Podcast Production

Podcast Production

Cover Image - Based off of the script, I had A few Ideas for the Title and Cover image. First, I had to take them. I set out with my camera and tripod, and 2 lights. Setting it at a 10 second timer, I gave myself a multitude of ideas to work with. I easily spent an hour going to various locations around the house and taking promo pictures. The needed a photoshop, but there were exactly what I was after. This went as follows:

I liked the overall visual style. But, the Font was not to my liking, and the image was too warm. Other than this, it is not the kind of image I wanted to represent the Podcast.

It was lacking a sense of life. It seemed too professional to consider interesting and needed an element of flora.

So, I went for the flora route. The font this time was to a standard of my liking. Although not perfect, it was heading in the right direction.

The colours weren't contrasting enough, the image was flat and didn't make sense in the way that I intended.

A title was still needed, and the background was dull.

I loved the idea of a 'grainy blur' effect, it gave the image a vintage vibe that I was very much leaning towards.

This was Eureka moment for me. The image was perfect. But the edit was not. I enjoyed the contrast in both colour, and style. This was a giant step in the right direction. I created my own LUT effect for this one which included a washed out teal and orange, along with the gran and blur from before. The font was a mix of the first two designs, and meeting in the middle was definitely the right call. The issue was that it still wasn't noticeable enough. 

The lower third was comprised of an old newspaper, and was entitled "One-Stop-shop of sarcastic ludicrosity".

I loved it until I didn't.

It was almost where I wanted it, but lacked a sense of taste that I was so hoping for. The lower third needed a design change, and the title needed simplifying. The colour scheme was too washed out, and the text was not just unreadable but also forgettable.

The final design change saw "malfunctioning Society" as its lead, and I was so pleased with this one. The lower thirds were redesigned to show more of the original image and yet fit the colour scheme. And the entire image was given a colour grade to help boost the details.

Lastly, a drop shadow was given to the text. It was perfect.

Recording - 

Location sketch-

I decided to pre-plan the production layout as it was something I was uncomfortable with. I had to ensure that I knew exactly what was connected to what or else I could have ruined everything. At an early stage of setting up, I dropped the audio interface, and for a moment, prepared myself for the worst. However, it worked seamlessly. This was an important moment in the production process because it made me realise that there are always risks that I don't predict. Things can happen that I didn't expect and that was something I had to face.

And it was definitely an issue for me. I had little time to record, and still had so much to setup. I was connecting cables while installing software because of my tight schedule. Something which I had not foreseen was the internet connection from the laptop to the router. The laptop was too far from the router to connect and download speeds were slow. I should have set up the drivers beforehand to speed up the process. Its ironic; by trying to save myself time I ultimately wasted more than I had hoped to. But, its all part of the learning process and I've learned a lot from it.

Recording the Podcast was also not as easy as I had hoped. I did a test run, with Audacity booted up. That is when I realised that the software was set to stereo recording. As the mic was Mono, it was only coming out of the left speaker. If you didn't already know, a Mono recording in Stereo can never be recovered, as the audio will never invert itself properly. This was a very simple fix. I just set my input to a mono signal, and the DAW changed by default.

Here is my Raw, uncut version of the podcast. No effects, no edit, just the Dry recording.

It is important to present this, so that you can see the creative direction that the Podcast took in Post.

As I recorded in one long take, it meant that I could keep a consistent volume and position throughout. Different mic-mouth placement would have changed the sound, and leaving my makeshift sound booth would have altered the rooms acoustics.

The Next step from here was to trim and cut the audio track.

This was a simple fix in Reaper. 

I used 'Split item at cursor' to select the areas that I did not want to keep.

I then lined each clip up back to back so that they played seamlessly. For many, there was a noticeable cut in the room noise tone. To fix this, I overlapped the cut and added a 'Crossfade' to physically fade the cut out of the mix.

As I mentioned before, A compressor is always needed when recording tracks. I used a Pop filter to eliminate overexposure and clipping. However, without compression, this is never enough. Ideally, you will want to record the track directly into a compressor. However, this was not an option for me, so I had to add it to the dry signal to make it wet.

The compressor I used also boosted all the frequencies.

EQ was the final VST added to this track. The equalisation was extremely important to mold the sound to my preference.

I wanted a crispy high end with a deep rumble supporting it.

For this, I used a 6 band EQ (6 control parameters). 'Oct' refers to the sharpness of the point controlling the frequency. This refers to how much the parameter adjust the frequency. I first cut above 20k and under 50 Hz to eliminate all room noise and hum. 

The rest goes as follows:

• 100 Hz +7 (low oct)
• 200 Hz +7 (high oct)
• 5.0k Hz +1 (low oct)
• 20k Hz +7 (low oct)

This was effective to give a warm radio tone while cutting through the high frequencies. To sum up the effects of my EQ VST, you can imagine the shape as a 'V'.

The Dialogue sections near the end were created by removing the EQ, doubling the Mix on reverb, and panning the audio track left or right. This helps to distance the narrator from the characters involved. 

Music -

The introduction music was entirely experimental. I used some VST instruments and built a short song to feature in the podcast. 

The product started with an organ track.

The Organ was an inexpensive VST plugin from martinic.com.

My favourite preset is 'The house of the rising sun'. I love the song of the same title, and the preset replicates it perfectly. The tone is that of a deep octave. The high note playing in extreme vibrato, and the lower playing with a fuzz distortion and sustain. 

This is the MIDI layout for the Organ part. 

It was programmed by myself, and is the perfect mix of creepy and melodic.

The harmonies weren't stacked to hard. This is because I knew that I needed a synth bass yet, so didn't want to overcrowd the Mix.

Beyond this,  I Boosted the mid frequencies with EQ. 

And added a preset Hall Reverb.

The drums were a free VST plugin from powerdrumkit.com.

This drum kit comes with a Hard rock/Heavy metal tone for cutting through the mix. The sounds aren't the most realistic on the market; But compared to other VST drum kits, it is very easy to use.

The toms have a deep bass, and the snare has a high snap.

The MIDI file here was very different. Drums are velocity sensitive - meaning the harder you hit, the louder they ring. To create realism, is used the Velocity sliders (located at the bottom) to changed each beat to its realistic velocity. 

Above this, I added a high/low boost and a mid cut to the EQ.

A preset Hall reverb by dragonfly-reverb was also added.

The Bass was a free Kee Bass Synthesiser by martinic.com.

The preset I used was 'Deep Throat' and was a harsh spring bass effect.

The MIDI work for this instrument was the root notes of the Organ track. 

I added a bass boost in EQ. 

And a short doubler delay.

Background Music -

The included piano track in the background was that of pixabay.com.

I did not wish to waste time on choosing background music. I ran a Demo of the top 5 on the site.

I eventually chose option 2 

"Cancion Triste".

This was not because of musical style, But Because it was the only track that lasted the duration of my podcast.

However, this was not enough for me, so I re-recorded the ending.

I wanted the track to end on a long, conclusive note to symbolise the conclusion of my story.

To achieve this, I took the Root note of the starting chord of the track. I turned this into a low octave of the original chord and stretched it for 4x the length of one chord (A bars length). 

All very musical and all very technical. But to sum it up, I used versilstudios.com to rescore the original piece in a way that suited my work. I used EQ and reverb to match the tonal qualities of the VST to the original track. Listen out for it at the end.

Distribution -

Now my podcast is rendered as a .WAV file, I need to publish it to streaming services.

To achieve this, I used anchor.fm/.

Anchor is a Podcast distributing branch of Spotify. It is free, and allows anyone to upload their podcast to all major streaming services. They can be fully customised and there are almost no limitations.

At the current state, I am still awaiting anchor's approval to post. It has been a few working days since I requested to submit the Podcast, and I have received an email stating that my podcast is being analysed before it is thrown out into the world. But don't worry, you wont have to wait to hear the finished product. Its just a click away.

Final Product

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY