Producing Media
Podcasting
Listen Up
I jumped into the world of active podcast listener about two years ago when I started a master’s program at the University of Colorado at Denver. I was working full time and taking two classes a semester. I felt like I had limited knowledge in the field of Learning Design, or Instructional Design if you prefer, so I figured my 35 minute drive to and from work would be a great way to bring myself up to speed on a few things while on the road. It didn’t take long before my commute was a favorite part of my day! I found a number of podcasts around e-learning design, e-learning trends, creating educational games, or as some call them serious games, and I just kept coming back for more.
As I near the end of my master’s program I am in a class that I’ve had my eye on for some time now, just waiting for it to fall into rotation for me. Although I’m normally full of ideas with the drive to create something new and interesting, I’ve always felt my lack of a solid background in media production has been a drawback. So here I am, finally in the class, and our first project is a podcast. We were assigned the task of doing a 5-10 minute podcast on a color. Talk about intimidating, what can one say about a color for that length of time? As a peer noted, how hard is it to listed to your own voice for that long?!! And aren’t podcasts usually a series? How do I set up the concept of a series, even if it doesn’t become one?
Well, I dove in with the intent of finding an interesting niche. I contemplated for a few days as I read up on technique and tools, software and how to be successful in this venture, and I landed on the concept of a “random rant”. With the intension of just having fun chattering away about a topic and pulling in some fun, maybe some history, and possibly some useful information I charged boldly ahead. Here’s a link to the final product that I hosted on Soundcloud. For those interested future podcasters, I listed the road I traveled to create my finished product below.
The Process
- Wrote my script and read it aloud a number of times to check timing and flow of content
- Plugged my Yeti microphone into my MacBook Air and prepared to record
- Started up Audacity, set my microphone levels, turned off the heat, and my email sounds to reduce background noise, and read the script a few times
- Edited the recording in Audacity to remove the stumbles and start-over’s
- Went looking for background music and sound effects in a couple of royalty free sites sporting creative commons license options
- I found my instrumental background music on Freemusicarchive.org
- The sound effects I located on Freesound.org
- Imported music, sound effects, placed them on the timeline, and adjusted volume levels before saving as an Audacity file
- Exported the audio to an AIFF file
- Located the AIFF file and drug it onto Levelator to level out the various sounds
- Finally I was off to SoundCloud to create an account, upload my file, and add a photo and a description
- Finally finished up by copying the link to use in my posting for my homework and here on my website