Starting a Podcast During a Lockdown [Using an iPhone!]
A couple of days before the UK entered lockdown I was on a job in a central London studio. Both director and sound engineer urged me to purchase home recording equipment – immediately. How I laughed. Me? I can barely send an email. Before I knew it one had my credit card while the other typed my address into Dispatch and uploaded “how to” videos.
Again. Me? Hello? I struggle with left and right. I can’t read a map. I fall over at bus stops, even when I stand still.
Don’t worry, said the sound engineer I’ll help you. It’s easy, said the director. You don’t understand, I replied. I bit my lip, and tried not to have a nervous breakdown.
So it came to pass I learnt to work from home, like many others, in the spare room with an ironing board (mixing desk) and duvet (sound proofing) slung over our clothes rack as I sweated, huffed and fell in love with WE Transfer.
Do I dwell on the time I plugged our hoover power cable that looks like the recording unit power cable in, seconds before a job and blew everything up? No. I do not.
Why am I telling you this? Because lockdown liberated my working life and for a while, I basked in the glow of capability.
How hard could it be, I reasoned, to come by decent broadcast sound quality on a podcast, which isn’t recorded in a professional recording studio.
Turns out, quite hard.
Pedantic, me?
Season One was recorded on a single microphone plugged into my iPhone. The microphone records in stereo. Stereo comes from the Greek STEREOS and means solid. We use stereophonic shortened to stereo meaning something that is recorded using two or more channels. Like a two-way conversation? Simple. Not!
The microphone (I would never blame my tools) did record two voices but on one channel. Who knew? Not me, until Richard heard the sound files and explained s-l-o-w-l-y that what was done to one file was done to the other and therefore impossible to separate.
Rich saved the day but I needed to up my game.
Did I say sound is important to me?
And that’s when I stumbled across a recording platform called Zencastr. Zencastr promises a High Fidelity Podcasting experience. Remotely. Guaranteeing studio quality. REMOTELY.
It was at this point I began to weep and wring my hands with joy before I knew it we’d recorded Season Two and Three.
HOW DID THE NAME ‘THIS FOOD THING'‘ COME ABOUT?
It comes from my once disordered relationship with food.
SEE SCENE BELOW:
EXT. STREET. LATE AFTERNOON
FRIEND and ME are saying goodbye.
FRIEND: Are you okay?
ME: Great.
FRIEND: Really?
ME: It’s just this...
FRIEND: What?
ME: Nothing.
Pause
FRIEND: I don’t...
ME: Just this food thing.
ME hurries off. FRIEND looks concerned. Wind kicks up leaves on pavement. A flotilla of Nuns cross street in BG. A siren wails.