I was tasked with creating a podcast, something I have had exactly ZERO experience with before.
Of all the topics I was offered to focus on, I chose to focus on activism, specifically regarding animals. I figured that out of the 4 topics it was the one I knew at least one thing about and given that my partner is big in the activist scene, I figured I could probably pick her brains for information.
Having never created much online content before (outside of photography) I was at a loss on where to start with something such as this. Luckily, the internet is filled to the brim with resources on how to create your very own podcast, so from that I was able to draft up a skeleton and ask myself “what ARE the possibilities and risks that social media offer activists?”
From there, I was able to start researching and digging up articles and information that would supply me with what I needed. I ended up with a fair number of sources in the end, both scholarly and non-scholarly. A couple of these references I ended up scrapping due to time limitations on the script. The sources I supplied were used primarily for definitions of terms rather than things such as data or the like, but there were one or two that were newspaper clippings (although I think these were some of the scrapped).
Within the podcast I use one track as my intro and outro. A friend found a site with hundreds of fair-use songs readily available and from there I was able to scour until I found a track I saw as suitable for the podcast. Other than that, and the references the podcast is 100% my content. I didn’t use any voice samples (although I did look around online for something that might be useful as I initially planned on a small interview segment) as relevant samples actually ended up being rather hard to track down.
Having edited photos for a while now and taking a film creation class parallel to the creation of my podcast I had a handle on editing audio and stitching it together. While Audacity was recommended, I opted for Adobe Audition for no real reason, other than I had an understanding of how Adobe applications functioned. I think in total I spent about 20-30 minutes recording my dialogue, using my phone as a microphone (I would’ve liked a proper microphone but given the circumstances the phone wasn’t entirely bad a recording device).
I did two full recordings of my script, one rehearsal to make sure I wasn’t speaking too quickly, and a handful of lines I re-recorded while splicing the podcast together. This was for reasons such as poor quality, background noise, and run-on words and pronunciation, which I did more than I’d care to admit to.
Overall my biggest issues were drafting up a script I thought was suitable and covered what I needed it to and finding a quiet recording location. Between my house and my partner’s I think I had a window of one hour of silence, and even that was interrupted by dogs scratching at the door and a bird whose call seem to be able to penetrate even the strongest sound-proofed door I could make with foam and pillows (I believe the bird can still be heard at one part of the podcast).
I have learnt a lot through this experience though. Next time I make a podcast I know what works to my strengths for drafting up a plan and a script and for finding sources.
Oh, and that birds are truly the enemy of silence and should be avoided at all costs during the recording process.
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