Hack11.Professional-Quality Podcasting


Hack 11. Professional-Quality Podcasting

Podcasting is new, but broadcasting isn't. Learn the established secrets of the broadcasting trade that will help you create professional podcasts with basic hardware.

Without even thinking about it, you are taking on the role of producer, writer, host, engineer, and editor of your own show. Understanding the different roles in a radio show can help you compartmentalize your work so that you can concentrate on each job. While you are in the host role, your mind should be fixed on the job of hosting, without thinking about the engineering or the production aspects of the show.

In this hack, I'll cover each role and give you some tips from the professionals that you can use in your own podcast.

2.3.1. The Producer

There are two levels of producer: the show producer, and the segment producer. The show producer is in charge of deciding how shows are organized, the theme of a show, and putting it all together. The segment producer handles an individual portion of a show, such as an interview or a comic bit.

A producer will tell you that a show needs a general theme and some structure. The theme is simply the subject of the podcast: some observation you had, a movie you want to review, or a story you want to tell. The structure of the show can be equally simple, with an introduction at the beginning, the show segment in the middle, and the credits and any plugs at the end.

The segment producer has two responsibilities: to research the topic and to author the show prep for his segment. This show prep is usually a set of notes that are given to the host before the segment starts. I'll cover what goes in the notes in the section titled "The Writer," later in this hack.

The podcast producer is concerned with finding guests for the show. The producer schedules a time to talk with the guest and does some research on the guest and what they are going to talk about.

Getting access to famous or important people can be difficult. As editor-in-chief of the Code Generation Network (http://codegeneration.net/) it's my job to secure interviews with interesting people. In general, I get access pretty quickly to people because it's a small field and people are interested in talking, but on two occasions, it took months of repeated calls and schedule choreography to get an interview [Hack #33]. But it was worth the wait.

Here are some tips I've followed to get some great interviews:


Have an elevator pitch

This is a summary of why the person should come on your show and it should be very brief. The term elevator pitch implies that you should be able to explain the whole thing between floors in an elevator. In particular, you should know the size of audience you are giving the person access to, and why that audience is important to her. Also, find a way to appeal to the interviewee directly. Tell her why your interview will be different, and not just another whistle stop on the press tour.


Sound official

In the process of getting an interview, you will talk with numerous people, all of whom have heard the same type of introductory lines over and over again. Have your salutation nailed when you start making the calls. "My name is Joe Schmoe. I'm from the Daily Review. I'm calling regarding an interview with Jane Doe about her new film, For My Eyes Only." Then be ready with the callback details, including a phone number and email address. The more blasé you sound, the better. Eagerness is a tipoff that you might be an amateur.


Keep notes

As you talk with different publicists and people on the marketing machine food chain, keep a detailed journal of who, by full name, you talked to, and when and what they told you. It helps you to respond quickly and with authority when someone asks you who you talked to, why you talked with them, and what they told you.


Be persistent

Publicists are busy, particularly when the person you are interested in is in demand. Keep calling, and keep a record of your calls. Always leave a message. If you're a small operation, you normally will not receive an answer. If they do contact you to tell you that you cannot have the interview, get them to tell you why, and try to rework your pitch to convince them to work with you.


Be positive and flexible

If you aren't part of the big media machine, working with you is optional for publicists. Make it a pleasure for them to call you back. Be excited, positive, and entertaining, and make them feel good about what you are trying to do. Nobody is going to return your calls if you sound irritable or mean, if they have a choice. If you are a podcast show with 200 listeners, they are doing you a favor by setting up the interview. Be flexible in your schedule and work around their needs.


Be confident

You have a good show. You understand your audience. You know the interview process and will do a good job at it. Have this in mind when you make these calls and talk with these people. Exuding confidence will reassure people that you are not a stalker looking for close contact with the stars.

Now, with the fundamentals in hand, I dub thee "press." Welcome to the club. We've got jackets. Now that you are one of the press, you can be on the press circuit for publicists. Publicists are your gateway to companies and individuals who want to flog their latest book, movie, product, or gizmo. A publicist's job is to get press that will generate sales, period. In general, companies don't have their own public relations group, or publicists. They contract that out when they have a product release.

The place to start is with the company web site and corporate phone number. Call them up and ask for the press relations department, and you will usually get a phone number or a voice mailbox. Leave your number and email (be pleasant, of course), and you are on your way. Have your elevator pitch ready for when the publicist calls back. You should also have a good answer to what your deadline is for the interview, and what times you have available. For the music business, you will want to start with the record label. Make a journal entry for when you called to remind yourself that you should call again if you haven't heard from them in a couple of days.

Timing is everything in terms of getting interviews. Understand that when a company isn't releasing software, or an artist isn't releasing a record, they are going to be in production on something new, or on vacation. It's when they release that they are most inclined to give interviews. If they aren't releasing at the moment, ask the publicist "what's in the pipe" and you will generally get a schedule of what is releasing (and when), and you should be able to get advance booking for the publicity train when the release does happen.

You should also have a clear idea of who you want to talk to. For example, if you want to interview someone at a software company, you will likely get the president, CEO, or a product manager for the software. You will likely not get access to the engineers that made the cool feature, unless you can convince the publicist that it will be a great interview that will sell the software. If you are trying to interview a band, you might want to start with the bass player or drummer and not the lead singer, as the former might not be in as much demand.

You can get local interviews with touring bands by checking out their concert schedule and getting in touch with their promoter. Local press is always good for ticket sales, so be sure to mention that you will be able to hype the tour with the local markets.

When you show up in person for an interview you should be dressed well and have all the kinks out of your sound setup before you get there. If you have a friend who can work the controls, bring her along as well so that you can concentrate on the interview. To add credibility, be sure to bring cards stating your show name and contact details. You should also bring the name, contact details, and any passes given to you by the promoter. Having microphones with flags (the little square boxes up at the top of the microphone that indicate your affiliation) also lends an air of credibility. Blank microphone flags are available in the $10 range from Microphone Flags (http://www.microphoneflags.com/).

2.3.1.1 After the interview.

After you have completed the interview, the company might want to preview the recording to make sure they have been portrayed in the best light. You should work out these stipulations in advance. In addition, if you are thinking about doing an interview that is intended to portray the person in a negative light, you will want to make sure you are properly covered legally beforehand.

The last job of the producer for a given story is to complete the circle with the publicist once the interview is online. The publicist will want a link to the story to add to the company or artist web site. That creates a virtuous cycle where you publicize them and they, in turn, publicize you. You should also let the publicist know what the listener response was like. This will make it easier to get a follow-up interview later.

2.3.2. The Writer

The writer's job is to create the show prep or show notes that the host will use during the taping or the interview. The notes can be a Word document, or an OmniOutliner document. OmniOutliner (http://www.omnigroup.com/) has the advantage that the notes can be exported as OPML [Hack #44] and attached to the podcast blog posting later.

Organize your notes in the same way as the show, starting at the beginning with the show introduction, moving through each segment, and then into the closing credits.

As a podcaster, you are your own writer and host, so write the show notes the way you like to talk. In the beginning, you should write out almost everything you say verbatim. As you get more comfortable with the role of host, you can reduce the segment sections to just some notes. But you should keep the introductions, credits, and any plugs you want to make written out and in spoken form. People expect these sections to sound canned and formal anyway, so the stilted nature of reading copy verbatim is expected.

My recommendation is that you start out by having one sentence per line, a break of one line between paragraphs, and that you use a large font that's easy to read. Serif fonts are probably easier to read than sans-serif, so use something such as Courier. You should use underlines to indicate words you want to emphasize.

In general, it's easier to read from a printed copy. You can use a computer to read the copy if you don't want to print it. Just make sure you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate around your document. Computers also generate noise [Hack #15] from their fans, so be sure to put them out of the line of any active microphone.

If you are doing radio theatre [Hack #32] or you have a two-person show [Hack #20], you will want the show notes to have each host's name next to their corresponding lines. That way each person can follow along with the show. If you want to be super-slick, you can use a highlighter to emphasize your own lines on your copy.

For sections in the show where you just want to banter about a subject for a little bit, you should have notes specifying where the segment is to go, and some notes about the topic. You also should provide a good lead-in line so that the host can segue into the free-form segment.

2.3.3. The Engineer

The engineer's role is to get the show on the air and to make sure it sounds good. The sound levels should be consistent, and neither too soft nor too loud. Any audio segments that are going to be used should be right at hand. This book has a lot of material on how to get quality sound [Hack #50]. But what it all boils down to is that when you are the host, you should not be thinking about engineering issues. The setup should be reasonably foolproof.

2.3.4. The Host

As the host of the show, you are its face. All the preparation that has come through the producer, the writer, and the engineer has its payoff in your performance. But relax, it's not that big a deal. No, I'm serious, relax. It's the number one thing to remember when you are hosting. Stress tends to speed up your speech and make it sound tight and thin.

In his book No Static (Backbeat Books, 1999), Quincy McCoy lists three fundamentals for hosts. He calls them the 3 C's: Concentration, Composure, and Confidence. Concentration is critical to hosting a great show. Give yourself ample time and an ample number of takes to take the pressure off so that you can remain focused on the task at hand. When you are working alone, concentrate on your style and tone. When you are working with someone else, either a co-host or an interviewee, remain in the moment and focused on the conversation at hand. Having a computer with your show notes is handy, but it can be a distraction, so don't surf or read email when you are recording.

Composure is important in live interview settings. People will always move off of your interview script and into directions that you don't expect. You can't control everything and you shouldn't expect to. Keep your cool and get them back on track gently. It's also fine to get flustered or to delay. Just make sure you leave enough space to edit out those segments.

Keeping it cool also means working with your attitude. In particular, when you are interviewing a famous person, you need to keep in mind that you are the envoy of the listener. You are not there to be entertained by the person you're interviewing. Even though you might be jumping for joy inside, you need to stay on an even keel on the outside. Keep your autograph request until after the segment.

Confidence comes from two essential ingredients: experience and preparation. Experience is very important, which is why you should get into pod-casting now so that you get over the mistakes everyone makes. Each time you do a show, review it to see what you could have done better, and make the changes in your next show. That will help improve your confidence in your ability to make mistakes and still get a great show at the end. Preparation is key as well. Having in-depth research and quotes will help you avoid any unexpected gotchas in an interview. Even if you think you know everything about a topic, you should still have notes that give names, titles, places, and times. Those are the easiest things to forget during the stress of an interview.

As I mentioned before, you need to relax, both mentally and physically. When you are taping your own segments, be sure to give yourself as much time as you need. And use as many takes as you like. Digital media is cheap and reusable. So, use a lot of it.

2.3.4.1 The physical component.

On the physical side, it's important to stay hydrated. It's not natural to talk continuously for such long stretches of time. You will need to stay hydrated so that your voice remains smooth. Drink plenty of fluids, but nothing icy cold, and nothing with caffeine. Coffee and caffeinated teas will speed up your speech and increase your stress level. Decaffeinated herbal tea, particularly lemon tea, is the weapon of choice for most hosts in the battle against dry mouth and dehydration.

2.3.4.2 The microphone.

You should always wear headphones that receive the monitor signal from the microphone [Hack #13]. This way you can adjust the position of the microphone and the strength of your voice to get the best possible sound. In fact, anyone who is in control of a microphone should be wearing headphones. Otherwise, people will tend to shift around and talk away from the microphone, which creates volume problems that have to be fixed in editing later.

Proper microphone technique is covered in [Hack #19]. But you should know at least the following fundamentals. Your mouth should be about a hand's-width away from the microphone, further for some microphones, closer for others. To avoid pops created by air rushing from your mouth, you should position the mic slightly above and to the right or left of the plane of your mouth. If a pop stopper [Hack #12] is available, you should use it.

You need to think of the microphone as a musical instrument. To get the best results you need to experiment with your position and the volume of your voice. You should always have a microphone stand. Holding the microphone will lead to annoying handling noise.

The closer you move to the microphone, the more the bass in your voice will come through in the signal. This is called proximity effect, and it's present in almost all microphones to some degree. This is the reason why you will see singers almost eat the microphone. You should experiment with just how close to or far away from the microphone you need to be to get the sound you want.

For a conversational show, you will want some proximity effect, but you will not want to have a tremendous amount of bass since this will ruin the illusion that you are standing right next to the person, having a conversation with him. Too much bass sounds unnatural and over-processed (or wet). A signal that is processed to the maximum degree is considered very wet, and a signal with no processing is dry.

2.3.4.3 Vocal styles.

Using different styles as you talk in your podcast is like using different fonts in a document. For introductions and credits, you will want to use a more formal voice, with stronger and clearer enunciation. For conversational content, you should use a lighter tone, but you should still try to enunciate and talk a little more slowly than you normally do.

If part of your style is to shout or vary between loud and soft segments, be sure to include a compressor as part of your signal path. This compressor will ensure that you will not clip the signal when you yell or scream, and that your soft segments will be audible.

An alternative to compressors, which can make the sound unnatural if they are overused, is to ride the gain. Riding the gain [Hack #56] literally means having the engineer tweak the volume of the signal on the mixer as you talk, increasing the gain if you are soft and letting it off if you are getting boomy. Riding the gain is almost always done in music production, and is almost never done for radio work. On a one-person show, I strongly recommend using a compressor so that you can worry less about how loud or soft you are sounding and concentrate on making great content.

2.3.4.4 Practice.

What all this boils down to is experience and practice. You need to learn how to write for voice so that you can read it into a microphone, and how to read so that you sound good. I recommend for your first few pod-casts that you write the content in detail and then read it exactly, going through the entire thing several times. Do this each time with more improvisation both in content and style.

The next time you write for voice you will have a better idea of what makes for an easy, effective read. Over time, you will maintain the level of detail on the introduction and credit sections, but loosen up the script for the segments.

2.3.5. The Editor

Podcasts aren't live, so you will always have the opportunity to edit the show before you upload it to your server. Whether you choose to use that opportunity, and to what degree, is up to you and is largely a question of the type of show you are producing.

We will cover editing techniques in more detail in other hacks. But you should remember a few fundamentals. Leaving space around ums, ahs, and parts that you want to cut away is critical to being able to make clean cuts later, as is remaining fairly steady in your tone of voice. You must also remember to have at least 30 seconds of clear sound that you will use during editing at the beginning of the recording. You should remove leading and trailing blank segments [Hack #36] before encoding to MP3 [Hack #18] and uploading to the server.

2.3.6. Books

Several million words can and have been written on radio production. And in those words are valuable lessons for podcasters. One book in particular stands out: Radio Production (Focal Press, 1999), by Robert McLeish. This book is well worth your time and money if you are serious about broadcasting.

2.3.7. See Also

  • "Train Your Voice" [Hack #19]

  • "Adopt a Format for Your Podcast" [Hack #20]



    Podcasting Hacks
    Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud
    ISBN: 0596100663
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2003
    Pages: 144

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