Ahh… a workshop on creating content that people want to consume. This one was led by the MGImedia team (makers of CommandN.tv) including Amber MacArthur, Jeff MacArthur (yes, Amber’s brother) and Chris Dick.

I’m going to start off with two counterpoints so I can get them out of the way.

Why is it that so many people feel compelled to push making revenue directly from the production around web-based content? Specifically, this clunky word monetize — even worse, monetization. I have yet to attend a conference or session that specifically promotes the idea of producing and distributing content to build and strengthen a personal or corporate brand. I’ve decided to leave the discussion of how to monetize your content out of my post.

While content is extremely important, I disagree that content is king. Newcomers are often indoctrinated into the concept of content is king at the expense of context and delivery. While it is true that absence of content is a killer (Whitney Hoffman has dubbed content-free speech as oral kegels), strong content without relevant context and accessible delivery is going to be victim to the ’skip’ button. Scott did acknowledge in his talk that bad video will derail good content.  Jeff brought up a great point with respect to content and frequency — there should be a direct correlation between the strength of your content and the frequency of your production schedule.

Okay… that’s out of the way, now.

This session was full of great takeaways:

• The equation E² = education x entertainment.

• Engage your audience.

• Lighting will make a huge difference in your video. Use a bounce board to reflect light on your subject. The larger the board, the softer and more natural the light.

• Use a tripod to ensure a steady shot. For hand held use, zoom out and get close to your subject to avoid magnification of the shake.

• Every image you use should tell a story. Use the rule-0f-thirds to make your composition more interesting.

• Attention spans are short and YouTube imposes a ten-minute limit on all videos.

• Serve a need; fill a niche.

• Stick to a production schedule.

• Make sure your camera has connections for an external mic (1/8″ or XLR).

• Every camera has its strengths and weaknesses.  Any brand will do.  Prosumer cameras have great default settings to get started.

• A lot of what you will do will be sweat equity.

Amber, Jeff and Chris were able to draw on a lot of experience and creative collaboration for producing interesting content. This audio guy is ready to fire up the video engine and start experimenting.

Note: the presentation will be available on mgimedia.ca.

I’ve performed and edited more interviews in the last two years that I can remember; I’d guess more than 300. During that time, I’ve coached and trained people and given presentations on interview skills. I’ve come to realize that people also need coaching on being a great interview guest. Here are my suggestions:

BE ENERGETIC AND DYNAMIC

If you use a monotoned voice or lack energy and inflection during your interview, the listener will tune you out. Your voice is a powerful tool; use it well.

BE CONCISE AND ON TOPIC

I’ve edited a few interviews in the last few weeks in which the guest carried on for so long after a single question (at least five minutes in all cases), and lacked energy (see the point above), that I actually forgot what the question was. The nice thing is that this makes the editing decision easy — lose the question and answer.

GIVE THE LISTENER SOMETHING TO REMEMBER

It’s sad to say that most of us have grown to expect great speakers who can talk in sound bytes. Having said that, little packages of information are great because your audience will remember them. Frame your ideas in a quotable way.

HAVE STORIES TO TELL

Having good responses for each question is important. It helps a lot if you are able to support your responses with entertaining and interesting stories where possible.

BE RELAXED

This is a lot easier said than done for many people. If you can focus on the interaction between yourself and the interviewer, and think of the interviewer as a curious friend, it will help a lot. Talk “with your host” not “at the microphone”.

Do you have any stories about being an interview guest?

One challenge that many of the PodCamps have been faced with is session concurrence and the inability of the community to organize sessions into logical tracks (note many, not all, PodCamps!). This means that if you attend a PodCamp, chances are good that being part of one session means missing another — or several others — that you want to attend at the same time. Thankfully, all of the PodCamp Toronto sessions were videotaped and are available in the media archive of that event.

I have been slowly working through the archive and this past weekend found a nugget of gold. During his session with Connie Crosbie on What To Podcast, Jim Milles said “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” — which is very different from what my father told me when I was growing up. What a perfect way to frame that the only true barrier to becoming a podcaster is one’s own conscious mind.

There are many reasons why people start their own podcast(s) and just as many reasons why people delay or refuse to do their own podcast(s). Don’t let fear of “doing badly” be one of them. Every podcaster I know (myself included) cringes at the thought of listening to their first five episodes — possibly more.

In everything, we have to do something “badly” to do something else well.

Photo: rhyndman

Over the last week, I’ve listened to a number of podcasts that have used what I call a “double introduction”. This is when a host presents the bio of their guest as part of the introduction of their show and as the introduction of the interview. This typically happens when an interview is pre-recorded and then added to the podcast during the production phase. I’m guessing that in most cases it’s an oversight and in some it’s a stylistic choice.

In the true sense of the maxim”less is more”, I recommend dropping one of the introductions. Which introduction you drop is entirely up to you. There obvious approaches are:

• Introduce the guest as part of the interview so that the guest is assured you have done some background work, and then simply mention during the show intro which guests will appear that show and on which topics.

• Include background information on your guest during the show intro and then welcome your guest when the interview begins.

I am incredibly impressed by the quality of the interviews and the range of topics. Many podcasts are introducing people to interesting ideas and kicking off some great conversations.

This Podcast is a culmination of my series on Blevis-ian editing, and the audio from my Editing Techniques and Decisions presentation at PodCamp Toronto. I highly recommend that you also listen to Bruce Murray’s presentation on Editing (How to make a layer cake with a butterfly and a sledgehammer). Between Bruce’s humourous and philosophical study of editing and my demonstration of editing techniques, you will gain a solid understanding of this area of audio production.

What makes this Podcast different from the video recording of my presentation (available at the Podcamp Toronto website) is that I have spliced in the audio clips that I played during the presentation. In this way, you can better hear what the edits sound like.

Photo: Timothy Pilgrim (Twisted Wrist)

 

 Editing Techniques and Decisions presentation at PodCamp Toronto [39:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Part 4 of this series dealt with the creativity of editing interviews. In this installment, I am returning to applied editing.

When I first mapped out this series, I figured I’d be done by now. I had a neatly compiled list of the types of edits I do and some soft skills I wanted to share. As it turns out, I left out a number of really interesting ideas and techniques - so the series continues.

One of the techniques I had overlooked is one I’ve dubbed Buried Edits. It’s an easy one to forget because I use it so rarely. However, it is a very powerful way to unite two different recorded elements, and disguise the edit in the process. For the purposes of this entry, I will present in terms of spoken word recordings even though the same concepts can apply to music - or any other recording.

First of all, what’s the trick?

In a Buried Edit, I unite the same sound that appears in two different recorded takes using a Clean Edit.

What???

The spoken delivery of two recorded elements may have been significantly different in each take while still having a common delivery element in each. I call this common element the “pivot”. In a Buried Edit, you find a pivot inside a particular word in each take and make your cut inside these pivots, then marry the two desired pieces together.

An example, please.

The word “so” is a really good word for a pivot. The “ess” sound is nice and static. You can cut that sound in half from two different sentences and marry them in a way that noone would ever know, as long as the audio quality is similar, and the thought is continuous. Even if the delivery by the speaker has a different cadence in each sentence, it’s a very forgiving sound.

When to use Buried Edits

In all cases, the speaker in the recording I am editing has run words together which makes it difficult to have a transparent cut between words. I have used Buried edits in the following situations with great success:

• The speaker has gone on a tangent and I need to remove a large section of talking. I find a pivot within each of the first and last thoughts and eliminate the thought process. Having a pivot means that I was able to make the speaker’s comments more efficient and fluid.
• The speaker records several takes in a row, sometimes without a pause. Different elements of each take are great while each full take has its problems. I will take the elements from each take that work well and make them into one stream. Buried Edits work well here because it isn’t the insides of the words that pose a problem, it’s the first and last sounds of the words.

In part 6 I’ll talk about something I call a Staggered Edit to disguise an edit in a multi-track recording of two speakers.

I just re-read part 4 (Editing Decisions) and realized that I left out a very important point about the use of breath in an interview - a breath can save you.  What I mean is that a breath is a great tool to hide an edit.

Suppose a speaker says ten sentences in response to a comment, and you decide to remove the middle eight sentences. This leaves the first and tenth (now second) sentences.  The remaining two sentences may have different deliveries since they represent the bookends of a single discussion.  Having the sound of a drawn breath, and maybe even a short pause, before the new second sentence will go a long way to disguising the disconnected deliveries.

Remember to experiment with the duration of any pauses you use to “fake” natural speech.

I ended Blevis-ian editing, part 3 - Blended Edits with the announcement that the next part of the series would explore editing decisions for an interview. That was August 22nd. Better late than never, I suppose.

Editing doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly, or even moderately stressful. It should be an integral part of the creative process of putting together a great audio program - Podcast or otherwise. That is, there’s a lot more to editing an interview than just cleaning up the “uhms” and “uhhs” so I’ll talk about those last. Depending on your approach, you can be incredibly creative and the results rewarding.

Storytelling

Not all interviews follow a natural evolution. This means that when editing an interview, it’s important to ensure that you have a flow. Each question should build on the last, or explore a new tangent if the previous one has been wrapped up. I like to think of this as the storytelling aspect of the interview and I try to edit my interviews in a way that enhances that natural flow. This means knowing the end point and keeping it in sight at all times during my edit - especially when, on the odd occassion, the interview I recorded is significantly different from the one I had planned. I work with my source recording to make the best show possible.

Focus

Your listener’s time is valuable. You need to make sure that the information you share is relevant, or at least entertaining. While, it may be interesting to explore a variety of tangents with your guest during the discussion, try to be as efficient as possible so that you don’t irritate your listener. If nothing else, be aware of how long the program is going to be.

Cleanup

Cleaning up the “uhms” and “uhhs” is a part of editing that is particularly controversial. Many people insist that the best approach is to remove all of the “verbal pauses” and breaths. Nothing can be more unnatural than listening to a person who never takes a pause or collects their thoughts. In fact, I’ve listened to many interviews where I find myself gasping for air only to realize that the speaker hasn’t drawn a breath in nearly two minutes - sympathetic participation, I suppose.

I’m not saying that verbal pauses aren’t annoying; the same goes with phrases like “you know”. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to wipe your audio clean of natural speech if for no other reason than you may never produce anything because you’ll spend six hours cleaning up ten minutes of audio.

Here’s what I recommend… Leave everything alone unless it’s overbearing. If the speaker says the odd “uhh”, leave it alone. If you find that there is one “uhm” for every ten words, you might consider removing every second or third “uhm” - or scrap the interview.

One thing that’s very important to remember is to let your interview breath, both literally and figuratively. This means that if your speaker draws a breath, leave it in. Similarly, if your speaker pauses to collect his or her thoughts before answering a question, leave a reasonable pause (perhaps one to two seconds) in the interview.

The most important part of interview editing, and I can’t stress this enough, is that you don’t want your audience to know where your edits are.

In part 5, I’ll present something I’ve been doing for a while and just named this morning… Buried Edits.

For a long time, many have argued that content is king for Podcasts.  I have drifted in and out of that debate, typically in support of content.  Last night, Arthur Masters made some compelling arguments at the Ottawa Podcast Meetup that changed my views on the defining quality of Podcasts (actually, my opinions on this subject weren’t as firm as many would believe).

My own take on Arthur’s comments are as follows: it’s not that a Podcast could be about the loss of a relative or pet, a product of the arts community, or a vacation; it’s that the host has a connection to the topic and delivers it in a way that connects the listener and host in one fluid motion.  The set up, the delivery, the subject… it all rolls up into the context of the Podcast.  And that’s what makes a Podcast compelling.

Tony Valle has a great post called Top 5 Corporate Podcast Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague.  His list is great and the comment activity is very insightful.  I kicked in a comment as well since I felt that his original list had a major ommission.

9. Make an infomercial. Many companies don’t know how to sell themselves, their brand or their knowledge. They only know how to sell widgets and services. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing Corporate Podcasts that tell me how great a company is, how great the company’s products/services are, and how great it is that the company is organizing or sponsoring a huge industry event. I can draw my own conclusions, thank you very much. Demonstrate what makes you best-in-class, showcase your thought leadership and engage the community. Show by example, not through in-your-face messages and pontification.

The new media age has redifined marketing models. Be part of it, or be a dinosaur. It’s your choice.

Source: Bob Goyetche