asked the actors to record at the beginning of their sides recording, now is when you’ll use that. When you open the Noise Reduction filter in Audacity it will ask you to choose a few seconds to get a noise profile. That is the 5 second sample the filter program is asking for in Audacity. Just a real quick EQ overview here. Every once in a while, someone will accidently bump their mic and not know it but it sounds like a giant thump(!) to you. In whatever editing software you’re using you want to highlight that thump, and just the thump, open the EQ board, on the left of the board should be the low end of frequencies about like 60 to 80-ish you want to lower that down till the thump is muted. Also, on the other end, the high frequencies you can dip any weird wind whistle that pops up. Some actors need to be juiced. Think of it like those old time movie lens gauzes that gave actors that ethereal look. In the EQ Person 1 might need EQ 200 and 400 gently moved until it sounds right.
Generally, I wait till I’ve gotten and listened to everyone’s sides and whoever had the “flattest” or “deadest” room tone I match everyone’s to that. If the scene is taking place outside, or in a “party” scene that doesn’t matter as much. Every room has it’s own tone; carpeting, tile, wood, high ceilings, ceiling fans, low ceilings, windows, all of this makes the room tone. Once you match everyone together you’ll have your baseline for everything else you edit into the mix.

You can do this part in two different ways. First you can load the actors sides files into the editing program and level them all out so that they have the same room tone. Then load them into a separate project, the main Episode # project.  Or you can simply load them into the main Episode project and do it there. I load them all into the main Episode project even though it would probably be easier to do it the first way.
As a side note when I’m setting up the tracks in Audacity, I always load in on the first few tracks the show music, the intro, and the next track is the cross fade to the room tone, I add the character voices and sound effects tracks. But do what makes sense for you and helps keep you organized.

I do a second listen so I can hear the actor’s reacting to one another. Let’s use a 3 person scene as an example. The set-up is: two people are in a room talking seriously about a recent crime. The third person walk’s in: “Hey y’all”. The other two respond, “Hey.” The actors have given you 3 takes each.  The first actor “Hey! Ya’ll.” “Hey ya’ll” or “Hey, ya’ll” So the other actor’s also give you 3 takes, “Hey!” “Hey” and “Hey?” I immediately know I’m not going to use the take that has the “Hey?” in it because it wouldn’t make sense so I delete it. However, make double sure you don’t want that take. I probably won’t use that “Hey! Ya’ll” take either but I’m going to hang onto it for right now because it’s interesting because I didn’t write that character as a suspect for the crime but the way they said that line make’s them kind of dodgy and the other actor’s don’t react to it making it “sound” like they suspect her. So, you see, in a way, you are kind of rewriting the script with the actor’s reacting to one another. And here’s a trick, use someone as the anchor in a scene: If you have an actor who is just a ringer, every side they give you is just dead on what the scene needed, someone who could react to a wall and give a great performance, then take everyone’s reaction line’s to match their lines. And/Or if you have someone who’s just off the wall, on the floor funny with each line reading, make sure every reaction line hit’s a different “note”. That’s another reason to ask for 3 readings per side. “Did you like THAT?” “Did YOU like that?” “Did you LIKE that?”  Now that I’ve got everyone on a baseline and I’ve listened to everyone’s sides, I have a pretty good idea of how I want to proceed with the story.

This is also where I build the room tones, atmosphere’s, and ambiance. The room tones, we’ve discussed. The atmosphere is less tangible. So, I have a room tone that I’m laying under the vocal tracks but if there is a light hearted moment in the dialogue I will lift the ceiling and give it breathing room. That means in the mixing after I’m done stitching it together I will add a little reverb to the vocal track. If there is a scene meant to be scary I will lower it and deaden the other sounds making the listeners ears perk up to even the slightest sound. Or I will add a low droning hum just before something happens. Ambiance is the mood I want to set and I use the scene change music to indicate. If, at the end of one scene, I have a character saying that they are going to drive somewhere and the next scene is at that place I will have the scene change music be a bit longer, just by a couple of beats. But if I have to start ramping up the pace of what is happening I will shorten the scene change music to just a couple of beats.
So I take the music I want to use for the show and I cut that up and save it in beats. Ambling scene change, scene change, and quick scene change. I’ve gone thru all the scene’s in and set the baseline room tones. 

Then I start slicing and dicing everyone’s lines. I’m not lining them up yet I’m just taking each person’s sides and cutting out the portion I want to use and as I go along cutting, I move the track further to the right. This takes forever but you’ll get really fast at it.
I start in page increments to build each scene. Let’s say on page 1 I have 3 people talking. I take those line reading sections and line them up so I can make sure they react and give me a picture of what is happening. And I continue doing that for each page of the whole scene.  And remember the extra page in the script you made? The one with the list of everyone’s sounds, “Katie’s doorbell, Laura’s room tone, etc.” those files that you’ve already cleaned up and are ready to load into the program? Pull it out, this is where you need it. I also start to load into the tracks the sound effects. There are two ways to do this. You can load all the Katie’s Doorbell SFX into one track or for each time you use it you can make another track. I know in Audible this happens, I’m not sure about other programs; just beware that if you use the same track with 7 separate Katie’s doorbell effects when you load each of them in it will alter the track. So you load the first one in at 5 minutes, 2.0000 seconds and the next one happens at minute 7.400 it will alter the 5.2000 to however long that effect lasts like it will alter it to 5.5000 seconds. It’s a pain but I use the same track because it’s less of a pain than making sure I have 7 separate tracks all with the same technical everything else. (That’s just me, you do you.) Now do that for every page, scene by scene, till your dead. I mean done. After your first episode, you will have learned everything you need to learn and the rest is gravy. But it’s a steep learning curve.

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the elusive Podcast Mastering.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Episode 6 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: Technical

Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 6 gives an overview of the Technical needs of a show.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

EPISODE 6:  TECHNICAL
Hey y'all, welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 6: The technical. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about the technical aspects of creating the Podcast including the hardware, software and the sound effects elements.

All artists have their tools and their space where they create the work, and they also have their methods or their own individual process. So be flexible when your putting together your studio. I come from a theater background, so I’m very used to having technical rehearsals. Which is where the cast walks through the show line for line to build the sound and light cues.  So consider this part kind of like your audio department pre-technical rehearsal. Everyone has their scripts and their marching orders on how they’re going to record their scenes. Before you sit down for the arduous task of editing/creating this show make sure you’ve got everything you’re going to need and you’ve got your mind right for it.
In episode 2, I was talking about the background research you need to do for preproduction planning. In episode 4 I listed the BBC writer’s room website to help you format the script. But here in episode 6 I want to get more into listing the technical aspects of the tools you will need to put together our example 12-part series, “Betty’s day out” that is recorded remotely. I can’t very well put in links to the podcast but in the blog, I’ve put in links for some of the various hardware and software I use. Some of those links are affiliate links, and only one place out of the many places you can purchase the specific tools. I haven’t linked random microphone sites and reviews for kickbacks, just the items I use or have used and worked for me in the remote recording production. 

My workstation includes my computer, printer, an external hard-drive, several thumb drives, and a couple SD cards. Some people may use a “cloud” for backing up their work. There’s a saying I’ll add here, ‘if it’s not saved in 3 separate places, it’s not saved.’
Once upon a time I would have put in the hardware list to have a sound mixer but unless you are using a live recording format for your Audio Drama, I don’t know why you’d have one. I add it here only so you know they exist. And if we were doing a live show they would be, obviously, a must have.
I use over the ear headphones, because I get the best sound editing values out of them instead of the in-ear headphones.
Also, I have a Zoom H-2 Handy Recorder. It is both a field recorder and my sometimes microphone. A Shure 58 with a signal adaptor (I already had the 58 but I just bought a signal adaptor for it) and an Audio-Technica mic. The Zoom Handy tool is invaluable to me because I do a lot of my own Foley work. Room tones, doors opening and closing, footsteps, cars passing by/ outdoor/ inside a moving car ambiance sounds, washing dishes, putting dishes away, dropping things, shuffling paper, phone sounds, keyboard typing sounds, all that and more. I don’t have to because as I’ll go over later there are sound effects downloads you can use as well, I just really like doing it. I wanted to capture the sound of a car door shutting on a 1972 rust bucket of a car so I asked a neighbor who has a rust bucket if I could record a few of the opening and closing doors. I record the sound effects on SD memory cards in the Zoom, download the effect into my editing suite and clean it up then upload it on my sound effects thumb-drive, and the external memory drive in a sound effects file. 3 places, safe and sound. You can also use the Zoom as a microphone for yourself when and if you record your own Show intro’s and out-tro’s and credits. I think doing some of my own SFX foley work helps get me in the right mindset for building a show. I also have a mic stand that holds my pop filter as well. And that’s it for the hardware. Before you get into the production phase just make sure everything works together as it should, like if you have to but an analogue to digital converter make sure the bit and sample rate match the audio software bit and sample rate.
In order to send the audio files back and forth with the actors you might need a file sharing app. Google drive, dropbox, one drive, icloud; there are plenty of free zip and file sharing apps. Coordinate with your cast members on which file sharing apps they use and accommodate their knowledge base. If the actor/s have a wide range of technical ability on this then by all means ask them to use whatever app you use. You could also just set up a gmail account and drive that your actors have access to as well. So they can load up there sides, and then you can download them on your end. Just be aware of the megabyte limits to any app software. It might be easier to have the actors compress their sides into an mp3 and when you upload it into your editing software convert it into a WAV.
Just a quick tip for the Actors when recording I will probably mention again in the editing episode:
When they record themselves ask them to identify themselves and their character and what scene and which pages they are recording. And in the first take ask them to give you about 5 seconds of silent recording. You’re doing that so you can record their room tone which will come in handy later when you are editing.

Editing Suites, Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Audio Editing Software, whatever you want to call it, they all should basically do the same thing. Recently I’ve seen some podcasting hosts offer editing services. Which would be great if you were recording yourself reading or talking with another person and you could splice it up and add some intro music, but the editing capabilities you need to make an Audio Drama are greater than that. There’s high end to low end and easy to use to difficult to use and everything in between now for Audio Editing Software. Guess which one I use? Audacity is a free open source software. Audacity does have some glitches. However, they are quick to help out and because it’s open sourced there are 100’s maybe by now 1000’s of users who have tips and tricks. Have you heard that Audacity crashes? It has on me, but because I back up and stay organized it’s not a problem. But I have used Adobe before and it crashed as well, that’s where I learned to stay organized and backing up my work. I’ve only used Avid many years ago to edit film so I can’t speak to it’s sound software. Audacity also has 3 different help/learning tools; The quick help guide, the online manual, and the forum. There are also countless You Tube tutorial videos to help level out that steep learning curve associated with any audio engineering program.

All podcasts hosts ask for CoverArt when you upload your website. These are invariably in jpg or png format. Dimension and Specs have to be on point so before you design and/or pay for software to design the CoverArt, click on over to the 3 main podcast distributors: Apple, Google, and Spotify and look at the requirements. 1400x1400 under 500k or whatever and make sure your design is going to look good in the size requirements.

Other elements of the Audio Drama include the sound effects, music, and ambiance or tones. There are plenty of places to find free sound effects. The sound effects bible and freesound.org, among many more. Just type into a browser for free sound effects. Or if you’ve got a field recorder like a Zoom Handy you can make some quality effects on your own. It can also help break up the tedium of searching for just the right effect. For several scenes in Arc of Joan I did the outdoor atmospherics and the footfalls through grass among other things with the field recorder. You have to be careful with downloading free sound effects there are a lot of corrupted ones or they could be carrying a software virus, so do be careful when downloading free stuff.

MUSIC:
But music for your scene changes or intro or background is a whole other beast. You must not use copyrighted music in your podcast unless you pay for it. If you don’t know whether it is copyrighted, or not, then don’t use it. There are plenty of places to find free music. So there’s no sense in pinching off someone’s hard work for free. One resource that I think gets overlooked is the library of congress. Go to LOC.gov and click on audio recordings in their drop-down menu. 

This is from their webpage:
“This page features items from the Library's digital collections that are free to use and reuse. The Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use. Each set of content is based on a theme and is first featured on the Library’s home page”
But again, credit your source.

Also you can go to Creative Commons.org. Like Audacity, Creative Commons is a sharing platform and I full on support their mission. Go to their website and click on the What We Do and then on the About CC licenses and then follow the license permissions.

The main thing is that you credit the place or people where you’ve gotten your free download. Credit them in your closing or opening credit’s, credit them in your meta-data, or show notes, on your website, on your blog, where-ever it’s appropriate. They gave you their work for free, give them credit.
I imagine if you’re a super organized person, which I am not, you could create a spread-sheet that lists files of the sound effect and/or music, the source credit, where you keep it, and other organizy-file-y information. And keep it with your editing script. That way you’d have a super-fast way to not lose any information or be like me with a wall filled with yellow sticky notes and enter into the cyclical world of losing stuff and finding stuff and losing it again and finding it stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Yeah, I’ve done that.
That’s the technical hardware and software and effects you’ll need for the show. I will go over the podcasting host websites in episode 9.

Before you get into the editing I hope you will heed these words: Every hour you edit, get up and stretch your legs. Walk around, go get something to drink, roll your head around, shrug your shoulders, focus your eye’s on a point in the distance. Personally, I find the act of sitting and focusing on these little wav lines to be physically exhausting so every time I get up from my work editing station, I stretch it out or something. Your body thanks you.

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the first part of editing the podcast together.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!
 

Episode 5 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: Casting

 Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 5 covers the casting and people wrangling for an Audio Drama.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

Hey y'all, welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 5: Casting and People Wrangling. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/

Depending on how you intend to record the podcast plays a huge role in your casting. Do you intend on going old school and recording in a theatre or a studio with all the actors standing around playing their parts? Cool. I actually would love to that like with a studio audience someday. I think recording that way is more along the lines of casting a live action play, but that’s not what I’m covering here.
At the time of writing this in the midst of yet another Covid wave raging through the world a lot of us might be remotely recording for a while. Which is cool too because you can actually get people from around the world together and record over a computer meeting, the most known one I think is probably Zoom. But look around and see what meets your needs and works best with your budget. Doing it over a Zoom type call can preserve some of the extra Je ne sais quoi you get when actors react to one another in person. The other way and probably the easiest as far as scheduling is just to have actors recording remotely from their closet. Excuse me, I mean home studio. But I would do at least one read through together either live or on a zoom type call. This can also help with answer any questions the actors have on the outset of the production.

I could start off my giving you the same ideas about casting your podcast that are in all the other websites about how to podcast; like asking the local amateur theatrical groups, family, friends, etc. which of course are all great ideas. Every time I start a new podcast everyone scatters like I’ve asked them to do the dishes after dinner or something. Or… Here’s a thought. If you are someone who wants to break into voice acting, you might want to introduce yourself to some audio fiction podcasters. Do you have the 3 R’s that podcasters look for? Reliable, reasonable, and remote. (as in you can record remotely?) It really doesn’t always matter that you can do a Glasgow, American Southeastern, and a Boston accent. Find some audio fiction podcasts you like and listen to regularly and open a dialogue with the producer. Don’t send an mp3 file without introducing yourself first though. Just send an email saying you like their other podcast and can you send them a mp3 file so they can hear your voice. But then put together an audio mp3 file: “Hi Saylor. My name is Beth and I’m a fan of your show Betty’s Day Out. I live in Ottawa, and I have this type of recording equipment, which I am recording on now so I can record remotely. I work an office 9-5 job but have plenty of time in the evenings and weekends to record. If you have any spots open in future episodes or shows I’d love to be a part of it. Here is my contact information if you have any auditions coming open. Blah Blah blah”
Tell the producer in exchange for your work you’d like some clips or your sides to help make a voice over audition tape.
And producers! This goes for you too. “Hi Beth, this is Saylor from Betty’s Day Out and Arc of Joan. I just heard you in the show “Yada, yada.” I really liked what you did and I have a part in preproduction right now that I’d like to offer you. It’s a small but essential role. We are recording the show remotely so it would be essential you have your own microphone and computer. As compensation I have some beans and a 10-dollar amazon card. But I can help you put together a voice over file for yourself and pull out and give you your sides from the finished show. If you’re at all interested please contact me next week sometime and I’ll send over the script, here’s my contact info…”

A COUPLE OF DO NOT DO THIS'S:

If you are reaching out to an actor for a show, unless this is for a paid role, do-not-ask-them-to-audition. You either want them or not. You just need to know if they can record remotely. And it doesn’t leave the actor thinking “oh boy I just got an audition!” Mostly they walk away thinking, “Hang on, you reached out to me, to do this recording audition work for a possible chance to work on a show I have no idea about for some dried beans and an amazon card? No thank you.
I put reasonable in the 3 r’s because when you’re sending files back and forth with 5 different actors, and the actors are sending files back and forth remotely it is possible that somewhere you or the actor is going to miss something. It is completely reasonable that it could happen. Or for whatever reason “Kelly” in scene 3 file got corrupted. Ug now you have to email or text Kelly, I hope she’s not annoyed…Stupid stuff happens on occasion, roll with it.

And the thing about working with people and asking people to contribute is that the minute you “invite” or “ask” for help with something you immediately are on someone else’s schedule.  When you set deadlines for getting their recordings to you by Wednesday, a great collaborator will send it to your in-box the prior Friday morning, a good collaborator will send it on Wednesday sometime, and then there are the others who will say “oh, you meant THIS Wednesday?” Or ghost you until Friday night after the Wednesday deadline and say “Sorry, this is late, I’m an awful person. Don’t hate me! Wink wink.” And that last one is exactly one of the reasons why you need to work a month ahead if you’re working remotely. When you record remotely communication between you and the actors is so essential. Try to make it a good habit when you get an email from an actor, even if you can’t answer it right away, just to acknowledge you got the email and as soon as you get back to your desk, you’ll answer them.

LEARNING MOMENT:
I work regularly with someone who didn’t get her recordings in on time, which was weird because she’s a great collaborator, and when I reached out to her with texting and emails I didn’t hear back and my first thought was, Uh oh, something is definitely wrong.  And unfortunately I was right, she had had a sudden death in the family. It was awful for her, and I wasn’t sure it would be appropriate for her to go on, but we finally talked for a bit and I asked her what I could do for her and then what she wanted to do about going forward in the show because maybe she wanted to drop out, which would have been understandable and fine. But she didn’t want to leave the show so I worked around her as long as I could hold out as we were now publishing the episodes weekly. And in the very end she got her sides in before the episodes publishing date and I ended up working some late night editing but we got it done. Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed her for dropping out and she’s such a great collaborator who really enjoys acting in the show, so I didn’t want to like punish someone further who is just going through an awful time. So you just figure out a way to compromise. You know that race game when you were kids where you tie your legs together and one of you ends up dragging the other across the finish line? That’s a good metaphor for collaborations. “Eventually one of us is going to get dragged across the finish line.” 

Some actors what to chat about every episode, they’ve got questions, or ideas and as the creator and producer you need to make time for them. The more comfortable your actors are with you and your reactions to their acting the better their acting is going to come across. And when you get entangled with a “Oh you meant this Wednesday” people.  Just do that smile and nod your head while backing away slowly thing. There is nothing you can do and you are not going to change them. Just find a good place to stop using that character, say thank you for your work, and end the collaboration. The fact that they continue to ignore the deadline or if they constantly record in the middle of a tiled bathroom even though you ask them to find a quieter place is them telling you they absolutely don’t care your stupid podcast. Don’t fight or frustrate yourself or talk about them to the other cast about what a pain they are. Do. Not. Do. That. Just end it in the friendliest way possible and keep moving forward. Change the character’s name, write a replacement character, or just simply replace them. Juggling people is hard no matter what, this is your show that is populated by people, so you need to find ways to juggle and still serve the story.

COMPENSATING THE CONTRIBUTORS:
If, in the near or distant future, you end up covering your costs of the show you wrote, produced, and edited by yourself and it makes 5 dollars or 5000 dollars you must share this with everyone who worked on your show. The actors and or musician’s especially. I’m not an entertainment or a copyright lawyer or a union rep or anything of that nature so if you need to seek that type of advice, please do.
All I can say is two things: One, pay yourself last. And second, you must be open and honest with everyone who is working on the show. What you are asking of them, who has royalty rights to the show and what you can offer in return for their labors. If you literally cleared 5 dollars in royalties and you’ve had 7 actors in the 12 episodes 3 people were in all 12 episodes and 2 people were in 4 episodes and 2 people where in 1 episode than you have a math word problem to figure out. Do you need to draw up legally binding contracts or release statements, probably not. But I would make sure everyone gets the same information regarding the compensation and intentions of the show, like in an email to everyone. Just make sure everyone is on the same page as you. An email that even just says thank you to everyone who contributes to Betty’s Day Out, none of us are getting paid and your time is precious to me. I’m going to make the show available for free downloads to as many podcatchers as I can and I will try to sell ads for it so if we get more than 100,000 downloads I will be compensating everyone through shares of the show.
If you are easy to work with and by that I mean show your appreciation by saying thank you, treat them with respect and be reliable and reasonable then that is really well over half the battle. Give them good feedback on their acting and/or actionable feedback. “Hey Actor, this one is great and on the next part can you move back a little from your mic so you sound like your standing behind everyone?” If you are 3000 miles away from them you could still send them a funny meme of a you laughing at your computer about one of their lines they delivered on point. Because the Arc of Joan is a comedy at the end of the shows I started tagging on their outtakes and bloopers after the end of the show. And it became a fun “thing.” Kind of an inside joke I had with the actors and something people who listened finally cottoned on to and loved it.  

In the publishing phase the cast is still with you. Whether through their social media and they post themselves in their recording area or sending you their bio for the show notes. You’ll be on the hook to send them their files back with their sides so most definitely hold up your end of the bargain there. So as far as casting your show for remote recording you can absolutely take the route of family and friends, or you can reach out to people whose work you’ve enjoyed however far away, you can even hire your whole crew if you’ve got the funds. But in the end whoever you get onboard need to serve the story. And you’re roll as captain is to keep them moving through the pre-production casting and read through’s, the recording, and the publishing.

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through all the technical aspects of putting together the podcast including hardware, software, and all the sound effects elements.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!
 

Episode 4 Joan and the Savvy Podcaster: Writing 2EPISODE 4 WRITING PART 2

 EPISODE 4 WRITING PART 2

 

Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am "playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop and create their own audio drama series. Episode 4 covers the pre-production writing for the actors script, editing script, and editing spreadsheet.

Below you will find the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay. This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show. It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what they are getting into before they start creating and producing.

This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com

 

Hey y'all, welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 4: Writing Part 2. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about formatting your actors scripts, the editing script and the editing spreadsheet.

Like I said in episode 3, I always have two scripts of the same episode. The actors script and the editing script the goal of both is to keep things moving while you’re in production.  Obviously, the actors script is pretty straight forward with dialogue and situation explanations for the actors. But the editing script is a whole other story. But if you take the time to do an editing script in pre-production it will save you much needed time when you are editing. So to explain the acting script I would send you to the BBC again. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, if you want to learn from the best go to the source and that would be the BBC. The website for how to format a radio drama script is at BBC Writers Room website, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/resources/medium-and-format/
and you’ll click on the “radio drama without audience” link. They have literally and consistently been producing audio fiction for 100 years. The end. Good luck and good night.
Just kidding. 

Script formatting is basically universal for most mediums, film or TV or radio. It has to be clear and concise. I said this in Episode 3 Writing 1 but in case you’ve skipped down here I’m going to repeat myself. The actors need to know more than just the lines on the page. Where are they in this scene? What are they doing? Walking outside? Sitting in a café? Here’s what I said before: I try to write the first one in as clear a way for the actors as I can including “stage directions” like (whispers), (talking loud over party and dance music), or (while walking). This will give the actors the audio ques they need to alter their speech. You can’t have two characters who are supposed to be jogging giving their lines as if they are sitting in a quiet café.  Also related both to scripts and editing; I always start with sound then voices. It’s almost like giving a clue to where you are and what’s going to happen.” I think this also helps the actors understand audibly what is happening. The only thing different I do is I number the lines so: 

Scene 1 – INT CHURCH – YM’S OFFICE – TUESDAY MORNING
                                       (YM, MURIEL)
1. MUSIC: PROGRAM THEME MUSIC UP and FADE OUT
2. SFX: FOOTSTEPS
3. SFX: DOOR KNOCKS

4. YM:       Muriel! It’s good to see you back, thanks for stopping by.

I number the lines is because we’re recording in isolation and if I need someone to rerecord a line and get it back to me it saves any confusion. I can just drop “Muriel” an email asking her to rerecord Page 1 Scene 1 Lines 9, 11, 13. And why I need theme done, whether it’s a problem with the line reading, or I lost the mp3 file, or the file was corrupted, whatever. Also, I always put under the Scene number the characters in the scene. I realized it’s a lot easier for the actors so they don’t miss recording any scenes.

Please don’t go out and buy a script writing program. Yet. Don’t get me wrong there are some great ones and very useful ones to be had.  And that’s fine they are fancy and can do a multitude of fancy things like pulling all the lines from one character and charting things and they make those fancy digital index cards. Some people love these programs and good for reason! And some are super useful if you’ve got a writing partner or it’s a group writing thing. But for me I ask myself why do I need this? Sometimes I’ll send over a script to an old writing pal and she marks it up the script with a different color, tells me I’m a hack and we’re done with it. You may find a writing program an absolute must have to get your thoughts organized and plot points mapped out. But I feel like they can be an obstacle to my ultimate goal. Because I will have to take time to learn how to use the writing program and really for the podcast you’re basically just putting in tabs on your word document. For me, it’s just a bit of overkill for the purpose, it’s like buying a gas leaf blower to clean up the leaves from a single tree.

Now for the script you’ll use for your editing.  Same script, different format. Basically you’re going to squeeze all your tabs in a bit and make your dialogue very narrow. I always print this one out and keep it separate from everything else until I start to edit. Whereas the Actors script is basically a pre-production script this is your production script. One of the constant truisms of editing a fictional podcast is keeping everything organized, think of this as your junk drawer. (It’s messy but it’s where the spare keys and everything else useful lives.) You keep the script narrow because it’s where you write out the sound effects, time codes, notes, ideas, etc. I try to keep time codes, settings, filters used, file names, stitching notes on the left side and on the other side notes, ideas, and which take from the actors side I want to keep.  
Everybody, everybody, every single person who has edited on computers has an editing program crash story or a computer crash story. It’s just inevitable that it will happen, but the severity of the crash varies. Picture this: It’s 1 am, you’ve been editing for about 4 hours, your neck hurts, but you’re on the last 3 pages of the script. Do you stop for the night or hang on; It doesn’t matter because the program just crashed. You work for 20 minutes to get it back up and running and you realize the whole episode is lost. So, just in case of a massive crash where you absolutely have to start over this is like your last line of defense. Even though you’ve saved everything in three separate places, like you should, how are you going to remember you lowered Muriel’s voice in scene 1 line 9 and gave it the effect of her entering the room? Or that you fixed a problem with the Fade In for whatever sound effect with this or that filter? Because it’s on the left-hand side with a time code and on the right you have the sound effect that you used for that line. This is why you have an editing script that looks like a junk drawer.

This is part of the preproduction writing but it could go in the editing episode as well but while you’re working on the scripts always do a Scene spread sheets that I print out and keep with the editing script. On the top is a row labeled:

 Characters  –         Sound FX           – Music –              Notes.                (Then below that is:)

SCENE 1
INTRO MUSIC FADES:                                                 SCNECHG.WAV
YM                    INT office AMB                                    YMAMB1.MP3
Muriel                foot steps                                               CARPFTSTP.MP3
                      RAPID SOFT KNOCKS                           OFCKNKS.MP3
YM                                                                                   YMfile1.mp3

SCENE 2                                    Scene change music     SCENECHG2.WAV

YM: Screams                                                                       YMfile2.mp3

This is so when I’m assembling the elements of the episode together to load into the software I know what I’ll need (as in sound effects), where it is, the file name, etc. Because I use the same sound effect file for Actor #1 front door throughout all the episodes. And that door sound effect is different that Y.M.’s office door. I use like 6 different car door opening and closing sound effects but I always use the same sound effect that is assigned to that actor. For example: I have 5 actors and all of them have a front door sound effect assigned to them. I find that so much easier and it gives an audio clue to the audience. I also use the same Ambient sounds, room tones or Atmospheres. Joan’s office sounds different than Y.M.’s and Muriel’s. Joan’s office is closer to the front door so in the background you’ll hear mumbling, door shutting. She also has the biggest office so there’s a higher ceiling. Listening to people talking in Muriel’s office is a bit claustrophobic. Flat, and absolutely no reverb. Outside Beth’s house there are always crickets. It’s these kind of touches that gives your audience the audible touchstone’s that’ll register in their subconscious so they don’t have to consciously think, “ok, where am I?” which will pull their attention away. I’ll repeat this and go into more detail in the editing episode but for now this is the pre-production reason why it’s important and how to do it.
So for every script you’ll have the Actors and the Editing script, as well as a Scene Spread Sheet for the editing.

As a general reference the scripts are about 1 page per minute. I usually do about 8 to 10 scenes per episode which translates to about 25 pages. I keep saying generally and about because it really does depend on how you format the scripts, how long your intro and outro are, and how many sound effects are used. For people who are using a Plot A and Plot B structure, where you have Plot A running throughout your series and you use the Plot B as the single story structure then I usually pepper the Plot A plot points about two-thirds through the first few episodes and let  the amount of scenes dedicated to Plot A number up until I have reversed the structure.

That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the casting processes and people wrangling.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!