Overcoming bumps in the podcast road: Episode 2 of Breaking the Grid

It was so much easier the first time.

When I made Episode 1 of Breaking the Grid the Podcast, titled “Becoming an Adult,” the stars seemed to align. The interviews with my girls went exactly as I pictured, the sound quality was good, and editing the content together seemed effortless. Everything I tried seemed to fit perfectly the first time, so when I was planning the second episode, I envisioned a repeat performance.

I could not have been more wrong.

Coming up with the concept was the only part of the process that was easy. Executing the idea came much harder. I wanted to tell people’s stories about small decisions or actions made that had a significant impact, and I seemed to remember a television commercial that I could use. I found it on YouTube, and I knew I had my concept. I drafted a script describing the commercial after doing a little research about the advertising agency that created it and “the snowball effect” itself.

Having some experience with Audacity, I was able to import sounds from the commercial and use the audio duck tool after I recorded my voice-over. I experimented with the envelope tool to increase and decrease the background audio so that it was not too distracting. This was a useful tool that could save my students time when they are creating a multi-layered Audacity file.

Next, it was on to my interviews. And this is where the difficulty began.

I envisioned my episode to be comprised of three to four stories of people who had a “snowball effect” experience, but finding the time and the people to interview presented a challenge.

Fourth quarter grades were due, and I had neglected the mass of papers growing in my school bag in order to concentrate my efforts to help my staffs complete and submit the yearbook and the sixth issue of the school newspaper.

I had a hard time describing what I was looking for to potential interviewees, or they had a hard time thinking of a story from their lives to tell. This brings me to the next thing I learned this week: it is not enough for me to have a clear understanding of the concept for a story or podcast; I need to be able to communicate that vision to others.

Once I had my first interview scheduled, I though my podcast was finally coming together.

I was interviewing a good friend–someone who had a fitting story to tell that would be interesting for others. We sat down, I turned on the microphone, and we did a sound check. But for some reason, even though the microphone was pointed directly to her, when we listened to the few seconds of the recording, her voice sounded like she was at the end of long tunnel. My voice, even though I was sitting to the side, was loud and clear.

She tried to project her voice more, and away we went. For 28 minutes.

When I listened back to the interview, I had two challenges in front of me: the audio of her voice was much quieter than mine, and I’d have to find a way to edit her story down to five to seven minutes at the most in order to fit it into the episode.

When I started recording voice-overs for the interview, I had the microphone pointed directly at me, and I realized my voice was quiet and sounded hollow, like Susan’s had during our interview. When I turned the mic to the side, my voice was louder and more clear.

So I also learned this week to test my equipment often and make sure I can manipulate it properly in order to obtain the best quality of product possible.

After a great deal of time editing, I had the first interview down to about 10 minutes, and I recored my second interview. But the deadline for the project was quickly approaching, and I had a lot more work to do on what I had already started. I decided I had to focus my energy on what I already had, and my second interview would have to be featured in part two of the episode.

From this, I learned that the final product will not always turn out exactly as I had imagined it, and I have to teach my students to learn to roll with the punches and allow the creative process to be fluid.

Overall, I’m happy with the final product, albeit the bumps in the road along the way.