Making a Podcast Episode

Hello my friends, and welcome back to my blog.

I thought for today's blog, I might offer a peek behind the curtain as it were, and show how I make my podcast, taking you all step-by-step through every part of my process from the conception of the idea all the way through to the finished product. I decided to do this with my first commission episode, on the Skibidi Toilet series, in part because its a series I am approaching for the first time, and so I think it will serve best to illustrate every part of my process.

So let's get started shall we?

Step 1: The Idea

All of my podcast episodes start with an idea of what content I wish to approach, and often with an idea on how I want to tackle it. For example I may wish to review a film or series, talk about why I love a franchise, discuss an industry shaping event, contrast parts of a franchise with each other, or analyse a classic from a modern perspective. 

With the Skibidi Toilet series the idea I had going into the original April Fools Day post was being aware that, while this series may have begun as a series of surreal non-sequitur videos of singing heads coming out of toilets, I knew from watching some videos with my youngest children, and hearing them excitedly tell me all about it, that there was a ongoing story and lore here. This was exacerbated when I saw YouTube videos discussing that lore, most especially one by Film Theory. Knowing that the anniversary of my podcast unintentionally coincides with April Fools Day I decided to build up the idea that I was working on something special for the anniversary, and then drop the fake video, the idea of which would be that I was going to analyse the lore of the series, and its implications for the future, helped by the fact that previous podcasts had already established that I am a bit of a lore hound. The joke seemed to be quite successful, but I decided that doing an episode on this series in the future could actually be kind of fun, and so decided to put it up as a commission, one which was swiftly bought by Dan, a longtime friend and supporter of the channel.

And so I then started work on the video. I knew what I was covering and the approach I wanted to take, but this was also a series that I was only passingly familiar with, and so in many ways this was like approaching content for the first time. It would take a significant amount of research to cover everything.

Step 2: The Research

So the first part of my research is always experiencing the content and making notes, so reading a book, watching a film or TV show, or playing a game. I will always do this when creating an episode, even if it is something I am already familiar with, and if I have enough time then I will try to do so twice. For the Skibidi Toilet series this meant watching a lot of YouTube videos. 

Even when I was commissioned there were over 70 episodes of this series, some of them available in multiple forms, and while none of them are especially long many of them are packed with tiny details indicating the main recurring characters and plotlines, and I had to make notes on all of these. It seemed clear as I got stuck into this that despite the series still being ongoing the third chapter of the storyline was approaching its conclusion, and that felt like a reasonable point to complete watching to. Now due to some unfortunate real world issues that have meant this episode took longer to complete than I originally planned the series has now begun its fourth chapter, however this now also means that I can comment now on the new threads of lore that are developing there, as well as everything that has come previously. 

So I watched my way through the entire series. I watched each episode completely without stopping, then made notes based on what I had just watched, and then watched the episode again while reading the notes, to ensure I had all the details I needed to comment on, and added any other details I may have missed. Once I had all the notes I felt I could get from the episodes, I then went online in search of more. 

In my own life I am a regular user of online wiki-style resources to learn more about my favourite franchises. I want to learn about making of stories, secrets, trivia, tropes and even spoilers. As a result I tend to frequent places like TVTropes, Fandom/Wikia, Wikipedia, and IMDB in order to learn what I can, and see what else I may have missed, such as the early appearances of characters that rise to prominence later in the series, or background details that serve as easter eggs. Or most importantly, correcting things I have gotten wrong, because mistakes do happen sometimes. Doing so in this instance allowed me to make more sense of certain aspects of the episodes that maybe were unclear due to the narrative style of the show, such as the recurring POV character that becomes the main character of Plungerman throughout the series, or spotting further Easter eggs and trivia that I might still have missed.

Not only that but I may have specific questions that I have been unable to answer from any of these sources, and so I will do Google searches to see of there are news articles or interviews that shed more light on those elusive answers. An example from this podcast was wondering if Alexey Gerasimov, the creator of Skibidi Toilet, has ever spoken about his inspiration and goals for the series, which led me to an article by Forbes that interviewed him, where he talked about exactly those things, giving me some interesting quotes and facts that I could include in my episode. 

Now obviously doing all of this has obviously left me with a lot of notes for the episode, but these notes are not necessarily structured. They go through the events of the series in a linear order, but do not necessarily address the topic of the episode itself. And so that takes me to the next step.

Step 3: The Script

For some of my episodes going through and creating the final script from the existing notes can be where the episode really comes together. Where I get a clear focus on what I am trying to say about this particular piece of media. For example this has been where some of my review episodes took on their shape as I decided what I wanted to say about them. Now in this case I already knew the way I wanted to approach this, but I still needed to order it.

The bulk of the episode was an account of the three chapters of the series, and obviously the notes for that were pretty much all in order, and so I tightened them up, correcting any information as necessary, and did my best to make it as concise as possible, so that anyone would listening would completely understand the plot of the series. 

The next part however was to structure the episode around that. In this case I knew I wanted to speak to the delay that this episode had taken and shout out to Dan for supporting the podcast and his patience and undertsanding in waiting in the intro. I then needed to introduce the Skibidi Toilet series, and I try to do this from the mindset of "if someone knew nothing about this series, what would they need to know to understand the rest of the episode?" I try to take this approach with everything on the podcast, assuming a minimal base knowledge, unless the episode is a sequel or follow-up to a previous episode, in which case I will recommend that previous entry as a source for that pre-requisite information. This is the part of the podcast that used the sections from the Forbes article I mentioned earlier, as well as background information on the series and its success using sourced information from Wikipedia. 

As a sidenote I do want to say Wikipedia can be an incredible resource to use but you do have to ensure the information is sourced if you are presenting it as fact, as Wikipedia and sites like it can be edited by anyone, so I only tend to quote information from there that has a source listed, especially if the information I am using is a direct quote, as I can then check it on the linked source to confirm it for myself. This can be a very time-intensive part of the process but I do think it is a very important one.

Following this I want to come to the end of the episode. I've introduced the topic, given all the information about it, but now I want to bring it back to the topic in mind and conclude the podcast. When I was in school and college I did a lot of essay-based subjects, and so I am trying to approach my podcasts in a similar way to how I used to approach essay questions. I've given you the information, and the supporting evidence, and now I am going to conclude my essay by answering the question I posed at the start, using the evidence I have given in that answer.  My blogs here have actually helped with that, as in many wasys writing them has felt similar to the essay writing I used to do in the past, and its now a process I will endeavour to do far more often if I can, as I think it is leading to better content than my earlier episodes. As a result for this episode I added a final lore section, elaborating on all of the lore from the episodes I have discussed in a single place, and I wrote that section out into the script.

Step 4: Recording

So the next step in the process is the recording. This is actually one of th simplest parts of the process for me. I used to be able to use the recording and editing tools available with Anchor, however Anchor is now owned by Spotify, and labelled as the Spotify for Podcasters app, and has removed many of the very accessible and intuitive tools that I used to use. As a result I have a stand microphone with a pop filter that is attached by a USB cable to my computer, and I record my voice using the default voice recorder software on my laptop. The files are saved directly to my hard drive and can be easily used and edited in other programs, which I'll get to in a moment.

The biggest issue is that I do not really have a dedicated recording space. I have a desk in my bedroom that I tend to use as my workspace, and so I do my recording there, but not being a dedicated space I have no soundproofing or anything else. As a result between a houseful of children and several noisy neighbours the trick can be in finding the best time to record without any interruptions. Listening back to older episodes you can hear all sorts of noises interrupting me, from phone and computer alerts, to shouting children, barking dogs, cars outside, the jingle of an icecream van, and much more. I now try to do the very best I can to mute any and all incoming notifications - phone on do not disturb, apps muted on my computer, desktop alerts turned off etc, and try to get my recording done in the middle of the day where I can.

Once the recording is done, I need to edit the files. I do this using a free program called Audacity. There are plenty of YouTubers that provide guides to Audacity and its functions, and I was able to use some of them to find the best method to compress my audio to hopefully make it as pleasing as I can to listen to. This is the sort of thing that may depend upon your voice, and so I don't want to give my settings out as what worked for me may not work for you. It did involve some practice and trial and error, which I did with old podcast clips from Anchor once it removed its tools. In fact the first piece of audio I made using these new settings was my current sign-off, where I mention this blog, as well as my Ko-Fi commissions and Discord, and this is used on all of my current episodes and updates.

I also have to add my music to certain audio clips, namely my intro and outro for each episode. The songs I use for this are songs that were available in Anchor and I liked the sound of, and I have since learned are by Blue Dot Sessions, and seem to have been created as royalty free music for this purpose. I intend to keep using them while I can unless there are any drastic changes, for consistency if nothing else. 

The final thing I do in Audacity is create a complete audio of the entire podcast, as Spotify for Podcasters now only allows a complete episode to be uploaded. This also lets me get a feel for the structure of the episode, and add anything else if necessary, for example my latest episode uses audio clips from the Skibidi Toilet series, which is inspired by similar things I have done in the past for previous episodes (I think my Alien and Predator episode was the first time I did this). I felt as this was a commissioned episode it was something I should do again, despite it not being appropriate for every single episode. 

With the audio complete the episode is ready to upload to all Podcast RSS feeds, allowing the audio of the episode to be listened to on Spotify, Google, Apple, Amazon, and many many more. However for three years now I have also been uploading this podcast to YouTube, and to do that it needs to have a video.

Step 5: The Video

Now as my style is that of a podcast rather than a video essay my videos are not as involved as they could be. I have a style that works for me, and no need to change it as yet. What I do rather than using video clips is to create video slides for sections of the video, usually broken up using the sections I recorded. 

Now to do this I tend to search for images to illustrate these frames. The best source for this tends to be the aforementioned Wikias for whatever the subject is. I download the images, usually way more than I need to give me some options, and then arrange them on my base frame using free program paint.net, trying to find the right images for each frame to illustrate the points I'm talking about. I try to have a unifying image on each frame for the podcast (except for anthology episodes where the frames will have individual images), which I will try to make emblematic for the entire theme of the episode. In the case of the Skibidi Toilet episode I used an image of the original Skibidi Toilet, but also the recurring character of Plungerman, as the two of them together worked to illustrate the conflict of the series.

I also needed a title frame for the podcast, which I can also use for the episode image on audio platforms (I know it definitely shows up on Spotify but I am unsure of other services), as well as the thumbnail for the YouTube video. I like for this to be a single image if possible, although for ome previous episodes I have made an image from several components (my episode on the Comic Book Crash being a promienent example of this. For films and TV shows this can usually be done by looking for a poster image, for which Google is my search engine of choice. Now a lot of search results can be fan edits, from sites like DeviantArt, which I don't like to use, but through sources like IMDB it can be easy to find a good image. 

Now for Skibidi Toilet I had an image that I had used as the title for the original April Fools Day post, however it was something that had clearly been made early on in the run of the series, and I was unsure if it was a fanmade image or an official one. As a result for the new episode I wanted to use a new image that was more emblematic of the heavier story focus later in the series, and I settled upon one of the thumbnail images created by Alexey Gerasimov for episode 70, a big culmination of several ongoing plotlines that highlighted several recurring characters of great importance to the show, and used this as the title image for the new episode.

With the frames complete the next step is creating the video. I use Win Movie Maker, a free piece of software based on the discontinued Windows Movie Maker, and which I've found to be very easy to use, especially as I have taught myself all the skills I need to create my podcast using online guides. I align the frames alongside the audio clips, and once that is done I can then export the video in High Definition, rendering it as a complete video file. However these files can be quite large, so I use another free program called Handbrake to compress the rendered file to reduce its file size, enabling for a quicker upload to YouTube. 

With the video complete all that is left to do is upload it, and then promote it. Where I can I try to have the YouTube video and Podcast RSS link go live at the same time, and I use YouTube's Premiere function to highlight the new episode, which highlights it for my subscribers, allows them to se and bookmark the episode before it goes live, and gives a countdown before it begins. I highlight the episode on my dedicated Facebook and Instagram pages, and if possible I also like to highlight it on my BlueSky, as well as a dedicated Garhdo Goes Geek subReddit that I set up, and finally I highlight it using a YouTube community post. My hope with doing all of this is that people who aren't already fans have a chance to find the podcast, as I truly do think that my podcast offers something that many people could enjoy. 

So that's the end of this blog, so thank you for joining me, and I hope that this has been enlightening for somebody out there.

I'll have more new episodes coming soon. I'm aiming to go back to a fortnightly release schedule if I can for the upcoming episodes, so you should see much more of me very soon.

In the meantime please all do the best you can to look after yourselves, taking the best care you can of your physical and mental health. Stay safe. Until next time my friends, bye for now.

Garhdo