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!