As
I stated last time, I have no schedule for these things. If there’s
something I feel like I can record a show about,. I’m going to try
and do it. And I definitely felt like Toy Fair was something I could
record a show about. I’ve been following Toy Fair for fifteen or so
years now and providing coverage of one kind or another for maybe
five. Every single year me and my toy dork buddies end up discussing
the reveals at length and the obvious next step was just to record
one of those conversations and then upload it.
HA
, HA, no.
Originally
I had five guests lined up with the potential for Monkey to be a
sixth. While I was stoked to have a full panel of folks, I also
understood I would likely lose one (or more) and was ready to just
babble on by myself if need be. Things actually worked out really
well on the guest front, with The Oncoming Storm’s Josh
Wilson, long-time friend and toy dork Ryan, Belligerent Monkey Jay, and honorary
Needless Things co-host Beau Brown all there for the live recording
and Reverend Dan Wilson from Poddy Humor providing a special
segment on Hasbro’s Marvel offerings.
We
had a great time recording and managed to cover all of the stuff that
was important to us.
Once
we were done I headed upstairs to spend some compensatory time with
Mrs. Troublemaker. We watched Arrow
(which was very good) and then The
Campaign (which was great
until the last twenty minutes or so where it got a bit full of
itself). After the missus went to bed I went back downstairs because
I was still excited about the podcast and wanted to go ahead and
start editing.
This
is where things started to go not well.
When
I played back the MP3 recording I found that my voice was at a
slightly loud but normal level. Everybody else was nearly inaudible.
It was pretty fucking disappointing. But I didn’t despair. I
assumed that there was technology out there that could fix this
problem to an acceptable degree. I sent my podcasting mentor -
Director Faber - a message asking what to do and he directed me to
some lovely freeware called Levelator.
I downloaded it, ran it on the file, and got a result that was…
well, at least listenable. Obviously it would be better if the
problem hadn’t occurred in the first place, but at least I’ve got
something I can use.
And
at least I learned a lesson, because I think I know what caused the
problem. This is the first time I’ve run a call with more than one
other person. The Amolto Call Recorder that I use activates
automatically with a Skype call, so it was running when the first
person called in. Then, when the second called I answered without
realizing I was suppose to add them to a group call. Once we got it
all sorted out the original caller had hung up and called back in and
I think that’s what effected the sound. For whatever reason the
group call was considered secondary and the audio was bad. I feel
lucky I got anything at all. So I’ll know better next time –
which hopefully will be the Le Sexoflex episode.
The
next thing that was a letdown was that when I recorded the intro for
the first episode I went straight into dialogue rather than saving
the music/show intro as a separate file. So I have to do that all
over again. This sucks because it took me a ton of tries to get it
exactly right and I don’t want to do it again. I was quite happy
with what I had.
So
that stuff kind of bummed me out and stalled my momentum. I had
planned on getting most of the editing done on Sunday night after
Reverend Dan sent me his report, but ended up drinking R&Rs and
catching up on Parks and
Recreation after trying and
failing to play WWE ’13.
Every time I tried to modify scheduled matches in Universe Mode the
game would just sit there loading. Dammit.
So
I figured a couple of days distance would be healthy and ended up
doing my editing Wednesday night after we recorded the final
regeneration episode of Earth Station Who.
Side
Note: This is a daunting occurrence in and of itself, as it means we
are out of planned episodes to cover and now are on to
research-intensive topics like “Five Episodes You’d Recommend to
A Whobie” and “Top Five Favorite Villain Episodes”. Ain’t
Nobody got time fo’ dat.
So
everything finally got put together and I have a podcast to present
to you.
-Phantom
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