To err is human; to record a backup is divine
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To quote the patron saint of my birth year, Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana:
Everybody makes mistakes,
Everybody has those days,
Everybody knows what, what I'm talkin 'bout…
Everybody gets that way.
Producing podcasts often means being a problem solver. We make sure everyone has the right equipment and is using it properly, we troubleshoot echoey rooms, and when we can’t fix something during a recording, we fire up our DAWs and tinker with that tape until it sounds good, or at the very least, listenable.
But what happens when we cause problems?
I don’t mean being a jerk. If you’re causing problems because you’re a jerk, only you can help you.
I mean honest-to-dog, tried my darndest but just couldn’t quite get it right, mistakes. I mean messing up recording, missing a track in the export, not hitting save frequently enough. It’s happened to all of us, and it can feel really bad!
Like the time earlier this year when I got halfway through an edit, saved it many times along the way, but left Audition open when I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning only to find that my computer had crashed overnight.
My hours and hours of meticulous work? Gone for good, with no way of retrieving it. I had to start over.
(Lesson learned: always, always, close Audition if you’re stepping away from your computer.)
Or the time, um… earlier this week, when I sent Katie a bunch of files to heal that were empty:
That one was an easier fix. I forgot that I muted the tracks when I was exporting them, so, unsurprisingly, they were blank. I re-exported them while they were unmuted and we were back in business.
The thing with these kinds of mistakes is that, for the most part, they’re fixable. Today on the Big Fry, we have stories from producers about their big mistakes, and what they did to make everything better. And even when they couldn’t make it better—they’re still here to tell the tale, and sometimes, that’s all the reassurance we need.
Thanks again to Emily Latimer for writing last week’s newsletter :)
The Mistake: “One of my first radio docs, I was new to the style of the show and so there was a lot of back and forth between me and a supervising producer on draft edits. It took forever to finally land on an arc as we both slowly made small changes. We both did safety listens after a long day and then put it to broadcast that weekend. I went to listen to the podcast version [that had been published] on my way home, since I was so nervous. About 7 minutes into the doc my blood runs cold. Somehow we had totally missed the fact that the doc repeats itself using the same quote at different points in the edit.”
The Fix: “I ran back in the building at 7 p.m., redid the edit, and sent an email off to the supervising producer explaining what had happened.
The Takeaway: “Sometimes the answer is… You're going to make a lot of segments/episodes of podcasts/radio over your career and in a few of them, the audio will be bad. It's not a great outcome, but you have to do your best to minimize the worst of it and jump to the next one.”
Follow Arman on Twitter: @ArmanBazz
The Mistake: “In the Before Times, doing a series where I interviewed only drag performers… they all talked with their hands and would drum on the table right next to my recorder as they talked.”
The Fix: “I actually invested in a couple quiet fidget toys and put them in front of my guests.”
Follow Max on Twitter: @_Max_Monday
The Mistake: “This one is quite silly. I sneezed while I was directing Newsbeat [for the BBC] and accidentally pressed the play button really hard, playing the next two clips over each other, and then in my panic I just mashed the button and played out short chunks of the whole programme.”
The Fix: “The host, to his eternal credit, picked up and said, ‘A little preview of what's coming up on Newsbeat there…’ and managed to fill for a few seconds until I signalled I'd reset and was ready to go.”
Follow Jay on Twitter: @JayCockburn
The Mistake: “Mine is definitely a not-saving-often-enough mistake. One time I was mixing something on campus (late at night, in a windstorm) and the power went out all of a sudden across the ENTIRE campus while I was bouncing my file… and of course I hadn’t saved. All I was left with when I was eventually able to access the file was an interestingly garbled bounce and no recovery plan. Not to mention being locked in the studio in total darkness was a minor horror movie moment in itself.”
The Fix: “It was SPOOKY on many, many levels and now I save every .5 seconds.”
Follow Ren on Twitter: @tuneswitch
The Mistake: “There's also the classic forgot to press record story which has definitely happened to me. Even sneakier though is noticing that Riverside wasn't actually uploading their audio, because I forgot to check which browser they were using and not doing anything about it until the end of the conversation… only to realize that I would never get the audio.”
The Fix: “Now I'm always so hyper focused on that upload bar, and if it's not at 99% within the first 5 minutes [on Riverside], I stop the record and check everything again.”
Follow Kattie on Twitter: @PodKatt
The Mistake: I was the lead podcast producer/host at the Review of Journalism in the final year of my Masters program at X University. We were hosting a panel filled with Canadian journalism heavyweights, and I felt like I was punching way above my weight class by moderating the panel. I was very, very nervous. Especially because we were planning to record the panel and use it for Pull Quotes, the Review’s podcast. I had learned how to hook up a recorder to a soundboard—I was using the school’s Marantz—but I wasn’t entirely confident that I had every step down pat. At a certain point, I decided I needed to focus on moderating and stop trying to produce. When I went to review the audio later, it was a big ol’ mess: I hooked up the Marantz incorrectly, and everything got recorded through the internal microphone.
The Fix: I didn’t have a backup for that week’s episode, so I just had to work with the terrible audio. Instead of broadcasting the whole event, my co-producer and I picked the panelists who sounded the least bad, and called it “a selection.” It was echoey, but I boosted the audio way up, so it was audible.
The Takeaway: Looking back, it’s such a relief that I made this mistake when I was at school. Yes, this was a thing that went out into the world—but no one was paying me to make it. Messing up was not the end of the world. A year and a half later, I was hired to produce a podcast that—you guessed it—involved me recording from a soundboard. This time, I knew what could go wrong, and I worked closely with the soundboard technician to make sure everything was hooked up properly. Also… I don’t try to host and produce at the same time anymore. There’s a reason those are different jobs!
Follow Michal on Twitter: @MichalStein2
We’ve got a CBC roundup with jobs all across Canada today:
CBC is hiring a columnist researcher for Indigenous content out of Montreal. This is a 6-month, full-time contract, and it looks like it would be a great training opportunity for up-and-coming Indigenous journalists. Apply by 11:59 p.m. on September 21.
Hey east coast early risers, this one’s for you—CBC Nova Scotia is hiring a reporter/editor for Information Morning in Halifax. This is a full-time, permanent position, and you have until 11:59 p.m. on September 21 to apply. Yes, we included this last week, but we want to emphasize the coast-to-coast nature of jobs you can apply for this week.
West coast cuties, we’ve got you covered too! CBC Vancouver is hiring a full-time, permanent producer for On the Coast, the afternoon drive program. Apply by 11:59 p.m. on September 22.
CBC is hiring a social media presenter in Winnipeg. If you thrive in the land of digital media, and can schedule tweets in your sleep, this full-time, permanent position is for you. Apply by 11:59 p.m. on September 21.
Okay okay okay, our last posting in our CBC Job Extravaganza comes with some gossip… am I spreading gossip? Is that allowed? Technically I’m kinda sorta employed by CBC, hope they’re not mad!
They’re hiring a producer for a weekly world news podcast, which means… CBC must be starting a world news podcast! I, for one, think that is very groovy, and look forward to diving into this once they get it up and running. This is a full-time contract job, and you have until 11:59 p.m. on September 24 to apply.
What do Polkaroo and I have in common? We’ve both worked with TVO! Now you can too—Nathaniel Basen, associate editor for TVO.org, is looking for pitches for Ontario-centric short features.
The Dance Current is hiring regional arts reporters all across the land we call Canada! They want arts writers to cover local dance and performance news in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Nunavut and Northwest Territories! Not sure if you’re qualified? Pssssh. The program was specifically designed to provide training for writers looking to develop their reporting experience. Deadline: September 24.
Artist and audio producer Aliya Pabani made a short audio piece for the BBC’s show, The Essay, on the violent eviction of the Trinity Bellwoods encampment in Toronto earlier this summer. To Have/To Hold is told through photographs of Pabani that were taken that day. “Every photo of conflict has a before and an after,” she says, about seven minutes into the piece.
This is a quiet, close-up look at what went down on a horrifying day: arrests, concussions, displacements. It poses the question of what role photos play when it comes time to tell the stories—who gets portrayed? What kinds of interactions? At just under 14 minutes, it’s short, but powerful.
More gossip! We are SO thrilled to announce that we’re making a brand new podcast with the Director’s Guild of Canada in Ontario, called Wider Lens. These are real stories and candid conversations about creativity in the film and TV industry in Ontario.
The first episode is a conversation between our host, writer and director Annie Bradley, and some of the creative team behind HBO’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Bruce Miller (Creator & Executive Producer), DGC Ontario Picture Editors Wendy Hallam-Martin and Christopher Donaldson, and Elisabeth Moss (Director/EP/Actor), who made her directorial debut in season four. Episodes will come out monthly.
This week on Well Said, Alex Johnston joins Heather Reisman to talk about her book, Inconceivable: My Life-Altering, Eye-Opening, Journey from Infertility to Motherhood. Alex’s story about her fertility journey is a vital listen for anyone who has struggled with infertility or is thinking about starting a family.
We want to hear from you! What are you looking for in your podcast news? Let us know on Twitter, Instagram, or by email at info@vocalfrystudios.com.
Thanks to Emily Latimer for editing this newsletter, and to Katie Jensen for designing it.
We’ll see you again on September 24. Until then, here’s an update from producer Jay Cockburn’s cat, Leo
₍⸍⸌̣ʷ̣̫⸍̣⸌₎
Yours in friends and fries,
Michal
