Today I am going to be sharing all that has happened during the fist half of my podcast project. So far I have created some art, made music to match the tone of my podcast, and even started to record what I want the trailer to sound like. As mentioned my previous post, I will be sharing more about what the podcast is going to look like, but also what I thought about the whole process as well. This might be long so I apologize in advance.

Before we were able to start thinking of ideas our podcasts and trailers, we had to figure out what we were actually going to make them about, and it wasn’t as easy as just deciding on a topic and talking about it. Our podcasts had to incorporate identity somehow into them, so before we started making these podcasts, we had to find out what our identity is. 

Now this part came in different forms such as reading, writing, and listening, but the one that stuck out the most to me was our identity photo. It was basically a photo with many more photos inside ( double exposure ) but the main photo had to be a picture of ourselves and the photos inside had to relate to our identity, it had to be things that we though were important enough to define our selves. I really enjoyed learning how to use double exposure but also choosing what to put inside the image and how to make it look cool. It took me a while to decided but in the end I chose I photo I took at a local beach because I though it represented where I live and how I was constantly outside and adventuring. Those were the things I thought we the most meaningful to who I am today.

We took this a step further and created GIFs in Keynote. Each GIF had images that represented the most  important aspects of our identity. These images zoomed in from different parts of the screen, when done properly it look very nice, although for mine I could only fit so many different symbols on the screen so I chose the ones I thought represented the most important parts of me.

After we understood what identity was, then we were ready to start creating drafts of what we wanted our podcast to be like. What really helped that our teachers told us is that our podcasts should be us looking at topics through a specific point of view that matches who we are. So for me what would make sense is looking at topics through the lens of an athlete, I could even narrow it down from there but that is were I stoped. This gave me a better sense of what my podcast was going to look like, and from there I went on to find examples of podcasts and trailers that I wanted mine to be like. I found some great podcasts such as This Paranormal Life , PDS  and others that had the same layout as those ones. I had a really great time going through other podcasts as well however these were the ones that were super interesting, very humorous and had a topic that was easy to follow.

From there I started to build my first draft of my trailer. I found it hard to start with the audio of me talking and build from there, so I went right ahead and created my introduction music. I knew the introduction was very important to the podcast, if people did not like the way it sounded then they might not listen at all, so I had to put a good amount of thought into what it should sound like based on my topic. Here is how the fist draft sounded.

From there I also made some music to go in under my voice audio, I had to readjust the volume so many times but eventually I got it to sound about right. Now with everything ready I decided to start recording my main audio in which I am talking about my podcast. I had created a script and everything, however it then took me around 40-50 takes to get the exact right sounding recording because every single time there was always something wrong or that I did not think was perfect. In the end I got the recording that sounded the best out of all of them and put it in to complete by fist draft.

The feedback was another huge help in this project, we did two peer feedbacks and both of which helped me a lot with working out what would work and what wouldn’t, along with smaller things that I was deciding weather or not to add in. I also got some cool ideas from others that I thought would make my own trailer a lot more interesting. 

I had a lot of revision to do, I started with all of the audio because I felt that was the thing that was most off. It took me another 10-15 takes in order to get the recording that I felt I was ok with, still if I could I would keep on going for better recordings, however I did not have the time for that.

With that I had completed my first podcast trailer and I could now ask for feedback from teachers and peers. I had put all I had learned into these recordings and with this I knew my techniques had definitely improved, however I still feel like there was more I could do to improve.

In the end it was a long-ish journey to get here, or it felt. In the last two months I have learned so much more and improved upon some of the audio skills I already had. I have gone through so many revisions in order to make the absolute best version of my trailer. This podcast is far from done, however I think I have learned enough to produce I podcast that people will listen to.