The good news is that even when you think you know everything about something and have perfected techniques to achieve your goal, you find out you were wrong.

There’s always something new to learn and new ways to challenge yourself — pushing your work to new horizons.  I enjoy that learning process; the zen cycle where the student becomes the master, and the master the student.  I’ve also heard it referred to the black belt fraying and becoming white again.  It’s humbling and invigorating.

I find myself at one of those crucial times of trying to push my skills to the next level.  I’m taking a different approach this time, more methodical and perhaps even academic.  I’ve been listening to podcasts and radio programs with a more critical ear and open mind and watching television programs, movies and documentaries with more focus.  It’s a self-study process in which I’m dissecting the ways stories have been pieced together, how real and implied visuals are incorporated into the context of a program, how audio backdrops are crafted and how narration is used to move the story and engage the audience.  I’m particularly interested in how certain elements used in video presentation can be adapted to audio presentation and vice-versa in the hopes that something new could be created.

I plan to look carefully at a variety of content from amateurs and masters and will happily accept recommendations and guidance from anyone.

My journey has begun by studying the masters (obvious though they may be)… Ira Glass and Ken Burns.  Given the opportunity, I would do what I could to apprentice/work/slave for each for a few days.  I’d love to learn more about their thought processes, research techniques, how they develop and piece together their ideas and put it all together.  I don’t think any of that can be properly communicated in featurettes.  To truly learn that stuff, you have to be in the middle of the action.

Ira?  Ken?  Any members of your teams?  Where do I sign up for my bootcamp?

Photo: Pushing him up into the red by Pupski.

One of the great underlying themes at PodCamp Ottawa 2008 is that communications — particularly anything released within social media and new media — is a process, not a result.  Some great examples were shared throughout the day to illustrate this point including Jeff Parks‘ story about finger painting with a little girl, Maurizio Ortolani relating how the NACOcast is reaching patrons (young and old) of National Arts Centre events including as an augment to orchestra performances and Hugh McGuire’s session in which he played a deeply personal excerpt of Scarbrorough Dude’s reflections on the death of his son’s friend as published on the DicksnJanes podcast (the room then proceeded to discuss and disect the elements that made the piece so compelling).

While the discussions at pcott08 centred around the publication of content and not the interaction through social media, digital dialog is why most people participate.  Publishing content online is just the beginning of the process of engaging with other people and further developing one’s thoughts.

The grassroots often refer to the ethos of social and new media.  What they describe sounds like the current of an ocean; the energy that makes online content and engagement exciting and ever evolving.

To me, the communications process begins with selecting content, developing it (even if only in one’s mind as part of a stream of consciousness), delivering it (including the context in which the content is delivered), recording it, editing it (if you so choose), mixing it (not just for levels but adding music and additional audio for audio backdrop), producing it, publishing it and promoting it.

Perhaps it’s the process-mindedness of many in the community that causes them (myself included) to become squirmy when they hear others use the word monetizing, not so much with turning hobbies into businesses.  The way most people drop that word and idea into a conversation is very final — an end, not a process — and they seem genuinely disinterested with quality of content, context and conversation in a way that emphasizes their interest in slapping a price tag on it.  They seem unconcerned and impatient when it comes to discussing and learning the skills that make people effective communicators, great storytellers, thought leaders and capable content producers.

You can’t build a house without a foundation and a frame so you may as well enjoy the process of design, materials selection and construction.

Photo: I has…part of a roof by BoneDaddy.P7.

UPDATE:  Other current discussions on this theme…

• It’s all about skills, baby! by Bob Goyetche
• Building a Business, Not Monetization by David Peralty

Congratulations to everyone who participated in PodCamp Ottawa 2008.  Not only was the day engaging and filled with opportunities to kick-off new friendships and rejuvenate established ones, the participants worked together to make a difference by raising $330 for the Snowsuit Fund — an Ottawa-based charity that raises funds for the purchase and distribution of snowsuits to needy children, 15 years and under, in our community.

According to the Snowsuit Fund website, “a donation of $35.00 is all it takes to dress a child warmly”.  That means that PodCamp Ottawa will be keeping 9 children comfortable this winter.

It’s really bad timing to have problems with your PodPress installation.  The PodPress Forums page displays a message that they were “screwed up by spammers“, so they’ve been taken completely offline.  Meanwhile (and probably because of the forum issue), Podpress creator Dan Kuykendall is not responding to support requests through email or chats.

If there are any Podpress code experts lurking around and willing to help solve some problems, I’d be more than happy to hear from you!

Over the past few years, I’ve been part of the organizing teams for many events and because of my work in social media and podcasting I regularly find myself in discussions about other events and the community.  I often hear that participation is noticeably skewed towards white males, aged thirty through fifty, that there isn’t enough cultural diversity or women represented.  In fact, I have at least twice been told that I don’t do enough to include multiculturalism and women in the community.

The community and its events are inclusive.  Anyone who wants to attend is welcome.  Invitations to participate are implied.  Invitations to speak or submit speaking proposals are open.  Oddly, some women and individuals from different cultural backgrounds that have expressed their concerns have never submitted speaking proposals to the events I’m involved in.  I respond by requesting they submit proposals and make the effort to increase multicultural and female participation.  There’s only so much the community organizers can do and I can assure you that we have made efforts to reach out to the under-represented.

The Canadian Podcast Buffet was created as a resource and meeting place for the community.  We don’t define who’s in the community, only that it exists for all to join and contribute.  Podcasters Across Borders was created to bring the community together in a single physical space.  We don’t decide who comes, only that the event is organized and those willing to sign-up and travel to Kingston can be part of the scene.  Speaking proposals are welcome from everyone.  I know that the same is true of the PodCamp movement — events are planned and invitations to participate are open.

Andrea and I have been talking about this lately because planning for PAB2009 is about to ramp up.  The PAB community has been built on word of mouth which emanates from CPB.  If you feel that we need more people from a particular country, cultural background or gender, it’s up to you to help increase that representation by spreading the word and inviting the people you feel the community will benefit from meeting and listening to.

Communities thrive when they are made up of mixed opinions and backgrounds.  Make sure you help create the environment in which we can all grow.

Photo: PAB2007 Group Photo.jpg by Sean Joyner.

Don’t forget that PodCamp Ottawa is taking place this Sunday (November 23) from 9:45am to 4:00pm in the Panorama Room of the National Arts Centre.  There are some great discussions scheduled and Griffin Technology has sent some stuff to giveaway.

Please be sure to bring a pillow or something comfortable to sit on the floor with, $10 for the Snowsuit fund and a money to contribute for our pizza lunch.

If this is your first PodCamp Ottawa, take a few minutes to read the Guiding Principles on the PodCamp Ottawa wiki.

Just over a week ago I wrote about a video experiment I’m involved in.  The experiment amounted to publishing a video version of an audio program published on the Just One More Book!! podcast website to see how an un-promoted video fared against its audio counterpart — a mainstay on the site.

Basically, I took about forty minutes to throw some still images into a thirteen-minute audio program and created a Quicktime movie which I uploaded to Viddler.  I then embedded the flash player for the video into the post.

The video was watched about three times more often than the audio was downloaded on the first day of the post.  Now, ten days later, the video has been viewed 2,100 times, slightly more than four times as often as the audio played/downloaded.  Aside from a mention in the post, we didn’t use any form of promotional campaign to raise awareness of the video.

We’ve received some feedback that there should be more visuals and more regular transitions in the video to keep the audience’s attention.  I completely understand that, particularly since I rushed the video together merely as a test.  The results are significant, though.  They prove that video players are far more obvious than their audio counterparts and that the general public understands video first and audio second — likely due to the success of services like YouTube.  As a result, we’ve moved the player for our audio programs (Podpress) to the top of each post and we have plans to do more with video.

I don’t believe in gratuitous use of video.  For example, exclusive use of video for a talking head seems to me to be a waste of bandwidth and offers little value to the viewer.  My intent is to use video to offer visuals that support and enhance the experience for the audience.  It’s more work for the content creator though it makes more sense to use audio for things to be heard and video for things to be seen.

There will be a discussion about this on next week’s episode (#121) of the Canadian Podcast Buffet.

PS. did you click on the image to see if a video or audio program would play???

Here is the long-overdue summary of things to consider when producing a story — in audio or video.

1. Be where the action is (when you audio/video record)
2. Capture the energy through ambient sound/video recordings
3. Set goals and be prepared to adapt them as you go
4. Gather and label your material
5. Understand that editing is an iterative process
6. Look for candidate themes, characters, plots and stories
7. Let the story identify and tell itself (if you decide the specific story in advance, you may find you’re wrong)
8. Tell the story using different voices and other elements
9. Remember that you can tell as much of the story with what you cut out as you can with what you include
10. Avoid soundbites
11. Experiment with recording, editing and storytelling
12. Only use your own voice as much as it’s needed
13. Use music and ambient sound/video as a backdrop and for transitions
14. Listen/watch, edit, mix, repeat
15. Consult with a set of honest (even blunt) ears/eyes that aren’t attached to your own body
16. Keep your listener/viewer wanting more at each moment
17. Don’t crowd your listener/viewer
18. Be patient
19. Enjoy (even be proud of) the process and the results

I realized that the missing element was music.  When my feelers for original music came up empty, I went to the Jazz collection and found the perfect piece of music: Poor James from the CD Tractor Parts: Further Adventures in Strang by the Canadian band, Zubot and Dawson.  Sadly, the band is no more.  It was Ken Rockburn who introduced me to the band when he played their fantastic song, Tractor Parts, on All in a Day back in 1998.

Once I picked the music and started placing it, things started feeling right with the show.  I had wondered if I should include a second piece of music.  That can be too much, though, and I decided to limit myself to the one song.  I also decided that it would be used specifically to score the excerpts of the reading.  There has to be logic to the use of the music, it can’t be random.

The editing and refining continued, though most of the effort was in cleaning up edits, removing some bumping of the microphone and, in two cases, cleaning up mistakes made by the speakers.  Thankfully, the way each speaker corrected themselves facilitated a clean edit and you’d never know.  Purists would argue to leave the mistakes in.  However, in this particular show, it made more sense to clean up the mistakes.  They errors were minor enough and the responses to the mistakes more intrusive than the mistakes themselves.

OUTSIDE EARS

I did a thorough refinement of the first four minutes of the show and listened to it for both audio and story flow.  It still didn’t feel right.  When I played it for Andrea, she pointed out a few things that didn’t work for her.  In particular, my voice over, the readings and interviews had different energy and emotional levels.  The readings and the interviewee spoke in more bursty and extreme intonations and my voice over was mellow and reflective.

MOOD AND ENERGY FLOW

I re-recorded my narration to be more punchy and energetic and played back a rough mix.  That was much better.  The individual clips made more sense as a unit so I went back to smooth out the hand-offs between clips and mix the music.  I also boosted the level of the ambient sound during my introduction so that there was more energy in the opening.

REFINING THE MIX

The process of mixing the elements for a smooth flow seems to me like staining a quality piece of furniture; it takes several passes, patience and a lot of care.  I worked on that for a while and realized that many of the voices on the show seemed a bit sharp in the mix.  I’m not sure if that’s the mic or the qualities of the voices.  I used my equalizer to add some warmth and remove some of the clarity from recordings.  I should note that I hadn’t adjusted any of the frequencies prior to that.  EQ’ing is the last thing I do.  I only do it to make sure that each element has its own room to breath.  If you find that two pieces of mixed audio are fighting with each other spend less time with the volume faders and more time giving each piece of audio its own space in the audio spectrum.

FINAL PRODUCT

I finished the audio production work in the early evening and created a mix I was happy with.  All it took was patience, listening, feel and an iterative approach to finding the pieces that best told the story.  In the end, I went from seventy-eight minutes of recorded audio of the event to a nine-minutes and fifty-four seconds of reading excerpts and interview clips included in the show.  My entire voice-over of introduction and narration was one-minute and seventeen seconds.  The program is thirteen-minutes and sixteen seconds long and has been published under the name A Bear in War on the Just One More Book website.

 

 A Bear in War [13:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

I’m an audio guy and I often profess that audio podcasts are the best option for mass distribution and ease of consumption.  However, even I can’t ignore the popularity of video.  More to the point, no matter how hard we audio folk try to make it obvious that site visitors can press play on an audio player, many people just don’t get it.  Even if it is far more intrusive (that is, you are glued to your video screen to consume a video), video on the web is far more obvious to use.

So, we’ve tried an experiment.  We published the “A Bear in War” documentary as a normal audio podcast of Just One More Book and to help people understand that there’s multimedia content available on the site, I created a video/slideshow version of the documentary (using the same audio), uploaded it to Viddler and embedded it within the post for A Bear in War.  Given more time and energy, I would have done more to make the video more compelling for the average viewer by using transitions, pans and zooms — like Ken Burns.  I threw the video together very quickly.

Interest in the video is encouraging.  After about two hours, the unpromoted video was watched thirty-six times.

FINAL TALLY

Not including travel time and the blogging I’ve done to document my workflow, but including the research and recording times and the production of the video, it took me about sixteen hours to create the A Bear in War documentary.  It’s not unusual for a documentary to take a significant amount of time to produce which is why I don’t do many of them.  I do very little, if any, editing in most of my hobby production work which means that the average ten minute podcast probably takes about thirty minutes to record, produce and upload.

I’ll create a summary of my workflow post highlights later today.