Call me AWARD WINNING Podcast Producer from now on!

The educational podcast I helped produce won an educational grant.

We are all happy about this and are already talking about next year’s class’s podcast.

Happy days!

What is Consumption? Consumption is a disease that plagues artists.

Here is the last of the educational podcasts. This one was fun to edit because I had all of this random accordion music with nowhere to go, and there were so many conversational beats that seemed to perfectly match some of this orphan music.

This was done in one take with Anita reading from a script and Elmo improvising. Several of us had to physically cover our mouths or leave the room or something to keep from laughing during the recording session.

What a fun time we had. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it again next semester or not, or if we’ll be able to top this, but I’m up for it.

Here is consumption.

Surreal Educational Podcast

This podcast is all me.

Like most self-conscious people, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of my voice. And there are parts of this that make me cringe. I also think it sounds a little over-produced in some places.

Having said all that, I think there are some really good bits in this. I like the entire idea of surrealism being presented like it was a monster truck rally, and the echo effect when I say SIGMUND FREUD is pretty cool.

I want to say that the idea behind this podcast is some sort of meta-commentary about how surrealism started out as this interesting thought experiment in the artistic community and quickly devolved into a lowest common denominator form of entertainment which continues to ripple through our culture, destroying the lines between “high art” and “low art” to the point where visiting a museum and going to a monster truck rally are indistinguishable, BUT the truth of the matter is that I can only do one or two funny voices, and the Truck Rally Announcer voice had to fit in somewhere here.

Having said all that, here is the surrealism podcast!

Strange, Strange Educational Podcast

Here is the latest in the educational podcasts I produced for an art class. How many have we done so far? 8? 9? I can’t remember. I do remember that this is my favorite one for a lot.

We were into our second bottle of wine for the night at the point when this was recorded. And our Man of 1,000 Voices just started improvising and riffing at this point. There were some verbal gaffes, but we just plowed through them. In other words, this was recorded in one take.

I was looking for an excuse to experiment with some new Reggaeton loops, and this podcast provided me with a great opportunity. On a sonic level, I like how well the voice and music work together with the voice in the sonic foreground and the music in the sonic background. All the podcasts were edited with me listening to headphones, but I didn’t try them out on car stereos or CD players until after they were already sent along. Some of them aren’t as dynamic once you pump them through a non-headphone environment.

This one, however, still works. I really like it and will use it as a portfolio piece in case anyone wants me to produce more podcasts for them. It makes my wife cringe every time I say this, but I work cheap.

The Godfather Reads Poems

That is the theory, at least.

Here is a nice little poem called, "The Master."

And, yes, it is one more in the educational podcast series.

How much education can you fit into a podcast? How about one blog post?

One of the drawbacks about podcasting is that I haven't found a way to put more than one .mp3 file into a single blog entry. I am three entries behind in sharing the World Famous Photography Podcast with you, and instead of putting all three in one entry, I have to split it out into three. Otherwise the people subscribing to the podcast feed associated to this blog will miss out on two of them.

Yeah... I've probably bored you out of your mind. This will excite you, though:

Cubism!

I have been remiss in sharing all of my internet exploits!

The educational podcast continues!

And look! The students are getting their photos posted on the blog.

I also made it onto the Filmspotting year-end show, and the Filmspotting guys did a great job of giving me billing over Ira Glass. What is up with that?

If you want to hear just my little contribution to the podcast, it is here.

Note: Although I really liked Children of Men, it made my wife sick. The handheld camerawork made her nauseous and the violence was too much. So if you don’t like the movie, there is someone in the household who is on your side.

One Man Show

The famous Horton educational podcast continues!

This one has me talking on it. Although Me, the actor, really loved hamming it up and shoving fingers up my nose while talking, Me, the director thought the performance was hammy. To round it out, Me, the editor, just had fun mixing in burps whenever possible.

All in the name of education...

More Education (in Podcast Form)

The latest educational podcast is up. This is the first one where you can really hear some of my contributions (the scoring, primarily).

Email me privately and I'll tell you a funny story about an early take of the David and Goliath portion of the podcast.

Shhhh! Podcast in progress

The educational podcast I produced is up and running. I received this nice little email from the teacher:

Okay, the day I introduced it, I played “the test” in my classroom, as I was explaining. I could tell the kids wanted to laugh, but they are too cool to do so, so I observed them just looking at each other, like I was totally off my rocker.

With an explaination that I wouldn’t do it again, we listened to Christy’s “Gray or Grey” in class. I explained that I wouldn’t talk with them about the subject matter, but I would answer technical questions.

I’ve been receiving their Lesson 1: Gray or Grey homework photos and they, for the most part, are so cool!!! I think they are enjoying the work. Today I gave them the permission to “do” the next assignment: Impressionism. It’s all so new to them that I don’t have a full impression of what they are thinking, but I will keep you posted.


Rich blessings my friend,
anita

***

And, because I want to share, here is Week 2: Impressionism.

What does a producer do, excactly?

I produced an educational podcast for a friend. Actually, I did very little, but I like the idea of having the word "Producer" on my resume and no one involved in the project has objected, so it is sticking. Maybe if I do even less next time, I can bill myself as an "Executive Producer."

Anyway, the first episode launched today.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.archive.org/download/AnitaHortonPhotoAssignmentGrey_0/Horton_ArtClass_GreySpeak1.mp3

Or subscribe to the podcast here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MrsHortonsSchoolOfAdvancedArt

There will be 10 Episodes, one a week, for the next 10 school weeks.

Enjoy!

Podcasts I Like: My Favorite Podcast

There are podcasts I can’t wait to listen to. Buzz Out Loud is a podcast I start listening to about 5 seconds after I download it. Same goes for Filmspotting.

But I will say this about all of them – they’re temporal. Sure these podcasts occasionally have moments that merit revisiting (how I wish for an eventual Best of Massacre Theater CD), but none of them leave me wanting to hear the entire podcast again.

This brings me to Audition. Audition is the official podcast of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Not only is every podcast a real treat, they all can be heard over and over with little or no diminishing returns.

Here’s why – they’re not dumbed-down. These are academics or writers writing to academics, and they love talking about the high-minded and esoteric. So sometimes it takes a few listens to really understand what is being said. And once an understanding is obtained, either a counter-argument forms or a challenge is presented to your life. Either way, you are transformed on a very fundamental level by the information presented.

The most recent podcast is a perfect example of this – it covers discussions of W.H. Auden, Flannery O’Connor, and C. S. Lewis. I have a cursory reading relationship with all of these authors, but this program made me want to return to them, devour and savor each of their collected works, and then relisten to the podcast. It makes me want to write my thoughts down and send them to the interviewees, and add my own thoughts to the discussion.

In short, it makes me want to be a better person.

It reminds me of what I love about higher education - the passion for ideas and the insight that comes with intellectual discourse. If only there was a way to have experience that without experiencing the soul-sucking bureaucracy known as the Registrar’s office.

Oh wait, there is a way for this to happen. It is called listening to this podcast.

Podcasts I Like: Professional Podcasts

Part of the entire appeal of podcasting is that it is relatively cheap to become a home audio producer. Plus there is the whole community aspect to it – you don’t know who your next-door neighbors are, but there are about 30 or so podcasters who regularly check in with you.

This is all nice, but a quick glance at the iTunes Top Ten Podcasts shows you that professionally produced podcasts dominate the market. Some of them are existing radio shows being distributed on the internet, and some of them are from existing media empires branching out into the world of podcasting. Either way, they set the standard for what podcasts should aspire to.

So I decided to list out all of my favorite podcasts created by major media outlet. I’m putting This American Life and all of the news podcasts (even the fake news podcast from The Onion) I listen to are in a little penalty box. Seriously, they do not need me to blog about them to get more listeners.

1. Slate / Slate Explainer – I never read Slate Magazine before they started doing podcasts. (And, to be honest, the main reason I first subscribed to the podcast was because Slate has a column about neat podcasts to listen to.) Every day, the podcast presents either an article reading or discussion about a news item. And on Fridays, they have a political gabfest.

2. On the Media – My second favorite NPR program (next to This American Life). It is a media program about the media. Sounds like a potential for a navel-gazing mess, doesn’t it? But it is not, it is one of the most insightful programs about what it is like to live a mediated existence.

3. Left, Right, and Center – Every Friday, I get a one-two punch of this political talk show and the Slate Political Gabfest. Does it make me smarter? No. Does it make me understand politics more? Not really. Does it make me keenly aware how most pundits are more personality then principle? You betcha. You can also make a drinking game out of how many times there are screaming talking heads on a show that claims to be an antidote to screaming talking heads.

4. Creative Screenwriting – If you’ve ever aspired to be a screenwriter, this is the podcast to listen to. Basically, it is a one-on-one conversation with a screenwriter about a completed film. One of my favorite ones is the interview with Zac Penn discussing the script to X3: The Last Stand. Basically, he says that screenwriters on big-budget action films wind up being the logic police more than anything else. The director thinks it would be cool if such-and-such character fought such-and-such character so it is the screenwriter’s job to provide the motivation in a way that makes sense. Truly fascinating.

5. Fanboy Radio – It is so easy to love comics when you are listening to people who love comics.

Test test test

Ok, so in my spare time I'm producing an educational podcast. I'm doing things a little differently behind-the-scenes wise, and need to tweak things here and there.

So I'm putting out this test file to see if this works.

Pay no attention to this post.

Podcasts I Like: Techie Podcasts

Remember how you searched for the word “the” on Google and got over 15,470,000,000 responses? Ok, when you search for technology-related podcasts, you will get about twice that number.

Narrowing it down to five was difficult, and I might get some heat because three of the five come from CNET. Sorry folks, CNET does some really great work. They deserve every bit of kudos the world has to offer.

These techie podcasts reflect more of my particular sensibilities, too. They are geeky, but still accessible for tha layman with interest in the shiny fandangle world of the internets. Many of these podcasts also focus on the business and politics of technology, which can be even more interesting than eloquent code.

1. Buzz Out Loud from CNET – This is the news of the day bundled with commentary and snark. What really makes this (and all of CNET’s podcasts, really) stand out from the crowd is the combination of vibrant personalities and the awareness that the audience is going to be a mix of super-techies and non-techies. You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to “get” the show – it works on the layman’s level as well. Plus 2/3 of the people on the shows are ladies who like technology. Anthropologists should listen to this show just to observe the peek into internet-based gender relations. (My favorite moments are the occasional bits of pleading centered around “Stop the marriage proposals.”)
2. Slashdot Review – Andy McCasky reads the headlines from Slashdot, and adds an occasional piece of commentary. This is a great, brief dash of technology news that is perfect for driving to work.
3. One Minute Tip – It is very rarely exactly one minute long, but this podcast contains a little, “nice to know” tip on a weekly basis. Most of the tips focus on iTunes, Photoshop, and Macintosh issues, but every once in awhile, other topics are discussed.
   
4. Tech News from News.com – This is like Buzz Out Loud minus the snark and commentary. Just the news, with an occasional reporters roundtable. If anything, it should fill aspiring podcasters with hope, because at least once a week, they blow a line and have to start over.
5. The Real Deal from CNET – Oh, how I love this podcast. Not necessarily because every podcast is a real winner, but because whenever someone asks me about a popular form of technology, all I have to do is refer him or her to this podcast for a high-level overview of the topic. Say your mom wants to start a blog, just send her to the Real Deal blog podcast. Say your uncle wants to know the lowdown on Ubuntu, send him to the Real Deal podcast about Ubuntu. Directing people to this podcast will make your non-techie pals happy they came to you, but without you going to all that effort of directly helping them.
   

Podcasts I Like: Home-Grown Podcasts

In theory, I run a podcast on this blog. I haven’t made an entry in awhile, but that doesn’t mean I’m not involved in the podcast community. Mainly, my participation is limited to listening. And sometimes, like in this and the next few blog entries entries, I list them out for the world to see.

I’ve divided my main list into categories for easy consumption. This list is comprised of my favorite home-grown podcasts. These are podcasts started by people not associated with the mass media industry. Some are more professional sounding with others, but all contain the goodness of regular people taking the power of media into their own hands.

1. Filmspotting / Reel Reviews – I love movies, and these are the two best movie podcasts out there. Filmspotting is the better of the two, primarily because it comes out on a regular basis and it is more of a conversation about current films rather than a monologue/gush about one particular film.
2. Rocketboom – This is a Monday to Friday daily video podcast starring Joanne Colan. To be completely honest, I had not even heard of it until the original hostess, Amanda Congdon, left the show in a flurry of publicity. The show is fairly random, focusing on “whatever we discovered that is neat today.” There is some techie news, some political news, some internet news, and some silly stuff (like Joanne wandering around Central Park asking people to dance a waltz with her).
3. AlterEgo / Comic Pants – These are both podcasts by a bunch of guys in a comic shop and it sounds like… like a bunch of guys hanging out in a comic shop. These podcasts are about an hour long each and are really fun for the niche market that is the uber goober crowd.
4. Winecast – Tim Elliott loves to talk about wine, and his passion inspires me to care more about wine. This podcast has a special place in my heart, because through it, I found my favorite winery – Humanitas Wines.
5. Thing a Week – Jonathan Coulton puts out a song a week, more or less. For whatever reason, I forgot to include him in my monster music blog entry. There is some really great stuff here.

Next entry – tech podcasts!

Where did you hear that?

I don’t listen to radio anymore, and if on the odd chance I do, I listen to talk radio (primarily NPR). But I like finding out about new music. So where are some good places for internet-savvy folk?

Aquarium Drunkard (Aquarium Drunkard MySpace)

Good: Great music posted on a blog. Almost every day, at least two mp3s turn up. There is a little bit of everything in there, whether it be contemporary or classic rock. Most of the music is of the rock/pop variety – very little classical-classical or jazz.

Bad: Despite the fact it has an RSS feed – for whatever reason iTunes doesn’t “see” the mp3 files. You have to go to the webpage and manually download the songs. PLUS, I have NO IDEA how they get away with it. I keep expecting one day to find the website shut down with a little note saying “You came to this website – we’re coming for you NEXT!”

Format: mp3

Frequency: Random, but often

Time: One song at a time

Dallas Does Indie (Dallas Does Indie MySpace)

Good: A nice mix of independent artists, put together in one big sound file. It is like an alternarock mixtape, with the occasional piece from Louis Armstrong or other vintage jazz or blues artist.

Bad: Sometimes the episode is a repeat – but that isn’t all that bad, really.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Weekly

Time: About 30 minutes

Coverville

Good: One of the best theme-based music podcasts. Brian Ibbott is one of the most personable podcasters out there. This is truly Brian's love, and that shines through. Usually, there are six songs per show, and sometimes there is a thematic link between the songs.

Bad: Brian says um a lot. You may choose to think of this as a charming foible.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Two to three times a week

Time: Thirty minutes to an hour

Not Lame Podcast

Good: Coverville’s Brian Ibbott puts together a list of catchy power pop songs for people to listen to. He chats between songs and is seems less like a podcast than like a cool friend playing you some choice tracks from his CD collection.

Bad: One of my buddies says you can make a drinking game out of how many times Brian says a song sounds like it was influenced by Elvis Costello.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Sorta Monthly

Time: Thirty to forty-five minutes

NPR's Song of the Day

Good: Oh how I love it when people with great taste pass along good music. If I haven’t liked the song, I have at least respected it as a representation for a genre.

Bad: This is all streamed media so you have to go to the NPR website and click the “Listen” button. You can’t download or load up your.mp3 player with this music. There are no links to the iTunes listing for the song, the Amazon listing for the album or the artist’s web site.

Format: Streaming

Frequency: Updated Daily

Time: One pop song length

NPR’s “All Songs Considered” Podcast.

Good: Full-on live concerts from beginning to end. Usually about an hour’s worth of music.

Bad: All the problems with live recording – the sound quality isn’t always the best. The crowd cheering and singing along tends to dominate the music. Sometimes the concerts are not mixed well (in particular, the drums tend to drown out the singer). In between song banter isn’t always entertaining. Because it is an hour, the file size is really, really large.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Sorta Weekly

Time: One concert – usually a half-hour to an hour

KUT’s Austin Music Minute

Good: Austin is a great place for live music. Every day, KUT gives the equivalent of a one-minute shout-out to a band.

Bad: Sometimes one minute just isn’t enough. Right when the song gets good, the podcast ends. This is essentially a commercial for a live show playing somewhere in Austin.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Daily Monday through Friday

Time: One minute EXACTLY

KUT’s Radio witout Borders Live Music Podcast

Good: A nice mix of local and national acts playing live in KUT’s studios.

Bad: The fidelity of the recordings isn’t the best because KUT’s recording equipment is just average. But this is incredibly nitpicky.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Weekly

Time: About half an hour

New York Times Popcast

Good: The staff of the New York Times do what they do in the paper – interview bands and review albums. Only this time, it is an audio version and it includes snippets from the songs so you can hear when they’re talking about when they tell you Jessica Simpson’s new album is “total crapola.”

Bad: Like all music critics, these people are very opinionated and occasionally very, very wrong. Also, you don’t get whole songs as much as song snippets with critics talking over them.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Weekly

Time: About 15 to 20 minutes.

Dallas Observer Music Blog

Good: Full mp3s of Dallas-based musicians that are posted willy-nilly in the Dall Observer’s blog.

Bad: Not updated regularly and can’t sync up with a podcast reader like iTunes. You have to read the blog entry (which may or may not be related to the song) and then manually download the song.

Format: mp3

Frequency: Whenever they feel like it

Time: One song at a time

AcidPlanet

Good: Lots of electronic music strung together for hours.

Bad: Lots of electronic music strung together for hours.

Format: Podcast

Frequency: Various – there are several different podcasts on the site, and they all say they are different, but to be completely honest, I cannot tell the difference between trance and emo and high-energy trip hop. It is all thump thump thump with some keyboards thrown in. It all sounds like the time Strong Bad made a techno song. The main reason I listen to these podcasts is to give me ideas on how to use the Sony Acid software package I own.

Time: Various, but most of them last an hour

Where I don’t go

MySpace

MySpace is a great place to connect with bands after you’ve found them, but it is not a good space to explore and find new bands. Here’s why – the MySpace player is fundamentally flawed. If you want to listen to a song, you cannot navigate away from the particular MySpace page without the song stopping. To be completely honest, what MySpace page merits 3 to 5 minutes worth of attention? Puh-leese.