May 27, 2024 • 25 mins
We did it again! Sixteen more episodes, new and returning guests. It’s time for a summer recess. Hoorf! editor and co-producer Ricki Cummings caps off Season 2 with The State of Hoorf: a behind the scenes audio essay offering a peek at all the moving parts that come together in each episode. This episode has a bit of everything, from how we select guests to the type of equipment we use, it should be gratifying for those of you who have come to enjoy discussing disability, pain, politics, love, and revolution.
All links are in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Elle Billing (00:00):
Hi, my name is Elle Billing. I am a chronically
(00:02):
ill queer femme, and I'm tired.
I'm here this episode and everyepisode to dig at the roots of
our collective fatigue, exploreways to direct our care and
compassionate and sustainableways, and harness creative
expression to heal ourselves and
our worl (00:16):
Radical care in a late capitalist heckscape.
Ricki Cummings (00:48):
Hi, this week is the final episode of season two
of Hoorf. So we're doing alittle bookend like we did last
season. This time with me (00:54):
co producer and editor Ricki
Cummings. As the title says thisepisode is Behind the Hoorf. But
since most folks aren'tnecessarily as familiar with me
at this point, as you all arewith Elle, We'll do a little
Behind the Ricki first. As Iwrite this, I'm a 42 year old
trans femme from the same basicfarmland area as Elle. We grew
(01:17):
up between 45 minutes and anhour apart across wheat, corn,
soybean, and sugar beet fieldsin two wildly different US
states, but the same basicculture. The first half of my
childhood was in Fargo, NorthDakota, and most of my quote
unquote real growing up was inGlyndon, Minnesota, a town of,
at the time, about 900 people. Igrew up nerdy as a theater and
(01:42):
choir and forensics kid. Yep, Idid competitive speaking,
managed to do pretty well inthat regard. And unfortunately,
I ended up growing up into whatwriter and educator Katie
Osborne, aka Katieosaurus, callsa burnt out gifted and talented
submissive brat with a praisekink, I mean, minus the brat
(02:02):
part. But maybe that's too muchinformation for you at this
point in our relationship.
Regardless, I ended up doing allthe smart kid stuff, but still
tended to do really poorly inschool because of homework. In
high school, this was mostlymanageable because I still had
deadlines and an incrediblycomplex home life that required
me to accomplish certain tasksin order to avoid punishment to
varying degrees. But college?
(02:24):
that was something else, betweenworsening then-undiagnosed
depression, struggling with myfirst real bisexual crush, and
still-unregulated andundiagnosed ADHD. I ended up
failing out of school twiceafter long periods of academic
probation. Despite this, severalyears, three states, and a child
later, I did finally end upgetting my undergrad degree-- 15
(02:47):
years after starting college,with a bachelor, a minor, and an
Associate's, all in absolutelyunrelated fields. In that first
stint in undergrad, I met themutual acquaintance who would
lead to Elle and I meeting,which is ultimately complicated
in itself. A few years afterthat undergrad experience, I
moved to Chicago and got amaster's in my minor area of
(03:11):
study, creative writing with apoetry emphasis. I often tell
people that it's the only thingthat I enjoy that I am also good
at and that might occasionallymake me money. And honestly, for
a poet, I read very littlepoetry. This phenomenon will
come up later. In addition tothe aforementioned depression
and ADHD, I've had chronicmigraines since I was in lower
(03:31):
elementary school. To say thatregular employment is difficult
for me is an understatement,since between all of the above,
executive function and reliabletimes of ability are hard. This
is mostly why I write and workon a podcast that releases
episodes every two weeks andtakes a lengthy summer hiatus on
purpose, which seems like a goodway to get into talking about
(03:53):
the podcast itself.
When we were initially tossingaround the idea of the podcast,
Elle and I both knew that ourdisabilities were going to be a
major contributing factor to theproduction pipeline. Most people
don't know how much time andeffort goes into something like
this, especially as a two personoperation. I personally wanted
to follow a model of televisionproduction rather than one of
(04:14):
podcast production. Part of thatis because most broadcast TV
shows are in production for anintense period of time and then
take a significant break betweenseasons. While most of the
podcasts I'm aware of are incontinuous production, more like
YouTube channels or ongoingradio series with the latter.
The work never stops. It'salways simultaneously in
(04:35):
production and in release, butthe former so-called Legacy TV,
there is an overlap for part ofthe season. The organizational
work of the season starts beforea single episode airs actual
shooting and post productionthings like audio and graphics
and editing are done every fewepisodes before anything airs
and then as the season isairing, it is also producing
(04:56):
episodes. That way there's someleeway in airing the show if
some part of the pipeline breaksdown or if there's an unforeseen
emergency with the cast or crew,then the casual viewer of the
show would never know becausethere's a backlog of episodes
available. As long as certaindelivery dates are met,
everything else is flexible. Wedon't have to have a massive
(05:17):
workload every week forever. Andso far, it's been working for
us. Outside of two weeks, we'vehit every release state over 30
plus episodes, and those twoweeks were extenuating
circumstances (05:28):
My dad died toward the end of last season
and this season, we took a breakin a creator's blackout in
solidarity with Palestine, whichhappened to coincide with both
Elle and I being sick. Otherthan those two things we've
managed to get through our owndisabilities, scheduling
conflicts with deaths orcancellations, scrapping entire
episodes after production began,holidays, family emergencies of
(05:51):
various types, systems changes,method changes, and guest
requests. We are not the mostprolific, but we're still here.
And we're mostly intact as a twoperson team. To be clear, others
have helped us here. We used tohave a person doing
transcriptions, but it wasunfortunately too much for their
plate. And Elle now does thatherself with some automated
(06:12):
assistance. We used to havesomeone doing all the
accessibility captioning on oursocial media images. But Elle
does that too. To be honest,Elle does the lion's share of
planning, scheduling and otheradministration work in addition
to hosting, I'm in charge of theaudio and the technical side of
things. For the most part, evenfor a small production, we have
a lot of data to keep on top ofplus, we're doing the jobs that
(06:33):
big professional podcasts havesplit up among a dozen or more
people. So two weeks it is and asummer break. We're still
somehow in the top half ofpodcast downloads. And we've
even hit some nice rankings inthe Arts category specifically,
and the vast majority ofpodcasts never even make it to
10 episodes. Still being hereand still making stuff is a big
(06:54):
thing for us.
So what does our productionprocess look like? I'm glad you
asked. Our pre production foreach season starts basically as
soon as the season itself ends,we look at what we've done so
far, and we look at what we canimprove both on the front end,
the podcast, and the back end;all of the systems and processes
we have in place. For example,this year, we switched how we
(07:16):
track episode production andnumbering. Last year, we
scheduled everything ahead oftime and it caused a lot of
headaches in episode numbering,behind the scenes organization,
and release dates. This year, wejust decided to schedule the
first few episodes and then letthe rest of this season play out
as people confirmed or canceledinterviews. And we did away with
internally numbering episodes atall, referring to episodes by
(07:37):
guest name, and you know what?
our stress levels went way down!Progress. Once we figure out how
we're approaching the season, weprepare a guest list. This
ranges from slam dunks likefriends we've known forever, or
other peers, to pie in the skyguests like YouTubers and actors
and all that crap. Then we sendout inquiries to people we'd
like to have on and then wait.
(07:59):
And effectively our schedulebecomes a first come first serve
list. Sometimes we'll have aguest who wants to schedule a
specific time to coincide withproject or launching or a
schedule something specific forlike St Winkus Day. But most of
the time a season is flexible.
This list is constantly beingupdated. Of course, any
inquiries often go out while theseason is already underway. But
the season break is when we lookat it with the most scrutiny
(08:22):
either of us can and willsuggest guests. While most of
our guests are Elle's choice,and she does retain final say by
virtue of being the one doinginterviews, several guests have
been my picks and severalepisodes have been my idea. Once
a guest agrees to be on ourschedules and interview time
with them according to theirscheduling needs. For a
recording platform, we generallyuse zencaster because its file
(08:46):
output capabilities and relativeease of use is handy for us. And
then Elle will conduct theinterview from the farm in North
Dakota and with the guestwherever they are. Elle prepares
the interview based on someintake forms and general
research. But the interviewsthemselves are free discussion
with the only real considerationbeing time constraints, we try
to shoot for a final episodelength of about 45 minutes. But
(09:08):
that can vary according tocontent and whatnot. For
example, this season's openinginterview with Brandon Connolly
was nearly two hours longoriginally, so we decided to cut
it in two and each episode endedup being roughly half an hour
after editing. After theinterview, Elle uploads the
audio files of her and her guestto a shared online drive where I
(09:30):
can download them to my computerin Chicago and begin editing
which I'll go into in a bit.
Once I'm done editing andassembling the audio and any
additional interstitial music, Iupload the final mix file, and
then Elle does the transcript.
This is the only automated partof the process where we actually
use the AI transcription. ButElle still has to go through the
(09:51):
whole episode in real time tomake sure it was correct and
make sense. And then she uploadsthe audio and transcript to our
hosting and then goes live onevery second and fourth Monday.
While I'm doing editing andaudio, elle is busy making the
promo materials for eachepisode, all the social media
cards, scheduling all theannouncement stuff, all that.
once an episode is live,everything hits Instagram,
(10:13):
Facebook and whatever media wehappen to be using, then we have
maybe a day of downtime untilthe whole process starts over.
This is basically what we dofrom early September through May
or June.
Early on, we made a couple ofeditorial decisions beyond just
scheduling. First, we wanted tostay true to the mission of the
podcast, which is basically thesubtitle of the show, radical
(10:36):
care and a late capitalistheckscape. in service of this,
we try to keep some sort oflevity and everything. Joy is a
radical act, and as is commonlyrepeated among circles of Black
activists, indigenous people,people of color, and the
LGBTQ-plus communities,existence is resistance. A
slight aside, this season washard for me as someone who
(10:58):
struggled with alcohol addictionboth personally and in my
family. Some of this season wasdepressingly relatable. And
while all of it was necessary,goodness, I am ready for a
break. End of aside. Also inservice of the late capitalist
heckscape part, we wanted to besure to include members of
marginalized communities as muchas we can to amplify those
(11:19):
diverse voices who make ourlives brighter. I think we
accomplished that, and I thinkwe can strive to do more next
season. Second, I made theunilateral decision as audio
editor to keep the audio is trueto the original recording as I
could. I initially wanted tosimply present a warts and all
approach to each episode with noedits for pauses, burps,
(11:40):
stutters ,vocalizedthinking--which is like us and
ohms and stuff like that--micbumps, all that stuff, and
letting the conversation simplybe presented as is. I very
quickly realized that this wouldbe a hindrance to actual
meaning. as a one-directionalaudio format, it's very easy for
a listener to get distracted,not to mention that hitting a
(12:02):
specific timeframe with thatprocess is really, really hard
to do naturally. So now meaningcomes first; clarity, second;
and verisimilitude third. Sirensgoing by, dogs barking (Thanks,
Winkie), in rapid fire bits ofconversation--those stay in if
they're not truly distracting.
What's important to you all outthere to recognize is the folks
(12:24):
on this end are real peopleexisting in real places in time.
Third, and possibly mostimportantly, we only feature
guests we personally vibe withand whose work and messages we
agree with. We're at a verylucky point now that people come
to us and pitch their ownappearances to us. But we accept
very, very few of them. Becausea lot of the time, not only are
(12:47):
they entirely strangers to us,but their work or product, or
whatever, is simply not in linewith our values, and they think
they can use our podcast forfree advertising for their snake
oil. We're not doing this forclout or any of that. We just
want to share people with thepeople listening, because we
(13:08):
think their stories areimportant. All of our stories
are important. And that's whatmakes us human. People trying to
make a buck off you are not whatwe're after. With those general
guidelines out of the way,here's how I have approached my
end of the production process.
The following might be boringtechnical stuff, and I don't
(13:29):
know who may or may not belistening, so I'll try to be
both as complete and asinteresting as possible. First,
we record Elle and the guest onseparate audio tracks. This is
one of the reasons we usezencaster. It allows for the
output of both participantsindependently. Elle uses a
podcast industry standard ShureMV7 microphones so I don't
(13:50):
usually have to do much workwith the audio. But our guests
use a wide range of microphonesfrom headsets to professional
studio mics. And that's usuallywhere my real work comes in. On
top of the variety ofmicrophones, a lot of guests
record in less than ideal audioconditions: rooms with bare
walls, wearing noisy clothing,having kinda crap internet, all
(14:14):
those things. Matter of fact,I'm recording in my bedroom
closet right now on a kind ofcrappy USB mic. So while I do
advocate for better recordingfor guests, it's not always
possible. and after I geteverything loaded into my
editing program, I start themixing process. Last season I
created a template that has mostof what I'm about to talk about
(14:36):
loaded up so I don't have tofart around with creating and
naming things. I usually apply anoise gate right off the bat.
This only allows audio signalover a certain volume level to
pass which helps clean up a lotof extraneous background noise
and only lets the speech of theperson through. After that comes
an equalizer but only if itseems necessary. This is the
most subjective part but it'susually where I account for
(14:58):
microphone deficiencies. Everymicrophone sounds different
because it picks up differentfrequencies and different
patterns. And not all of themare good vocal mics, actually.
And not all of them sound likethe person involved. So I have
to accommodate for that and anyother weird frequencies like fan
noise or something like that.
Sometimes I have to apply someprocessing to remove room
reverberation, digital clicks,or other distracting technical
(15:21):
glitches, then it's into acompressor, which helps level
out volume. Speech is verydynamic. Elle has a very loud
laugh. some people naturallyspeak quietly. So that has to
all be wrangled down into anarrower volume bands. So the
listener, you, doesn't have toconstantly turn the volume up
and down on your phone, orcomputer or whatever. On top of
(15:43):
being very good at keeping loudthings quiet. I also use
compression to bring up theoverall level of the recordings
making quiet things loud. Afterthat I added any interstitial
music I've had to create for theepisode. Sometimes there just
isn't a transition that workssmoothly or some large section
needs to be cut, or I need tomake up some time for the
(16:04):
overall length of the episode.
And for those sections, I createsome little piece of music or
audio to both delineate andbridge the section. As an added
detail, I tried to stick to aconstraint each season. Last
season, everything was in thekey of B major. This season,
it's everything is created withmodular synthesis. After that I
(16:25):
assembled the whole episode. Theintro and outro bits are
holdovers for every episode. Sothat just gets copied into the
whole project. Elle records aseparate bio and intro for each
guest. And so I import and editthat. after I have everything
the way I like it, and I thinkit sounds right, I do one last
comparison listen. One secretaudio engineers have is that
(16:46):
they're constantly comparingtheir work to those of other
engineers. And unfortunately,audio is a largely subjective
experience. So you can't justset the volume at 30 and assume
it will sound right. So Icompare the volume to one of the
few podcasts I listened to,usually Welcome to Night Vale. I
can count the number of podcastsI personally listened to on one
(17:06):
hand, is similar to how muchpoetry I read as a poet. When I
feel like I have the rightsound, I export the track out of
Studio One and then load theresulting stereo track into a
free audio editor calledaudacity in order to convert the
file into an mp3 for upload toour host. something most people
don't realize is the podcastsare extremely low in audio
(17:28):
quality. They are monophonic,meaning there's no separate left
and right. And they have a verylow resolution. They're about
four times smaller than atypical high quality mp3.
There's two reasons for this.
One is that speech is relativelylow when it's Sonic complexity.
Old landline phones, forexample, only include a very
small slice of the actual rangeof human voice. The other reason
(17:48):
is that lower resolutions meanlower file sizes. Last week's
episode with Darci has a finalmp3 size of about 30 megabytes
for 45 minutes of audio, thefull stereo mix was 450
megabytes, literally 15 timeslarger, and almost half a
gigabyte. That's a lot of stressto put on data networks and a
(18:09):
lot of space to take up on yourcomputer or phone. Anyway, once
I finished that last export, Ilistened to it on a couple of
different systems just to makesure nothing sounds wonky.
Usually I use my normal mixingmonitors, and then my computer
speakers and sometimes my phoneor in the car, then I upload it
for Elle to do her distributionstuff with. All this takes me
(18:30):
anywhere from half a day to morethan a week, depending on the
complexity of the episode,whether I need to come up with
music, and so on. It takes a bitbut it's worth it honest work
and all that Midwestern stuff.
And then it's on to the nextone. in between all that, I'm
helping with organization andguests stuff. So that's the
(18:51):
production stuff covered.
One thing we'd like to do atthis point is talking about next
season, some changes we mightmake, and so on. First, yes,
we're already working on nextseason, we have some guests that
we didn't get a chance tointerview this season, either
due to time or variousscheduling issues or simply not
having things work out. So wehave a few folks already on the
(19:11):
list for October and beyond. Soyeah, there will be a next
season; that's already a given.
This is as much to inform youthe listener as it is me
informing Elle, since I wasn'tsure how long I could really do
this. And now I'm too deep toget out. Second, we may be
changing some parts of theinfrastructure on the backend.
We take our tools andprofessional partners seriously
and in the face of what CoryDoctorow calls the
(19:35):
enshittification of theinternet, it's becoming harder
and harder to find services thatalign with our anti capitalist
ideals. This is part of thereason we don't run
advertisements of any kind. Wedon't want to sell you things
that we don't like and you don'twant. So we'll be having
discussions in the offseasonabout what to do with recording,
distribution and production.
(19:58):
Third, I personally wanteddiversify our content a little,
which is a point Elle and I havediscussed before but have never
really moved forward on. I liketo model that YouTube channel
Regular Car Reviews uses anaside here as a warning, if you
like cars even a little bit, youshould be watching RCR. But Dear
God, be aware that if you clickon the link in the description,
(20:19):
and then it's a vat of literarytheory next to the most horrific
extreme shitposting you canimagine. And then some. Imagine
if Hunter S Thompson was gay andgrew up on a steady diet of
Fight Club, but like it wasgood. They have their normally
formatted content, which is juststraight up car reviews, usually
a normal ass car like a ToyotaCamry or an AMC Gremlin or
(20:42):
something. But they also haveother deeper dives into things
like the history of a specificmanufacturer like Saab, or a
specific story, like the timethe FBI stole a stolen Ferrari F
50 out of evidence, and thencrashed it. It's not their
normal content, but it'srelevant to the channel and more
of a video essay than an 18minute car review.
(21:04):
So is that something we shoulddo? Would an occasional break
from the normal conversationformat into more scripted, yet
relevant to the podcast stuff,whatever it is, Be interesting
to you? We don't have commentsor anything but feel free to
reach out to either of usthrough the podcast email, or
our social media channels orwhatever. Everything is so hyper
(21:27):
focused in the world of contentcreation, that it's tough to
know what people actually want,that is new or different. So
help us out, which is sort ofpoint four here. And that's me
hoping that we can get more of adialogue here with our
listeners. The nature ofpodcasting is very one sided, we
make an episode and you listento it. We know we have a number
(21:48):
of very dedicated followers, andwe get to talk to those people
often through other methods, butour community is spread out.
Hopefully, we can createsomething that is more than
simply a passive experience forfolks, more of a conversation
than a broadcast, though I andwe don't necessarily know what
that looks like. comments andsuggestions are also welcome on
that front.
(22:08):
Finally, I really want to talkabout the reality of creation.
And as such, I won't sugarcoatthis. The best ways you can help
us out, if you like our weirdlittle gig, is to tell your
friends by sharing episodes withthem and helping with your
dollars through a donation orsubscription at buy me a
coffee.com The truth is thathosting and services cost us
(22:29):
several hundred dollars a year.
And neither Elle nor I make anymoney doing this show despite it
being a full time job mostweeks. The fact of it is that we
largely get by on the privilegesof family and that becomes a
community strain. We really wantto keep making these episodes
and the long term viability ofthe podcast becomes harder if
we're not able to keep thesystems running. So if you want
to help out in a very viewerslike us sort of way, toss us
(22:53):
some bucks, either a one timething or recurring. Whatever
works for you. We will love youforever regardless. And with
that, I'm going to wrap up HoorfSummer Recess (Ricki's version).
Thank you so, so much forlistening to us over these past
two years and for helping getthe word out about our show our
guests and the work thateveryone does. It means so much
(23:14):
to us to have found people thatHoorf resonates with. see you or
hear you or talk to you inOctober. Till then, protect your
neck
Elle Billing (23:33):
thank you for joining us on this episode of
Hoorf. To view the complete shownotes and all the links
mentioned in today's episode, orto get a full transcript of the
episode. Visit Hoorf podcast.comthat's H O O R F podcast.com.
Before you go make sure yousubscribe to the podcast so you
can receive new episodes rightwhen they're released. And if
(23:56):
you're enjoying our podcast, I'dlove to have you leave us a
review in Apple podcasts.
Reviews are one of the majorways that Apple ranks their
podcasts. So even though it onlytakes you a few seconds, it
really does make a differencefor us. Become a patron for $3 a
month you can support thecreation of this podcast, pay my
editor and join a community offellow caregivers out here just
(24:17):
doing our best. Thank you againfor joining me Elle billing in
this episode of Hoorf. Untilnext time, be excellent to each
other.
(24:44):
Hoorf is hosted by Elle Billing@elleandwink. audio editing by
Ricki Cummings @rickiep00h musiccomposed by Ricki Cummings.
Hoorf is a production of Elle &Wink Art Studio all rights
reserved. Hoorf podcast can befound on social media channels
@hoorfpodcast at H O O R Fpodcast
Hi, my name is Elle Billing. I am a chronically
(00:02):
ill queer femme, and I'm tired.
I'm here this episode and everyepisode to dig at the roots of
our collective fatigue, exploreways to direct our care and
compassionate and sustainableways, and harness creative
expression to heal ourselves and
our worl (00:16):
Radical care in a late capitalist heckscape.
Ricki Cummings (00:48):
Hi, this week is the final episode of season two
of Hoorf. So we're doing alittle bookend like we did last
season. This time with me (00:54):
co producer and editor Ricki
Cummings. As the title says thisepisode is Behind the Hoorf. But
since most folks aren'tnecessarily as familiar with me
at this point, as you all arewith Elle, We'll do a little
Behind the Ricki first. As Iwrite this, I'm a 42 year old
trans femme from the same basicfarmland area as Elle. We grew
(01:17):
up between 45 minutes and anhour apart across wheat, corn,
soybean, and sugar beet fieldsin two wildly different US
states, but the same basicculture. The first half of my
childhood was in Fargo, NorthDakota, and most of my quote
unquote real growing up was inGlyndon, Minnesota, a town of,
at the time, about 900 people. Igrew up nerdy as a theater and
(01:42):
choir and forensics kid. Yep, Idid competitive speaking,
managed to do pretty well inthat regard. And unfortunately,
I ended up growing up into whatwriter and educator Katie
Osborne, aka Katieosaurus, callsa burnt out gifted and talented
submissive brat with a praisekink, I mean, minus the brat
(02:02):
part. But maybe that's too muchinformation for you at this
point in our relationship.
Regardless, I ended up doing allthe smart kid stuff, but still
tended to do really poorly inschool because of homework. In
high school, this was mostlymanageable because I still had
deadlines and an incrediblycomplex home life that required
me to accomplish certain tasksin order to avoid punishment to
varying degrees. But college?
(02:24):
that was something else, betweenworsening then-undiagnosed
depression, struggling with myfirst real bisexual crush, and
still-unregulated andundiagnosed ADHD. I ended up
failing out of school twiceafter long periods of academic
probation. Despite this, severalyears, three states, and a child
later, I did finally end upgetting my undergrad degree-- 15
(02:47):
years after starting college,with a bachelor, a minor, and an
Associate's, all in absolutelyunrelated fields. In that first
stint in undergrad, I met themutual acquaintance who would
lead to Elle and I meeting,which is ultimately complicated
in itself. A few years afterthat undergrad experience, I
moved to Chicago and got amaster's in my minor area of
(03:11):
study, creative writing with apoetry emphasis. I often tell
people that it's the only thingthat I enjoy that I am also good
at and that might occasionallymake me money. And honestly, for
a poet, I read very littlepoetry. This phenomenon will
come up later. In addition tothe aforementioned depression
and ADHD, I've had chronicmigraines since I was in lower
(03:31):
elementary school. To say thatregular employment is difficult
for me is an understatement,since between all of the above,
executive function and reliabletimes of ability are hard. This
is mostly why I write and workon a podcast that releases
episodes every two weeks andtakes a lengthy summer hiatus on
purpose, which seems like a goodway to get into talking about
(03:53):
the podcast itself.
When we were initially tossingaround the idea of the podcast,
Elle and I both knew that ourdisabilities were going to be a
major contributing factor to theproduction pipeline. Most people
don't know how much time andeffort goes into something like
this, especially as a two personoperation. I personally wanted
to follow a model of televisionproduction rather than one of
(04:14):
podcast production. Part of thatis because most broadcast TV
shows are in production for anintense period of time and then
take a significant break betweenseasons. While most of the
podcasts I'm aware of are incontinuous production, more like
YouTube channels or ongoingradio series with the latter.
The work never stops. It'salways simultaneously in
(04:35):
production and in release, butthe former so-called Legacy TV,
there is an overlap for part ofthe season. The organizational
work of the season starts beforea single episode airs actual
shooting and post productionthings like audio and graphics
and editing are done every fewepisodes before anything airs
and then as the season isairing, it is also producing
(04:56):
episodes. That way there's someleeway in airing the show if
some part of the pipeline breaksdown or if there's an unforeseen
emergency with the cast or crew,then the casual viewer of the
show would never know becausethere's a backlog of episodes
available. As long as certaindelivery dates are met,
everything else is flexible. Wedon't have to have a massive
(05:17):
workload every week forever. Andso far, it's been working for
us. Outside of two weeks, we'vehit every release state over 30
plus episodes, and those twoweeks were extenuating
circumstances (05:28):
My dad died toward the end of last season
and this season, we took a breakin a creator's blackout in
solidarity with Palestine, whichhappened to coincide with both
Elle and I being sick. Otherthan those two things we've
managed to get through our owndisabilities, scheduling
conflicts with deaths orcancellations, scrapping entire
episodes after production began,holidays, family emergencies of
(05:51):
various types, systems changes,method changes, and guest
requests. We are not the mostprolific, but we're still here.
And we're mostly intact as a twoperson team. To be clear, others
have helped us here. We used tohave a person doing
transcriptions, but it wasunfortunately too much for their
plate. And Elle now does thatherself with some automated
(06:12):
assistance. We used to havesomeone doing all the
accessibility captioning on oursocial media images. But Elle
does that too. To be honest,Elle does the lion's share of
planning, scheduling and otheradministration work in addition
to hosting, I'm in charge of theaudio and the technical side of
things. For the most part, evenfor a small production, we have
a lot of data to keep on top ofplus, we're doing the jobs that
(06:33):
big professional podcasts havesplit up among a dozen or more
people. So two weeks it is and asummer break. We're still
somehow in the top half ofpodcast downloads. And we've
even hit some nice rankings inthe Arts category specifically,
and the vast majority ofpodcasts never even make it to
10 episodes. Still being hereand still making stuff is a big
(06:54):
thing for us.
So what does our productionprocess look like? I'm glad you
asked. Our pre production foreach season starts basically as
soon as the season itself ends,we look at what we've done so
far, and we look at what we canimprove both on the front end,
the podcast, and the back end;all of the systems and processes
we have in place. For example,this year, we switched how we
(07:16):
track episode production andnumbering. Last year, we
scheduled everything ahead oftime and it caused a lot of
headaches in episode numbering,behind the scenes organization,
and release dates. This year, wejust decided to schedule the
first few episodes and then letthe rest of this season play out
as people confirmed or canceledinterviews. And we did away with
internally numbering episodes atall, referring to episodes by
(07:37):
guest name, and you know what?
our stress levels went way down!Progress. Once we figure out how
we're approaching the season, weprepare a guest list. This
ranges from slam dunks likefriends we've known forever, or
other peers, to pie in the skyguests like YouTubers and actors
and all that crap. Then we sendout inquiries to people we'd
like to have on and then wait.
(07:59):
And effectively our schedulebecomes a first come first serve
list. Sometimes we'll have aguest who wants to schedule a
specific time to coincide withproject or launching or a
schedule something specific forlike St Winkus Day. But most of
the time a season is flexible.
This list is constantly beingupdated. Of course, any
inquiries often go out while theseason is already underway. But
the season break is when we lookat it with the most scrutiny
(08:22):
either of us can and willsuggest guests. While most of
our guests are Elle's choice,and she does retain final say by
virtue of being the one doinginterviews, several guests have
been my picks and severalepisodes have been my idea. Once
a guest agrees to be on ourschedules and interview time
with them according to theirscheduling needs. For a
recording platform, we generallyuse zencaster because its file
(08:46):
output capabilities and relativeease of use is handy for us. And
then Elle will conduct theinterview from the farm in North
Dakota and with the guestwherever they are. Elle prepares
the interview based on someintake forms and general
research. But the interviewsthemselves are free discussion
with the only real considerationbeing time constraints, we try
to shoot for a final episodelength of about 45 minutes. But
(09:08):
that can vary according tocontent and whatnot. For
example, this season's openinginterview with Brandon Connolly
was nearly two hours longoriginally, so we decided to cut
it in two and each episode endedup being roughly half an hour
after editing. After theinterview, Elle uploads the
audio files of her and her guestto a shared online drive where I
(09:30):
can download them to my computerin Chicago and begin editing
which I'll go into in a bit.
Once I'm done editing andassembling the audio and any
additional interstitial music, Iupload the final mix file, and
then Elle does the transcript.
This is the only automated partof the process where we actually
use the AI transcription. ButElle still has to go through the
(09:51):
whole episode in real time tomake sure it was correct and
make sense. And then she uploadsthe audio and transcript to our
hosting and then goes live onevery second and fourth Monday.
While I'm doing editing andaudio, elle is busy making the
promo materials for eachepisode, all the social media
cards, scheduling all theannouncement stuff, all that.
once an episode is live,everything hits Instagram,
(10:13):
Facebook and whatever media wehappen to be using, then we have
maybe a day of downtime untilthe whole process starts over.
This is basically what we dofrom early September through May
or June.
Early on, we made a couple ofeditorial decisions beyond just
scheduling. First, we wanted tostay true to the mission of the
podcast, which is basically thesubtitle of the show, radical
(10:36):
care and a late capitalistheckscape. in service of this,
we try to keep some sort oflevity and everything. Joy is a
radical act, and as is commonlyrepeated among circles of Black
activists, indigenous people,people of color, and the
LGBTQ-plus communities,existence is resistance. A
slight aside, this season washard for me as someone who
(10:58):
struggled with alcohol addictionboth personally and in my
family. Some of this season wasdepressingly relatable. And
while all of it was necessary,goodness, I am ready for a
break. End of aside. Also inservice of the late capitalist
heckscape part, we wanted to besure to include members of
marginalized communities as muchas we can to amplify those
(11:19):
diverse voices who make ourlives brighter. I think we
accomplished that, and I thinkwe can strive to do more next
season. Second, I made theunilateral decision as audio
editor to keep the audio is trueto the original recording as I
could. I initially wanted tosimply present a warts and all
approach to each episode with noedits for pauses, burps,
(11:40):
stutters ,vocalizedthinking--which is like us and
ohms and stuff like that--micbumps, all that stuff, and
letting the conversation simplybe presented as is. I very
quickly realized that this wouldbe a hindrance to actual
meaning. as a one-directionalaudio format, it's very easy for
a listener to get distracted,not to mention that hitting a
(12:02):
specific timeframe with thatprocess is really, really hard
to do naturally. So now meaningcomes first; clarity, second;
and verisimilitude third. Sirensgoing by, dogs barking (Thanks,
Winkie), in rapid fire bits ofconversation--those stay in if
they're not truly distracting.
What's important to you all outthere to recognize is the folks
(12:24):
on this end are real peopleexisting in real places in time.
Third, and possibly mostimportantly, we only feature
guests we personally vibe withand whose work and messages we
agree with. We're at a verylucky point now that people come
to us and pitch their ownappearances to us. But we accept
very, very few of them. Becausea lot of the time, not only are
(12:47):
they entirely strangers to us,but their work or product, or
whatever, is simply not in linewith our values, and they think
they can use our podcast forfree advertising for their snake
oil. We're not doing this forclout or any of that. We just
want to share people with thepeople listening, because we
(13:08):
think their stories areimportant. All of our stories
are important. And that's whatmakes us human. People trying to
make a buck off you are not whatwe're after. With those general
guidelines out of the way,here's how I have approached my
end of the production process.
The following might be boringtechnical stuff, and I don't
(13:29):
know who may or may not belistening, so I'll try to be
both as complete and asinteresting as possible. First,
we record Elle and the guest onseparate audio tracks. This is
one of the reasons we usezencaster. It allows for the
output of both participantsindependently. Elle uses a
podcast industry standard ShureMV7 microphones so I don't
(13:50):
usually have to do much workwith the audio. But our guests
use a wide range of microphonesfrom headsets to professional
studio mics. And that's usuallywhere my real work comes in. On
top of the variety ofmicrophones, a lot of guests
record in less than ideal audioconditions: rooms with bare
walls, wearing noisy clothing,having kinda crap internet, all
(14:14):
those things. Matter of fact,I'm recording in my bedroom
closet right now on a kind ofcrappy USB mic. So while I do
advocate for better recordingfor guests, it's not always
possible. and after I geteverything loaded into my
editing program, I start themixing process. Last season I
created a template that has mostof what I'm about to talk about
(14:36):
loaded up so I don't have tofart around with creating and
naming things. I usually apply anoise gate right off the bat.
This only allows audio signalover a certain volume level to
pass which helps clean up a lotof extraneous background noise
and only lets the speech of theperson through. After that comes
an equalizer but only if itseems necessary. This is the
most subjective part but it'susually where I account for
(14:58):
microphone deficiencies. Everymicrophone sounds different
because it picks up differentfrequencies and different
patterns. And not all of themare good vocal mics, actually.
And not all of them sound likethe person involved. So I have
to accommodate for that and anyother weird frequencies like fan
noise or something like that.
Sometimes I have to apply someprocessing to remove room
reverberation, digital clicks,or other distracting technical
(15:21):
glitches, then it's into acompressor, which helps level
out volume. Speech is verydynamic. Elle has a very loud
laugh. some people naturallyspeak quietly. So that has to
all be wrangled down into anarrower volume bands. So the
listener, you, doesn't have toconstantly turn the volume up
and down on your phone, orcomputer or whatever. On top of
(15:43):
being very good at keeping loudthings quiet. I also use
compression to bring up theoverall level of the recordings
making quiet things loud. Afterthat I added any interstitial
music I've had to create for theepisode. Sometimes there just
isn't a transition that workssmoothly or some large section
needs to be cut, or I need tomake up some time for the
(16:04):
overall length of the episode.
And for those sections, I createsome little piece of music or
audio to both delineate andbridge the section. As an added
detail, I tried to stick to aconstraint each season. Last
season, everything was in thekey of B major. This season,
it's everything is created withmodular synthesis. After that I
(16:25):
assembled the whole episode. Theintro and outro bits are
holdovers for every episode. Sothat just gets copied into the
whole project. Elle records aseparate bio and intro for each
guest. And so I import and editthat. after I have everything
the way I like it, and I thinkit sounds right, I do one last
comparison listen. One secretaudio engineers have is that
(16:46):
they're constantly comparingtheir work to those of other
engineers. And unfortunately,audio is a largely subjective
experience. So you can't justset the volume at 30 and assume
it will sound right. So Icompare the volume to one of the
few podcasts I listened to,usually Welcome to Night Vale. I
can count the number of podcastsI personally listened to on one
(17:06):
hand, is similar to how muchpoetry I read as a poet. When I
feel like I have the rightsound, I export the track out of
Studio One and then load theresulting stereo track into a
free audio editor calledaudacity in order to convert the
file into an mp3 for upload toour host. something most people
don't realize is the podcastsare extremely low in audio
(17:28):
quality. They are monophonic,meaning there's no separate left
and right. And they have a verylow resolution. They're about
four times smaller than atypical high quality mp3.
There's two reasons for this.
One is that speech is relativelylow when it's Sonic complexity.
Old landline phones, forexample, only include a very
small slice of the actual rangeof human voice. The other reason
(17:48):
is that lower resolutions meanlower file sizes. Last week's
episode with Darci has a finalmp3 size of about 30 megabytes
for 45 minutes of audio, thefull stereo mix was 450
megabytes, literally 15 timeslarger, and almost half a
gigabyte. That's a lot of stressto put on data networks and a
(18:09):
lot of space to take up on yourcomputer or phone. Anyway, once
I finished that last export, Ilistened to it on a couple of
different systems just to makesure nothing sounds wonky.
Usually I use my normal mixingmonitors, and then my computer
speakers and sometimes my phoneor in the car, then I upload it
for Elle to do her distributionstuff with. All this takes me
(18:30):
anywhere from half a day to morethan a week, depending on the
complexity of the episode,whether I need to come up with
music, and so on. It takes a bitbut it's worth it honest work
and all that Midwestern stuff.
And then it's on to the nextone. in between all that, I'm
helping with organization andguests stuff. So that's the
(18:51):
production stuff covered.
One thing we'd like to do atthis point is talking about next
season, some changes we mightmake, and so on. First, yes,
we're already working on nextseason, we have some guests that
we didn't get a chance tointerview this season, either
due to time or variousscheduling issues or simply not
having things work out. So wehave a few folks already on the
(19:11):
list for October and beyond. Soyeah, there will be a next
season; that's already a given.
This is as much to inform youthe listener as it is me
informing Elle, since I wasn'tsure how long I could really do
this. And now I'm too deep toget out. Second, we may be
changing some parts of theinfrastructure on the backend.
We take our tools andprofessional partners seriously
and in the face of what CoryDoctorow calls the
(19:35):
enshittification of theinternet, it's becoming harder
and harder to find services thatalign with our anti capitalist
ideals. This is part of thereason we don't run
advertisements of any kind. Wedon't want to sell you things
that we don't like and you don'twant. So we'll be having
discussions in the offseasonabout what to do with recording,
distribution and production.
(19:58):
Third, I personally wanteddiversify our content a little,
which is a point Elle and I havediscussed before but have never
really moved forward on. I liketo model that YouTube channel
Regular Car Reviews uses anaside here as a warning, if you
like cars even a little bit, youshould be watching RCR. But Dear
God, be aware that if you clickon the link in the description,
(20:19):
and then it's a vat of literarytheory next to the most horrific
extreme shitposting you canimagine. And then some. Imagine
if Hunter S Thompson was gay andgrew up on a steady diet of
Fight Club, but like it wasgood. They have their normally
formatted content, which is juststraight up car reviews, usually
a normal ass car like a ToyotaCamry or an AMC Gremlin or
(20:42):
something. But they also haveother deeper dives into things
like the history of a specificmanufacturer like Saab, or a
specific story, like the timethe FBI stole a stolen Ferrari F
50 out of evidence, and thencrashed it. It's not their
normal content, but it'srelevant to the channel and more
of a video essay than an 18minute car review.
(21:04):
So is that something we shoulddo? Would an occasional break
from the normal conversationformat into more scripted, yet
relevant to the podcast stuff,whatever it is, Be interesting
to you? We don't have commentsor anything but feel free to
reach out to either of usthrough the podcast email, or
our social media channels orwhatever. Everything is so hyper
(21:27):
focused in the world of contentcreation, that it's tough to
know what people actually want,that is new or different. So
help us out, which is sort ofpoint four here. And that's me
hoping that we can get more of adialogue here with our
listeners. The nature ofpodcasting is very one sided, we
make an episode and you listento it. We know we have a number
(21:48):
of very dedicated followers, andwe get to talk to those people
often through other methods, butour community is spread out.
Hopefully, we can createsomething that is more than
simply a passive experience forfolks, more of a conversation
than a broadcast, though I andwe don't necessarily know what
that looks like. comments andsuggestions are also welcome on
that front.
(22:08):
Finally, I really want to talkabout the reality of creation.
And as such, I won't sugarcoatthis. The best ways you can help
us out, if you like our weirdlittle gig, is to tell your
friends by sharing episodes withthem and helping with your
dollars through a donation orsubscription at buy me a
coffee.com The truth is thathosting and services cost us
(22:29):
several hundred dollars a year.
And neither Elle nor I make anymoney doing this show despite it
being a full time job mostweeks. The fact of it is that we
largely get by on the privilegesof family and that becomes a
community strain. We really wantto keep making these episodes
and the long term viability ofthe podcast becomes harder if
we're not able to keep thesystems running. So if you want
to help out in a very viewerslike us sort of way, toss us
(22:53):
some bucks, either a one timething or recurring. Whatever
works for you. We will love youforever regardless. And with
that, I'm going to wrap up HoorfSummer Recess (Ricki's version).
Thank you so, so much forlistening to us over these past
two years and for helping getthe word out about our show our
guests and the work thateveryone does. It means so much
(23:14):
to us to have found people thatHoorf resonates with. see you or
hear you or talk to you inOctober. Till then, protect your
neck
Elle Billing (23:33):
thank you for joining us on this episode of
Hoorf. To view the complete shownotes and all the links
mentioned in today's episode, orto get a full transcript of the
episode. Visit Hoorf podcast.comthat's H O O R F podcast.com.
Before you go make sure yousubscribe to the podcast so you
can receive new episodes rightwhen they're released. And if
(23:56):
you're enjoying our podcast, I'dlove to have you leave us a
review in Apple podcasts.
Reviews are one of the majorways that Apple ranks their
podcasts. So even though it onlytakes you a few seconds, it
really does make a differencefor us. Become a patron for $3 a
month you can support thecreation of this podcast, pay my
editor and join a community offellow caregivers out here just
(24:17):
doing our best. Thank you againfor joining me Elle billing in
this episode of Hoorf. Untilnext time, be excellent to each
other.
(24:44):
Hoorf is hosted by Elle Billing@elleandwink. audio editing by
Ricki Cummings @rickiep00h musiccomposed by Ricki Cummings.
Hoorf is a production of Elle &Wink Art Studio all rights
reserved. Hoorf podcast can befound on social media channels
@hoorfpodcast at H O O R Fpodcast
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