As part of my research for this project I have listened to a number of popular podcasts that explore similar ideas and themes to gain a sense of how they make the dialogue flow. When recording with a guest it is easy as it's just conversational and therefore there is a natural flow, plus if needed you can edit bits out to make it sound more cohesive. However, one of the things I have found difficult is creating an introduction to the podcast -- as I do that on my own -- and creating little intro sequences for the guests and segments. I surprised myself at how tricky I found this given that I like to think I am quite an articulate person so I wrote myself a little script for each of the sections I have needed to introduce. To write the script I literally just put down onto paper exactly what I was thinking and how I would articulate something if I was speaking out loud.
This did really help to gather my thoughts and ensure that everything I wanted to say was included, however, when I recorded these bits they did sound a bit too scripted so I had to re-do them quite a few times. To try and eradicate this I would follow the script but not too fastidiously. I'd add in my own mannerisms and occasionally go off piste if I thought that it made it flow a bit better and sound more natural.
To begin with, during the first podcast I would record all of the scripted bits before getting my guests on to try and remain organised and on top of everything but when playing the edited podcast back to myself I realised that this technique did not really work very well. Often the scripted introductions didn't go very well with the segment afterwards so I learnt that the best thing to do was to record the segment with the guest, then go back and re-record their introduction. This way I could add anything in that felt necessary and take stuff out that I previously written and became redundant.
A perfect example of this is the "Internet Sensation of the Week' intro. As you can seen from the screenshots below there is a long section in the middle that I ended up cutting out of the introduction completely because it was not needed.
Creating these podcasts has been so eye-opening for me because I thought that all I was going to need to do was have a few casual conversations with people, put it all together and have a great episode but I was so wrong. You really do need to plan ahead and think very carefully about how you frame something and exhibit it to your target audience.
