I’m preparing for the Pod, HAL

        Date:        July 11, 2008 6:11 PM
Topic:        I’m preparing for the Pod, HAL

I’ve been tossing around a few ideas like the contents of wooden bowl full of greens before vinegar and oil. The one that has most recently topped the salad is I have been imagining putting together a periodic podcast. (Yes, it is true that I hate the word podcast. It has a certain slimy sound of sucking souls growing in the greenhouse. but I will give in to the term that has been spawned without one whit of consultation with me.)

I decided to look around on the internet for ideas about creating a podcast.

How is it that no matter what the endeavor, I always come with the same such perverse notion?

I seem to be forever reading about character development and the relationship between the arc of the plot and how the setting can affect the balance between the action and the meaning …Blahgity blahgity blah! Or someone blathering about programming style and its importance to the overall coherence to the project (we all use software, we all know how well that seems to work) , or the proper way to handle the guitar pick (plectrum?) in a splickity lick (I have yet to manifest the smoking speed of John McLaughlin. I prefer fingerpicking anyway, p-i-m-a, hand in a curve not a claw) , the proper use of persepective, the position and composition of a name block on a mechanical drawing, the absolutely necessary use of a smarmy Sincerely yours at the close of a letter, the pretense Dears Sirs at the beginning.

I find that people giving instruction about screenplay writing are the worst of the bunch. (The evidence for that is at the cineplex.) There are more rules that shouldn’t be broken planning a TV or movie script than found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy .

The stricture about only using Courier 12 Point for submissions, (I’m guessing ’cause it looks like a typewritten manuscript ) is both interesting and irritating. I don’t like any more than a couple fonts myself, but I have found that I can still read and understand things written in Times New Roman. And, though, I admit that I would have some trouble reading anything in, say, Stacatto 555 or Bernhard Schoenschrift, there are many many fonts that just aren’t beyond the reach of a literate person. Believe it or not whole works of literature are written in different type styles. Perhaps I just can’t imagine the pain of a poor tortured producer who would have to read scripts in several differing fonts over orange juice in the morning? Very messy, so distracting! Mein Gott naeste vi will be submitting zem in foreign tongues!!

What I find, after a very few minutes of review of these sage articles that I am prone to consult, is I am compelled to to figure out how I can break every rule that has just been put down by that good hearted person who was just trying to give the benefit of experience and bon ami. I am a terribly hard case. If I thought about it for a some period of time, I would be embarrassed.

Alas my search for Podcasting instruction fell into the same sad pattern.

In one online tutorial about podcasting I was told that podcasting was work intensive but that it could be a tremendous amount of fun.

For about a year and a half I put together a Comedy Radio Program. The group that I was part of wrote, performed, recorded, composed music for and edited an hour long program once a week. It wasn’t just work intensive, it was a horror! And I never really felt all that good about it, even though I think we were very good and that the broadcast was relatively solid. It became a push of a stone up the hill that managed on access to the peak just to slip to the bottom once again. I think I will skip the notion about about how much fun I will be having and pass over into some other realm, which may even be become evident to me as I write this blog post. (Blog, don’t like that word either, but I’m only one person and we grow accustomed to things)

The article went on to explain that it was only worth it to podcast if you incorporated your passions.
I was immediately on board with that whole idea about my passions until I started to reflect on my passions. It wasn’t so much that I don’t have them. I certainly do! but so many people are doing so many podcasts about similar ideas that I feel I could add very little to the mix.

Then I was advised that the best thing that I could do was plan the podcast out in detail.

It was a blow. I am incapable of planning out anything that has to do with creating. O, sure I can put a schedule together at work, I can even adapt and change with conflicting demands. In short, I can and do make decisions quickly and accurately and on the spot. I live with the consequences. But this idea of planning stymies me.

I believe that planning in the beginning is counter to production.

When you start something you have to be willing to stumble in the muck, build a structure, find the weakness then totally destroy it to build a better one. To me this is the method that works and yes it does mean massive amounts of confusion and work. How can I possibly know what is going to develop until I start scratching and clawing through the process. Planning comes afterward. Dreaming is what is required in those first steps, and failure, destruction and rebuilding are really part of the joy of exploration. No matter that the dream can become nightmare.

The vaster problem with dreaming is that often it is all there is, but I figure if dreaming is enough, maybe the rest of it wasn’t all that important.

The remainder of the article was about microphones and mixers and hardware configuration.

I didn’t pay attention to it much either.

Tomorrow I’m going to go on to editing techniques.