Freelance Work Blog - Dead and Buried Podcast

Over the course of this trimester I worked on a number of freelance projects. Potentially more than I should have, as there were definitely moments when I had far more work than I needed. Not that I made a ridiculous amount of money off of any of them or had clients lined up at my door but there were certainly moments where I said yes to more than I should have and I had real trouble balancing my work load with school and my work load outside of it. Initially I was just saying yes to anything that came my way out of pure excitement that people wanted to work with me and also because I felt it was really important to begin building professional relationships for the future. I had more than a few occasions were I sacrificed time that I should have put toward SAE assessment because I had said yes to someone else. Even though I haven't received marks back for any of my work yet, I am not as confident that they will be at the level I have managed to maintain so far this year. Working with freelance clients in audio is what I would love to do going forward, however I do still need to make my way through SAE and complete my assessment at a high standard.

Due to the majority of projects that I worked on this trimester being music based none of those are released yet, however they will be in the new year and I am fairly certain that one project I worked on is being released on vinyl, not just CD or Bandcamp. Which is quite exciting as I having my name credited on the inside of a record sleeve as an engineer and not a musician will be a first and something I did not expect so soon. What I would like to look at for the purposes of this blog though is Dead and Buried.

In their own words "Dead & Buried is a podcast about Melbourne history for people who don’t yet realise they like Melbourne history. Showcasing untold stories we trace the origins of the world’s first celebrity preacher, explore tales of colonial era cross-dressing and uncover a tale of circus sweethearts ripped apart by a brutal murder…". There is a very small community of Australian podcasters and from a production standpoint much of it does not compare in quality to a lot of the top podcasts around the world. The idea was to make something interesting, keep it local and produce it to a standard that matches a lot of the other top ranked podcasts in it's genre. Personally I believe we did that and the recognition it has received so far would suggest that as well. It was featured on the front page of iTunes Podcasts under New and Noteworthy and currently has a 5 star rating.

My role for the team consisted of field recordings and post editing of the interviews we conducted. All of the episodes featured interviews with experts on the subject matter being discussed and all of these conversations were conducted either at someones office or home. In these situations I would travel out on site with producers Carly Godden and Lee Hooper, set up a Tascam DR-60D and try as best I could to capture a quality sounding interview. Which was not always easy considering the spaces were never ideal for recording and you have limited time to set up. Each site presented a new challenge and learning about each episode on the spot was always interesting as I generally had no idea what was going to be discussed until the interviews were being conducted.

After these interviews the files would be sent to the producers to listen so they could time stamp the sections they wanted to include in each episode and then these notes were sent to me so I could edit and clean up the sections they required. This is were time management became incredibly important as each episode was/is being released every fortnight and there was/is no room for mistakes or missing deadlines.

For now the project is complete with the last episode being released next week. From late October until now it's occupied quite a bit of my time especially when I had a day off from work or SAE but spent it out recording a D&B interview. However it has been very rewarding to see the success of the project and also a great opportunity to work with very professional clients that have high expectations. The team have asked to keep me on board and expand my role for when they begin work in their second season next year which is very exciting. Recording music is what I would like to do first and foremost but this really has been a great opportunity to dip my toe into a different pool of the audio world and hopefully it opens more doors down the line.

http://www.deadandburiedpodcast.com