Starting a podcast

I really liked listening to podcast while at work. I would put an earbud in one ear to hide it from the boss who was anal about no phone and no earbuds. But my job was boring and just working on the computer for hours straight. If it wasn’t for the podcast I would listen to I would have been rolling asleep on the job. My friend Kevin Cortes and I would talk about the different podcasts and he would suggest more for me to listen to. The conversation became doing our own podcast about filmmaking or just talking about movies we’ve seen. I liked the idea but it still took us a while to try and start the podcast.

False Starts

In late 2020 after they finally released a COVID vaccine we started to try and get together more and actually slowly started to get the equipment together to start a podcast. As a filmmaker I had all the equipment to tackle almost any production but still needed a few more things for a podcast like podcasting mics.

I went ahead and bought 2 mics sets that each came with cables, mics, and isolation shields. I already had a field recorder the Zoom H6 that would let me use 4 mics at the same time. Now with the gear we did a trial run Kevin was the podcast connoisseur of all my friends, then Manuel Gaona was always game to try anything and so the 3 of us got together to do our first episode. Any episode you won’t find anywhere because it was unpublishable because it was a mess.

We had a few false starts, stopped and started again. We then did one where it was just 20 minutes long but there was any chemistry, the flow was off and Kevin tried to make it really edgy and created awkward silences in the group. We scrapped these recording thinking we probably would get canceled before we even really get started.

Finally picking up momentum

November we got Milos involved who had a few extra mics we could use for the podcast, Tres joined in, now we were 5 with Kevin, Manuel and myself. We bought a poker table with chairs from the facebook marketplace and slowly started to build up a set. I had always planned to start doing this as a video podcast but we settled for audio only at first and each time tweaking the set and trying to improve the sound. 

Our first episode came out in January of 2021 and was recorded in December. We started with a guest a friend we had worked with in other projects who was an actor  and podcaster Jerry Velez. He was a great guest and made having a conversation very easy. We found we had to address the echo in the room and the mics bleeding audio into each other so we got more isolation shields and started to hang moving blankets on the walls, and on c-stands. The ones on c-stands would be used to close off our side of the room while we recorded.

But we still had no insulation in the walls so the outside noises would sometimes interfere. We addressed all we could and by episode 4 we finally introduced video into the podcast. We started the podcast with trying to keep a bi weekly schedule with 2 episodes released a month. Eventually we monetized the audio podcast through Anchor at the time so we would release audio first and the following week we would release the video version. This was in an effor to try and build up the following in the audio version. 

Hot Hiatus 

We stayed somewhat consistent but would easily start to fall off on the release schedule. Milos volunteered to edit the podcast but he was also going through new job training and I would step in and edit some episodes or at least get the audio version edited to release and give Milos the extra week to edit the video version. Once we experienced a taste of what summer recording might be like we had to try and get an ac unit. Unfortunately even with a window AC we could not record. It was too loud to run while recording, once off the room would heat up very quickly, so we avoided recording in the summer. Around the same time Tres brought in some furniture and set up his own casual corner for a podcast of his own with a couple fake ferns. He tried to get it started but then decided a podcast wasn’t for him and gave us his set decorations. We also did virtual podcast at this time and would record 2 or 3 episodes on a weekend so we could release episodes in the summer while we waited for the scorching temperatures to pass.

Consistency?

We started back up maybe late October 2021 but when the holidays started up we started to fall behind again. We did a Christmas episode which ended up being one of our best performing videos and finally crossed the monetization threshold on YouTube but on Anchor it was bought by Spotify and they changed the monetization requirements. After the holidays it took up a bit to find our rhythm but never recovered. 2022 we released 5 episodes. Holidays came up again and we didn’t until 2023 and only released 7 episodes but ended up recording onto a bad hard drive with no back up and had about 5 episodes corrupted. By this time we had finally set up a new podcasting studio, all new set up giving us more space and now insulated improving the audio quality. We still lacked AC but it was better than the old studio and eventually got a new AC unit.

We kept working on a few episodes and released some of the corrupted episodes edited the best way we could. We had great audio but the video footage needed to be cut and manually synced and re-synced throughout the edit.

We had some great guests on these episodes we hope to bring back to try and do another interview.

Now in 2024

Now in 2024 we haven’t done a new episode as of now April 22, 2024. Now we settled on a new business format and published our website. Now with this new modular podcast set we can set it up for anyone to use and also have the other half of the studio setup for video or photography. We still plan to continue the podcast and update our socials and website. If you have any questions or want to book time at the podcast studio reach out to us and we can schedule a time to meet.