The Independent Creator's Playbook

I got a question from a Community member about recording audio away from home, so I grabbed my Zoom H4N and a few mics and headed to a local Starbucks to test out the different mics in a real world setting.

If you’d like to invest in an affordable, portable recording setup, this episode will help you get started.

Your podcast description is one of the first things people see when they come across your podcast online or in a podcast app. This is your chance to catch their attention and sell them on your show. It’s your opportunity to convince them to listen.

The ideal podcast description answers two questions for your potential listener:

When a potential audience member comes across your podcast and starts reading your description, they’re wondering, “What’s in it for me?” This is your chance to tell them why they should care about your show. Otherwise, they won’t.

I’m joined this week by Cory Miller. Cory is the co-host of the Invisible Details podcast and loves all things design and branding.

Aaron: In this world where there’s millions of pieces of content competing for our attention, your audience is looking to see if your content solves a specific need they have. You have to put thought not just into your podcast description, but into each of your episode descriptions as well.

When a potential listener comes across your podcast for the first time, they’re reading the description and wondering, “What’s in this for me?”

Your podcast description is your chance to tell people what’s in it for them. You have to tell them why they should care about your show, otherwise they’re not going to.

Aaron: When writing a description for your podcast or podcast episode, here are some questions to think about:

The last two weeks I interviewed two guys who run a company called Dead Signals and produce two radio drama style podcasts (Related: e064 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 1 (With Writer Marc Sollinger) & e065 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 2 (With Producer/Engineer Dan Powell)).

Their podcasts are very much just entertaining stories. They’re not business related and they’re not trying to change the world with their podcasts, they just want to tell stories in the audio medium and entertain people.

The way I write a description for my podcast is going to be way different from the way they write theirs. They thought about that and asked, “What are people who would be interested in our show looking for?” They’re trying to write a description that would catch the attention of someone looking for an entertaining story.

I love the description for their Archive 81 show: “Three months ago Daniel Powell vanished. These are the tapes he sent to me. If you know anything, please contact me at [email protected].”

They don’t even tell you who the guy is, all you need to know is this guy vanished after he sent a friend some tapes.

Cory: Write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. Write it in a way that, while they’re reading the description, they’re thinking, “Oh yeah. Yes! This! Exactly that! Yes! I need to listen to this.” That’s the reaction you’re looking for.

You want to write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. When they look at that description from Archive 81, people are like, “Whoa. That’s creepy. I feel like I need to listen to this because I’m intrigued.” You’re bringing intrigue and agreement.

Whatever it is you write, you want it to resonate with your intended audience. The second thing is to write it in a way that if they’re sitting with their phone on a bus heading to work and someone looks over and says, “I see you’re listening to a podcast, what’s that all about?” they can respond without looking up the description.

That’s what you’re aiming for: you want something they can quickly tell their friend about without looking at the description. It’s about clarity. It’s not all about you, it’s about what they’re getting. If they said, “I’m listening to this show where this guy wants to help make me a better podcaster,” that’s huge.

Or, “I’m listening to this show where they teach me how to build a better brand.” That’s very simplistic, but you can build off that and you can craft a description where people can pass that on. That’s rooted in telling people what the mission of your company, your brand, or your life is. Being able to distill it in a way that allows people to be able to pass it back and forth is very powerful.

Share and talk about the experience you have and why you’re qualified to teach on a certain subject.

I can say, “I’ve been helping people make great podcasts for five years. I’ve worked for 5by5, the founder of Dribbble, Sean McCabe, and the Shop Talk show.” That shows authority and expertise, but if someone asks a listener about my show, they’re not going to say, “Aaron Dowd is this great podcast editor and he’s worked for all these people and he knows all this stuff about audio engineering.”

The person asking about my show doesn’t care about me, they only care about what the show will do for them if they listen to it.

The words I should use instead could be, “If you want to learn how to make a great podcast, this is the show you should be listening to.”

Cory: There’s aspects of that you can include in your description. Instead of saying, “Hey, these are all of my accomplishments,” you can change that to something like, “Get knowledge from a guy who has years of experience in podcast editing.” You’re putting the emphasis back on the listener and what they’ll get from the show.

You can do fill-in-the-blank stuff, like:

These are actionable steps. Your description should resonate with the listener, tell them what the benefit is for them, and give them a glimpse of the person they’re going to become after listening.

If you want, you can slide a little bit of your credentials in there. For instance, Aaron’s podcast description says, “Professional podcast editor and producer shares everything he’s learned about making great podcasts.”

In the moment someone reads “professional podcast editor,” they’re going to think, “This show is going to teach me how to become a professional podcast editor,” or, “I can learn something from this person who has this experience.”

Ultimately, you have to remember that people will only care about you once you’ve proven you care about them.

In regards to a value-exchange like this, you have to prove that you care about this person before they’re going to start caring about you.

If I find a new show, and look at it's podcast description, I don’t know this person, I have no connection with them, I have no background on them, so I’m looking to see if this is worth my time.

Once I listen to it, I can create a connection. That’s exactly how it happened with seanwes. I started listening to the seanwes podcast out of the blue and I didn’t know who Sean and Ben were, but after listening to so many of their shows, I started really connecting with these guys.

That’s why I joined the Community in the beginning, because they were talking about all these conversations people were having and I had total FOMO. I wanted to be in on the inside jokes because I felt connected to the podcast hosts.

The connectedness happens after you’ve proven that you’re here to deliver value. You deliver value first and the connectedness is all about, in a sense, selling yourself, your knowledge, and the benefit to the listener, and then they can continue to connect with you.

Aaron: Make your podcast description about your listener. If you don’t know who you’re creating a podcast for, that’s a problem. If you’re just creating a show because you want it to be out there, you might get a few people listening, but you need to think about who you’re making your show for.

Aaron: One of my listeners (Stan) reached out to me, and I wanted to do a review for him to give him some practical steps to help him write a better podcast description.

I feel like I can’t pick apart his podcast description without looking at my own podcast description first, so let’s pick apart my podcast description, then we'll do Cory’s show (Invisible Details), then Stan’s show.

I feel like I need to rewrite my description anywys, so I’m hoping the things we talk about in this section will be helpful to someone else who has been listening who might want to rewrite theirs.

Here’s the (current) description for The Podcast Dude:

“Professional podcast editor and producer Aaron Dowd shares everything he’s learned about making great podcasts. If you’re interested in starting a podcast, growing your audience, and increasing your influence, this is the show for you.

Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more. To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there. Don’t just make a podcast—make an awesome podcast.”

I don’t know if I like that first sentence. It’s making a claim that I’m a professional podcast editor and producer, but I don’t have any evidence to back that up. I’m not saying, “Professional podcast editor and producer for these people.”

I do have evidence to back that up, and the people that know me know I’ve worked with some fairly well-known podcasters, especially in the design realm, but I’m not backing it up with evidence.

Also it puts me first—the first thing you see is my name, then I say I’m going to share everything I’ve learned.

Another mistake I think I'm making there is talking about myself in the third person. I want to speak to a single person and I’m not speaking to a single person until the second line.

Cutting out the first and the last sentences would be a good place to start, because that puts the focus back on the listener. "What do you want? Do you want to start a podcast? Do you want to grow an audience? This is the show for you."

The next part, “Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more,” explains the kind of stuff I talk about. This is what I’m going to teach you.

That’s good, so I’ll leave that as it is.

Finally, I give my mission statement, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there.”

Cory: I think you should remove the first sentence and the last sentence. I thought the last sentence was a mistake, honestly.

I think you can add your name in the new last sentence, like, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude, Aaron Dowd, will help you get there.”

Aaron: I would say, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. My name is Aaron Dowd and I want to help you make an awesome podcast.”

Cory: “Make an awesome podcast,” is the last thing people will read and it’s the last thing that’s going to be on their mind. They’ll read, “If you’re interested in starting a podcast…” and they’ll think, “Yes, I’m interested in starting a podcast.”

Cory: Invisible Details’s description says, “A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. A brand is so much more than a logo or what is visible on the surface. It’s the heartbeat of a company. A brand is about values and the story you’re telling. Join Cory Miller and Kyle Adams every Saturday for clear and practical advice on how to define your brand from the inside out. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.”

I like it, but I think I could rework a little bit. There are a couple of things I’m trying to do with this.

First, I’m setting expectations with “a weekly show.” There’s no confusion about when it comes out, like bi-monthly, or a seasonal thing. It’s a weekly show.

Next, the description talks about building a successful brand. Most of the people I encounter who are starting this journey of building a better brand think branding is a out the visuals, logos, and all the things you see, but a brand is all about perception. It’s all about how people think and feel about you and what they say about you when you’re not in the room.

I could rework that second sentence, but I also want it to be introductory, because the people we’re trying to reach are people who have new and growing brands. They’re just getting that first taste of redefining what brand means, and that’s what that second sentence is for.

Aaron: You have a solid first sentence and a solid last sentence. Let’s say we cut all that stuff out in the middle; it would still be a good description—“A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.” It explains what the show is about and what the listener will get out of it.

Cory: It’s very action-centered. I’m a very simplistic kind of person when it comes to design and writing. I adhere to this idea of, “How much can I remove but still have there be quality? Can we do less, but better?” That’s my whole philosophy. I know people who write out their whole about pages in their description and no one will read that or remember it. You need to create something that is short and memorable.

If someone asks if there’s a podcast about podcasting I’d recommend, I’d say, “If you want to make a podcast, the Podcast Dude is all about helping you make an awesome podcast.” That’s how I would describe it. Those are the ideas and key words you want to plant into people’s heads through the description in a very simple way that’s tangible and memorable.

Aaron: You can’t ask people to remember four paragraphs about you and what you do, because they’re not going to. If you can’t explain the point of your show in one or two sentences, you’re going to have a bad time.

Cory: People already know what they’re looking for. You need to demonstrate that you have what they’re looking for.

People already know what they’re looking for. Your description is there to let them know you have what they’re looking for.

Aaron: I didn’t get Stan’s permission to share the name of his podcast, but I do want to give him some direct feedback. Here’s what’s on his website when you first visit it, “I’m passionate about coaching leaders to help them reach maximum impact wherever they are currently leading.”

“My heart beats faster when someone I spend time with takes a next step towards being more closely aligned with God’s will for their life, enabling them to make an even greater impact. My goal is to provide leadership resources that are practical and can help anyone develop as a leader, including moms, dads, teachers, administrators, managers, volunteers, campus pastors, and lead pastors. Everyone leads someone.”

The description for his podcast is, “This podcast focuses on ministry leaders to reach maximum impact where they currently lead. We also focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.”

Cory, what’s your first reaction where you hear that?

Cory: It sounds like something I would read in an about page, not a home page. On a home page, you need to speak to the pain of the person who’s problem you’re solving and it needs to speak with a benefit.

I see his goals, but I don’t see the benefit for myself. I want to know what I’m going to get out of going to this website.

Condense that down to a single sentence—that’s what people need to see on the home page.

There’s a lot of things there and I’m sure Stan is awesome. In fact, I’d love to talk with him about some of this stuff. The problem is I don’t know Stan yet and all he’s doing is introducing himself. If I’m a leader and I want to have maximum impact wherever I’m currently leading, I want to know that you’re here to benefit me. That’s ultimately what people are trying to figure out when they first go to your site. You can bring in yourself a little bit later.

For the podcast description, I think that’s a good start, but I would love to see more actionable sentences. Like, “Learn how to make a maximum impact in the industry you’re currently leading.”

Aaron: Stan, what do you mean by “maximum impact”? I think that’s important, because those aren’t very specific words. If you want people to make a change, what kind of change are you trying to get people to make? Go a little deeper on what those words mean. Also, what specifically about brainstorming and ideas? What’s missing is a clear description of the problems you’re trying to solve for people.

Cory: The other aspect with that second sentence is, I see, “We focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.” Does that mean you’ll brainstorm for me and give me ideas? Or are you trying to teach me how to brainstorm? Are you trying to give me the tools to have better idea creation? Are you trying to make me into the kind of leader that is able to lead a team, brainstorm, create ideas, have successful meetings, make an impact in our community? Those are the things I want to see and hear about.

You can expand on it without being too wordy with it. If I looked at this and someone asked me what the podcast is about, based on the description I’d say, “If you’re a leader, they want to make you a better leader.”

Another thing you can do is if you’ve had a podcast for a while, you can go look at the reviews and see what people are saying in your reviews. From there, you can rewrite and clarify your description based on what other people are saying. If you’re a new podcast, you may not have that yet, but I would recommend talking with someone. Share everything about what your podcast is about and what your mission is and have them repeat it back to you in a sentence or two. That will give you some good ideas that you can include in your description.

Have clarity in your podcast description. If you don’t have clarity, you have nothing.

Aaron: Talk to a couple of people you trust, or if you have an engaged online community, reach out to them and ask, “What do you think my podcast is about?” and see what people say. If you don’t have a podcast, try it for yourself instead. Ask some of your friends, “How would you describe me to someone else? What do you think I’m about?” You’ll get a lot of insight out of the answers to those questions.

Cory: Stan, I hope this doesn’t discourage you at all. The fact that you’ve shown up and have a grip on your mission and you know how you want to help people, that’s good! That’s more than a lot of people will ever have, but you just need to focus on clarity. Clarify some of the words and clarify who your target audience is based on this list you wrote. This is a great list, but try to condense it in a way that’s repeatable for someone you’ve just shared it with. You have to write for stupid people. Is that a terrible thing to say?

Aaron: It’s not just stupid people. People are in a hurry, in a rush, people don’t want to think.

Cory: Let me rephrase: You have to write in a simple way that’s tangible and clear for people. I often see people use inside slang, jargon, and terms that average people wouldn’t understand. Don’t give me the marketed, straight-from-a-thesaurus words. I don’t care about that. If I’m your intended audience, I need it explained in a simple way.

You can deliver complex ideas simply with clarity. Communicate in a simple but clear way.

Aaron: Candice said, “A well-known author I know said he writes his books at a fifth grade level so that anyone can understand it.”

Cory: I didn’t mean that people are stupid. You just have to write in a clear way that anyone in your intended audience can understand. That’s the most important thing.

Aaron: Jonathan asked, “Is there a formula or best structure for writing an effective bio for your social media descriptions?”

Cory: First, what is the goal of your social media account? I don’t know that there’s necessarily a formula, but I know that a lot of social media descriptions have a cap, so you can’t write past a certain amount of characters. Write something that’s succinct and will help push you toward your goals. Especially now, try to make something that’s memorable beyond “Father. Coffee lover. Hiker. Mountaineer.” Everyone is doing that, so if you’re doing anything different, you’re in good shape.

Aaron: The formula I use for my Twitter bio is what I do and what I want to do for you, the person reading. My Twitter bio is simply, “Audio engineer/podcast editor for the seanwes network. I want to help you make an awesome podcast.”

Cory: Mine is, “Director of Member Success at seanwes. Podcast host of Invisible Details. Author of Nice-to-Have, currently writing.” It depends on what your goals are. I want my Twitter to be a place where people can get access to me and the content is not in the description, the content is in the timeline.

That’s where I want people’s eyes to look. I don’t want to be clever, I want a bullet point credential. That’s how I’m using it. Figure out what your goal is, what the goal of your social media account is, and what the goal of your description is. Then, condense that in a way that provides you some kind of credibility and people will continue going down the timeline.

No one is going to care on Twitter unless they’ve gotten some kind of value on your timeline, whether it’s entertainment, practical, etc. They’re going to go to your timeline first and then they’ll want to know about you. I use my bio as a tiny about page related to what it is I’m posting.

Aaron: You’ll get more followers if you include what you want to do for other people in your bio.

Cory: Kyle Adams has a great one, “Icon designer intent on communicating in profound ways and helping others do the same.”

Aaron: Jeremy Mura has a good one too, “Designer and illustrator. Teaching others what I know and helping people design a life of greatness.”

When I look at someone’s bio, I’m wondering, “Why should I follow this person?” Your bio is your chance to convince me to follow you. If I’m not already convinced, I don’t know you, and you don’t already have a huge audience advocating for you, and you don’t tell me what you want to do for me, I probably won’t follow you.

Your bio is a chance to convince people they’ll get something out of following you.

Huge thanks to Cory Miller for joining me today. Follow him on Twitter and check out his show, Invisible Details.

Dan Powell is one half of Dead Signals Production, creator of the popular Archive 81 and Deep Vault found sound, radio drama podcasts.

In this episode, we talk about his recording process, how he designs sound, and his editing process. He shares some of the hurdles he overcame while producing podcasts and what advice he’d give to anyone interested in making a modern radio drama.

Aaron: Hey Dan, thanks for joining me today. Tell me a little bit about yourself—where you’re from and where you are now. Maybe a little bit about what your path to audio and podcasting has looked like over the course of your life.

Dan: I was born in Rome, Georgia and I was there until I was about 18. It was a medium/small size town in the middle of the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself alone with my thoughts, which is probably what caused me to gravitate to sci-fi, horror, and secular fiction. I began making radio dramas at the age of eight or nine. I used Window 95 Sound Recorder to make these one-man shows.

Sometimes it would be me and sometimes it would be my friends, and we would get in front of a microphone and see what happened. That’s really what introduced me to audio editing and creative sound design. From an early age, I was interested in what would happen if you slowed down, sped up, or changed the pitch of your voice.

I went to Syracuse University for college and majored in English. I loved reading and still really do, but I realized I was spending all my free time in studios recording my friend’s bands (or recording myself), and that working with audio might be a good career path. I’d always been interested in creative writing, but I thought it might be good to develop a more technical skill or trade that I could have on the side while writing.

I ended up really enjoying working with audio and I decided to make that my primary creative and career pursuit. After school I moved to New York City. I interned, I did some odd jobs, I worked at an Apple store, and I eventually got my first job in the sound industry at Soundsnap, a commercial sound effects library. I did that full time for about two years and then transitioned to working there part time while making more time for freelance work, sound engineering, and working on my own podcast on the side. That’s where I’m at now.

Aaron: You met Marc (the other half of Dead Signals) in college?

Dan: Yeah, Marc and I met his senior year and my post-senior year. I stayed after I graduated to do a fellowship in audio engineering and sound design. One of the cool things about Syracuse is they have this program where if you get to the end of your four years and you decide you want to do something different than what you studied, you can apply for a fellowship that will let you stay an extra year. You basically get a free year of credits that you can do what you want with. I did that after I finished studying English so I could build up my portfolio and get some more one-on-one mentoring strictly with audio stuff. That’s where Marc and I met.

Aaron: Then you guys formed Dead Signals Productions.

Dan: We formed Dead Signals this time last year. Marc came and visited me in New York and we were talking about ideas we had. The project we worked on together in college was Marc’s senior thesis project, a radio play he wrote and produced. I was just acting in it, playing the lead. More recently, starting last year, was when we started collaborating and both giving equal input for the project.

Aaron: Let’s talk about Archive 81 and Deep Vault, the recording process and the tools you use to handle the editing. Marc said you guys recorded Archive 81 in a bedroom. Do you remember which mic you used for that?

Dan: It was the Sennheiser MKH 8040. I got this mic because it’s a really good all-purpose sound design mic. It’s good for all-purpose folio recording, like footsteps, fabric movements, and every day objects you want to record. It’s also really good for ambient field recording. We recorded the dialog with this mic and another mic called a Sennheiser MKH30, which is a bi-directional stereo mic. The two of these things together form a really good pair for mid-side stereo recording.

What I was really interested in when I bought these mics was, one, it was the best deal I found on eBay, and two, I was interested in doing more ambient field recording. Living in New York City there’s so many interesting sounds everywhere. There are neighborhoods, parks, and subways. You can turn a corner and be in an entirely different sonic landscape than you were just in.

I wanted something that was good for capturing my environment, but when it came down to produce Archive 81, after doing some tests, we realized that these mics would work just as well for dialog recording. I personally would have liked to use a wider diaphragm AKG microphone, but I still think the mics we used worked well for recording dialog. It’s good gear and it’s what we had available at the time.

Aaron: I know a lot of podcasters who use $60 or $70 USB mics and there’s a big difference in quality between those and the MKH. What do they run used, close to $1,000?

Dan: Close to $1,000. The mic I’m on right now goes for about $1,200 new, but I’m a big Craigslist and eBay deal-hunter. When I was first getting into audio, one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I was talking to someone five years my senior who’s successful and established in the music production scene here in New York. He said:

Don’t buy your gear new. Even if you buy the best gear used, it’ll still last you forever.

He told me, “I’ve made a spreadsheet of every piece of equipment I’ve purchased from when I first started out. Collectively I’ve saved about $30,000.” That really stuck with me, so now I only buy used gear. I got the mic I’m talking on now for about half of what it would cost new.

Aaron: I’m currently on a Shure BETA 87A, which costs $250 new and I think I paid $120 for it used at Guitar Center and it’s an awesome sounding mic for podcasting.

Dan: I like the richness of it. In general, I really like dynamic mics for podcasts. I like the rich low end and the proximity effect you can get. I use the mics I use because I want to have a lot of applications for things like sound design and field recording, but I don’t want to make it seem like you have to buy a $700 or $1,000 microphone. I’ve seen people get fantastic results with an SM58, which I use when I do event recording gigs. You can get one of those used on Craigslist for $50 in most cases. In many cases, it’s probably more ideal if you’re at home instead of a treated acoustic space because dynamic microphones do a better job of isolating the sound source and not picking up your refrigerator, your roommate, or your neighbors yelling at each other.

Aaron: I agree. I love the large diaphragm condensers, but you do need a quiet, treated room to make them sound good and not pick up a bunch of sound. Alright; let’s talk about sound design. Here’s a clip of episode one of Deep Vault, which has some dialog with some reverb on. I wanted to ask you about that, and about the part in the music where the footsteps transition into the beat of the song.

First, let’s talk about the ambience and reverb you used. As I’m listening to it, there’s some kind of ambient sound in that. I’m not sure if it’s reverb in the space you recorded it in or if it’s reverb you added afterward. There’s also an air conditioning kind of “swoosh” background ambience. Can you describe how you achieved those effects?

Dan: None of that reverb is natural. It’s all added in post. I exclusively use impulse response reverb, which is basically the ability to capture the sonic snapshot of a real, indoor space by going in and blasting a sign wave or white noise in it and then recording the echo that comes afterwards, then notching out the original sign wave in post. This gives a ghost emanation of what a space actually sounds like.

There’s two reverbs fading out and in. There’s the outdoor reverb, which I have a light touch on. It’s meant to evoke the sense that the space is outdoors and then there’s the echo-y underground reverb of the vault they’re about to go into. If you listen prior to them entering the vault, you can hear how it evolves from one space to another. I think very visually when I’m working on it. I’ve said this a lot in various interviews, but because I’m working with Marc on the scripts from the beginning, I don’t really think of this as post production.

I’m always thinking about space and sonics as I’m reading the first draft of a show.

I usually visually map out or make a flow chart of what the space looks like and how things need to transition from one stage to another. That helps me focus better. In the background, we have a desert ambient sound. It’s a field recording of a desert that’s near an urban area. You have some wind and outdoor air atmosphere, called the air tone, which is the outdoor equivalent of a room tone. If you search Soundsnap for air tone, you’ll find a bunch of ambient recordings of outdoor air spaces that don’t have crowds, people, or traffic.

It’s more a general wash like you hear in that clip. There’s the air tone and then there’s the vault sounds—the ambient sounds of the space they’re going into, which is a field recording by a field recordist named Stephan March. I think it’s some recordings of some abandoned bomb shelters on the Danish coast. It’s some industrial room tones with some distant waves, but they have an underground low-fi industrial roominess to them. Those things blend together to create the atmosphere of the vault.

Aaron: I’m embarrassed to say it now, but I was thinking these were effects you could achieve with something like the reverbs that come with ProTools or Logic Pro X. What program do you use to do all this stuff with?

Dan: I use ProTools for editing, mixing, and basic sound effect placement. For what’s referred to as composite sound effects design—designing a sound effect that needs a lot more depth to it than what you can pull from a library as is—I use Logic. I do that for two reasons. One, I think it’s good to have separation between sound effect editing and show editing. I like to be in two different programs when I’m creating the sound of a robot or a door and when I’m editing the show. Having the different software environment helps to streamline that.

The other reason is, though I do think ProTools is great, I think it’s very flawed for making things creatively from scratch. I would never write a song or demo a song in ProTools because I don’t think the user experience is tailored toward composition, whether that’s composing a song or compositing a sound effect from scratch.

It’s great for editing and taking material that’s aesthetically already done—like you recording a guitar through an amp—but if you’re trying to dial in the tone of a guitar, I prefer to use Logic, something a little more built for making music from scratch. For this scene, I used pretty much all ProTools because I wasn’t designing anything beyond simply layering things together and the reverb that goes along with that. I wrote the music in Logic.

Aaron: Are there any stock plugins you use inside of Logic or do you have any favorites?

Dan: I use Logic’s modular synth plugin, the ES2, a lot because I know it really well. It has a very particular sound but I’ve been using it for many years, and I can dial in the sound I want pretty quickly with it. I probably should learn some more synth plugins so I don’t get set in my ways.

Aaron: What about reverb or special effects? I know there’s like 50 stock plugins inside Logic.

Dan: Space Designer Plugin for Logic Pro X is incredible. It’s a great impulse response reverb plugin. I use Waves IR1 for the reverb in this scene, but it could have as easily been achieved with the stock Logic Space Designer plugin, probably easier even, because they have a larger native sample library. Any sound designer you talk to will say that Space Designer is the best free stock plugin of anything. That’s a big one. There aren’t a lot of other stock Logic plugins I use for sound design in terms of compositing. Although I do really like the basic Chorus and Phaser modulation stuff for voice processing for robot voices.

Aaron: You wrote the music for the show. Is the music going to be available somewhere else later?

Dan: Marc and I would really like to release an album of the music from our shows. It’s something we want to do and there’s a few reasons we haven’t done it yet. One reason is time. I’m very skittish about making sure everything is mixed properly. I wouldn’t want to release the music stand alone unless I was absolutely sure it was put together well. The other reason is that I write most of the music for our shows, but we do have some songs that are done with side collaborators and I would want to make sure it’s done legally and copywrite-wise we were in the clear. I want to sign some kind of licensing or formal distribution agreement to make sure everyone is happy money-wise. The song from episode one was me ripping off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I’m a big fan of their scoring work.

Aaron: Let’s talk about how you achieved that effect for the song in the sample clip I played earlier. I’m guessing you had the sound of the footsteps on a ladder. Is that something you recorded yourself or is that something you got out of the sound library?

Dan: I used several different libraries for that. There’s a mixture of some simulated ladder movement in there, like arms reaching and hands grabbing the rungs of the ladder. There’s also some pure metal footsteps in there. When I was originally putting that together, there were six or seven tracks, three of which were cloth movements and body motions and three of which were footsteps.

Some were more foregrounded, like when one character named Jeremy is counting his steps. His footsteps are louder because he’s drawing attention to the fact that he’s counting them. The others are more off to the side to evoke the sense of space and depth, because presumably, they’re going down a circular enclosure to a vault. That was a real pain to put together.

Aaron: I can’t believe you recorded clothes rustling to make this realistic.

Dan: I can’t speak to film, tv, or video, but part of what makes the footsteps convincing in audio dramas is the footsteps being good, but also having cloth movement and fabric rustling.

Aaron: With headphones and soundscapes, you have left and right channels, obviously. What do you do when you’re trying to make something seem like it’s coming from above or below. Is there any way to achieve that affect?

Dan: In episode two of Deep Vault, where two characters crash through the floor of the room their in, they’re down there for a bit, and then you hear them crawling up through the crash hole to the other characters that are above them. I think it worked pretty well. I think the sequence of the narrative and that you hear them crash through the floor first and the space change around them helps to establish that.

It’s just a matter of having more reverb and/or more delay on the voices that are further away than the voices that are close to you. I’m still figuring out what my philosophy on panning things is for the Deep Vault. It’s an ensemble cast with four actors talking at once, I have them panned around the clock—some are hard left, some are hard right, and some are close to the center.

Usually if characters are interrogating or trying to get information from another character or recording, I’ll try to have whatever recording or character they’re talking to in the center to give the sense that they’re gathered around this new source of information they’re trying to learn. As far as making things sound far away or from above or below, it’s a matter of adding more reverb to the things that are farther away and hoping the sense of space translates.

Aaron: I think it does most of the time, but it’s something I’m curious about. I’m thinking about the future with virtual reality and how they’re going to handle the different angles of sound. Have you had a chance to try VR yet?

Dan: No, but I have some friends who told me I need to do it and I really want to. I have some friends who say Google Cardboard alone is incredible. I’m curious what that technology is like, but also what it’s going to mean for sound. I’m curious what sound for VR is going to be like and how it’s going to differ from the old guard, but also how it’s going to use some of the same techniques to make a realistic experience.

Aaron: I used the equivalent to Google Cardboard, not even one of the great ones, and it blew my mind. It’s going to be a game-changer. Maybe we’ll both have future careers in sound design for VR applications.

Dan: I’m just trying to stay ahead with what’s new for sound design because I’m afraid of being replaced by robots. It’s something I think about regularly. Am I doing something that will still be done by a human in 20 years? I feel ok about it most of the time, but you never know.

Aaron: I like to think that you’ll still have a job because you’re being creative and you’re doing things that take a human. I guess we’ll see.

Let’s talk about then music a little more. You did this transition where you have this music playing over the sound of the footsteps, and the footsteps blend into the beat of the music. Did you write the beat first? Were you listening to the pattern of the footsteps or did you go back and match those things up later?

Dan: They were matched up later, but my choice of percussion samples definitely made them more easily blendable. With the exception of the kick drum, which is more of a classic, electronic bass-pulse kick drum, everything else is found percussion—everyday objects being tapped on. Things like chairs, bags, or plastic silverware. I like working with low-fi sound percussion samples. I think the fact the percussion track in the song isn’t a real snare drum recorded in a studio helps serve as the connective tissue between the footsteps and their percussiveness and the song’s percussion, and it’s driving the melody forward.

The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts.

It glues two things together that work well on their own. Sonically, that could be a good example of choosing the right percussion sample in the context of this being a score rather than a stand alone song. Perhaps if this was just a song released on an EP and it wasn’t meant to score anything, it would sound better with a non-found percussion or some other type of sound.

Aaron: Let’s jump into some mistakes or hard times you came across when you started doing Archive 81 and the Deep Vault. What are some of the things you struggled with?

Dan: I do have one thing about recording in a bedroom. The bedroom we recorded in sounded really good as far as bedrooms go, but we had only ever tested the sound in the room at night when everyone else in the house was really quiet.

When it came to production time, we were recording during the three most blizzardy weeks in January when every person was holed up in their apartment in New York City. Above my friend’s bedroom is a family with five teenagers, so we had to pause all the time because there were so many footsteps, running water, and cooking sounds. We didn’t plan for all of that.

I realized that, even though acoustically the room sounded very good, there was no isolation from what’s above and outside. That was definitely an error I made in trying to plan the space. The next time, we paid for a real studio, because as cool as it is to record in a good-sounding bedroom for free, it’s worth that money to not have to stop every take for outside noise.

When you’re pausing takes like that for noise coming from upstairs or outside, you’re losing the groove you have with the actors. The actors might move around if you have to wait for 10 minutes between a scene and you might have to reset levels, which makes it harder to set levels in post and mix. That was a real learning experience.

Make sure you understand what’s happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in.

Aaron: That applies to regular podcasting too. Someone asked me the other day, “How do I soundproof my room?”

They’re actually asking two different questions: “How do I make the sound of my room less noisy?” and, “How do I keep outside noise from coming in?” First, you have to stop noise from computers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and the sound of your voice from bouncing off the walls and being recorded by your mic. Then you have to soundproof the room so that the external sounds aren’t picked up by your mic. For me, I have three windows directly in front of me and it’s an old house, so the windows aren’t soundproof at all. If someone was running a lawn mower outside of my window, everyone would hear it.

Soundproofing is making sure noises from outside don’t come in. Sound treatment is making sure there aren’t noises inside your room causing problems in your audio.

Aaron: Any other mistakes or things that stood out throughout this process?

Dan: There are so many. The question is what’s a useful mistake to talk about, and what’s one I perpetually torture myself about at night? I’ll talk about casting. With Archive 81, we didn’t have a system for how we went about casting it. We put the character notices out on Craigslist one at a time and auditioned and chose people piecemeal. It worked out for the most part, but there were some characters where we were in a real bind because we didn’t have enough people in time, so we had to choose the best option. I would have liked to have more options.

I pretty much did all the casting for the first season and I didn’t go about it systematically, so for the Deep Vault, I wanted to make sure I did it more systematically. I spent a whole weekend auditioning people and planned in advance the characters they were auditioning for and allot time slots throughout the day so I could do it all at once. That was good and it was organized, but I packed too many people in one weekend, so by Sunday afternoon it was too much.

I’m pretty introverted by nature and I think I chose my line of work in the technical side of audio production because a lot of times, it’s just you and the machine. You do need other skills and to be able to talk to people professionally, but you also spend a lot of time alone, which I’m fine with. I definitely love socialising, like on this interview, but I’ll be glad to go back to my little audio hole.

That Sunday after three eight-hour days of auditioning and reading lines in character for these people, I was totally depleted. I think I’ve learned I need to be more systematic about it, but that I also need to spread it out over a few weekends in advance as opposed to trying to do it all in one weekend.

Aaron: I’m a productivity nerd when it comes to planning out my days and making sure I have stuff to do. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, but when you first get into that, you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish. You think you can do meaningful work for 12 or 14 hours and you don’t realize that you can take on too much and say yes to too many things.

Half way through, you’ve given it all you have for six hours and you’re worn out and you feel guilty because you didn’t do all the things you said you were going to do. It’s good to plan and try that stuff so that you know next time not to plan 12 hours of work for both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you can do that, but you don’t know until you try. Start by planning and make notes about how it goes and you’ll have a better understanding about yourself and your stamina for the next time.

Dan: That speaks to the more general philosophy that doing it is the only way you’ll know what your own patterns are, what works for you, and what doesn’t work for you. Be open to some trial and error for your own personal workflow. It’s easy to look up to certain human accomplishments and think, “This great musician practiced for 12 hours a day, so I must have to do that to be the Rachmaninoff of podcasting,” but at the same time, there are successful and accomplished people who have more human and normal working hour regimens. Trent Reznor is one of those people and it’s obvious from his output that he’s someone who never stops working. That works for him, but some people need more time to unwind and not get burnt out on things.

Aaron: What kind of advice or tips would you give to someone who’s interested in doing something like Archive 81 or Deep Vault—a found sound or radio drama podcast? I’ve noticed in the last year or two they’re skyrocketing in terms of popularity. I think there’s a lot of people who might be turning the idea over in their mind. What would you say to those people?

Dan: The first thing is the writing and acting has to be really good. Have people you can trust give you feedback and critique who you can run things by. If the source material and story doesn’t work, then everything that follows isn’t going to work either. If you’ve never done a podcast before, be prepared for many ours of sedentary work. Doing this kind of work takes a lot time and it’s a lot of time you have to spend alone in front of a computer.

I lost count of the number of times this summer my friends said, “Hey, we’re going to the beach. Want to come?” or other things I wanted to do and I had to blow them off because I was editing or doing revisions. Be prepared for that and make sure you’re ok with that.

If you need a lot of time outside of the house and you really need a social life, maybe this particular kind of podcasting isn’t right for you. Interviewing is a very different thing. I don’t like to be preachy about exercise, but I do think it’s good to exercise if you’re doing sedentary creative work because it makes the mind work better and for me, it puts me more at ease.

Aaron: I’m with you on that, so two out of two podcasters recommend exercise and good sleep.

Dan: Go out there and do it. Work hard and tell the story you want to tell. Don’t make anything because you think it’ll sell or bring an audience. Marc and I made Archive 81 because we thought it was a cool idea.

What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don’t make something just because you think it’ll get a lot of downloads.

I still feel like I’m learning a lot and trying to figure all this stuff out. Keep an open mind and stay open to learning new things as you go along. I still study sound design with a mentor because there’s always new levels I can push myself towards and I don’t want to get too comfortable.

Aaron: Are there any books, websites, or online courses for someone who’s a total beginner, or someone like me who is relatively familiar with recording, mixing, and producing music and podcasts but hasn’t really gotten into sound design?

Dan: Transom.org is a great resource. Although it is geared towards beginners in radio and podcasting, I still find articles on there I can learn from. I think it has a good intro overview to things like sound design. I can’t name anything specific, but for a few years now, when I want to learn more about a subject, I find someone I like and relate to who’s established in that field and I reach out to them asking for some one-on-one mentoring lessons. That’s something I think is worth paying for. Most people will take $50 for a few hours to talk about it.

No matter what artistic discipline you’re in, it’s helpful to find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice.

That’s what’s been the most helpful for me. If there’s a sound designer, composer, or radio producer you admire, reach out and see if that’s an option. I don’t think Ira Glass is capable of doing private lessons with as busy as he is, but I’m sure there are other people who are really good at what they do who are capable.

Aaron: There’s people at all different levels on this journey. We’re talking about audio specifically, but it’s true for anything. There are famous people you’ve heard of and then there’s people in the middle who have more experience than you but maybe aren’t quite so famous yet. Surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and interests on your skill level is great, but try reaching out and offering to pay for some consulting.

Chances are they like talking about that stuff, but it is good to pay people for their time. That makes sure they’re invested and they’re not feeling like you’re taking advantage of their time. Audio engineers have to make money to buy gear!

Aaron: Diana asks, “What’s your setup for mobile recording?” She’s about to start a podcast and will be doing some traveling. I know there are times where you take microphones out into the real world to do field recordings. What’s your setup? Is it the same mics and a portable recording device?

Dan: A Sennheiser MD421 or a Shure SM58 will work great because most dynamic microphones are good at sound isolation.

Another good option to consider would be the Sennheiser ME66 Shotgun Mic, which is a great short shotgun microphone. That’s good for both ambient sound and interview recordings in a live setting. It’s in the $200 to $300 range and you can find it on eBay, Craigslist, Guitar Center, or Reverb.com for much cheaper.

Aaron: What device do you record into?

Dan: The Zoom H5 or H6 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. You can find that new for $300 or used for way less. It’s a solid improvement over the H4N in many ways. There’s less handling noise, it’s less noisy, and the majority of people looking into podcasting would do great with one of those.

Aaron: I think this is a situation a lot of people will get in. When you’re out and about and recording, you have to think about the noise in the room and the ambient noise, and if there’s a possibility of a lot of noise where you are. Coffee shops and crowded restaurants aren’t going to be great for getting clean audio. You'll also want to set input gain levels correctly, so you can be sure the levels coming into the microphone doesn’t hit zero and clip. You want to keep the highest peaks coming in around -12 DB. What’s your thought on that? What do you aim for?

Dan: I aim for -12 to -6 at absolute highest for both studio and in the field. I always stuck by that as universal truth of audio, but when I was doing some sound design training this summer with the person I was mentoring under, for sound effects recording, he was advising me to capture things at as high of a signal level as possible without clipping. Being able to focus and isolate the sound source that way really is much more beneficial when you’re trying to make a sound effect at non-dialog level.

Aaron: Did you have limiters on in that situation?

Dan: I usually keep the limiters on, but I try not to hit them. I record on my rooftop a lot. Sometimes I get up at 6am and record the morning rush as it starts to unfold and I usually need the limiters to catch a truck horn or a plane that flies overhead. If you’re in a noisy environment, that’s another good case for using a dynamic microphone because it does isolate the sound source pretty well.

When I was in school, I did a student radio project for a radio podcast production class where I was riding the campus buses and I was on one of those buses on a Friday night when it was filled with drunk kids going from one frat house to another. You can imagine how quiet that was. I was using a dynamic mic and it worked pretty well when I was cutting the interviews together. It had that loud, crazy ambience in the background, but if I held it pretty close to the speaker, I could still isolate them in a way that worked for the final product.

Think about how the ambience and background noise where you’re recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece.

Dan: With all the woes that came with recording Archive 81 in a bedroom with loud upstairs neighbors, I do think the fact that it felt like an apartment helped the actors get the vibe. I’m not sure how much of that translated sonically, because it’s hard for me to be objective about it at this point, but I do think that background worked for that piece. In theory, I would like to do more location recording for audio dramas.

If something takes place on a busy street corner, I’d like to get out there with a more formal production sound rig and record it, but Marc and I work at a pretty intense pace and it’s not always easy to coordinate that. Many times it makes the most sense to do it in the studio and create the atmosphere after the fact, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

Aaron: Do what your gut says and plan for it. Last week, Marc said one of the hardest thing for him is the time constraints. I definitely feel that too. My podcast isn’t anything complicated but it still takes a few hours to produce. When you have a full-time job, other projects, and people you want to hang out with, you really have to focus on what you want to say yes to and what you have to say no to.

_Huge thanks to Dan and Marc for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. If you’ve enjoyed these interviews, head over to their Patreon page and support these guys.

My guest this week is Marc Sollinger. Marc is one half of Dead Signals, a podcast production company that produces the modern radio drama podcasts Archive 81 and Deep Vault.

In this episode, we’re going to take a deep dive into what it takes to plan, write, and produce a modern radio drama.

This is part one of a two part series: Next week I’ll be interviewing Dan Powell, who handles a lot of the editing, sound design, and music for Dead Signals.

Aaron: Marc Sollinger: Thanks for joining me. Tell me what you do at Dead Signals. My understanding from our brief conversation previously is that you work more on the writing side of things?

Marc: Both Dan and I write and contribute to the creative process equally, so both of our roles are really creative. We’re both the “idea person.”

Aaron: You do a lot of the writing and he does a lot of the editing, but you both contribute equally to the writing process, yeah?

Marc: Yeah, and we’re both audio professionals. He’s an engineer and works at a sound effects library, I work in public radio for Innovation Hub. We both work with sound for our day jobs. It’s really fun.

Aaron: I brought you on because you and Dan recently launched a modern radio drama podcast called The Deep Vault. I like the description you guys wrote: “The Deep Vault is a serialized, seven-episode audio drama set in in the almost-post-apocalyptic United States.

“The story follows a group of longtime friends as they journey from the uninhabitable surface world into a mysterious underground bunker in search of safety, shelter, and answers to their past. Robotic servants, tooth-filled monsters, and terrible computers collide within the claustrophobic, steel-reinforced walls of The Deep Vault, a modern day homage to the golden age of sci-fi radio drama.”

I want to hear about your background and how you got into audio and radio. Before we get into that, I have to say that the Audible ad read at the end of the first episode of The Deep Vault is one of the most genius things I’ve ever heard. Good job on that, whoever had that idea.

Marc: Listen to the second episode, because it gets crazier. With podcasts that are more host-driven and not fiction, it’s usually the hosts talking about how much they love Blue Apron or Squarespace. For us, it felt a little weird to break the world and say, “Hey, it’s Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell, and we’d love you to try out Audible or Blue Apron,” so we came up with the idea of a robot that’s not a character in the show. It’s just a random robot that’s gradually gaining sentience and is really pissed off at his masters. It’s fun and hopefully people will enjoy listening to it. The main thing is we wanted it to be fun.

Aaron: Mission accomplished. So when did you get started with audio?

Marc: I fell in love with audio in high school when I was driving around in my car and I heard a This American Life episode. It was one of those proverbial driveway moments, where I stayed in my car for 30 minutes because the story was so good.

(Audio storytelling is a powerful medium.)

I feel in love with it and I adore the power of audio documentary and public radio. That’s my day job now, but I started listening to older radio dramas like Orson Welles’ The Mercury Theatre on the Air. That’s really good; start with War of the Worlds.

If you’re looking for other great audio drama podcasts, AV Club has a good list of creepy radio dramas from the 40s, 50s, and 60s you can check out.

Aaron: So you were listening to those and you thought, “I have to figure out how to do this for myself?”

Marc: Yeah, I noticed when podcasts were getting big in 2007 that there weren’t a lot of audio dramas. There were a couple and there were a lot of audio books released as podcasts, but I didn’t feel like there were a lot of podcast audio dramas that were at the same level as stuff from the 40s and 50s.

For my college thesis, I made a 10-episode audio drama that I released as a podcast. This was before Dan and I started collaborating, but he was featured as the main actor, playing a nebbish anthropologist who crash lands on an alien world and has to discover a bunch of secret stuff.

It’s called Transmission and it’s still something I’m proud of, but I didn’t do any promotion. I fell into the trap of thinking, “This is really good, obviously it’ll get big,” which is not a good mindset to be in. It’s a Patreon reward for our Patreon page now.

Aaron: So you dove in and made a 10-episode podcast series. What kind of experience did you have with audio at that point?

Marc: I interned for a summer at Chicago Public Radio’s Youth Vocalo, and I studied radio, television, and film in college. I did some work for Nick van der Kolk of Love + Radio. I interned for my local NPR station and I learned a lot about sound from the incomparable Douglass Quinn of Syracuse University. I fell in love with audio by listening to This American Life and old radio serials, but I became someone who could do audio through learning from Douglass Quinn. That shows the importance of having a really good mentor.

Aaron: When does Dan come into the picture?

Marc: We met in college (Douglas Quinn was his mentor too). Quinn kind of forced our heads together and it turns out we really liked each other. After college, we went our separate ways; I worked for the PBS News Hour and then I moved to Boston to work for Innovation Hub and Dan went to Brooklyn to work for a sound effects library.

He came to Boston to visit and we talked about projects we had been thinking about. Then I went to New York to visit him and he was talking about wanting to do an audio drama, something where he would be listening alone to a bunch of weird, freaky tapes. It was a really good idea so I said we should do it together. We brainstormed and came up with an outline. I wrote it, he edited it, but it was a very collaborative process. There’s a bunch of really dumb ideas that would have gone into it if he hadn’t told me to take them out.

Work with people you trust and ask them for their feedback.

Aaron: You’ve got to have someone you can trust to curate and edit what you come up with.

Marc: It’s a matter of trust. If I really like something and Dan isn’t sure about it, even if I don’t understand why he doesn’t like it, I trust him enough to know that there’s something wrong, something that needs to be fixed.

Aaron: This podcast you’re talking about–where Dan listens to freaky tapes–is called Archive 81. The description for this show is, “Three months ago Daniel Powell vanished. These are the tapes he sent me.” How long did it take you to get all these episodes written, recorded, and edited? What was the preparation process like for Archive 81?

Marc: For the writing process, I can write about two episodes a week.

Aaron: Part-time on nights and weekends?

Marc: Yeah, and I’ve been a hermit. It’s a lot of work. After the episodes are written, we have a two or three week period where we heavily revise it. We script everything out and we usually do a table read over Google voice and we pause and re-write when anything sounds weird.

Aaron: Once you’ve got the script for the episode in a good place and you feel good about it, what happens after that? Studio time?

Marc: We recorded all 10 episodes at the same time. I’m glad we did that instead of writing an episode and then recording it, writing an episode, and then recording it. That saved us a lot of time and money.

For Archive 81, we got our cast together and then one of our friends let us record in her bedroom. For The Deep Vault, we went to an actual studio. With Archive 81, since it’s tape-based, it’s a lot of two people talking to each other, so the bedroom worked fine for that. With The Deep Vault, it’s more action, adventure-y and there were going to be five people in a room at the same time. You need an actual studio if you have five people in there at the same time.

Aaron: So you recorded all 10 episodes of Archive 81 in a bedroom. Were all the voice actors friends of yours?

Marc: A mix—some friends, some Craigslist, some family. We pay all our actors, which is something we think is really important. We didn’t pay them as much as we would have liked to but we did pay them.

Aaron: I noticed that the guy that plays Dan’s boss has the same last name as Dan. Is that his father or one of his brothers?

Marc: His father. It has a bunch of creepier overtones when you realize it’s Dan’s actual dad, who turns out to be a really really good actor.

Aaron: Were there any struggles or hurdles you overcame that stick out to you during producing or recording either one of those shows?

Marc: The biggest one is how busy Dan and I are. We’re both working full-time jobs or more than full-time jobs. We started Archive 81—writing it, promotion for it, and releasing it—and then as soon as we began to release the episodes, we started to develop The Deep Vault, so there would be no pause between shows.

Episode 10 of Archive 81 was released at the same time as the teaser for Deep Vault, then episode one of Deep Vault went out the next week. It’s just a lot of work, managing time and pulling through it. We’re working on Archive 81 season two now while Dan is still finishing edits for the Deep Vault. We’re doing promotion, starting an LLC, working with advertisers, and responding to fans on Twitter. It’s just a lot for two people to do.

For the most part, we’re been really lucky and blessed to work with wonderful actors, and Dan is a wonderful partner. The studio we worked in for the Deep Vault was really great. It comes down to time management and knowing when to say yes to stuff and when to say no to stuff.

Aaron: Is one of your goals to take Dead Signals and make it a full-time job?

Marc: Maybe. I really enjoy my full-time job, but if the audience was there…The trouble is that it’s very difficult to do it unless you’re Welcome to Night Veil or you have the backing of Panoply or Giblet. It’s something we’ve discussed, but right now we’re not at a point where we could do that.

Aaron: I was talking to my friend Sean the other day, and discuessed a question: “If we had a million dollars in the bank, what would we do?”

Let’s say you and Dan had a million dollars in the bank. Would you want to spend most of your time on podcasting, or do you think you’d be happy keeping your day job and working on podcasts on nights and weekends?

Marc: If money was no object, I think most people would say, “Let’s go to Belize and surf!” For me, it’s all about weird creative projects. If we had a million dollars, we’d probably work on creating more interesting things. We’d be able to rent out more time at studios. We’d be able to do a weekly thing instead of a bi-weekly thing (I hate bi-weekly).

Aaron: Weekly is great, but with all the work you guys have to do for each episode, I understand why you do bi-weekly. I have a hard time keeping up with my podcast and it’s not anywhere close to the kind of work that your shows are.

Marc: Maybe if we were doing it full-time we could do it weekly. If I had a million dollars it would be nice to work with other writers and sound designers to do more weird stuff.

Aaron: I had a related question, which was, “What are your plans for the future?” but it sounds like you’re just going to keep pushing forward. You’re working on season two of Archive 81. Are there plans for a season two of Deep Vault?

Marc: It depends on how it’s received. Deep Vault definitely has an ending. It leaves open the possibility for a season two, but we’re very happy with leaving it as a mini series. If everyone is crying out for a season two and gives us a million dollars, we’ll make season two. We also have other projects in the pipeline that we’re thinking about doing after season two of Archive 81.

We’re probably going to do something new before we do a season three of Archive 81, if we do a season three. We really like doing new things.

One of the reasons why we didn’t just plan for four seasons of Archive 81, or even do things in the same universe, we want to broaden the possibilities of audio drama and do interesting new things. We want to make stories that can only be told through sound.

Michal Wdowiak asks: “When recording the actors separately (even remotely) for a dialogue scene, how do you manage to keep the flow of the scene so it sounds like a real conversation? Do you ever record dialog scenes separately (remotely)?”

Marc: No, we don’t. If it’s supposed to be a conversation, they’ve got to be in the same room. That’s one of our big priorities for our actors, they have to be in New York.

You can splice stuff in, but I really don’t think you get the same performance when two people are not talking to each other. The actor’s performances feed off each other and having them in the same room is really important.

Virginia Houser asked: “How much effort and planning do you put into creating your own sound effects for your stories, if at all? Is it worth the time to create or add sound effects? If the go-to is using pre-recorded effects from online, what resources do you use to find those sound bites?”

Marc: We do a mix between creating our own sound effects and using effects from sound libraries. Dan is a manager at an online sound effects library called Soundsnap, which is helpful. He can get whatever he needs there, but we do prefer making our own sound effects so we can get the exact sound we want.

Before we wrap up, I want to say that it’s a really interesting time for audio drama and podcasts. I think we’re on the cusp of something. Welcome to Night Veil, The Black Tapes, Lime town, The Message, and The Truth were all the first mainstream audio dramas to be released as podcasts, and it’s a really good time to start one yourself. If you want to start an audio drama, don’t just do it because you want to start a TV show and you don’t want to spend a lot of money. If you’re really passionate about it, get started now; companies are starting to invest money in these podcasts. It’s a lot of work, though, so be prepared to put some time into it if you want to succeed.

You can head over to their Patreon page to learn more about Marc and Dan and their podcasts.

Stay tuned, next week I’ll be talking audio production and sound design with Marc’s podcasting partner, Dan Powell.