A View from the Stacks: How Do You Cast A Podcast? (Part Deux)

A while back, I mentioned that King County Law Library was working toward producing a semi-regular podcast for our website. 

Well, this past Saturday, Rita Kaiser (the brain-trust behind this whole project) and I decided to take this project by the horns and record some content.  This is the conversation, verbatim, on the process of recording:

Rita:  “Press ‘M’ to turn on.  Why isn’t it turning on?”
Stina:  “I don’t know, it says press ‘M’ to turn on.”
Rita:  “Well, it is not turning on.  Is there a battery in here?  Where is the battery?”
Stina:  “On the back?  Wait, it just turned on.”
Rita:  “How?”
Stina:  “I think you pressed the button below.”
Rita:   “Well, that is dumb.  That is not the ‘M’ button.”

And so it went, for about three hours, a conversation that, in itself, was podcast worthy.  Finally, we stopped reading the directions and just looked at the pictures (much like the directions that come with IKEA furniture that needs to be assembled).  Thankfully, after threatening to throw the recorder across the room, we had enough of an introduction recorded to warrant some editing and music.

Oh, and on the topic of music for a podcast…there seems to be a large amount of music out there to choose from, but not a lot of music that works as a viable choice.

By the end of the day this past Saturday, Rita had edited my words (I said “you guys” which is a particularly nasty habit of mine that has been years in the breaking) and made our very first segment of our very first podcast.  We listened to it, both proud of our efforts.  Rita lauded our initial attempts, and then told me that we needed to re-record the entire introduction as soon as possible.

Never have I given proper credit to radio-personalities, or folks who have existing podcasts.  I would like to take this moment to say “hats off.”  It is hard to listen to yourself read from a script, even harder to try and sound like you are not reading from a script, and almost impossible to sound relaxed while making a conscience effort to be relaxed.  Maybe after we have been recording these podcasts for a few months (or years) we will have a handle on pacing and the tone of our voices. 

In the meantime, we have successfully put together (after about 6 hours of time) a good seven minute show that may, someday, make its way to our website.

After it has been re-recorded, of course.

Stina McClintock, Library Technician, King County Law Library (Seattle) and Beer Judge (BJCP)

Editor's Note: Stina has used the word "beer" twenty times in her posts, more than any contributor to the Law Professor Blogs Network. I am certain that if Stina podcasts about beer or while drinking a beer or both, the King County Law Library podcasts will move forward at a very lively pace and replace Check This Out! as the most popular law library/law librarian-related podcast site on the net. Sorry, Jim. You're good, very good, but you're no Stina! [JH]