My final session of day two here at the New Media Expo was just presented by Tracy Evans of Tracy Evans Productions. I was interested in learning some tips for the production side of editing interviews in the podcasts for my corporate day job so it was helpful.
Evans titled his presentation “Interviews – Top 10 Production Techniques.”
Starting out, Evans laid the ground work with this statement: “Style and location determine the technique.” But he also said skills, equipment, budget, etc… come into play. So, Evans said, it’s more like “Skill set and time commitment determine technique.”
The first step in planning any audio podcast is figuring out what kind of microphone or portable audio recorder to use and how you record into your computer, or perhaps you won’t use a computer at all.
I paid close attention to Evans when Skype came up, as a way to record a two-way conversation. I haven’t used Skype at all, but want to start for the day job. The biggest drawback for me has been that you have to get your interview subject to download Skype and hope they are technically savvy enough to figure it out, to be able to record your interview through your computer. At my corporate day job, I just can’t expect a busy professional to take the time to figure Skype out, when they’re already taking time to do the interview. I need to play around with Skype a bit more.
Evans also mentioned The Levelator as a way to maximize and level out your audio podcasts, which I personally use as well and can tell you that it makes a huge difference in boosting the volume of your podcast so your listeners won’t get frustrated that it’s not loud enough to listen to in the car or on their iPod in noisy situations.
Evans wrapped up his session with comments on the “practiced cadence” of the “NPR style” of audio recording. Evans says if audio podcasters want to copy this style, they should pay attention to the fact that NPR emphasizes bass and mid-tones and they also record in very “dead” or silent rooms to give it their distinctive sound.
By the way… It’s not there yet, as I write this just after the session, but Evans says the content from this presentation will be here in a few days.
June 15, 2009 at 9:59 pm |
[...] here is an overview of the seminar from Kevin Hunt’s blog. Thanks [...]