The Q&A Episode

In the Season Finale, Jen & Chris respond to listener questions, in "The Q&A Episode."

They also cover their recurring segments, "Technical magics or mishaps," "How the writing is going," and provide a "Podcast tip," something to help you along your journey in making your own fiction podcast.

This may be the Season Finale of MAKING THE STRANGE, but there's more pods on the way -
THE STRANGE CHRONICLES launches on Halloween 2022!

You can subscribe to THE STRANGE CHRONICLES on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

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Thanks for listening!

Transcript

00;00;10;29 - 00;00;24;23
Jennifer
Hi and welcome to Making The Strange a podcast about how we made our fiction podcast. We will take you along with us in real time while we create our fiction podcast. I'm Jennifer, the writer and creator of The Strange Chronicles.

00;00;25;00 - 00;00;32;15
Chris
And I'm Chris, the producer of The Strange Chronicles, a sci fi noir detective podcast.

00;00;37;26 - 00;00;44;11
Jennifer
Today is the final episode of Season one, making the strange and our Q&A episode.

00;00;44;12 - 00;00;46;03
Chris
I can't believe this is the last one.

00;00;46;04 - 00;01;07;09
Jennifer
I know it went so fast. So thank you for coming along with us. As we made our first fiction podcast. First, The Strange Chronicles will premiere on Halloween 2022. If we have enough interest, we'll also do a season two of making the Strange. We plan to interview makers of fiction podcast to pick their brains, helping you to make your own podcast.

00;01;07;10 - 00;01;19;29
Jennifer
So if you are a fiction podcaster and want to be interviewed in season two, please email us at info at the Strange Chronicles dot com. Also keep sending your questions and we can do another Q&A in season two.

00;01;19;29 - 00;01;30;14
Chris
Great. So in today's podcast, we'll discuss a piece of technical magic that happened in an hour. How's the writing going? Segment Jennifer will discuss how the writing is going.

00;01;30;20 - 00;01;36;09
Jennifer
And finally we'll provide one last podcast tip something that helps you with your project.

00;01;36;12 - 00;01;38;20
Chris
First, a quick rundown of making the strange.

00;01;38;23 - 00;01;51;22
Jennifer
Making the strange has been great. It's definitely kept us on task for our fiction pod and we hope it has met its goal of helping a few of you make yours. So how has it been for you? Mr.. I prefer to be behind the camera.

00;01;52;23 - 00;01;55;22
Chris
Well, I'm still not on camera, so I guess it's working out for me, right?

00;01;55;23 - 00;01;56;27
Jennifer
Good point. Good point.

00;01;57;02 - 00;02;16;04
Chris
Mama always said I had a face for radio and a voice for silent movies. Oh, it is. Just kidding. Mama loves me. She thinks I'm handsome. Yeah. No, it's. It's been a lot of fun. It's definitely been a learning experience coming at it from this mindset and then going in to edit it and thinking about all the things we need that go into producing this thing.

00;02;16;04 - 00;02;18;25
Chris
It's actually been helpful, you know, understanding this side.

00;02;18;26 - 00;02;21;14
Jennifer
Yeah. And you've been okay being the talent?

00;02;21;19 - 00;02;25;28
Chris
Yeah. I don't really think of it that way because it's just, you know, it's you, so it's easy.

00;02;26;12 - 00;02;39;10
Jennifer
Well, I'm glad you've had fun because I've had a great time to you. Yeah, I'm glad we made it here. And now it's time for our technical magic or mishap. And today it's a magic. So, Chris, tell us something magical that happened with the tech.

00;02;39;12 - 00;02;43;11
Chris
Okay, so today's magic is another mishap turned into a magic.

00;02;43;16 - 00;02;52;13
Jennifer
I should preface that for this episode. We had our first guest director as an episode for The Strange Chronicles, the talented voiceover actress and director. Amanda Troup.

00;02;52;14 - 00;03;13;07
Chris
Yeah, true. Yeah. So because we did it this way, your set up changed a little bit in order to make that happen. She was on Zoom and you were on audition for the recording? Yeah. And a few technical mishaps occurred, which only became apparent after you guys were finished and you sent me the file and I started editing because it was the first time running audition in Zoom.

00;03;13;09 - 00;03;21;24
Chris
Your computer was working super hard and that made the fan all of a sudden kick on, which hadn't happened before, and your mike started picking it.

00;03;21;24 - 00;03;24;21
Jennifer
Up and I had my headphones on so I couldn't hear. Yeah.

00;03;25;03 - 00;03;37;13
Chris
So as I played it back, the whole entire track had this terrible, terrible. It wasn't quite a hum, but it definitely you could hear the fan over everything. It was rough. I wasn't sure if the audio was going to be usable.

00;03;37;14 - 00;03;54;26
Jennifer
We were so worried that we would have to rerecord the entire episode and so bummed because it was so great having Amanda work on it and I felt like it was really good. We had so many good takes that we would have lost, but I was really not looking forward to completely redoing it. But that is when the magic happened.

00;03;54;27 - 00;04;21;22
Chris
Yeah, that is when the magic happened. That's when I switched hats, put on my audio engineer hat and really got into learning what that means. There were a lot of problems with the audio because not only was the fan running when you had Zoom going, you guys timed out before you were finished the entire script. So Amanda had to leave early and that meant you shut off Zoom and the minute you shut off Zoom, I don't know if there was a power surge that all of a sudden went into your microphone because you're microphone's connected, your computer and it's powered off the computer.

00;04;21;22 - 00;04;38;26
Chris
So I don't know if that was pulling juice from the mic initially and all sudden it just sent it back into the mic because all of a sudden your levels spiked. Yes. So not only did I have the fan issue for the first, you know, most of the end of the record, but the last 25%, I had the fan issue and everything was very.

00;04;38;26 - 00;04;39;11
Jennifer
Loud.

00;04;39;11 - 00;04;43;27
Chris
Really loud and just spiking into the red. And I was so scared.

00;04;43;27 - 00;04;58;18
Jennifer
I was and I was just like, I can't understand what happened. I've done it the same way every time except for, of course, having a director on. And I couldn't understand how my voice suddenly got louder. And then we were thinking maybe it was the power.

00;04;58;18 - 00;05;20;15
Chris
So that's when I found isotope R x ten advanced software. It absolutely saved the day. There are two versions of it. There's a standard and there's an advanced. And the standard has some pretty good tools for like dicing and dumbing and things like that. But there's a filter in particular that is in the advanced version that's not in the standard version called Dialog Isolate.

00;05;20;15 - 00;05;26;03
Chris
And that is what was really able to work in magic and pull out most of that sound.

00;05;26;04 - 00;05;29;24
Jennifer
Thank goodness you had some magic. I can't wait to hear the episode now.

00;05;29;25 - 00;05;43;19
Chris
Yeah, I mean, look, it's not perfect. I don't want to say it is, but it is 90% there. You can tell there's some artifacts in it. Yeah, but I'm hoping once I get the music and the sound effects right it'll sound it's.

00;05;43;19 - 00;05;48;04
Jennifer
A special episode anyway. It will not give anymore away, but it'll be passable. It'll be great.

00;05;48;04 - 00;05;51;17
Chris
Yeah, yeah. If, if, if it weren't for that, the whole thing would have been trash.

00;05;52;12 - 00;05;54;02
Jennifer
You saved it. Technical magic.

00;05;54;03 - 00;06;01;27
Chris
Technical magic. All right. Next up is our final How the Writing Is going. So said so, John, how is the writing going?

00;06;02;20 - 00;06;20;15
Jennifer
The last writing segment of the season? Well, I'm happy to say it's going well. The fifth episode was a struggle, and I think that's because it's the one where I lost my notes. I had written out a pretty detailed outline for it, and then I couldn't find my handwritten notes because I have a bit of a notebook collection.

00;06;20;21 - 00;06;26;03
Jennifer
And I had gone through every notebook of the recent past and could not find these notes.

00;06;26;03 - 00;06;32;19
Chris
You're know, process is kind of like and Tommy Boy, I was like, Why is this your filesystem? And she's like, It works for me.

00;06;32;19 - 00;06;55;20
Jennifer
Exactly. And I'm an artist. So I really tried to find this outline because I mean, it was very detailed, so I had a bit of a mental block on writing a whole new one, maybe out of my own resistance, like, no, I know this episode is written down somewhere, so I didn't want to redo it, but now that it's done, I feel relieved and happy to continue on.

00;06;55;21 - 00;07;19;14
Jennifer
The second half of the season gets more into Gray's personal struggles and her relationship with Jo and what exactly is going on with him. So I'm happy to get the whole season finished. So my verdict on the writing for this final episode is satisfied and confident. The writing for this podcast has been so fun. So to all the other fiction podcast writers out there, cheers to you.

00;07;19;14 - 00;07;28;05
Jennifer
I'm rooting for you. I'll leave this segment with a quote from the wise Stephen King. He says, The work is always accomplished. One word at a time.

00;07;29;05 - 00;07;39;00
Chris
We love Stephen King around these parts. Doing well. I'll be glad when you get those episodes done because I have about a month to finish editing them. So. Woo hoo. Lucky me.

00;07;41;01 - 00;07;50;13
Chris
All right. Now we're going to answer a few questions from our listeners. And the first question we have is, what are some of your favorite fiction podcasts?

00;07;50;22 - 00;08;17;19
Jennifer
Okay, so I have a little list of some of my top picks in podcasts and they are in no particular order. The Magnus Archives. Welcome to the Night Vale Vega Girl in Space and Homecoming on My Must listen list. So I haven't listened to them yet, but I want to are narcissa ether c and creepy. Those are all kind of buzzy, new fiction podcasts.

00;08;17;23 - 00;08;21;13
Chris
The ones you mentioned that you like. Is there anything about them specifically you want to point out?

00;08;21;27 - 00;08;28;23
Jennifer
Like most of them are fantasy, sci fi, horror. Those are kind of the more interesting fiction podcasts for me.

00;08;28;23 - 00;08;33;15
Chris
And it's because of the writing performance, the production value, all of the above all.

00;08;33;17 - 00;08;50;21
Jennifer
All of the above. It's funny because there aren't a lot that are just like one voice. Reading some of the episodes of I think in the Magnus archives are just like a story read. But yeah, I mean, I enjoy listening to the whole full cast. I mean, homecoming is elite stuff, but yeah, that's my list.

00;08;50;27 - 00;08;56;25
Chris
Excellent. The next question we have is, what is something you would have done differently knowing what you know now?

00;08;56;26 - 00;09;04;11
Jennifer
Easy. I would have completed all the scripts for the whole season before pressing record. Hands down. How about.

00;09;04;11 - 00;09;08;05
Chris
You? I would have had you finish all the scripts before we started.

00;09;09;22 - 00;09;13;07
Jennifer
Hey, it hasn't affected you yet. It just affects me.

00;09;13;19 - 00;09;14;27
Chris
It's about to affect me.

00;09;14;28 - 00;09;15;24
Jennifer
Yes, it's about to.

00;09;16;01 - 00;09;30;17
Chris
It's about to affect me. Very, very much so. No, honestly, for me, something I would have done and we talked about this before we started this is I would have released the scripted version first and then done the making of right. Because in my mind, that's how it makes sense. Like.

00;09;30;19 - 00;09;32;10
Jennifer
Yeah, like incest or the thrones.

00;09;32;10 - 00;09;41;14
Chris
Yeah. Like an after the thrones type thing, you know, any kind of after episode type summary, like this is what you saw and this is how we did it, or this is what you heard and this is how we did it.

00;09;41;15 - 00;09;59;23
Jennifer
I don't know. I kind of enjoy the fact that this is us a mess because we lead up to it. Yeah. Like, watch our crazy mess, and then hopefully it will lead to, like, a polished gift at the end rather than. Here's how it came out. Great. And then like, Oh, wait, this is how it actually happened. Yeah, but either way, you could listen to it either way.

00;09;59;23 - 00;10;00;11
Jennifer
Right. Yeah.

00;10;00;12 - 00;10;15;12
Chris
I think, you know, we learned some things in this that we've incorporated into recording and editing the scripted version. Sure. So in that way, I don't know if it's helpful or not because it's definitely it's going to make it better. Yes, but you'll definitely notice a shift, which I'm afraid of. Oh, yeah.

00;10;15;13 - 00;10;26;24
Jennifer
It's like television. The pilot is always a little rough around the edges. And then, you know, everyone's got their chemistry and the voice become strong. And, you know, those fourth and fifth episodes are amazing.

00;10;27;18 - 00;10;37;00
Chris
All right. I'm looking forward to getting to that part. All right. Question number three is, do you think a fiction podcast is a good way to work on an idea for a TV show or a movie?

00;10;37;03 - 00;10;57;12
Jennifer
I think it certainly can be scripted. Television and film definitely carry a different expectation from the writer, as those are both visual mediums. I think anytime you're working on your craft, it can inform your TV and film writing. Writing for audio is a wonderful form in its own right. So I think if you're only goal is writing TV and film scripts, then just write a TV and film script.

00;10;57;16 - 00;11;13;23
Chris
Yeah, I think it's a double edged sword. It can help and can hurt you. I think it can help in that. Yeah. You're putting your idea out there, and if it gets a lot of listeners and people respond to it, you know, you've got something to take in to a pitch meeting with you. Like this is what the story is, this is what it can be.

00;11;13;23 - 00;11;30;08
Chris
This is already the audience we've built up, and you've done it for a fraction of the cost on your own side of what it would do to, like, produce just a pilot, right? Sure. But then the bad side of it is you could produce this thing. You can have a great piece of IP. There's so many podcasts out there, nobody finds it, nobody listens to it.

00;11;30;08 - 00;11;35;13
Chris
And then you walk into a pitch meeting and go sell it, and they're like, Well, nobody listened. Right. Why would anybody watch it now?

00;11;35;16 - 00;11;54;12
Jennifer
Right. True. Yeah. So I think as far as the writing is concerned, if you really want to write a fiction podcast, you should like that. I really wanted to do that. So I'm really excited about it, like totally separate from any career aspiration. And I think the more you write, the better you become as a writer. So it doesn't really matter what you write.

00;11;54;17 - 00;11;56;11
Chris
True. That 10000 hours, right?

00;11;56;12 - 00;11;57;01
Jennifer
Exactly.

00;11;58;00 - 00;12;07;11
Chris
All right. Question number four is a two parter. What's the most popular category of fiction podcast? And do you think you should make one in that category or do something different?

00;12;07;16 - 00;12;26;08
Jennifer
I would say just by looking at the fiction category in all the different podcast platforms, that horror is probably the number one from what I see. I'm not an I don't know that for a fact, but that's my guess. And my opinion, though, is to write what you love. Because if you write to fit a popular genre, then it might not be as fun.

00;12;26;08 - 00;12;43;12
Jennifer
And any time it's not fun, then it will be a slog for you to write and then a slog for everyone else to listen to. So I think write something that you're passionate about and that you enjoy. But I do think you should be specific about what your genre is no matter what you write. Since listeners usually have a preference.

00;12;43;12 - 00;12;52;17
Jennifer
So if you really, really want to write romance, write romance, because then you're excited about it and that's going to come across in your story. Yeah, I don't know. That's my $0.02.

00;12;52;20 - 00;13;08;23
Chris
Yeah. Write what you're feeling, right? I mean, that's where you're going to have the most resonance. Exactly. Okay. For the final question you asked, what if you had no experience in podcasting? Do you think I could still make one? All right. I'm going to jump in and just make one little point here. Have you listened to this podcast at all?

00;13;08;24 - 00;13;20;20
Chris
Because that should be that should give you your answer right there. I had zero experience in making a podcast, and here we are, we've made one. And that's really what it's about. We've hit the end finished product. We are now podcasters.

00;13;20;21 - 00;13;41;24
Jennifer
It's true. I agree. Although you do have producing experience, so you're not entirely green even if you make your podcast out of the most basic materials. A good story spoken in your voice is needed. The more stories told, the more representation. And in my opinion, when we tell stories from all the different corners of the culture, we have better understanding and connection.

00;13;41;24 - 00;13;51;12
Jennifer
I know this is a bit Kumbaya, but I think stories bring us together and show us how similar we all are. So I think you making a podcast only helps.

00;13;51;13 - 00;14;00;05
Chris
Yeah. Yeah. And I think also just from, you know, a financial and technical perspective, there are very few barriers to creating your own podcast and getting it published.

00;14;00;06 - 00;14;01;05
Jennifer
It's free basically.

00;14;01;12 - 00;14;16;15
Chris
Yeah, you could basically take your device, whatever you have for a phone and talk into it for however long you want, whatever it might be. Hit, stop, put it on an RSS feed and pretty much every single podcast platform out there you can publish it to at no cost to you. So go ahead and do it.

00;14;16;15 - 00;14;17;08
Jennifer
We're rooting for.

00;14;17;08 - 00;14;26;26
Chris
You. Yeah, we are rooting for you. Well, I think that finishes up the Q&A portion of this episode. These are all really great questions. So thank you to everyone who submitted them.

00;14;26;26 - 00;14;37;05
Jennifer
Yes. And keep them coming. We will answer more questions in season two. Just email us at info at the Strange Chronicles dot com or you can DM us on Instagram at making the Strange.

00;14;37;08 - 00;14;44;11
Chris
All right, now it's time for our final podcast, Tip of the Season. A little something that we learned that we hope makes your journey easier.

00;14;44;11 - 00;14;48;23
Jennifer
And the podcast tip for today is Warm Up Your Voice.

00;14;48;24 - 00;14;50;05
Chris
Wait, was I supposed to be doing that?

00;14;50;17 - 00;14;52;10
Jennifer
Yes. Oops, it.

00;14;52;10 - 00;14;54;14
Chris
Helps. La la la la la la la.

00;14;54;15 - 00;15;14;25
Jennifer
Do a few vocal warm ups before you begin your podcast and I want to recommend a podcast that might help you have some warm up ideas. It's called Backstage Pass with Eric Vitro. He's a voice coach to the stars and interviews. Lots of singers and Grammy winners. And each episode includes a vocal exercise that you can join in on.

00;15;14;26 - 00;15;20;06
Jennifer
So I love that little part of his podcast, and this is not an advertisement.

00;15;20;07 - 00;15;42;27
Chris
Nope, no affiliation. Just a really good podcast that you like and enjoy. So again, warm up your voice before you record and you will be much happier about the quality of your sound. I'll try that for season two, guys. All right. That's it for this season of making the strange. Please tune in for the premiere of The Strange Chronicles on Halloween, October 31st, 2022.

00;15;42;27 - 00;15;56;06
Jennifer
We want to thank you so much for tuning in to our journey and creating a fiction podcast, and we hope that it can inspire you to create your own story because we believe everyone has a story to tell.

00;15;58;27 - 00;16;09;05
Jennifer
Please look for the Strange Chronicles and click the follow or subscribe plus sign on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. And when the first episode drops, you will have it in your queue.

00;16;09;10 - 00;16;22;23
Chris
We'll see you all at the wrap party. Thanks for listening. You can follow us on Instagram at making the strange and at the Strange Chronicles podcast. You can also email us at info at the Strange Chronicles dot com until our next season.

00;16;22;28 - 00;16;26;00
Jennifer
I'm Chris. And I'm Jennifer. Keep it strange.

00;16;29;28 - 00;16;32;23
Chris
This has been a kings of content production.