Canadian Podcast Buffet

Creating and Using Atmosphere in your Audio Productions presented at PAB2007 by Mark Blevis

Mark stepped in for an ill Jeff Parks (who was to present on a model for mentoring within the podcast community) with a presentation on how to engage your audience by using ambience and atmosphere within your audio recordings and final productions. Using three specific examples, Mark challenged the Podcasters Across Borders community to take risks and think beyond quiet studios, converted clothes cupboards and stale boardrooms to take their listeners with them — wherever they may go — when they record their programs.

Our apologies… this podcast is peppered with clicking and popping from Mark’s Intel Macbook, a problem from a Mac patch that has since been identified and corrected.

Photo by Andrea Ross.

TRANSCRIPT BELOW…

Mark Blevis: I’m Mark Blevis.

Bob Goyetche: And I’m Bob Goyetche, and welcome to special coverage of Podcasters Across Borders 2007 right here on the Canadian Podcast Buffet.

Mark Blevis: This show is brought to you in part by TD Canada Trust. Stay tuned to the end of the show to find out how you can get a free iPod.

Bob Goyetche: I don’t know if we’ve mentioned this but there is a Podcasters Across Borders 2008, Mark.

Mark Blevis: I’ve heard some mention, somewhere, sometime.

Bob Goyetche: Yeah, and somehow you and I are responsible for this again.

Mark Blevis: Oh, not again.

Bob Goyetche: Apparently, so we’re going for year three, mark it on your calendar. June 20th, 21st and 22nd 2008. You might want to keep an eye on www.podcastersacrossborders.com for additional details.

Mark Blevis: Of course. We were supposed to have a session for you right now on “A Model for Podcast Mentorship” by Jeff Parks of the “IA Podcast”. Unfortunately he got the Norwalk Virus. So I had to cover for him. And since I didn’t know what his presentation was about, I put one together on “Using Atmosphere in Your Podcast”.

Mark Blevis: If you want to know what the definition of tough is, it’s following Mitch and Ninja and coming before Julien Smith. I’m here to make everybody else look good, I guess. I’m going to start off actually just with some quick entertainment. You may not have seen this…oh, we need computer audio there Bob. Here it comes…whoooo…excellent, Todd. And then I’ll keep up the entertainment. This actually, and I’m sorry Ted, if it didn’t work for you. So I thought I would at least put it up in ours. This is something that was supposed to work in Ted’s presentation.

I’m going to try and this kind of came up, this whole session presenting today. It kind of came up just a couple of days ago when I was trying to come up with ideas about what I might speak about. And I thought I would try to draw together some stuff that has already been presented and stuff that will be presented. And I thought I would try and challenge everybody in this room to think differently about how they podcast by creating…on how to create news atmosphere. Specifically, we all tend to function in these worlds in our basement. We lock ourselves in our basement or in our closet or wherever is a nice, quiet space for us to work in. We rarely, and we’re so afraid, and I think this might be the radio listener in us, to experiment with atmosphere and environment. And where to use ambient noise.

So I want to start off with this just as a way of making you think a little bit about how images and sounds can make us think. And what I want you to think about when you see…now that you’ve already seen it, is it’s not always about the story that’s…well it’s not always about the atmosphere of sound. Sometimes it’s the atmosphere of words and how they create images in our minds, taking your listener to a place that they are not at the moment and you want them to go. So…talk about getting in the studio. You want to give your audience the freedom to experience your show. Everybody sees things and hears things through their own filter. You want to present them with the inspiration to use those filters and experience your show. I’m going to play a couple, well actually three clips in total, as this is going to be a bit of a short presentation as I want it to be interactive. But I wanted to present three clips to you that will help you think differently hopefully about how you use your podcasting and where you do your podcasting. A lot of, as I said before, a lot of us work in studios. Some of us work in boardrooms and since Mitch just presented, I decided I was going to do a clip from his show. So Mitch tends to present boardroom ideas. They’re brilliant ideas, but they’re very much…he does his podcast typically in his office and he presents ideas that deal with his work. Mitch is passionate about what he does. He lives and breathes it and that’s the important thing is it comes through in how he presents his information. Sometimes that’s lost in the way it’s presented and this clip I’m going to play for you shows how he lives and breathes the subject. This is a clip of a show that…an episode that Mitch did a few weeks ago, two weeks ago to be exact. And he was out of his office. And just…I’m not even going to tell you what you’re listening to; I want you to just think about what you’re hearing.

Mitch Joel: “…box to say, hey it’s miscellaneous, we’ll all tag it and we know that it’s all there, or that it’s going to be everywhere, right? The idea that the data doesn’t have to be in one particular place, that it can be in many places…”

Mark Blevis: Do you hear the background?

Mitch Joel: “…and that it can be tagged as such is pretty powerful as well.”

Mark Blevis: Okay, I specifically left in the background what Mitch was talking about in terms of the background, where he was. What did you hear in the background? Anybody pick that out? A stream…water, that’s right. He was out on a camping trip, had his M-Audio with him, went out for a walk and talked about what he’s passionate about and he wasn’t in his office. He took you out with him to talk about the stuff that means something to him. And it was really cool. It was, I think, it was like 20 or 25 minutes Mitch, that you were talking by the stream. There’s parts where you can hear birds chirping, sometimes the wind hits the microphone, it’s a little bit noisy. But you know what, that’s part of what this is all about, this is part of engaging your listener. The next clip is from Dry Shave and this kind of talks a little bit about on location. But what’s really good about this clip is we may not have had these exact interactions. But what you’re about to hear you can relate to because you’ve…I’m just going to play it.

Dry Shave: “…what’s this, something special?

It’s just a poem.

Did you write this?

Un huh.

You got like just a pad of paper, you sit down and write poems and then…

Yeah, that’s right.

How long you been doing this?

Six Months; three months; two months.

Three months?

Three months.

How well you been doing?

Ah, I continue to do it.”

Mark Blevis: I just have to engage my audience here. So what do you hear in the background? Buses…yeah, street traffic. So that was Ross…I assume walking around at lunch or at home at the end of the day. And he’s talking to a vagrant who’s selling poems on the street. And it was such a real conversation and the neat thing about what Ross did is, you just land in this conversation. He’s walking down the street and he sees this person. He doesn’t introduce, he doesn’t say “oh I’m walking the street, oh here’s a vagrant I’m going to talk to”. Suddenly, boom, you’re just…I think that’s very…at the very beginning of the conversation where he asked the guy if he’s selling poems and how much they are. And then it just goes. And then he talks about it for, I don’t know, 5, 10 minutes and then suddenly the shows over. It’s like you’re just there with him. So you’re walking down the street and you’re giving your listener a chance to imagine where it is. And I don’t know about you guys, I imagine Ottawa ‘cause that’s where I’m from. And I can…I imagine a street corner that I walk past a lot. And it created this whole scene in my head. Now, not everything is…no, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna let this one set itself up again. Listen for it. Listen carefully to the background.

“…get my day started, the showers here are kinda cool, let’s go downstairs, one little room, three little rooms, shower rooms, all the tiles and a big bathtub.

Mark Blevis: Did you hear it?

“…and deep bathtub, so let’s see over…”

Mark Blevis: Hear what happened in the background? I’ll play it again.

“…get my day started, the showers here are kinda cool, let’s go downstairs, one little room, three little rooms, shower rooms, all the tiles and a big bathtub, a deep bathtub so let’s see over…”

Mark Blevis: I love that. There’s something…I felt ripped off, but I felt…it felt so good to be ripped off in the process. That’s Scarborough Dude and dicksnjanes. He was in Japan and he’s…I actually cut out the beginning intentionally where he was talking because it took away from what you were hearing there. But he was…it sounds like he’s in this restaurant talking in the morning, where he’s mumbling into his microphone because he doesn’t want to be seen. And he’s telling you about his shower and then suddenly the background is gone. So he wasn’t actually in the bar or the restaurant when he did that recording. He might have recorded the background separately and it was so fun to feel like I was in the restaurant with him, and then instantly be transported into his hotel room. I mean, that’s not something everybody would do all the time. But it was just one of those funny things where I went from one place to the next. It was like a movie transition that I wasn’t prepared for.

So what I want you to think about when you’re doing your podcasts is how to use atmosphere. And atmosphere could be the story you’re telling as we saw in the video. It could be in the background sounds that you’re using to create atmosphere. Or it could just be doing something really unique which is going out of your studio and going to a location. If you’re doing something about coffee, for example, it doesn’t make sense to sit in your house and talk about the coffee you had earlier in the day. Go to the coffee shop, bring your recorder with you. Ah, I just took a sip of this coffee, it’s hanging on the pallet, ummm good, you know. It’s…you wanna take your listener to the place with you and set them up so they can experience with you. And I think that’s all of my slides.

How did I do for time? Alright, the thing is last year at PAB, one of the great things that happened was the…sorry, am I going to get audio play here…no…one of the great things that happened was the interaction. And that’s what I wanted to afford time for. So we have now 15 minutes for interaction.

Bob Goyetche: I’m sure…

Mark Blevis: Well, we’re waiting for Bob to show up.

Arthur Masters: I just want to say that one of the reasons that I stopped podcasting for a little while is, among others, is that I moved into an apartment with perfectly parallel walls. And if you stand in the middle of the room, you snap your fingers, it rings, and it just wasn’t conducive to podcasting. I had nowhere that I could go to get that private space. And Mark was like “Dude, where you been? Why haven’t I heard anything?”. and I’m like, oh, you know, my apartment is just not…and you know what he said? “Why do you podcast in your apartment? What’s wrong with the park?” You know, and like all these background noises…like good, we’ll know you’re in the park. And yeah, that’s one of the…it’s all the little mistakes that I think makes podcasting charming. And I remember when I first started listening to, you know, just like a survey of going through Canada Podcast Buffet in early 2005 and there was only maybe 50 listings. And one of the things I was listening for was background noise. I wanted to know what it sounds like in your living room. Like, regardless of what you’re saying, I was like wow, I’m like getting like I can’t see into these people’s homes. But I can hear into their homes and their environments. And I thought that was really interesting, really personal and really distinct about______ the message.

Mark Blevis: …message.

Arthur Masters: Oh, that’s okay, that’s all I wanted to say.

Mark Blevis: Thank you. I do want to say actually, I want to say that in response to my comment that Arthur should continue to podcast, he actually released his most recent episode from his bathroom.

Arthur Masters: Yeah, I found somewhere quiet.

Mark Blevis: What was really cool about that is he actually said “I’m in my bathroom right now ‘cause it’s the only part of my apartment that I can actually sit in…I can actually sit in and record without having this weird echo”. I mean, you get a different type of echo in the bathroom. You get a porcelain echo. But you get a different type of echo. Oh this one? But actually, Scarborough Dude, are you in the room? No? He’s gone to Japan again. Listen for his podcasts. Thank you for being on….

Audience: I just wanted to say, it’s always good to record when you can background noise. My…just my life doesn’t allow me to go places to record. I have to record at home. So I just wear my little stereo headphone mikes which look like headphones and record all the time. And sometimes you’re just on the bus and you’re recording bus ambient noise. And you’ll get conversations, you know. I caught two guys having a little argument, like seven year old boys, because I happened to be recording the noise. So it’s good to just get ambient sound when you can and then you can use it later the way Scarborough Dude did. That was all.

Bob Goyetche: That was good too.

Mark Blevis: You can actually create your own sound library. And actually Bruce Murray talked about a bit about this last year. If you can turn around. I don’t want to walk too close to the speakers right now with this microphone on. Ted Riecken, thank you very much for introducing me to these. These are in-ear stereo microphones. And they just…they go in your ear. And I think paid…how much were they Ted? I think they’re like $80.00 or something like that, out of the States. A guy by the name of Chris Carfagno…is it Chris Carfagno…makes these for Sound something or other…Sound Professionals. And they go in your ears. They look like headphones and I listened to an episode of Island Podcasting. And Ted was at a conference or he was at a hotel. And he was going up the elevator and he commented that it just looks like I’m wearing headphones right now. And he’s in the elevator and these young women are having this conversation. And I can’t remember if they talked about Ted or Ted joked about the fact that they could have talked about him and he could’ve recorded the whole thing and they wouldn’t have known.

Tod Maffin: One little tip that I started using a couple of years…

Mark Blevis: Is that Tod Maffin?

Tod Maffin: Yes, I’m at the back…sorry. I should probably stand up…oh, I’m getting old.

Mark Blevis: You’re sore from last night and doing that dance.

Tod Maffin: Sorry…now I forgot what I was going to say…oh yeah, right. One of the tricks that I picked up from a couple of producers is, and it’s really good. If you’re recording room tone which you should be doing anytime you change rooms, location. Record like 30 or 60 seconds of just the ambient noise of whatever room you’re in or whatever outside you’re in. And if you’re outside and you know that you want to use some ambient sound, but you’re not quite sure what the levels are, a couple of things; one is, get the right microphone, because there are some mikes like an omnidirectional microphone will pick everything up around you and you may not want that. So you may want a cardioid pattern, which is a little like, you’ll still hear the sound but it’ll focus more on the voice. The other thing that’s kinda neat is if you record first the voice of the person, or if you’re doing an interview, or you’re talking yourself, record that separately. Then go out and collect five minutes of the ambient sound, piece the two together. It sounds like a lot of work but the beauty there is you now are in absolute control of how loud that ambient sound is. So you can start it high, you can bring it down so that it’s still underneath you. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, and it’s kind of artificial but it works really well.

Mark Blevis: There was one time actually for the Just One More Book Podcast where we recorded it in a coffee shop. And we talked about kids’ books in the coffee shop. And there was one day we went there and I can’t remember why but it was just extraordinarily quiet that day and there was no music playing. And we recorded the show and we listened to it afterwards and it just lacked the life that the usual shows have. So we actually took the painstaking time of picking a few songs, Podsafe songs, and mixing them underneath and f–ting around…pardon me for saying so…with the equalization to make it sound like it was muffled and in the background in a coffee shop. I mean, we could have just recorded, rerecorded the whole thing in the time it took me to pick the songs. And then muck about with each individual song so I could make it sound like it was in a coffee shop. You can be anal that way, but you listen to it and you wouldn’t know.

Neil Gorman: Neil Gorman again. One thing I was going to say kinda springboards off what Tod said. I do a show in my car a lot because I started doing podcasting in my car. I’d have an hour and a half drive to work and an hour and half drive back, so that was some time that I had to do it. And until I started saying I was doing the show in the car, no one knew I was doing the show in the car. They wouldn’t have known, I guess, unless I told them that. And the way that it kinda slipped out one day is I was in traffic and somebody was doing something that I didn’t like. And I said some stuff and I forgot to edit it out. And what happened is afterwards, that increased the level of comments and the level of, I guess, intimacy, that the podcast created with the listener. People were just like, I love that, I love the fact that you just freaked out at that dude that you were driving. I feel like we connected, you know. And so it was like one of those like oops, I guess that worked out though. So sometimes I think, you know, going out and kind of forgetting that it’s…I guess it’s stopping and seeing the environment as something that you need to control. And just kind of let it be ‘cause sometimes people like that. It adds to the idea that podcasting isn’t this like overly produced person sitting there trying to make everything perfect and sell you something. It’s just somebody talking about something they care about.

Mark Blevis: Well another…on that point, another thing that’s good about doing recording in the car or when we do it in the coffee shop is it’s just something you do. You’re in the car, you go to the coffee shop. But most of us make time to record our podcasts. We actually physically find the place that’s pristine, you know, pristine and quiet. And we find the time that we can sit down and focus. But if you’re so passionate about something that you’re talking about, like, well, we’ll use the example of Mitch Joel. Like marketing, you can take your recorder out to a stream because your brain is constantly going over the stuff. So just…it’s nothing to take up the microphone and just open up your mouth while those thoughts are flying through. And then, the passion comes through, so you’re taking your audience with you on that ride.

Dave Delaney: Hey, I’m Dave from “Two Boobs and a Baby +”.

Mark Blevis: Now with more baby.

Dave Delaney: Now with more baby yes, yes. We ran out of material so we had another baby, but…

Mark Blevis: You guys are going to be producing a lot of babies…

Dave Delaney: That’s why we said plus instead of 2 boobs and a second baby or 2 babies, ‘cause just in case but…we’re sleeping in twin beds now so just in case. We’re not quite ready yet. But yeah, I just wanted to add to that. I mean, we recently moved into our own place from…we were living at…we’re living in Nashville with a long background. But actually we were living in my in-laws’ house. And yeah, getting a…doing an episode was a nightmare just ‘cause of the sound in the place. It’s really big. And so we started doing carcasts as well. And, you know, Ross and Ken are certainly inspiration for doing that kind of thing. So we started doing carcasts from like Wal-Marts’ parking lot. And then we took the mike and we went to Perkins and we had breakfast and we podcasted a Perkins’ podcast. Not, you know, being paid by Perkins, although we really should have got a free coffee or something out of it. But yeah, and it’s amazing. I’ve been finding more and more listening to episodes with background noise, ambient noise, that I’m way more intrigued. Ken’s experiences in…or Scarborough Dude’s experiences in Japan were just incredible. Like listening to those background noises. And the same thing with like Julien. You know, walk around the streets of Montreal out of breath, just ranting. Like it’s very cool. And I don’t know, I just wanted to encourage more people to do that so.

Mark Blevis: There was a great podcast when Bob and I we’re doing the crazy thing of listening to every Canadian Podcast. And I can’t remember the name of the show now. But it was this one Canadian and one Brit. And the Canadian was working in England, in London. And they commuted to, I think it was like the commuter too. I can’t remember what it was called now. But it was two guys and they would go to work together. They worked actually in separate places but were next door to each other. And it was ten minutes each way. So ten minutes to work, ten minutes home. And they would just talk about stuff. And they never said “hi, this is episode such and such”. It’s like, they got in the car, boom, the doors close and they were off and they were talking. And they were talking about their life. And it was one of those voyeuristic things. And going in the car that you felt like you were in the back seat…I don’t know if you can see me…you felt like you were the passenger in the back seat leaning on the two front seats forward and trying to get in on the conversation ‘cause they were talking about stuff you could totally relate to. And you felt like you were in the car. And then when you got to the destination, hey yeah, I’ll see you guys in a few hours.

Brent Morris: I’m Brent from the “The Closet Geek Show”. And I find that recording, if I don’t have time to do a show, like I’m just too busy, I find the best way to just get a show out is bring my portable recorder with me when I walk home from work. And the audio quality isn’t as good as it would be if I was recording at home. But it feels a lot more conversational. And my shows sometimes go even better and the flow feels better ‘cause I’m just sort of walking home and talking to my listeners so. It works well. I get a good response.

Mark Blevis: Another…I say another example. Kathy and Nora sometimes sit outside of the CBC building. And so they usually do their shows in an apartment or in their house. And then every now and then, they’re sitting outside the CBC building over lunch or something. And they squeeze it into their schedule then. And those are the most fun to listen to. What was that Tod?

Tod Maffin: They were locked out.

Mark Blevis: Ah, they were locked out

Dave: Hi I’m Dave with “Web in Our Wisdom”. And I’m curious just where you’ve learned how to assess the negative impact of adding that ambient noise. I do a lot of content expert interviews and find that things like coffee shops and my car get in the way, in fact add a negative impact to that interview that I’m not looking for that folksy, personal touch. So I’m just wondering with your experience what…where you’ve learned how to draw the line, particularly in a business-to-business podcast where that folksy, personal effect may get in the way of the content?

Mark Blevis: That’s a tricky line to walk on in the business world because they’re not…they’re so attached to the radio ideas of being in this pristine quality studio with no extra noise and stuff. Now are you talking about audio quality specifically? Or are you talking about the mood of the interview, the interactions?

Dave: I like the idea of adding that ambience to add the personality. But when I’m listening to it, I know personally it annoys me and my audience feedback is it annoys them. So it tends to be…piece it all out…just get into a pristine interview when you’re sharing content knowledge.

Mark Blevis: Part of…one of the tricks is the signal-to-noise ratio of having the voices more present than the background noise. And the trick that we use for “Just One More Book” is lapel mikes. You still get a lot of the background noise, but the mikes are a little bit closer to your mouth. The other thing too is you don’t have this going on. You don’t have the handing back and forth of the microphone. So the microphone just kinda disappears from view. You can clip the microphones on and just kind of talk about something from the morning, or from the day, or from their work. Just get the ball rolling and suddenly they forget, oh yeah, you just clipped a microphone on me. I want to ask you a question, let’s kick this thing off, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they might momentarily remember there’s a microphone there. But they’re just looking you eye-to-eye. So you have the eye contact. I was actually considering, and I haven’t found it quite yet. But Sue Campbell was here last year, with Sheila Rogers, for PAB2006. And one of the things that I noticed with Sue was when she was interviewing podcasters, she used a shotgun mike. And I didn’t have one with me but if you’ve see one, somebody has one here, a Shure one. And it’s basically a long…it looks like a stick and can be anywhere between 12 and 24 inches. And she would have the microphone down here. And a shotgun mike is very directional. So she’d have it down at her waist and she’d aim it at herself when she talked and aim it at her guest when they were talking. But with the eye contact, you don’t see this.

But then again, you know, you might have to wear headphones. I actually did an interview like that in Toronto recently where I did use a shotgun mike. And because I’d never really used one before, I had the headphones on. Well that…it gives it away. But the…yeah, exactly. It’s like you’re talking to somebody who might be listening to their Walkman. So I didn’t really like that. But it sounded…in the end it sounded great. I had the microphone about four feet away from their mouth and it sounded like I was doing this with a dynamic mike. But the lapel mikes are great. And they’re reasonably cheap. I think I paid $250.00 a piece for now…I mean that’s money. But if you’re going after quality content, you’re going after the business community, you may be even looking at making a business out of it, it’s a small price to pay for the audio quality and that interaction.

Yeah…it is, they’re binaural mikes. So they actually pick up the stereo feel. In fact, the first…when I first got them, I was here in Kingston. I brought them with me and went out on a morning. It was like 6:00 o’clock in the morning and just put them in. Stood on the street side, next to the street and the birds were out, it was like early spring and the birds were out. And it just…the stereo feel when you put headphones on and listen to it now, is incredible. And then I actually took them once. I did an episode of one of the podcasts that I do. I went to somebody’s home concert and I wore them into the house just to capture the walking in without having a microphone in my hand. So I arrived at the house, and they opened up the door and I walk in and I capture some of the conversation, hustle, bustle in the house. And I had the headphones on and it took away from having to do, you know, have one hand occupied with a microphone.

Bob Goyetche: You also talk about the stereo effect and you can have that actually blow your atmosphere. I remember one of the early episodes of the “Catfish Show”, we decided midstream to go through the drive-thru at McDonalds because we were in French, ‘cause we were in Quebec. So we said hey, you know what, maybe nobody knows that you can actually order in French and what that interaction would sound like. So we’re in the drive-thru and Kat is driving and I’m in the passenger seat and we each have a lapel mike. But I had them reversed. She was actually on the right mike and I was on the left mike, which is no big deal, until we started to get comments from listeners: “Did you guys drive through the…go backwards through the drive-thru? Or did you reach across Kat to get the food or what? ‘Cause it was completely backwards.” ‘Cause you heard, you know, it was stated that it was obvious I was in the passenger seat and here’s the drive-thru window that the listener is hearing. And like…and so, you know, Matt from (….) “how long are your arms?” you know. You can blow the atmosphere. It was a great atmosphere up until that point, but because my mikes were reversed, it was ridiculous.

Mark Blevis: And that’s another thing actually that you wanna be…watch out for if you are using a stereo field for miking and lapel or I guess any type of miking situation. Don’t split your speakers full on. What I usually do, actually with “Just One More Book” in order to give a bit of stereo feel so you actually have the ambient noise of the coffee shop, but still have the centered sound of the two speakers, is I pan only about 8% on either side, left, right. So you get a little bit of stereo effect, but the voices are still reasonably centered.

Bob Goyetche: We have time for one more question before we have to pull the chain. Is there one more question? There is one more question, there’s always one more question.

Gary: Thank you. Gary from “Grow See This”. We’re doing mainly a video podcast, as an art…we’re doing a video podcast.

Mark Blevis: Okay, yeah.

Gary: And the big issue we’ve got is trying to get rid of ambient sound because there’s too much of it, ‘cause we’re filming outside, as we do the gardening. We’ve only got…

Mark Blevis: Is that why you have the shot-gun mike?

Gary: Yeah.

Mark Blevis: Okay.

Gary: Yeah. What would be a good way of sort of re-introducing…we’ve got stereo input. What would be a good way of re-introducing that post-production?

Mark Blevis: Well probably the best thing that I could think of is you’d have to abandon the shot-gun mike and use the lapel mike, if it’s wireless or even wired. Because that way, you’re getting more of the presence of the person. And if you’re able to record the ambient noise at the same time and then mate the two in post-production. You have to be careful, obviously, because you want the bird chirps to line up in the exact spot or you’ll get weird reverbs and fazing.

Gary: We’ve got stereo recording now. We’ve got a second microphone to put on the camera.

Mark Blevis: Okay, so there. And then you can bring that second microphone down. But you might lose…you might have to have them monoed so you lose the stereo feel. That’s the only trick. It’s tough, I mean unless you’re going to start to carry around a lot of sound gear with you, where you have stereo mikes on the video camera to capture the ambient sound and the lapel mike really close up to the speaker in order to capture them more than the ambient sound and mix the signals. Or record to a multi-track recorder where you can mix the signals later on. Zoom H4 might be able to do that for you.

Bob Goyetche: And that wraps up our time for Mark. Thanks Mark.

Mark Blevis: Thank you.

Bob Goyetche: This episode of Canadian Podcast Buffet featuring Podcasters Across Borders audio is brought to you in part by TD Canada Trust. When you switch your main chequing account to TD by August 3rd, you will qualify for either a Free Shuffle, iPod Nano or a 30 gig iPod. Visit www.tdswitch.com/pab for details.

Mark Blevis: Thanks to all of the PAB2007 Sponsors: Rogic Podcast Conglomerate, Third Storey Productions, TD Canada Trust, Thornley Fallis, StartCooking.com, Marion McDonald, Don Edwards, Freddie Litwiniuk, Bill Deys and Christopher Penn.

Bob Goyetche: For more info on Canadian Podcast Buffet you can go to our website www.canadianpodcastbuffet.ca.

Mark Blevis: For more information on Podcasters Across Borders visit that website www.podcastersacrossborders.com.

Bob Goyetche: To contact us you can leave us a voicemail, area code 267-220-3701 or our e-mail at: canadianpodcastbuffet@gmail.com.

Mark Blevis: Of course you’re welcome to join any and all of the Rogic forums including the Canadian Podcast Buffet forum, the Podcasters Across Borders forum, and there’s a link to that at www.rogic.com/forum on the Canadian Podcast Buffet website.

Bob Goyetche: Canadian Podcast Buffet and Podcasters Across Borders are proud members of the Rogic Podcast Conglomerate.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.8MB)