podfic musings

[obstinatecondolement]

So I have dipped into a lot of non-fic fanwork creation of various kinds—fan crafts, playlists, graphics, vids, podfic, icons, typesets and books of fic—but I am generally not super prolific in any of them. I started vidding in 2019 and have since only made 14 vids, which is not not due to tech issues, but it's still not a great innings, especially when you consider that the first four were all posted within the 21 days of each other, because I started off on a hot streak that then immediately cooled to a rate of two and a half vids a year after that. I also have been orbiting fan binding spaces for like... three years and have only gotten started actually binding books this year, and it also almost didn't happen for me again because of tech issues (my dad's printer and the imposition process joined forces to ruin my life, but luckily a renegadepublishing mod held my hand through troubleshooting the issues I was having.

this got very long, lol

I am doing better with podfic, likely due to the lower barrier for entry. I posted my first pod last year towards the end of May, and as of now I have six completed podfics posted publicly on my AO3 account (plus one WIP, plus one that's in the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology IV collection and will be revealed on September 30th and, if I'm being a bit cheeky, plus a fraction of (one of) my pod_together partner(s), semperfiona's Discworld pod: [Podfic] Radio Killed the Semaphore Star, because I read the footnotes for the podfic version).

This still isn't amazing compared with my fic output,^* and that is also in large part because I have also had tech issues that have held me back with podfic. My microphone is, by all accounts I've seen online from audiophiles, Very Good and an exceptional XLR condenser mic at its price point, and I haven't read any horror stories about the audio interface or XLR cables I use, but consistently it has recorded incredibly quietly for me, even with the gain on the audio interface set as high as it will go. I have kind of improved that as of this evening, because apparently some versions of Windows set the input audio levels very low by default and you have to manually change them in settings, so that was a big part of the issue, but I still have to set my gain up higher than I'd like to get the audio to a place where I don't have to drastically change the volume when I normalise it to between 19 and 16 LUFS, because I lose a lot of the audio quality with huge changes from very quiet to very loud, but if I set the gain as high as I think is appropriate then I get a hiss that I have to take out with two rounds of noise reduction that, to my ear, takes a lot of the warmth out of the tone of my voice and makes me sound a little tinny.

I have gotten some feedback on this, though, and someone else said that they felt one round of noise reduction made the hiss inaudible unless they turned the volume up uncomfortably loud, so they at least would not notice it if that was what the final edited version of audio sounded like. I do think I will ask for an inline preamp for my mic for my birthday, just so I can set the gain as low as it will go. I have heard good things about the FetHead Phantom (I need to get one that allows phantom power to flow, since my mic needs 48V phantom power) and at €75 plus fifteen quid delivery, I would not feel outrageous asking my siblings and parents to chip in on it for my birthday present.

However! I have also recorded the last two pods I've done (plus the footnotes of the one I guest-voiced on) on my phone, which is like... definitely more than adequate! It's 1000% not a hobby that requires top of the line microphones and I would never recommend someone starting out get a mic before they've recorded a few pods on their phone or their laptop's in-built mic, or whatever they already have, and edited on an open source DAW like Audacity to see if they enjoy the hobby.

I did not, I hasten to add, run out and buy expensive equipment on a whim to try podfic. I ran out and bought expensive equipment on a whim, because at one point I had plans to do a Star Trek podcast with my friend that we kind of lost momentum on when we were Going Through It. So, basically, all the advice I had come across, when I was researching what to buy to start a podcast was aimed at people who were trying to make podcasting or other kinds of Content Creation™ a side-hustle. And, in that specific context, the getting highest quality audio you can afford out the gate is good advice,^** because good audio is a solid investment for someone who makes their living creating audio(/audio-visual) stuff online. If you buy something that isn't going to give you the kind of audio that people have come to expect from Content Creators™©® it's often just a false economy that will slow the growth of your career and you will have to replace it much sooner than if you'd even gone one tier up from the absolutely ground level of the budget options on the market.

But for podfic? Literally do not spent a fucking penny if you have anything at home already that can record audio, which you almost certainly do if you are in online fandom. Plenty of very prolific podficcers record on their phones (or on headset mics, or laptop mics, or whatever they had when they started out) for their entire tenure in the podfic fandom. And that's not only literally fine, it is a lot more typical than having a set-up comparable to someone whose job involves recording and editing audio just for podfic. And actually? Mics on smartphones have great audio quality that can sound better than a higher quality mic that someone who doesn't really know what they are doing (*raises hand*) is recording on, because they can be extremely sensitive to the point of picking up a pin dropping in the next room, while phones are literally designed to exclude outside sound. Because they're phones.

And like, I think I kinda know what to do with my set-up now, but it has taken a lot of trial and error and Google/YouTube/Reddit/Discord have turned up a lot of dead ends or told me to do things I've already done/not to do things I am not doing. If I hadn't already owned a mic and had just started out on my phone instead, I might have already recorded and posted a lot more podfics and I likely would never have felt the need to get a microphone. And, you know, it's very nice to know that I have the option of just using my phone when I don't feel like taking out all my equipment and setting up my mic stand and all that shite and it will be Fine. I'm not unhappy that I have such a nice mic and I do want to make it work as well as it can for me, given that I did buy it for that podcast that never happened, but I am glad that I don't feel like it is the only option available to me that is up to my own standards for audio quality (which aren't even my own standards really, but those of some dads with YouTube channels, and I have been known to be very forgiving of pretty questionable audio quality when I've been listening to music or whatever in the past). And even if I get good enough at wrangling my mic that the quality is unequivocally and objectively Much Better than what I can achieve on a phone, I feel like I'm finally starting to escape from the prison of perfectionism and I'll be able to say and actually believe that doing something imperfectly is better than not doing it at all, because I don't feel up do doing it The Best That I (hypothetically) Could. I am feeling this in other parts of my life too, which has been great, but it is a very welcome change here.

But anyway, obviously I want to be empowered in non-fandom parts of my life by this, but I also am kind of excited to get more vids/books/etc. done because I'm gonna stop waiting to be able to whole-ass things that I can absolutely get done to a Good Enough standard with 45% of my ass. Like, I mean, I went from having recorded A podfic in January this year, and seven in the span of eight months, to having (at least contributed to) three in one month and honestly I think [podfic] Death with Dignity by Thebiwife is maybe my best work to date.^***

I think that I have this very warped idea of what I Should be able to do, because I am very, very productive and can perform to very high standards... sometimes. And over short periods of time through small bursts of effort that are not sustainable to do All The Time. I can't reasonably expect the same level of "productivity" and "quality" non-stop. It's like saying that Usain Bolt would be the fastest marathon runner in the world if he'd only stop giving up after 200 metres. And also... sometimes, it is Bad, Actually, when I am working that fast and that much and to such a high standard, because it means either I have put myself under too much pressure by overcommitting and/or procrastinating, or that I'm Doing A Hypomania, or all of the above, and then I crash hard and can hardly function on much more basic and essential level for however long it takes me to recover. Which is not good!

On the other hand, I do very much hesitate to say something like "I should just be Steady and Consistent and Never do things over short, intense sprints" here, because I don't really think that's realistic given how many times I have tried really hard to do that and it doesn't seem to be how my brain works, but also it's not always bad that I get bursts of energy where I do Lots of things to a very high standard. I don't think that I should expect it of myself as a default, and I don't think I should ignore when it can be a red flag or the result of a bad decision, but I don't think it's a bad and pathological thing that I need to ruthlessly stamp out. I remember when I was writing reams of Cobra Kai fic while incredibly depressed (or, I guess, having a mixed episode) and not being able to do various basic self care things that are pretty much non-negotiables like showering, but I don't think that I would have suddenly been able to do those things if I had cut myself off from my sole source of happiness because I wasn't allowed to have fun until I could Be Healthy.

So, yeah, it's a pretty multifaceted thing, I guess. I think it would be healthy for me to let myself off the hook for not running the marathon in 01:07:28, and not basing my plans for the future around being able to do that, or thinking that it's something I Could do but am just being too lazy to apply myself to achieve because I'm a bad person who hates hard work, but I also have to allow myself to be happy when I can run 200 metres in 19.19 seconds and it's not hurting me in other areas. And I shouldn't hate myself for being a bad marathon runner no matter how fast or slow I can sprint right then. I can work on my marathon end time without being self-loathing about how I've Frivolously decided to be good at sprinting instead, because it must mean I'm a show off and have no stamina. I don't know if this metaphor is still working, but you basically get the idea.

^*Which is like, to be clear, not a problem. You don't need to focus completely equally on all the different things you do in fandom and it's not really surprising that a skill I've been working on almost ceaselessly since childhood that involves absolutely no technical skills involving hardware or software that are unfamiliar to me anymore, and only requires a machine (not saying computer here for a reason—I wrote a lot of fic on my phone that I posted to AO3 when my laptop was not cooperating for literally months) that has a word processor and an internet connection to create that kind of fanwork, and that I started doing in fandom years before I tried making other kinds of fanworks, is something that I generally do more of compared with my other fannish hobbies.
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^**Honestly, given that I did not want to monetise this podcast, I don't know what my excuse is. I think I got rather carried away and went mad, because I am extremely susceptible to dogmatic didacticism from people on the internet telling me the Best way to do things that Everyone should do and how Only A Fool would do the much more accessible and inexpensive thing. Don't let me near salespeople, basically.
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^***Which I say not because it was the first one I used effects on, but the one where I flubbed the fewest number of lines while recording it. I usually end up with raw audio that is ten times as long as the finished run time will be after editing, but I got this one out pretty fluently. And I think what made the difference there was that I used a (free) teleprompter desktop app when I was recording and tweaked my script a bit ahead of time instead of making decisions on the fly about whether I was going to add dialogue tags to make it less ambiguous who was speaking or to leave it as written. Literally a game changer and I strongly recommend it to anyone who records podfic hasn't tried one. I used to have the fic open on my phone and I'd be squinting at a tiny screen and trying to juggle a thousand bits of hardware at once and it was Rather Hard. I much prefer just reading off my laptop screen as it scrolls down a teleprompter with multiple font sizes that I can pause, speed up, slow down, and page up and down the playback of while I read into my phone. Fucking luxury compared to how I was living before, lol.

And, speaking of making small changes to the text like adding dialogue tags, I also started to be a bit more judicious about replacing descriptions of sounds (laughing, snorting, etc.) with just... doing that sound myself and changing the dialogue tag to "[they] said" and so on.

But, I mean, while I very much would still think this was my best work if I'd done any sound effects or not, I am also very proud of the soundscaping I did in that pod—in particular the section I did where Deanna's empathy overwhelms her in a crowd, which I tried to make a Stressful Listening Experience that evoked sensory overload in a way that would, hopefully, not just tip over into being too stressful to listen to for 100% of listeners (although I did make a version without sound effects and added warnings and timestamps, so that it was a completely opt-in experience). I got a lot of lovely feedback about that from people over last weekend during pod_together's listening jam where a bunch of us listened to and read stuff in this years collection and commented on it, keeping track of our comments and amount of time we spent listening over the weekend.

Collectively, I think we got to a very impressive 70+ hours and 150-ish comments. I was in the top five listeners and top five commenters, which I'm very pleased about, because historically I have had an awful habit of just... not looking through collections of events that I particate in very extensively, because I get overwhelmed and put it off. And then forget. Having a weekend long group thing, which included some communal listening hours hosted on the Discord as well as us doing our own thing, really helped me make it a priority.

Also, by the end of the weekend there was nothing left in the collection that didn't have any comments! This was a first for the exchange, as they've often had years go by before a particular years collection had comments on every work and this year we got to everyone within a week of the end of the event. Obviously people (and especially podficcers) aren't just creating their art to get praised, but it can be a bit of a bummer to work on something for an event and then not hear any feedback at all about it, and I think with podfic (which doesn't get a lot of love directed towards the creator at the best of times) it's disspiriting because it can feel like "Oh wow, even when I'm making something for a podfic-centric event, there are not going to be a lot of people who like or care about what I do, and the few who do don't tell me about it." In my case, I went from having no (0) comments on Death with Dignity (which, as I mentioned, I think is my best podfic to date) to having six very generous and thoughtful ones in a few days, and I'm very glad that I got to pay that kindness forward to other participants.
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Anyway, TL;DR, if there's something that is genuinely pretty accessible you want to try, but there are barriers to entry that you are actively opting in to by expecting that you have to be an expert or have expensive specialist equipment right away, then you have my permission to be a beginner and to have fun half-assing things with whatever you have that'll get the job done. And, although this is not at all the point of hobbies, you will ultimately get better by half-assing lots of things than you will by dreaming of what you could accomplish with your whole ass and not doing anything. And some day 10% of your ass and Tony Stark's figurative pile of scraps will be able to accomplish what your whole ass and all the expensive tools in the world could not even hope to right now. But also, while it's not bad to want to do things well or to care about craftsmanship, it is very, very important not to let anxiety about the quality of what you can produce at your skill level, and with the tools available to you, ruin the fun you could have with the process of getting there.

Comments

[kavyina]

As a fellow Renegade Publishing member, congratulations on making your first books!

[obstinatecondolement]

Thank you! I broke my duck doing the Tiny Books Bang.

[kavyina]

Oh jeez, thanks for reminding me that I never actually posted pictures of my finished books for Tiny Books Bang...

[amado1]

That's a good point about the lack of interaction. Podfics are a lot of work for very little reward. I think people go into them, like them, and then think, "Oh, but this chick didn't WRITE the fic," so then they don't leave any sort of comment -- on sound effects, on acting, clarity, stylistic choices, music.

(I think the first time anyone podficced for me, it was an H.P. Lovecraft fic I wrote for "The Colour Out of Space." I was blown away by the sound effects and the creepy atmosphere.)

Anyway, I think it sucks, because like I said, y'all put a LOT of time and effort into these for very little appreciation.

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realise how much work and skill goes into podfic, both creative and technical. But it's kind of weird, because these same people will swoon over an actor's interpretation of a character without being like "Well, they didn't write the script though, so who cares?"

On the other hand, to be fair, I do also think a lot of the lack of interaction is more benign and along the lines of people downloading stuff to listen to later and then because there's the extra steps of remembering to go back to the AO3 work and write a comment based on your memory of the podfic maybe days later, it's less likely that they will comment. This was also the basic conclusion I drew from the phenomenon of people leaving rave reviews of fic in private discord servers where the author would never see it and then not commenting on the fic itself. I don't think it's a deliberate snub, it's just that ever extra step is a place where more people fall off, since commenting it already something only a minority of readers do.

I think it's also a platform thing? Like I get next to no comments on AO3 for my vids if it's not posted for a con or a vidding event, but I think that's because people mostly are not going to AO3 for vids and will scroll past them in the tag. But I have no interest in uploading vids to YouTube where the General Public will stumble across them in non-fandom contexts, so it is what it is to a certain extent.

Honestly, vidding and making podfics has kind of been good for me in the sense that it's made me value making fanworks as an end in itself as opposed to being as caught up on what people think of it/tell me about it. Although, very much at the same time, it's also nice to appreciate and recognise people's work and artistry, and I am glad that I participated in that weekend listening jam to do that.

[amado1]

I don't think it's a deliberate snub, it's just that ever extra step is a place where more people fall off, since commenting it already something only a minority of readers do.

Right, that's a good point. The discord commenting is something we've talked about before, I think, and remains true XD

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, I think that almost always people don't intend to offend or go out of their way to ignore people or diminish their work. They just don't go out of their way to comment either, which is pretty much the default.

[vriddy]

Really thoughtful and encouraging post!! Thank you for sharing. Your thoughts around what "sustainable effort" can look like over time is giving me a lot to think about as well.

[obstinatecondolement]

I'm glad it was encouraging! I definitely do think that people who are prone to perfectionism psych themselves out of getting started a lot of the time and have impossible standards that no one but they expect them to meet, so I've certainly found it quite liberating to try and get some distance from the idea that I have to be doing things The Best Way and to the absolute highest standard of an expert whose been doing something for years the very first time I try it out. Because like, no one ever get to the standard of an expert if they don't practice and make novice mistakes! And they will also miss out on having a lot of fun and making things that are Pretty Good that a lot of people will enjoy, even if they aren't Perfect per the standards in the creator's head. Which is an easy lesson to get on an intellectual level, I guess, but I think I'm starting to turn a corner into believing it on a more emotional level.