Latest / Story Scaling / Evolving Our Studio: Behind the Scenes of Design and Sound Excellence

Transcript

Evolving Our Studio: Behind the Scenes of Design and Sound Excellence · Story Scaling

0:00
Speaker 1: We are podcastvideoscom.
0:01
Speaker 1: Our goal is to educate, enlighten, engage and entertain.
0:05
Speaker 1: We believe in the power of love and transformation through storytelling.
0:08
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, women, girls, friends and family, I am Bang of podcastvideoscom.
0:18
Speaker 1: I am the marketing director and social media manager here, and I'm here with some really, really good people.
0:22
Speaker 1: In my personal opinion, to my left, I have my name is Brooke McNeely.
0:27
Speaker 2: I am the director of studio innovations here at Podcast Videos.
0:30
Speaker 3: And Parker Dodson, director of sales.
0:33
Speaker 1: Parker, it's been a long time since we've seen you in here I know man, it's been a hot minute.
0:37
Speaker 3: I'm in just meetings all the time.
0:38
Speaker 1: How do you?
0:38
Speaker 3: feel, being back in here and recording with you guys, I always get to come in and see y'all doing it and then I'm like, ah, I've got a meeting I've got to run out to, so I can't join you, kind of thing.
0:47
Speaker 1: You've been grinding bro.
0:48
Speaker 3: It feels good.
0:48
Speaker 3: It feels good to get back.
0:59
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I'm going to let you kick it right off.
1:01
Speaker 1: Today, we're talking about three things that you wish, but the basic ground level was, you know, all your brainchild.
1:07
Speaker 2: So there's a drawing.
1:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you come and visit you can see the Parker's drawing.
1:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kept it folded up in the drawer and then Bob took it out one day and framed it and I was like yeah we need to frame that.
1:18
Speaker 1: We got to see where we came from.
1:20
Speaker 3: It is kind of cool though to see like that original aspect kind of carry over into the final product, like the different things, like the piping and the shape of the front desk, things like that.
1:28
Speaker 3: It was kind of cool to see it.
1:29
Speaker 3: Man, it's hard to say like what you would change Again.
1:31
Speaker 3: We went into this very blind.
1:34
Speaker 3: The old studio I know Brooke had been there several times, you'd been there a couple of times too, you know and it was just kind of a working with what you had kind of scenario is acoustic curtains.
1:42
Speaker 3: It wasn't really a purpose built room, so all of these are purpose built.
1:46
Speaker 3: That's one of the main things.
1:47
Speaker 3: Like the exposed ceiling grid is cool.
1:48
Speaker 3: That's probably one of the main things that I would change.
1:50
Speaker 3: It serves its purpose.
1:52
Speaker 3: It needs a little bit of reinforcement here and there.
1:54
Speaker 3: Essentially, the cameras and lights in almost every room are pretty much in the same spots.
1:58
Speaker 3: Sure, Would be probably been really nice back to kind of know that and like, hey, let's just put maybe more of a central mounting system and then let's leave the ceiling there where it is, the rest of the spaces and maybe just put more sound dampening in there.
2:11
Speaker 1: What was the original purpose for the grid ceiling?
2:14
Speaker 3: Was it to just to mount equipment.
2:15
Speaker 3: OK because I mean, we kind of knew the room setups and, like we've already switched the lounge and the newsroom something that kind of like shows you the purpose was, if we needed to build a space that was incredibly flexible or we could just transform it any way we needed to, that we wouldn't have to remount back, screws out patch holes, repaint just to move our equipment around.
2:34
Speaker 3: With the grid system we can simply readjust the camera's lights and everything and it's just cutting a few zip ties, reattaching the mounts and that's about it.
2:41
Speaker 3: So it definitely serves its purpose.
2:43
Speaker 3: From that we don't need the amount of mounting points that we do have in here.
2:46
Speaker 3: But yeah, going back on that, I would probably do more of a centralized mounting.
2:51
Speaker 3: That's maybe a little bit more sturdy than just a ceiling grid, because that aluminum in there is a lot flimsier than you think it is.
2:55
Speaker 3: That was probably my first big cause.
2:58
Speaker 3: I came up here for about two to three weeks when we first built this out and I remember the very first time I went to mount one of those camera arms hanging on that grid system and it just started swinging and bending.
3:09
Speaker 2: I was like that's not going to work.
3:12
Speaker 3: So that was a brief moment of panic, because it was like this is how all the cameras are mounted, All the lights are mounted Like.
3:19
Speaker 3: If this doesn't work, the exposed ceiling grid is completely pointless.
3:23
Speaker 3: That would be the first big one work.
3:25
Speaker 3: The exposed ceiling grid is completely pointless.
3:26
Speaker 3: That would be the first big one.
3:28
Speaker 3: Second big one.
3:33
Speaker 2: You got to think back a little bit.
3:34
Speaker 2: I mean from a design perspective.
3:36
Speaker 3: What about the windows?
3:36
Speaker 3: We talked about the windows yesterday.
3:37
Speaker 3: The windows, yeah, so within people that have been in here, the conference room where we're recording right now, we have a little kind of side light window next to the door, which I really like.
3:43
Speaker 3: The original building plan that I had drawn out was when I did the 2D kind of overview of it for the three big studios on the right.
3:52
Speaker 3: I drew on the first studio like, hey, I want a little side light window and then the solo is a bigger window, thinking that that would get translated to okay, we want to put that in every studio, which it didn't.
4:02
Speaker 3: I'm glad that it necessarily didn't, especially in the solo studios, because if you imagine having a giant window in those rooms, it doesn't really work from an acoustic level Plus.
4:12
Speaker 3: Anytime you're trying to record, you're just staring out of a window the front room.
4:15
Speaker 3: It works because Bob sits there and he can see out in the lobby and people can see in there.
4:19
Speaker 3: That kind of stuff works really well.
4:20
Speaker 3: I would like to actually have a sidelight into all the other three rooms, as far as the larger ones go, Just because I think it is cool to be able to walk by see people in there talking.
4:29
Speaker 3: But it also kind of doesn't make you feel as closed off because kind of bringing me to my, one of my main things with the design is the whole black.
4:38
Speaker 3: I like the all black.
4:39
Speaker 3: I think it's very clean and you're obviously limited by what you can do when you're appealing to the masses.
4:46
Speaker 3: You can't just make everything completely customizable, or just because I think that the lounge room needs to have a brick wall and kind of have this vintage feel, somebody's going to come in that doesn't want that look at all and you're going to get hey, I would love to use the lounge room, but we're a tech company.
5:00
Speaker 3: That kind of vintage look isn't really our style, so it's kind of a give and take with that.
5:09
Speaker 3: I mean, there's certain aspects in it that I would probably have liked to have, maybe have different themes, you know, for each one.
5:12
Speaker 3: And if we all had like the same conference room set up in every room, that would be kind of cool.
5:17
Speaker 3: Like, hey, we don't really feature the lounge or we don't really feature the newsroom, it's all the conference table.
5:21
Speaker 3: But like, this room's an all black with led lighting kind of tech.
5:25
Speaker 3: Look, the middle room is a more of a.
5:28
Speaker 3: That's a wooden table with brick and, you know, bookshelves and just kind of a plants, different things like that, and then say the last room is whatever you wanted it to be, more of just an overall lighter color all the way around, when that would have been really cool to do too.
5:41
Speaker 3: But I think that's really nice to just give people the option of how do we provide offerings with different seating arrangements so that people can just kind of achieve a different look with it?
5:50
Speaker 3: Because, again, same thing with doing three different themed rooms.
5:54
Speaker 3: If we'd have done like the brick and then the lighter color, overall somebody, people are going to gravitate typically towards one.
5:59
Speaker 3: Well then, now we've got 90% capacity in this all black studio, whereas the vintage studio only has 10 capacity.
6:06
Speaker 3: So now we're looking at redoing that entire room to make it like this one so that we can handle the capacity.
6:11
Speaker 3: There's not really an easy solution there at all, um, but yeah, I mean, it was all just a concept, basically using a little bit of what we had at the old studio into.
6:18
Speaker 3: I think this will work right.
6:21
Speaker 3: I hope it does kind of situation and then it did to a degree.
6:25
Speaker 3: And then obviously Brooke came on and had, you know, a lot more knowledge and a lot of this stuff and really has taken it up to the next level.
6:31
Speaker 3: So I'd like you to kind of touch on that a little bit with just making everything set up to work.
6:36
Speaker 3: But how do we really make it to where it's optimized, better and more efficient for people and for our systems to a degree too?
6:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, really just going in there.
6:44
Speaker 2: I mean, what you did was amazing and so it's really good to have, like, especially this, this conference room, like the conference room I haven't even touched, like this one at all, like I haven't touched the audio.
6:53
Speaker 2: I haven't really touched like the way it's been, like you know, because this is again the most popular room and it works the best.
6:57
Speaker 2: Now it's just going in and like seeing, like how can we make this?
6:59
Speaker 2: Just like, take it to the next level, you know, and like, like with the shotgun mics, like you know, we realized that, like the shotgun mics, the sound goes up the ceiling, bounces back, comes into the mics.
7:08
Speaker 2: On the other side there's an echo, so we went and got more soundproofing.
7:12
Speaker 2: So you know, there's things that so we're like looking at, like soundproofing, we're looking at, um, different cameras, like 4k cameras.
7:18
Speaker 2: We can get them like out of your face and so they, they can get back on the wall.
7:22
Speaker 2: There's just a lot of stuff that we can do that you know, it's just kind of just like that builds on, like the foundations that Parker and Eric built in the beginning.
7:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I mean, technology is always changing.
7:33
Speaker 3: That's what's crazy.
7:34
Speaker 3: It is crazy we could be looking at moving to 4K and then next year some new crazy camera gets released and it's like release, and it's like, oh, this is what you have to have, and just, it'll be a never-ending cycle when it comes to that between microphones and interfaces, all that stuff.
7:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's different for everybody and all of these aspects of recording are super important, but for you particularly, what is it?
7:53
Speaker 1: That's like man, that audio is a little bit off man, that camera angle is a little bit off man.
7:58
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
7:59
Speaker 1: Like what's the most important or let me not say important, because I do think they're all of value, but like what's the thing that sticks out to you the most as the most crucial part of a recording the most crucial to you personally it kind of varies.
8:11
Speaker 3: I mean it's you know I will watch podcasts, like if I'm just have the time.
8:16
Speaker 3: For the most part, you know, a lot of times I'm just like probably 90% of other people, whereas I'm listening to the car, you percent of other people, whereas I'm listening to the car, you know, going to or from work or I'm mowing or whatever it may be.
8:29
Speaker 3: So I mostly listen to it.
8:30
Speaker 3: But I am very picky on how audio sounds and there's a couple of podcasts that I've even, you know, came across before, not obviously recorded here, but I'm like, oh, this content seems really interesting but it sounds terrible.
8:38
Speaker 3: Or the volume is so low that like I have it turned up all the way in my headphones and I still can't really hear them that off that well.
8:44
Speaker 3: So to me it's just having the quality.
8:47
Speaker 3: There's a major factor, um, because it adds the legitimacy to it automatically, like if I tune into it and you guys are ever, the volume is coming through nice, clean, crisp, it sounds well done.
8:59
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of, like you know, tone adjustments or volume level fluctuations, like that adds that kind of legitimacy, like this is done the right way.
9:07
Speaker 3: And then, from the video side, I mean, you know, some people just consume their podcast through like a YouTube channel, which is fantastic if they have the time to just kind of sit and watch it.
9:16
Speaker 3: But really the video side of it, to me, having that there is just so important from a social aspect.
9:21
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that more than anybody.
9:28
Speaker 3: I literally had a conversation with a lady yesterday who has a podcast.
9:29
Speaker 3: She does audio only and she's like I'm kind of having trouble with like getting people interested in it.
9:31
Speaker 3: And I'm like, well, how are you marketing it and how are you getting it out there?
9:34
Speaker 3: She's like, well, I'll just like post a, you know a little graphic that says check out the new episode.
9:39
Speaker 3: And I'm like, well, there's your issue.
9:41
Speaker 3: Like you're telling me to go listen and check this out without giving me a sample of what I'm getting into.
9:46
Speaker 3: And so I was talking to her about adding video to the, to the, the system that she has, because I'm like you can just immediately take so many social snippets that people can discover on Instagram or wherever else you're pushing it, because that's how people were consuming more content there.
10:01
Speaker 3: And you're just like you're already spending the time to come in and record and doing your content, which is fantastic.
10:06
Speaker 3: But just adding that video in there will really make it easier to market it and then be more appealing to people.
10:12
Speaker 3: Because if I come across an audio snippet that's just got an image of that show, I'm probably not going to listen to it because it's not visually catching for me.
10:19
Speaker 3: But if it's people in here talking and I can see that video snip and I'm going to go oh well, check this out.
10:24
Speaker 3: Hmm, that was really interesting.
10:26
Speaker 3: Let me pop over and check out where their their their content's at.
10:30
Speaker 3: So adding that aspect to it's really important.
10:32
Speaker 3: But yeah, to me personally, audio is a major thing.
10:35
Speaker 3: I'm glad Brooks come in because helping that, I always kind of had to struggle with the shotgun mice because I'm just not familiar with them.
10:42
Speaker 3: I knew that I wanted to try to get it to where, like in the lounge, especially the lounge like you don't really want to be sitting in a leather chair and then like swing a boom arm of a mic in front of you.
10:51
Speaker 3: It's just some places do that and it's fine, but I think with the ability to control sound and everything, but have the shotgun mics up there where you're just talking.
10:59
Speaker 3: There's no mic on the table.
11:00
Speaker 3: There's nothing to worry about proximity wise, um, because y'all know as well as I do, like somebody will come in and they'll sit down and do that, and then they do their whole episode and you're like, oh, that's not ideal, or?
11:12
Speaker 2: and I can't believe that yeah or yeah you'll see that person starts sitting back yeah, well, the worst is, if they like, do this, and then they start talking to you and then like you can't it.
11:23
Speaker 2: That's not how the mic works.
11:25
Speaker 2: It is directional.
11:26
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah.
11:27
Speaker 3: So I mean, you know the shotgun mics do at least help with that being able to.
11:31
Speaker 3: When you're sitting in that lounge room, it's not as much as a focus on your brain to hey, you need to stay right up here on this microphone.
11:37
Speaker 3: So I have a lot of people that have just started using the lounge room just because they're like, yes, I look, the look and feel of it, but they're like I just like not having to worry about having a mic in front of me, like I just like that feeling.
11:49
Speaker 3: So it's kind of interesting how, how it all unfolds that way yeah yeah, I back them up, though audio, audio is the most important thing.
11:55
Speaker 2: I think that's why I started with the audio, because, like people, you can forgive a lot of things, it's but but the audio.
12:01
Speaker 2: If you don't have the audio, you don't have people engaged and they're not listening totally and so that's why like audio is like number one, important for everything.
12:09
Speaker 2: Anything I've ever done with like film and is audio is number one.
12:13
Speaker 2: And then second is yeah, one that you want to have good angles and you want to have people in focus.
12:18
Speaker 2: You want to be able to see their face, because that's what people connect with is other faces right and so like.
12:23
Speaker 2: That's why you know, like when you put it out a social clip, you want to have like it should be engaging, it should be people that are like looking, you know you want to see that person that you're talking to.
12:31
Speaker 2: You want to see their eyes.
12:32
Speaker 2: That's like second, you know.
12:33
Speaker 1: But then, but, audio is always number one you know, it's interesting how much of this is subconscious, like you can tell when something is really a high quality recording and, like you said, you give it a different level of reverence in your mind, without even realizing it.
12:47
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, this is official, this sounds really good, whereas if you hear something that's a little bit less quality.
12:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:51
Speaker 1: Not to say that like People shouldn't create with what they have, but you can just instantly tell that difference.
12:58
Speaker 3: I mean it's like you.
12:59
Speaker 3: I mean being an artist.
13:00
Speaker 3: I mean I'm sure you've produced very rough cuts of songs where when you listen to it you're like, oh, it's good.
13:06
Speaker 3: But then whenever you come back and hear that final version of it, you're like okay.
13:09
Speaker 3: Like here's the depth of it, I can actually hear everything I want to now.
13:13
Speaker 3: So if you were just to release that rough cut you know some people like that sound overall, but like if you were just to release that rough cut and not the final version it just kind of takes away that like, oh okay, this, this went from.
13:26
Speaker 3: He just like recorded it in his garage on his own, which is still really cool.
13:29
Speaker 3: Right, this was done in like a professional studio where it actually sounds.
13:33
Speaker 3: Everything was mixed together, it's put together.
13:35
Speaker 3: So I mean that can have impact on people because it just again it adds that legitimacy to it.
13:40
Speaker 3: Like these people know what they're doing.
13:42
Speaker 3: It sounds good.
13:43
Speaker 1: For sure.
13:43
Speaker 1: You know it makes a difference.
13:44
Speaker 1: Well, and that's a really good point that you make With music.
13:47
Speaker 1: That's a style like that grunge, underground lo-fi, so there are some people that favor that.
13:58
Speaker 3: But in podcasting like less quality, you record it on a calculator.
14:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't want that, you never want that.
14:01
Speaker 1: It's a real question for you.
14:02
Speaker 1: Okay, you know we're talking about Parker.
14:04
Speaker 1: He came in and just kind of laid everything and a really, really good foundation, even as you mentioned, and then you came in and, just like I like to say, put the sauce on top of.
14:12
Speaker 1: You know late and so finish the sentence.
14:15
Speaker 1: You're about to build out a recording studio.
14:18
Speaker 1: Do not do blank do not.
14:24
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm having a hard time.
14:24
Speaker 3: I have one what I would say do not use hard surfaces from a sound thing something.
14:29
Speaker 3: I think if you're building a studio, to me it's all about controlling that room, like controlling the sound within that room.
14:37
Speaker 3: Like I had a meeting with a guy last week.
14:39
Speaker 3: He's got a practice that he's wanting to put a little corner podcast thing in, but he's like looking at putting it in like a conference room area that's going to have all laminate floors and I'm like now, granted, it's just going to be usually one or two people, that's not terrible.
14:52
Speaker 1: Right.
14:52
Speaker 3: But if you were to get four people in there trying to have a conversation, the sound is just going to be insane To me, the number one thing I would think of is just if I'm building out a new studio.
15:01
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's a do not do this.
15:03
Speaker 3: I would say the more focus should be choosing the right location for it within your space, because that's going to make a big, big impact.
15:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more like what to look for, what not to do.
15:13
Speaker 2: It's like this is these are the things to look for If you can control where the HVAC system goes don't put the HVAC system next to the biggest studio, move it as far away from the studios as possible, because, no matter what you do that HVAC is always going to be sound pollution.
15:29
Speaker 2: So it's more of just the things to look at.
15:32
Speaker 2: These are like when you walk into a room, these are the things you want to look at.
15:35
Speaker 2: It's like make sure that it's got yeah, have carpeting, make sure you can soundproof, make sure it's customizable.
15:43
Speaker 2: Because one thing I've learned since I've been here we're trying to standardize everything and make it really easy, but nobody wants standard.
15:50
Speaker 2: They want it.
15:50
Speaker 2: You have the base of standard, but then everybody comes in.
15:54
Speaker 2: They're like well, can I do this, can I do that, can I do this?
15:56
Speaker 2: So you need to be able to customize really quickly and then move it back to the standard really really quickly, which is another thing that we're working on right now.
16:03
Speaker 2: It's just like how can we just kind of make it customizable for like?
16:08
Speaker 2: You know?
16:08
Speaker 2: Okay, this is how you customize it for two people, this is how it's for four people, this is how it's it for, like, this certain family.
16:16
Speaker 3: But then you also want to be able to reset as fast as possible to go to like so another family can come in good point if you've got an existing location, picking a good room for your podcast would be like picking the same room for a tornado shelter, like an interior wall interior room.
16:32
Speaker 3: It has no external walls.
16:33
Speaker 3: So I mean, think about road noise or emergency vehicles like you can cut a lot of that stuff out.
16:36
Speaker 3: But an interior room as little as windows as you possibly can, just from a sound control perspective, the bigger the room, the more of an echo you're going to have.
16:44
Speaker 3: All automatically, um, not always.
16:46
Speaker 3: I mean, if it's super large sound can just kind of wander off into existence.
16:51
Speaker 3: But you know, having it's a nice small interior room like would just be perfect for it and then make sure has the carpet sound, dampen it as much as you can.
16:58
Speaker 3: Make sure there's not a you know person sitting in the office right next to you Whose phone rings 75 times a day like avoid that kind of stuff, because it can get really loud and distracting.
17:07
Speaker 2: Don't put it next to bathroom, don't put it next to a toilet flush Like you know, don't too, that I, we have one in our house and I love it.
17:18
Speaker 2: And so if you were in like a one-story building or if you're at the top, solar tubes have you ever seen a solar tube?
17:24
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
17:25
Speaker 2: So it's like this.
17:26
Speaker 2: It's like literally just a tube and it goes to the outside and like the light comes in and it bounces and refracts and then comes out and it's just, it just diffuses and it's like it's just the most.
17:36
Speaker 2: So it's like a skylight sort of it's a skylight, but it's really small and so you don't have to worry about like any kind of soundproofing and it diffuses the light and like it looks really beautiful.
17:44
Speaker 3: So is it kind of like a can light almost in a way?
17:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
17:52
Speaker 2: So it's like a little can light.
17:53
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that I would never do a podcast in my bathroom, the worst place to do a podcast.
17:56
Speaker 2: But if you have the opportunity, the capability of actually moving, if you have a way to put a solar tube in, then you get that natural light without getting the soundproofing problems.
18:10
Speaker 3: I've never even heard of one of those I'm very interested.
18:13
Speaker 2: That sounds kind of cool.
18:13
Speaker 2: That's fancy, bro.
18:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, solar tubes.
18:17
Speaker 3: Did you have those put in, or were they already in your house?
18:19
Speaker 2: No, we had them put in.
18:20
Speaker 2: When we redid the bathroom, the guy was like oh, you'll love this.
18:22
Speaker 2: And I was like, because it was the only room that doesn't have a window, Is it pretty bright yeah?
18:26
Speaker 2: It's so bright.
18:27
Speaker 2: I've had people come in.
18:28
Speaker 2: They're like I can't put it in here we're in a three-story building.
18:36
Speaker 3: I know I was like thinking If we ever build a single-story building Solar tubes.
18:39
Speaker 3: We don't even need studio lights.
18:42
Speaker 2: Just solar tubes, solar tubes.
18:43
Speaker 3: Love it.
18:44
Speaker 3: Final thoughts I mean for me it's like if you don't have the capacity to come in and record in the space but you want to do your late just consulting with people, hey, here's the type of equipment that we use in the space and then we've even gone in and built it out custom for people.
19:01
Speaker 3: So if you want a studio done or have a space or think you might have a space, give us a shout, we'll come by, check it out and build you out your own custom studio.
19:09
Speaker 2: That is such a sales guy Right.
19:11
Speaker 3: I love it, I love it, I love it.
19:13
Speaker 3: You can blame Eric for that.
19:14
Speaker 3: I.
19:15
Speaker 2: I would say you're never done Like you're never done, making it better.
19:19
Speaker 2: So don't ever, don't, ever think that once you have it set and you have it somewhere, that you like it, that you're ever done.
19:25
Speaker 2: You always want to keep looking for more stuff, cause yeah, cause technology is changing rapidly and everything is, and you can always be better.
19:32
Speaker 2: So that's my ender.
19:34
Speaker 1: Hey, as Parker mentioned, if you want to get into some recording, that's my ender.
19:38
Speaker 1: Hey, as Parker mentioned, if you want to get into some recording, come in, let us record for you.
19:43
Speaker 1: If you want to do your own thing, don't, let us record for you.
19:44
Speaker 1: I'm Bang.
19:44
Speaker 1: This is Brooke.
19:45
Speaker 1: We're Parker.
19:45
Speaker 1: We'll see y'all next time.
19:46
Speaker 1: Peace.
19:47
Speaker 1: We are PodcastVideoscom.
19:49
Speaker 1: Our goal is to educate, enlighten, engage and entertain.
19:52
Speaker 1: We believe in the power of love and transformation.