Making (Module 3)

In the final stage of making our D.A., we saw our project come together much better than anticipated. Although we still haven’t gotten the audience interaction or reach we hoped to, we’ve still progressed our podcast more than expected.

Our project beta went well and we got further feedback we’ve implemented to continue progressing our project.

Our project followed F.I.S.T. (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny) the whole time we worked on it as we wanted to make sure that, firstly, we followed as much of the criteria for the D.A. as possible and secondly, that we didn’t get too lost in making something we were inexperienced in.

As our Tutorial Guide for BCM114 states:

#bcm114 introduces you to key concepts in digital media making. The primary aim of the subject is to encourage experimentation and a speculative approach to media making. The secondary objective of the subject is to expose all BCM students to fundamental concepts in media making, including ideation, rapid prototyping and feedback-based iteration.

This has run true to my experience with this course and this project, as I feel I’ve been introduced to making a new type of media making (podcasting). Experimentation was a big aspect of how we progressed our D.A., as we went through different ideas for content, presentation, and logos throughout the 12 weeks we’ve worked on it. We also had to follow all the concepts of media making (as noted above) as without it was almost impossible to properly develop the artifact without doing so.

The making of the podcast after the Beta was no different to when we were prototyping apart from the fact we had a better idea of the direction our podcast was heading, making it more enjoyable to make and also much easier.

 

The making of our podcast generally goes like this:

1. Find a topic to talk about / find people willing to have a beer and be on our podcast
2. Record the podcast (generally runs around 15-20 minutes unedited)
3. Edit podcast (takes around 30-45 minutes max)
4. Upload to YouTube

 

Where to now?

Now that the Digital Artefact project has been completed I don’t think we’ll continue to make podcasts, not for now at least. Our audience definitely isn’t big enough to make it worthwhile (we currently have 3 Twitter followers, 2 Instagram followers and 7 YouTube followers) but I would definitely take the opportunity to recycle the idea for another project or use it in a different way if I had to.

 

Prototyping (Module 2)

The prototyping stage of the DA was hard to get off the ground. After trying to adapt the podcast to make it more suitable to a wide range of audiences, the recording of our actual podcast was delayed, putting us in a bigger rush and just making the task generally harder. I do agree with the notion that “in many respects prototyping is a key element of the media making process, as all previous stages are validated by the encounter with reality generated in this stage.” as I feel this stage was ‘make or break’ for our podcast (thankfully resulting in the latter). 

 

A Coffee With…

A YouTube audio-visual podcast which allows an insight into everyday people’s lives, all over a cup of coffee.

 

There’s also Instagram (@a.coffee.with) and Twitter (@ACoffeeWith1) accounts to support the DA, which we’ve tried to use to get feedback and engagement.

We originally tried 2 directions with our podcast – a serious one and a more relaxed and laid-back approach. After deliberations and feedback from friends, we decided the later was a better option for the type of podcast we originally intended on making and so that’s what we decided to go with.

Our first idea was a podcast where we debate current topics (e.g. politics, currents affairs etc.) called DEBATABLE. We made one rough draft for it to see if it was a good idea or not as we were told to think about changing our idea after our project pitch. We used this to help us get comfortable with the equipment and the process of making and publishing a podcast.

We then made a draft episode for what turned into A Coffee With… featuring just Adam and I so we could introduce the episode and get to know the hosts. This was shown to a few friends and colleagues to see what their thoughts were on it.

The positive response we received indicated that we had a podcast that was ready to be remade. This idea is that the interview runs for around the same time you’d catch up with a coffee for. We also plan on making the interviewees a point of interest for our listeners rather than just a side thought, so the viewers get a better look into the lives of these people. Check the first episode here.

We decided to explore a range of different platforms and see what ones would be suitable for our podcast. These were the options;

1. Soundcloud
2. Youtube
3. iTunes
4. Spotify
5. Podbean

The idea to use YouTube was due to ease of use, familiarity, popularity and the fact that it’s free to upload content. We also had an idea to use video in our task as we constantly found ourselves going to our computers for info so we decided to look into screen recordings to help give viewers a clearer idea of what we’re talking about. The three best recorders we could find were:

https://screencast-o-matic.com/screen-recorder

https://www.bandicam.com/free-screen-recorder/

https://www.apowersoft.com/free-online-screen-recorder

 

Our prototyping stage didn’t involve much work as we had a solid foundation from the previous podcast but we did have to change a few things. We also encountered problems with the audio where it would only record to the right channel which took time to solve and then we had issues with audio disappearing.

 

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How am I meant to fix this????

 

Luckily though we got past both those problems in time.

 

Another change we had to make along with the name was a new logo.

       Our new and improved logo….

Although I like branching out to other social media platforms to try to engage with our audience, we’ve found it’s been hard to get any real, solid interaction. This may be because of our delays, which put us behind other DA’s and made it harder to break through.

I think this DA has taught us both a lot about the need to FEFO (Fail Early, Fail Often) as it may have helped make our project easier. I think the fact that we’ve been scared to gain feedback from complete strangers has also been a weak point, as it’s easy to get feedback from friends but we may not have gotten as good feedback.

What’s next?

We’ve recorded quite a bit of content and intended to continue releasing episodes weekly. We’re both excited to continue making our podcast but we’re still trying to work out how we can edit it better, to get a more professional feel to it.

 

Making
We originally started the podcast, after our pitch, as a podcast debating current issues but found problems with originality and getting ideas for guests.

Breaking
We knew after our project pitch that we needed to change the type of podcast we were making so we decided to take the elements we liked (the podcast, guests, short) and implemented new things we liked to it (laid-back feel, wide topic range). 

Remaking
By the end of week 7, we had transitioned it into A Coffee With…, a podcast focused on the idea of getting to meet and interview someone similar to how you’d meet over a coffee, a casual chat with them learning new things. We like the idea because it allows us to get to a look into someone’s life without the traditional podcast questions. 

 

 

BTS

Our Logic Pro X work station

 

 

Heres a few of our logos we tried out during the process.