| Get organized.
As my friend Elaine Grant likes to say, an interview isn’t just a conversation. It’s a conversation with a destination.
Don’t just meander around, going in circles. Take just a few minutes before your interview to put your questions into a logical order. And if things go wonky during the recording, that’s okay! But consider finding a straighter line by moving a few things around during editing!
Be friendly.
Plan for 5 minutes at the top of every recording session to warm up your guest. Some guests won’t need it. But some are gonna be nervous. Or overwhelmed.
Take a few minutes to just talk to them…like a normal human being. You can talk about the weather. Or what you had for breakfast. I don’t really care.
If they still seem hesitant, go ahead and explain the recording process (again) and let them see how relaxed and confident you are. Do this…even if you have to fake it!
After all, you are the pro here. It’s important for you to SEEM like you know what you’re doing!
Ditch the long intros.
You know that bio the guest sent you? I’m gonna need you to throw that thing out the window.
Respectfully.
Instead, describe your guest with no more than 10 words. Seriously. 10 words. Even if they’re the most brilliant and accomplished person you’ve ever met.
If you need to refer to more of the guest’s great work or brilliant accomplishments, figure out how to fold that info into the questions you ask. Nobody cares about all of that crap at the beginning of a conversation. But once you get into some of the juicy stuff, listeners are ready to learn more.
Record on separate tracks.
This suggestion is basically free and takes almost no time at all.
If you’re not doing this, you should re-think your life choices.
Once you have everyone recorded on separate tracks, you can get rid of awful things. Like a dog barking in the background of the person who isn’t talking, or really annoying crosstalk, or the incessant “hmms” and “ahhs” from a host who interjects too often.
So, yeah, EVENTUALLY, this could cost you quite a bit of time, depending on how nitpicky you are.
But that time is going to be sooooo worth it.
Wear headphones.
Ask your guest to wear headphones. If they don’t have any, send them a $9 pair of ear buds.
If everybody’s wearing headphones, you can turn off echo cancellation. And echo cancellation is evil. So, so bad.
Plus, you’ll eliminate computer dings. And you’ll be better able to hear problems with the recording during the recording session, when you’re hopefully better able to fix them.
Pay attention to where you put that mic!
Of the 20 entries I listened to for the International Women’s Podcasting Awards, at least half could have been VASTLY improved if someone had just taken a moment to think about mic placement.
For most microphones, you need to place that thing about one fist-length from your mouth and slightly to the side. It needs to be close, for best sound quality. But it needs to be slightly offset, so that you don’t get a ton of popped plosives. (More on that in a bit.)
This is free and it will take, literally, 20 seconds at the beginning of each recording session.
Really, people. You have no excuse!
Get rid of those popped plosives.
Even when you get your mic placement right, you sometimes still get a few popped plosives.
A little audio lesson here: A plosive is a sound that is made by stopping the release of air from your mouth and then suddenly releasing it. P’s are the classic troublemakers, but t’s, b’s, and d’s also tend to cause problems in audio. Put your hand in front of your mouth and say the word “opportunity.” Feel those pops of air? When those pops hit your microphone, they sound bad, bad, bad.
You’ve paid attention to this list, so you’re already wearing headphones during your recording. Listen for the pops and adjust your mic placement in real time, to minimize the amount of work you need to do later.
But if all else fails, you CAN get rid of popped plosives in post-production.
If your DAW has a de-plosive filter, run it. If not, try a bass cut. Or, zoom way, way in on your waveform and literally snip out the pop. They’re super easy to see and snip.
Professional podcasts do not have popped ps. And we all want to sound like professionals, right?
Ask the guest to record themselves using a smartphone.
Look, sometimes you call someone up on video chat, and they sound lovely! They’re in a non-reverberant room. They have a newish laptop. And they’re sitting close enough to their computer’s internal mic that their voice sounds full and clear.
But MOST of the time, unless the guest is using an external mic, they’re gonna sound like crap. Utter, utter crap. And, because you're wearing headphones, you're gonna be able to hear how bad they sound.
This is when you ask them to pull out their smartphone.
That free voice memo app is all they need. It comes pre-installed on the iPhone, so at most you’re just going to have to talk them through how to find it. You’ll have no idea how they’ve organized their apps, so I usually just tell people to swipe all the way to the left and use the search bar to look for “voice memo.”
Personally, I find this more difficult when the guest has an Android. But Android users are generally decently tech savvy.
People are gonna want to put the phone down on the desk in front of them. This will sound bad, bad, bad.
Instead, ask them to hold the phone as if they’re using it to make a phone call. That’s how the mic is meant to be used!
If they insist on holding it out in front of them (like they’re talking on speaker phone) ask them to hold it slightly to the side. Again, we are attempting to sound professional, and phone mics are notoriously bad with popped plosives.
And if the guest simply won’t agree to hold the thing, ask them to pile up a bunch of books and place the phone on top…so that the microphone is as close as possible and pointed toward their mouth.
Yeah, the whole process might take 5-10 minutes at the beginning of your recording session. But it’s totally gonna be worth it.
And you're gonna record the video chat, just in case the smartphone recording fails, right?
Right?!?
Do a little post-processing.
Learn how to use your DAW’s existing noise reduction, de-essing, mouth noise reduction and pop elimination tools. And when those fail, use one of the free AI tools. Whichever method you choose, you can make a LOT of improvements to your audio in 10 mins or less.
If you’re confused about how a tool works, just ask YouTube!
I guarantee, there will be at least one geeky dude (why are they always dudes?) who will explain the process in EXTREME detail.
So. Much. Detail. |
