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!