My First Podcast
For this project I was assigned to create my first podcast. As a whole bunch of thoughts rushed through my head I decided to make this podcast project on something easy that I know a lot of the information about. I invited some friends to talk with me about this podcast. The subject that I chose for podcasting was on the “Pirates of The Caribbean” movies from Disney. The reason why is because I am a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean and I really enjoyed watching the movies that I now own DVD’s of. I also, like to listen to the sound tracks from all of those movies. Therefore, I thought it would be great to do a podcast to talk about these movies and why I enjoy it.
The first thing that I needed was a good microphone of which I did not own. Luckily as I was talking to a friend named Sean, I found out that he owns a microphone. I was able to talk with him and work with him to have a solid recording rather than a really bad muffled recording that may sound very staticky. I also, was able to invite one other friend to play along and give his insight and feedback about what he thought on the pirate’s movies. As I was doing this podcast and reviewing the recordings, I now realize how much I have a hard time talking and thinking even out loud. Just to get the words to flow smoothly just for others to understand what I am talking about. I do admit that I have a small speech problem and what is worse is that I am not very good with my grammar when writing. I do also realize, how quiet these recordings are and that is the hardest thing to figure out about the whole thing. I do apologize in advance to all those who might listen to the podcast and having to turn the volume all the way up just to listen to it with clarity. Being familiar with the Audacity program I was able to filter or make things sound better in the volume or noise reduction controls.
The Progress, Process and Problems
I had to be very careful with the microphones and the use of them due to some testing beforehand and seeing that no matter what I did, the smallest amount of sounds would be picked up and recorded into my recordings as I was talking. Thereby giving a distraction to the audience or even to those who were speaking. I also, found that the sounds from far away were also picked up by the microphone showing how sensitive and easy a single device can pick up and record anything during the microphone test.
I found that the editing process was the thing that took the most time. The recording still has some sort of static to it. But, in all my efforts of getting good clarity giving much thanks to my friend’s microphone, the sound of those talking were excellent. However, to enhance the recordings with music and character snippets from different parts of the pirate’s movies had its challenges. The problems that I ran into was the copy right laws with I-tunes and having to try and get some good clarity on the music to go into the Audacity program on my windows laptop. I have tried every way to figure out how to put music into audacity. With how much I failed to do so, I got the professors permission to do what I can as to gain the experience and not be so focused on getting the permissions that I would need to proceed with the music. Therefore, I had to record the music bits from the sound tracks of the movies to be able to finish off the recordings. The music sound tracks I recorded were for the intro and the outro as well as to the middle parts of the speeches just to entertain the listener from being bored. I also felt that having just three people talking was not enough, so to really make things even better I added recordings of little moments of the each part of the movie to really focus on what the three of us are talking about.
Instead of watching the movies on TV and trying to record it by hand, I did a lot of research on YouTube.com to get the short phrases from the movie. I wanted to have this in order to illustrate what we were talking about. This process had to also be recorded by hand and then pasted into the right place of the recordings. This can help the listeners know what parts of the movie we were on. Then, the other part was the long length of time it had to take in order to get things right and shorten the time frame with all the editing. For the sound bite of the three of us talking, each recording was from 28–35 minutes long. However, by taking out the long pauses, and cutting out the unnecessary rambling parts as well as all the long sounding um’s, uhh’s and and’s, I was able to narrow each of them down to 20–23 minutes long. By doing this it made those who you would hear speaking from your audio, to sound more clearly and to the point rather than hearing them trying to think as they speak.
The Cover Picture
The other thing I needed to come up with the cover art. I remembered that many semesters before this class I had taken a Photoshop class. In this class I had a task of learning how to put myself into a picture as if I had dressed up and photo-bombed someone or something. This gave me the opportunity to go through my pictures and find it. This picture of the cover art is a photo that was taken from off the internet and it is about the cast preparing for a scene in a part of the “Pirates of The Caribbean: At worlds end” which is movie number three. I put myself in replace of one of the characters and tried to act out the lighting in the scene of me to try and fit myself in. I realized now that maybe I should have worn a different bandana color. I felt that this Photoshop project would be a great thing to use for my cover art. As for the rest of the picture it had to be squared and the picture is not a square. Therefore, one of the people had to be cut off in order for it to fit.
The Big Bad MetaData
As for the metadata, there really was not a whole lot to it. It just needed an author and who was with me and what they want to see in the description and how long the podcast is. I did not need to write out a spread sheet for all the other things that I incorporated into this project. But, I do give credit to the I-Tunes songs as to what I have. That is as far as the pirates of the Caribbean movies sound tracks go that I was able to use as background music. I also, give a lot of credit to a whole bunch of researched YouTube videos to help me enhance my recordings to refer to what the things I was discussing with the others during the recording. Upon my own review, a lot of bits and pieces where actually good timing and well put together into the subject matter.
The Testing and Conclusion
The testing was too easy, I downloaded the anchor app on my phone and all I had to do was log in. after I was able find my profile, I was able to make sure that I can listen to the podcast that I just created. This is where I could be able to listen to it at work and make sure that I could catch any mistakes. In the purpose of which I can figure out where they are and fix them on my computer when I got back to it. I was surprised to see how fast an MP3 could upload to the podcasting device considering that the saving part took its time in Audacity. The Anchor app was better than Spotify which you can also switch to, if you prefer not to have the anchor app, I know that you can still find my podcast there. I even used a different device other than my own phone such as my wife’s IPad to see if the link that I sent to her worked. I did this just to be sure and see if my podcast works on other people without having to sign in. These pictures below are what they look like on a phone.
In conclusion, I think this was a fun way to learn how to create Metadata and what to do or what to use and how to be able to give credit to your resources. I found that recording things can be fun but not so much fun for the editing part. I do wish to have had a better way to get music in its clarity for this project. But to use YouTube and record some of the movie clips from there, was a great way to enhance what my friends and I were talking about. Especially when it came to different parts of the movie. This almost makes me want to become a radio host just for the fun of it. Here is the link to my podcasting projects. I hope you enjoy listening to them.
