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Stop, Look, And Listen
December 9, 2016
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. For an interview -- static for long stretches -- or, especially, for something that requires theater-of-the-mind richness, whether it's radio drama or news reporting on location, audio can go where video can't, and it can convey what you want more economically (in every sense of the term) than video. And if you want that content to be portable, while video is obviously popular on mobile devices, audio lets you reach people where and when video can't -- in the car, for one example.
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I'm working on some projects these days that could have gone either way- they could have been podcasts, and could be video. One of them's going to video, and when I made that call, I thought about how you make that call - how you decide when something should go visual or aural.
It's not obvious. Obvious would be "well, if there's something you NEED to look at, go video, and otherwise, go audio." That wasn't the determining factor for my decision. Weirdly enough, video is EASIER to do, thanks to ubiquitous high-quality cameras in cell phones and the proliferation of platforms, from the tried-and-true YouTube and Vimeo to Facebook Live and Periscope, which are point-and-shoot to the extreme. You CAN spend a LOT more money and time on video, but for a project like mine, it's far from necessary - I'll explain in a moment. Podcasting needs a little more attention - you CAN just talk into a USB mic and slap the result on Soundcloud or Libsyn in minutes without editing, but you're competing with shows that spend a lot more time on production. Ever agonize over music rights and editing and logos? Yeah, that.
In my case, I needed something that was suitable for short-form content, and something that could be done live and then taken without edits to be available as part of another medium. Audio can be embedded, but it doesn't have the shareability (Clammr and public radio's clip technologies notwithstanding) and I would not want to put this particular stuff up without adequate audio production values. On video, I can just tape it in a couple of minutes and grab the code and embed or link, it's more shareable, and it's more adaptable to the way people will use the content. So, video it is.
But for an interview -- static for long stretches -- or, especially, for something that requires theater-of-the-mind richness, whether it's radio drama or news reporting on location, audio can go where video can't, and it can convey what you want more economically (in every sense of the term) than video. And if you want that content to be portable, while video is obviously popular on mobile devices, audio lets you reach people where and when video can't -- in the car, for one example.
There's room for you to do both. And you should, because it's that easy.
Got a question about podcasting? Go ahead, send it to psimon@allaccess.com or tweet it at @pmsimon. That's what I'm here for.
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