The Unedited Podcast

The Unedited Podcast

Byrichard

There was a time when I wanted to listen to hours of podcasts a day, and I did. I would listen on my walks, on my commutes to work, while driving and more. I would love listening to podcasts so much that I would wish I had more time to spend on listening to podcasts. That, unfortunately changed, as podcasts became livestreams, and thus unedited.


Too Long For Casual Listening


It’s not that I don’t like listening to people talk, but that when a podcast goes from being fourty five minutes to an hour long, to being one and a half to two hours long then it becomes too long for a walk, and too time consuming to listen to more than one podcast a day. It gets worse. The problem with This Week in Tech, and that entire network of podcasts is that by being unedited they waste our time. Instead of getting tech news we get personal stories. Instead of analysis and context we get opinion and sidetracked. They used to joke about rat holes. By being live and unedited, when shared as podcasts, they become irrelevant.
Hiking podcasts, programming podcasts and others all make this mistake. The result is that listening to podcasts is less engaging than it was. What makes this worse is that podcasts are sponsored and funded, so as they become profitable they become less engaging for the listener.


Using A Running Order


I was thinking about this yesterday, when listening to a French podcast by France Culture. The podcast was organised, with a running order, various sound bytes. It kept on track and it was about something specific. Podcasts have value because they are specific, because they offer information efficiently. When podcasts get sidetracked they become a waste of time.


What Changed


The first thing that changed is the pandemic. It made listening to normal people have normal conversations, whilst in self-isolation deeply unpleasant. I couldn’t listen to people living “normally” when I felt so isolated due to the pandemic still going on.
The second reason is advertising and promotional messages. When a podcast is young people are talking about the topic they’re about. Eventually, with time, they become about self-promotion and advertising. If you listen to one podcast a week, then that’s fine. I don’t. I would listen to a podcast episode or more every day for weeks. Eventually I burned out on adverts and self-promotion. I have the same complaint about YouTube content. They’re breaking the fourth wall.


Audio Books


Paradoxically the fact that podcasts have become so time consuming and long winded has encouraged me to do two things. The first is to listen to more audio books once again. If I’m going to spend hours listening to something it might as well be a book. I have been listening to The Practicing Stoic, Eye of the Beholder, Journey (by Tony Blair) and The Cult of the Amateur. I find it hard to stick to just one book at a time.


Nature


I also listen to nature. I listen to the sound of traffic, and I walk without earphones for up to an hour at a time. Somehow by podcasters losing focus, I have found the time to walk more mindfully, to day dream, to think and just to be in the moment, in space and time.


And Finally


I am looking for podcasts that are worth my time, that are 45 minutes to an hour long at most, that are worth listening to. Walking without distraction is a good thing, anyway. Walking, in the moment is good.

Mythbusters: A Fun Documentary Series
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Mythbusters: A Fun Documentary Series

Byrichard

Recently Netflix Switzerland made Mythbusters available on their service. As I watched episode after episode I noticed the camaraderie between those who participate in the show. We see that Adam and Jamie occasionally argue but that overall they are having a lot of fun. We see them laugh, joke, tease each other, and collaborate.


Their show is a science show where fun myths are challenged. They have two goals with each myth, establish whether it is confirmed, plausible, or busted. They then scale up and reproduce the results.


The first two seasons are short and low budget using prosumer cameras and we notice the difference between camera image quality from shot to shot. The first “season” as it is called on Netflix Switzerland must be the pilot episodes.


Information taken from the Wikipedia page
Information is taken from the Wikipedia page


The first episodes of the season are great because their editing style is good. Every minute of the program covers something new. In later seasons, at least for the broadcast versions and those shared via youtube advertising provisions ruined the watchability of the show. I am speaking of the lead in each segment and the lead out.


Netflix is paid for directly by the customer and there are no ad breaks. As a result of this, I would re-edit content for the 50-minute duration rather than broadcast the TV edit. It allows for the producers of the show to provide more content and information to their audiences.


Netflix content should be reformatted for a longer viewing duration. It should take advantage that there are no commercial breaks to get content to flow without fade to blacks and without repetitions. It should also take in to account binge viewing.


Documentaries will benefit from services such as Netflix and Video on Demand. They will benefit because they can edit content to be seen without commercials and without the constant need for repetition. As a result, rather than have 40 minutes of content and 10 minutes of repetition documentaries will have 50 minutes of content for the viewer.


Two stories or more are usually explored per episode and in the earlier episodes, you have cut from one story to the next no more than two times. As they produce more episodes so the editing goes from Story A to B to A to C to A to B to A again and then to C. This flip-flopping between experiments results in the editor having to summarise what happened before and what they want as a result frequently. This repetition is optimal if people watch just five minutes of a program but ruins the viewing experience for those watching an entire episode. Let’s see if they resolve this issue for Netflix.

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Four Reasons to be Happy

Byrichard

There are four reasons to be happy today. The first of these is that my MBP is finally in Geneva therefore it is a short matter of days before I get it into my hands and start playing with the computer and the new software.

The laptop will be used for all video editing and multimedia work I have whilst the iBook will be used for daily tasks such as surfing the web, mobility, and more. I’m going to have two apple laptops capable of video editing at my disposal which is quite a luxury.

The second reason I should be happy is that google Adsense, over the past week has doubled in income, meaning that I should get my next check twice as fast as the last one. I added a few more AdSense adverts on sections where advertising had not been and as a result, many more eyes are seeing and clicking on the advert. I’m still a long way from earning enough money to live off my website but any income is good.

The third reason is that my website is being migrated to Drupal, a database-driven CMS solution for web mastering rather than the outdated HTML pages that it has been over the past decade.

The advantage of the Content Management System (CMS) is that the layout is the same for every page whilst the content is held within a database. As a result, when you want to change something on multiple pages all you need to do is move blocks around. Blocks, when applied to drupal are how modules are manipulated to space them in specific areas on the website. As a result, whenever a website is re-worked it takes a matter of minutes rather than hours to change.

As a side note, I’ve also updated both the PHP and MySQL database to version 5 and it’s working smoothly for the time being.

The final reason to be happy is that a friend has received the edited DVD that I worked on a few weeks ago and finalised within the past few days. As a result, I’ve managed to finish what I had to do a matter of days rather than hours before it was due.

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It’s been a twelve hour day of editing

Byrichard

I’ve spent around twelve hours editing today and it’s finally getting to resemble something, as I’d like it to be. It’s involved two days of video capture of a variety of material from a number of events around Europe in particular. It’s starting to be a good edit.

Any creative person will tell you that the hardest part of the work is not the work itself but finding the inspiration and finding how to tell the story the most efficiently. If I understood the brief correctly then the edit I’ve done should be well accepted. I should find out by tomorrow morning normally.

I love the editing phase because it’s one of the more creative phases. You’ve got all the material and it’s a matter of sifting through it, finding the best and then applying it to the finished product.

If I get good feedback then I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

A sunday morning

Byrichard

It’s Sunday morning and yesterday was another day of shooting and editing. As a result of that, the documentary has progressed a little more. One or two more segments have been added, graphics have been improved and the project as a whole looks good.

There’s still a lot of work to be done and I’ve been thinking of extra graphics and shots that could help make the documentary more interesting to watch.

Another 7hrs before editing is over for today

Third Day of Editing And More Relaxed

Byrichard

It’s the third day of editing and the pressure has been relieved. I’ve captured the footage and edited most of the multicamera show. It wasn’t as bad as I thought therefore there were only a few small things to change. As I’m under time pressure I’m glad there’s less to do although with more footage I may have tried to be more creative.

With the myspace documentary, things are going well. We’re up to about ten minutes and need another 2-5 therefore that’s relaxed as well. With that edit it’s a matter of getting the framework finished, finding a few more illustrative shots before finally working on the fine-cut for projection on Thursday or Friday.

For the globalisation project, I haven’t had time to speak to that many people so the progression has stalled. 45 credits vs. 15… Both are important but one requires a team to work at all times. The other, only two or three people.

That’s it for today.

Day two of editing

Byrichard

And there we have it. Day two of editing is over and we’re up to five minutes with a script that’s ready to be fleshed out by a variety of interviews. I love editing and whilst writing this I’m beginning to look forward to tomorrow’s editing. The problem is that I was getting a little tired of being in the same room for so many hours in a day. That’ll change tomorrow as new things occur.

We’ve added the sequences to the timeline and it would seem that things are progressing nicely.

I have captured the making-of footage for the multicamera project and that should be fun to edit. It will wait until later in the week when the Documentary edit is closer to completion.

Day One of Editing Done

Byrichard

Day one of editing has finished and I’ve spent the last two hours resting and relaxing. The editing is quite interesting. We’ve got an interview with someone who was considered as hottest single in the world two or three weeks ago.

The documentary is about myspace and it’s effect on the music industry. It’s interesting because we have at least ten interviews, that’s ten points of view, some musical, others more ITish and yet more from the ordinary public.

Three segments have been assembled and we have a few more to work on. The duration is only five minutes so far but will progress tomorrow.

The rough cut needs to be done by thursday to give an additional week for gathering extra shots and cleaning everything up.

I need to make time for the editing of the multicamera project.

Two weeks of editing

Byrichard

Two weeks of editing await me. Both projects have been logged for the most part although now it’s a matter of finding out how to unite all the raw footage, something which may take a few hours.

It should be a matter of going through the material and choosing all the most relevant bits, seeing whether they go well together, and then finalising that.

Tomorrow I have to work on the documentary. We’ve got a lot of interviews although I’m worried about the shots that can be used for illustrative purposes. I don’t think there are that many location shots, just interview after interview.

Tomorrow we’ll see how well they go together.