Tall Tale Features / Tall Tale Radio

I know it’s the burning question of our age: “How DOES Tom create his podcast.” I must’ve had…gosh…one person ask me this, so due to overwhelming desire, here it is.

It starts…

….with inspiration. Or, really, just me reading the comics. (Man, if I got paid to do this, it’d really be the ultimate job, wouldn’t it?)  I send out emails to people I want to interview, and see if they’re interested and have the time. I get suggestions from colleagues in Tall Tale Features, other artists I know, fans who write me, and mostly from my own reading and interest level. I’ve found that by and large, cartoonists are extremely amiable folk, and love to talk about their craft. I’ve only had one outright refusal, and that was from the extremely talented and nice Walt Simonson, legend among comic book artists…and he had just come off a long spate of interviews and very nicely told me that he was just frankly sick of talking about himself! He said I should try again, and trust me…with the movie “Thor” on the way, I will have him on at some point.

Anyway…emails are sent out, schedules are made, and generally on Thursday nights around 5:30PM San Diego time, the curtain goes up and the magic begins.

I use Skype as my interviewing software of choice. I love that TalkShoe allows you to live, and I had a great talk with Kurt over at TGT Webcomics about this very subject, but quite honestly, I hate the sound quality. It’s great for having people in the chat and going out there live, but it has a long way to go in my opinion, sound-wise. I suspect it, or other options, will improve in the future to give us more of a call-in radio show type of situation. Until then, Skype it is.

Skype is by no means perfect, but let’s face it…it’s pretty $@#!&in’ cool. I either talk to my interviewee via Skype if they have an account, or I can call them directly. I love it when they have a Skype account and a microphone, as the sound quality is the best. Speaking of sound quality, here’s what I use:

It’s called the M-Audio Podcast factory, and you can find it out there for about $99. I’m not 100% sure they’re still making it, honestly…when I search for it, there seem to be conflicting reports. But, the bottom line is this…it’s a very simple XLR microphone with a USB hub box to hook into the computer. If you’re going to do a podcast, invest in a decent mic.  Keep in mind that mics are all over the map, cost-wise. You can literally spend thousands of dollars on a single mic, but let’s get realistic…you can get something perfectly serviceable in the $50-90 range. Don’t skimp and get some cheesy headset mic at Radio Shack for $19.99. Podcasting is ALL about sound; if you sound tinny, it won’t matter how cool your show is, ’cause no one will last 10 minutes.

There are other options…I have my eyes on this 4-channel mixer from Alesis so that I’ll be able to have multiple microphones for special occasions like Comic Con. (Note that the link takes you to BSW Audio…I do recommend them as a place to buy audio as I’ve ordered various things from them for both home and work, but I am not affiliated with them, so shop around.)

Bottom line: spend a little on a decent mic, ’cause it’ll make you sound like a pro.

I purchased a Skype add-on called “Call Recorder,” which was $19.95 and you can get here.  Note that I’m using a Macintosh MacBook Pro for all of this, so software will vary. There are a ton of choices for software and such out there, so find what you’re happy with and stick with it. Kurt over at TGT Webcomics is chock full of information if you’re on a PC, so be sure to check him out.

Call Recorder is simplicity itself…you set up your call, and when you’re ready to record, you click the big red button, and just start a-talkin’.  It’ll make a nice file on your computer (runs about 2.3GB for an hour, so have some space on your hard drive…these ain’t small files.) On a podcasting stylistic note, I never start recording until I’ve chatted with my guest(s) for a bit. I want to put them at ease, and I think calling someone up and ambushing them by recording them right away is less professional than taking some time to chat with them a bit. Besides, there’s usually about 15 seconds of awkward silence or stumbling on each other’s words before you start, so I like to give everyone a head’s up that we’re about to start recording.

I won’t go into too much detail about the interview process. Let’s just say I do a lot of research, read through as much of someone’s archive that I can, and I write down a bunch of questions before the interview. If I can, I’ll email my victim…um, guest…and give them a head’s up about the line of questioning I’m thinking about going down. Gives them a little time to prepare and suggest topics I might not have thought about.  I’m not a journalist, and I’m not out there trying to be controversial, so if there’s a topic that might be a little dicey (religion, politics, shuffleboard) that I want to take on, I’ll clear it with them to be sure we don’t have any reeeeeeeally uncomfortable moments. When I had Wes Molebash and Brock Heasley on recently, both men are very spiritual and Christian, and it infuses their work and writing, so it was a natural topic to go down. I checked with both, and we had a really great discussion on the topic. Maybe one of these days I’ll get Ted Rall and Scott Kurtz on, and see what happens.

The next several steps are pretty technical and a bit complex. As of right now, I use GarageBand for the Mac to edit and mix the final podcast. It’s by no means a perfect program, but it is quick and easy.  I have Soundtrack Pro at work, and it’s a much deeper program, but 1.) I don’t have it on the laptop, and 2.) it’d sort of like using a bazooka to kill a fly. A lot of the technical dance I do might change in the future, but for now, this is what I have to do:

–The Call Recorder file is a Quicktime movie file, and GarageBand won’t read them directly. So, I downloaded a free suite of programs from E-camm, the people who make the Call Recorder plug-in. The first thing to do is to drag the raw QT recorded file to a program called “Split Movie Tracks.”

This takes the raw file and splits it into two separate tracks…my voice alone, and my interviewee(s) on the other.  This might seem a little weird, but it allows me a TON of flexibility when I edit. If my track and their track are separate, I can edit out coughs, silences, accidental mic hits, etc. I don’t do a lot of editing like that, but occasionally, you really need that flexibility. I do have to pump up my voice for some reason…my track always comes out at a fairly low level compared to the interviewee’s. I’m not sure why…I have the levels maxed out as high as I can without distortion, too, but it’s not a big deal.  I just use a simple filter in GarageBand called “Dynamics Processor” that allows me to boost the gain on my track. (And no, contrary to popular belief, I don’t us the “Super Sexaaay” filter. That’s all me and my dulcet tones.)

There’s one more part to the pre-edit dance…the Split Movie Tracks program makes the one raw file into two .mov files, which are still not readable in GarageBand, so I have to use another conversion program that comes with that suite I downloaded…”Convert to AIFF.”  AIFF is the standard Mac sound format, so once I’ve converted the two movies files to the AIFF files, I just throw away the .mov files as they just take up space.  I generally archive the original raw file to an external hard drive or a DVD just in case; you never know when catastrophe will strike.

I create a new music project in GarageBand.  I don’t use the Podcast option because I just want more options to create music and sound effects, and the podcast option maxes out at just over an hour.  Most of my podcasts are around an hour, but I’ve been known to go over that sometimes, so you don’t want to run into that wall.

The way around it is to choose “Music Project” and to change the tempo setting to 80 from 120. (It has no effect on the sound, but it extends the length of time you can record.)  Once again, it’s not like I’m doing epic five hour opera-like episodes, but I’m all about the flexibility, baby.

After that, it’s all about editing. I sometimes divide shows into two halves if there’s a natural stopping point, or I’ll just let it run. I have rarely cut anything out of an episode for content…it’s 99% just tightening things up, getting rid of coughs and extraneous noises.  There is the occasional Skype burp where I lose connection with the people I’m chatting with, and I’ll do my best to edit around them…I pick up the conversation where it left off, or find a better transition. There have been several occasions where that’s just not possible, so instead of trying to be clever, I just play it up…I created an “Internet Interuption” sound effect and just try to find the comedy in the situation. Mostly, my approach is to let it be as natural as possible, and let the conversation flow.

After the the primary interview is edited, I’ll sometimes record a “news” segment, or add something fun, like a random stream of consciousness from Francesco Marciulliano of “Sally Forth,” and “Medium Large,” or more recently, the really cool pieces Jonathan Lemon of “Rabbits Against Magic” has been sending me.  Then it’s “Export to Disk” which creates an MP4 file, which means I have to do one more conversion dance to create an MP3, because that’s what iTunes and Comic Press like.

And now you know how I spend many a Sunday night. Life in the fast lane, baby.  If you have any questions, or if you want to know more, write me at talltaleradio@gmail.com.  If you’ve made it this far, I salute you, and severely question both your sanity and your taste…but I salute you nonetheless!