THE SOUND OF AFTERSHOCK podcast: BORROWING THE LANGUAGE OF CINEMATOGRAPHY

Aftershock is a 10 episode audio fiction drama podcast starring Sarah Wayne Callies, David Harbour, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Tati Gabrielle & Janel Parrish.

The sound of the series is cinematic in scope, and "hyper-real" Where "hyper-real" might inspire thoughts of science fiction, fantasy, or Fast & Furious style action - Aftershock is firmly rooted in the REAL. But it features a stylized aesthetic rather than the Vérité approach often associated with audio.

Throughout the series, I experimented with borrowing various elements of cinematography in crafting the sonic world of the series. Some of these impulses were innate to my own aesthetic as a designer. Some were inspired by the words on the page - the action notes or scene descriptions. And others came by being inspired by the actors’ performances.  

As new episodes roll out, I'll highlight a few instances where I tried to borrow from the visual language of film to realize the narrative vision for this audio series.

Obviously, the sound design of an audio drama has a LOT more in common with film and TV sound design. But more interesting to me was seeing how I might borrow from cinematography to help design sonic POV and emotional storytelling in similar ways various camera techniques creates in Film/TV. 

Let's start with Episode 1:  full episode here:

TECHNIQUE: Push Zoom - Dolly Zoom. 

The Push Zoom is when the Camera is literally MOVED closer toward the subject.  A Dolly Zoom is when the camera is moved in the opposite direction of its lens zoom - for example, the lens zooms OUT while moving the camera TOWARD the subject.

The more dramatic Dolly Zoom technique creates the background moving against the subject effect popularized in Hitchcock's Vertigo and then - everywhere!

To be fair - no “Zoom” effect in Aftershock sounds as obvious as a Dolly Zoom looks. So how did I borrow the concept of ZOOM using only audio in Aftershock?

EXAMPLE from Episode 1:

During the quake, Cassie goes outside for help only to find chaos. This audio clip picks up as she comes back into the apartment where Lawrence has been trapped.

Sonically we are in wide perspective at this moment. All the chaos of the outside world continues - muted only by the occlusion of the apartment's walls. 

Over the course of this scene, we slowly ZOOM in on Cassie & Lawrence. The ZOOM begins when Lawrence calls for Cassie to "come here, come here"

How do we do ZOOM in audio? By slowly pushing the outside chaos, interior shaking and rumbling further away from us, and pulling Cassie and Lawrence closer. This particular ZOOM takes place over the course of about a minute. It’s subtle.

What makes this technique possible is sonic CONTRAST. First, starting WIDE with the sound of CHAOS right upfront and large. Then by keeping the characters at a medium distance when Cassie returns to the apartment, we have the SPACE to move CLOSER to them when it matters most at the end.

This “zoom” technique is repeated in the Red Cross Shelter scene a little bit later. 

Starting WIDE with the chaos to convey the scope of the misery.  Over the course of the scene, we slowly Zoom IN on Cassie and Wayne as they meet, connect and hatch a plan to rescue Makayla together.

Again the key is contrast - by making sure we have enough WIDE and UPFRONT environment sound at the beginning of the scene to ZOOM in on these characters as they get closer by pushing the environment away - and pulling the characters closer.

These are not flashy sound design techniques. Instead, they are sonic storytelling devices that help support the emotional impact of these incredible performances.

Ideally, for most listeners, these techniques will go completely unnoticed. But they will FEEL the result - and that's the point.

This technique is repeated a few times over the course of the series. I won't call out each time it occurs but now that you know what it sounds like - you'll probably be able to spot them for yourself.

Next time we'll talk about borrowing the OVER THE SHOULDER shot - easy for cameras - but audio? Oh yeah!

As always, I hope you enjoy the series and these inside looks - I look forward to any comments and questions you may want to share.

AFTERSHOCK GOES LIVE

I’m super excited to finally be able to announce the release of this incredible 10 episode Audio fiction series.

The trailer is here - please pop on some headphones and give it a listen.

I’ll have more to share in the weeks to come about the making of this series - episodes will be released beginning July 14th everywhere you get podcasts.

Here’s the press release on Deadline:

BEING SEEN series wins Silver Clio Award

Thrilled to learn the BEING SEEN audio series won a 2021 silver Clio Award for Public Service.

2020 Buh bye!

Ok 2020, you can go get F√ç∆∂!  now.  

Happy New Year!  I've been extremely fortunate to have kept quite busy in an otherwise miserable year. 

Here are just a few highlights.

STATS! STATS! STATS!

According to Podtrac - which measures this kind of thing - six series I created sound for in 2020 were among the Top 25 most downloaded new shows of the year.  They were:

#6 - Dr. Death Season 2 - Dr. Fata
Dr. Death S1 was the most downloaded new show of 2018

#7 - GURU - The Dark Side of Enlightenment

#11 - Blood Ties  - Audio Fiction Drama

#13 - Joe Exotic  - The Tiger King

(technically, we made and published "Joe Exotic" in the summer of 2019 - but it was republished in 2020 to take advantage of the buzz that would be kicked up by the Netlflix Doc. Looks like it worked! )

#16 - Do No Harm - w/NBC News

#18 - Bunga Bunga - The Rise and Fall of Silvio Berlusconi

You may notice all of these series were produced by Wondery which had 11 total new shows in the Top 25 of 2020. They are a hit machine and it's great to get to work with such talented people on these series.  If you're interested in how the sausage gets made I plan on creating a few "Favorite Scene" posts featuring scenes from these series - so be on the lookout for those.

Surprising to me (in a good way) is the high performance of Blood Ties which is an original Fiction Audio Drama. 

Historically speaking “Audio Drama” has not been as popular for listeners as Documentary / News & Information type series. The performance of Blood Ties is a great sign that the Audio audience is maturing and increasingly willing to turn to Audio content for the same kinds of storytelling they get from TV & Film.  Oh and btw - season 2 of Blood Ties was made remotely during the early months of the Covid-19 lockdown. 

AFTERSHOCK!

Sarah Wayne Callies

While I'm talking about Fictional Audio Drama - this year I completed work on AFTERSHOCK - a 10 episode original Audio Drama starring Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead, Colony,) David Harbour (Stranger Things, Hellboy, Black Widow) Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Watchmen Film) and several other amazing performers from TV & Film. Aside from a few remaining minor details, I have 10 episodes of exciting, well-acted, highly produced Audio Drama ready for your earholes!  Coming to your favorite podcast App on July 14th!

David Harbour

We created the pilot in early 2019 - got financing for the full series a few months later, got voice actor recording started in late 2019/ early 2020, and then -COVID!!  So the production had to move remote like everything else.  I finished post-production for all ten episodes in Sept 2020. It didn't take every minute of that time to make the series - there were long periods of inactivity due to scheduling conflicts, Covid etc... BUT this series finally sees the light of day on July 14th, 2021.  So be on the lookout for that.  I will definitely post about it.

PODCAST MOVEMENT 2020

The annual huge podcast conference was originally slated to meet in Dallas in Oct but had to move virtual this year. I was fortunate to get to do a short session on Scoring & Music Supervision for Podcasts. I shared the virutal stage with Music Supervisor Scott Velasquez. We talked about our work on Bunga Bunga and took questions from attendees. If you have a pass to the conference, the session was recorded and you can watch it in the PM library.

BRANDED

I worked on a few branded audio projects in 2020 - including a few new ones.  The thing with "Branded" content is that it's very easy for it to play out like a long-form commercial for the brand paying the freight. 

One very note-able exception for me this year is BEING SEEN

On the surface BEING SEEN is an 11 episode interview series focused on the gay and queer Black male experience. It's hosted by author and activist Darnell Moore. Moore is a Director of Inclusion for Content and Marketing at Netflix. So where is the "brand"? The series is supported by ViiV Healthcare whose primary focus is on HIV care and treatment. They smartly host these conversations which benefit the community rather than making the series about themselves. What's special about the series is the voices and stories told - and each episode is as thoroughly designed and produced as any of the big event mini-series for which I create sound.

My favorite episodes are Episode 4 and 11 but the entire series is ear, eye, and mind-opening.

2021

A lot of things going on already for 2021: more event mini-series with Wondery, AFTERSHOCK will get published a few branded things continue some new ones will launch.

I'm also working on building and leading teams to launch a few new series that are just now starting to take shape. International in scope, these could be very exciting and I can’t wait to get them up and running.

Maybe you and I can collaborate on something?

Let me know - I look forward to hearing from you!

WRITING FOR SOUND - MORE

One of the most dreaded and avoidable listener complaints can be summed up in the phrase “cheesy, canned sound effects”. On the surface, it appears to be a comment about the quality of the sounds themselves. It may also speak to cases where the sound was not artfully employed. But in my experience, that kind of comment is most often about sound effects that are not narratively necessary. And the root cause (over-zealous sound designer notwithstanding) can almost always be traced back to the writing.

I can think back on numerous situations where I felt boxed in by writing that did not leave room for the sound to carry exclusive parts of the narrative load. In many of those instances, the requested sound was mere window dressing to the narration or worse, unnecessarily redundant to it.

An anonymized example:

NAR: Torrential rain drenched the City as Janet and Earl made their way across the busy street, and up the stone steps to their heavy wooden front door.
(sfx: rain - wet footsteps - door opening)

That kind of writing is what you might find in print. Lots of words telling you everything you need to know. So when being “adapted” for audio the sound effect notes are added to the script but the writing itself isn't changed.

It’s easy to mistake this as a scene “written for sound" because of those sound notes. But you’ll notice the narration is already telling us everything and that the requested sounds are now redundant.

While the sound effects in this scene may "dress it up" a bit - this approach leaves a lot of story-telling potential on the table. On the simplest level, the sound can convey all these details of our scene without any narration or dialogue at all.

Rain pounding the street.

Cars slowly rolling over drenched pavement.

Splashy footsteps across the sidewalk and upstairs.

Fumbling with keys, a door opening.

Assuming these scene setting details are important to the narrative of our story we can now see that no narration is needed to communicate them.

So now, with sound telling that part of the story our narration and dialogue is liberated to do something sound alone can’t do - like tell us what someone is saying, thinking, feeling or what they’re smelling, or seeing that’s not making a sound.

When we decouple narration/dialogue and sound design from each other they’re both empowered to perform in complementary ways - we get choreography instead of mimicry, design instead of post-production. Sound used this way isn't as likely to be perceived as "cheesy" or "canned" because it's serving a unique narrative function.

This requires a big shift in how our stories are written. Just as filmmakers are encouraged to "show" rather than tell, audio story-tellers should be equally encouraged to let our audience "hear" rather than be told.

If your scene is really incorporating sound in this way it should feel somewhat incomplete if you read through it without the sound notes. That’s a great sign you have incorporated sound into carrying exclusive parts of the narrative. If that seems like a high bar to clear, well, it is. This is not a well-worn skill, yet. But as an audio-only medium we should be seeking to use sound to its full advantage.

We can begin with thinking about how to tell the story so that sound naturally and organically carries more of the narrative load. What kind of sound? Depends on the story - but writers should be aware that “sound” in reality is physically a verb - it is action - it’s air molecules being excited by a force in an environment. It can be small and subtle or enormously explosive. So then the question becomes what kinds of sounds are important for the characters in our story and our listeners to be hearing. They don’t always have to be the same sounds and they certainly don’t have to be literal. Instead of thinking of sound as “background” to the story think of it as an equal but unique layer through which to weave our story-telling.

A simple way to start is to write the description of the scene and actions like you would normally - but instead of using it for narration or dialogue put that information in the script as a sound design guide. Then write for the narrator/characters knowing the sound is already telling it’s part of the story. Your narration and characters can be aware of that sound or not - it’s incredibly freeing.

Once you've got the hang of that then you can turn to even more artful uses of sound - like portraying subjective points of view, for example.

Some of the more compelling scenes I’ve designed have been for the Wondery series "Imagined Life". An important trait shared among those scenes is that they put the listener in a first-person perspective of a character for whom a physical or emotional condition alters their perceptions. It could be an illness, or joy, grief, injury, or triumph. In that approach, the normal sounds representing the “objective” world can be morphed into a subjective and designed "experience" influenced by their condition. It makes for powerful story-telling that leverages the unique strengths of both sound and voice in an audio only context.

Think about anything that colors or alters a character's perception of events - or characters expressing subjective points of view and memories and you’ve found beautiful and unique opportunities to use sound more creatively in your story-telling.

FAVORITE SCENES: Imagined Life - The Bride

Spoiler alert - this clip reveals the identity of the subject of the episode!

So if you haven’t heard the episode and don’t want to know who YOU are yet, don’t click play.

Otherwise - as always - pop on some headphones and join the journey.

For me this sequence highlights what is special about the show - putting YOU in the experience of another combining drama, tension, tragedy and redemption.

First, we start outside “viewing” this as we customarily might - from a distance in 3rd person. Then we cut to inside the vehicle and now we’re clearly first person perspective. YOU are in the car. Our perspective leaves the car for a bit so we can get a sense of speed and place and then we’re back in the car again until…

Stick around for the end and the reveal - it’s quite touching.

Narrated by the amazing Virginia Madsen

FAVORITE SCENES: Inside The Exorcist

You might expect a series based on the film The Exorcist would be a playground for an Audio Designer and you’d be right. Over 7 episodes there are numerous exorcisms and spooky events as well as the dramatizations of the making of the film you’d expect. This post highlights a few of my favorite scenes.

The Willam Brinkley Suicide.

William was the journalist who wrote about an actual exorcism in the Washington Post in the late 40s which inspired writer Bill Blatty to later write the best-selling novel “The Exorcist” which became a screenplay and then film.

This is the cold open to the first episode and so really set the tone of the audio design for the entire series: Minimal music score, documentary style sound twisted as needed to illustrate subjective and supernatural points of view. In this case, a man haunted by major depressive disorder.

Possessed Beast.

There are plenty of exorcism scenes to choose from in the series and my view is they’re best consumed in context of the series story. That said, the possessed animal in the cold open to episode 6 is among my favorites as a scene. It’s such a vivid and fantastical scenario which begged for expressionistic audio design.

Cucci Execution

Let’s not forget that before The Exorcist, before The French Connection, Director William Friedkin was a documentary film-maker. That aesthetic is apparent in his direction of those two films.

This scene takes place during Friedkin’s documentary days when he was in person to witness an electric chair execution.

When faced with the Audio Design of this scene I wanted to avoid the expressionistic approach I used with the supernatural material in the series.

Instead, I decided to treat the scene as Friedkin treated the medical treatment scenes of the Reagan character in The Exorcist film. Clinical, cold, and routine. Documentary style impressionism.

And finally - the very end. This clip merges the “Robbie Haunted Boy Storyline” introduction from Episode 1 to it’s conclusion at the end of E7.

For the end, series creator and host Mark Ramsey knew he wanted Robbie to somehow demonstrate on the call that he was still possessed. He gave me one reference - the Canadian cult horror classic Black Christmas. If you’ve never seen it a menacing voice(s) keeps calling a house and terror ensues.

From that guide I designed the transformation - all the possessed “dialogue” is me and it was “conjured” during improvised performance.

The next trick was having the possessing spirit end the call and end up in the room with YOU. This is where I used Binaural audio.

I can write a long post about my general distaste for the sound of “3D audio” and entire series recorded in binaural. I feel it’s much more effective as a spice, a “special effect” rather than the main course. This clip demonstrates that. At the end binaural is used to create a clear distinction that what was once on the other end of the phone - is now in the room right friggin next to you!

There many more great moments across Inside The Exorcist I’ll probably end up sharing in future posts.

I had the opportunity to do a lot of custom recording for this series and it remains one of my favorites.

FAVORITE SCENES: Gladiator

The story of Aaron Hernandez & Football, Inc reported by the Boston Globe Spotlight Team offered a number of opportunities to use sound to immerse the listener into the story.

The cold open of E4 is great example of how sound blended with the hard news style you’d expect from Spotlight can help illustrate the story in a more immersive way. And that is the way I typically view sound in these investigative series - as illustration. It can take different forms and style - but ultimately I view it as artistic rendering in the chosen medium, which of course here is Audio.

Audio Block

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Later in same episode we travel with Aaron to Florida as his paranoia over the double homicide catches up with him and sound is used to illustrate how that paranoia is shaping his perceptions.

One technical note here. Making the best of poorly recorded police tape.

The police recording was picking up some pretty bad electrical interference. Of course noise reduction was employed to reduce it and improve intelligibility, but it’s not perfect and couldn’t remove it all.

The other sound on the police tape is birds from the parking lot. I made sure to “pre-lap” bird sound under the narration leading into the police tape and continued it under the police tape. This helped “connect” the tape with the larger design feel and masked a bit of the edges of the tape.

And finally in Episode 5 we arrive at Aaron’s final days and hours in prison before his suicide.

What struck me about this entire sequence was how the event calls into question what really happened without ever really asking “what really happened”. I’m not one for conspiracy, but these events still seem strange to me.

Gladiator was the second most downloaded new show of 2018 according to Podtrac - which is remarkable considering it came out in October.

I’m really happy with how it came out and with the response. Let me know what you think!

FAVORITE SCENES: Inside Jaws - USS Indianapolis

​The story of the USS Indianapolis was the centerpiece of JAWS in Robert Shaw's unforgettable monologue aboard the Orca in the film. It was also the only story Steven Spielberg wanted to tell when asked if he'd return to direct JAWS II.

USS Indianpolis via: Wikipedia

For Inside Jaws we tell the story of USS Indianapolis across 2 episodes (Eps 5 & 6)

Part 1 covers the sinking of the vessel.

Part 2 covers the shark attacks in the aftermath and eventual rescue of survivors.

I've put the segments together for the first time into a single file below.

The Inside Series has a reputation for aiming to be more than mere behind the scenes "making of" film trivia and these sequences are evidence of that. They also demonstrate how powerful and cinematic audio only story-telling can be.

They're ambitious in scope and include a personal story of one soldier that has a poignant payoff. Just as Steven might do.

Take a listen.

Some sound things to note: I love to change "camera" position with sound throughout these sequences.

Notice how the sound cuts and places you in different places: we're outside - then inside - then on the bridge - then back in the sea while the ship sinks, etc... And in the rescue sequence - starting in the sea, then on the plane, then in the sea and then back on the plane as it lands. This wasn’t done merely for effect, but to communicate scale and scope - a large event impacts many perspectives - and they all add up to give us a sense of how devastating it is

None of these shifts were specifically called for in the writing or the narration. But the writing and the narration imply them by leaving room for me to interpret these scenes and where to "put the camera". From where is the best emotional place for "us" to experience this is the question I’d ask myself.

These scenes are what I would consider a great example of "writing for sound".

For example, the narration isn’t telling us “everything”. If it did, that would reduce the sound to only an echo of the narration. Instead it was written anticipating sound would carry much of the narrative load. It leverages what we’re hearing to free itself from the burden of explaining too many details.

Lots more scenes from Inside Jaws to share and chat about in future posts!

Lemme know if there are any you’d like to learn more about.

FAVORITE SCENES: Imagined Life - The Commoner

Imagined Life is a different kind of show. It’s an audio biography of famous people at it’s core, but it’s told in second person placing YOU firmly in the experience of that person. It also withholds the identity of who YOU are until the very end thus creating a kind of immersive guessing game.

Top notch writing with terrific narration from Robbie Daymond and Virgina Madsen demand an equally high level approach to the audio design.

There are many great scenes across the 18 episodes I produced - here is one of my favorites. It’s from the cold open to The Commoner - no spoilers in this clip so pop on some headphones and give this 3 minutes of attention.

One of the more creative parts of the series for me as an audio designer is the constant opportunity to filter the sonic world through the subject’s perception.

The ability to move between objective and subjective points of view is filled creative possibilities for audio only media - and I think it’s one of the form’s greatest strengths.

The key for me early on was realizing that while the story is told in second person - for the listener it should be a first person experience.

“Audio Design” in my use of the phrase is the artful combination of Music and Sound Design elements to illustrate not only what the person is hearing - but HOW they are hearing it, how it changes based on their experiences and how they feel about it. The purpose of Audio Design in Imagined Life is in placing the listener inside the subject life and experiences.

I think this section of the Commoner demonstrates these ideas as well as any other I’ve designed from the series. I’ll be sharing more from this series and others in upcoming posts.

Take a listen and let me me know what you think!

—jeff

SNEAK LISTEN: FEAR

In development in partnership with Mark Ramsey comes FEAR an 8 episode audio thriller anthology.

Here’s the cold open to an episode titled JINN - about a soldier in Afghanistan blinded by suicide bomber who now must escape and eventually confront the deadly Arabian demon.

The series currently has an outline for 8 episodes, with 2 already produced and ready to join a suitable publishing partner looking for a great Fall seasonal series.

Reach out if you’d like to learn more!

FAVORITE SCENES: Dr. Death E3 Occam's Razor

Dr. Death dominated the podcast world in 2018 and was the most downloaded new show for the year according to podtrac. Across the series the tone is dark and atmospheric. A great many listeners called the best horror, not horror audio series they’ve heard. I’ll be sharing several scenes from the series in future posts - but let’s start with the cold open to episode 3.

This sequence is a perfect example why I prefer to call my work “Audio Design” rather than sound design.

While there are sound effects cut into this sequence - all the energy, mood and power comes from music selection, editing and production where we start with a description of a nice person and end with the ranting of a seemingly deranged neurosurgeon.

2019 OFF TO AN AMAZING AUDIO START

The latest Wondery mini-series I designed audio for “Over My Dead Body” just hit the pod-verse and the response has been pretty terrific - still at #1 on Apple Podcasts as of this writing two weeks after publishing.

Across the board we tried to approach this story without using the standard True Crime tropes.

For example - there’s no 911 call, victim or even a crime to kick off the series.

Instead of returning to the ominous style underscore I’ve enjoyed creating in previous series this series is outright perky & plucky at times.

All is not so bright though - it’s kind of a slow cooker and it does get dark.

Imagined Life came back from holiday break with a few decidedly more, ummm shall we say controversial characters whose sometimes less than ideal lives we immerse you in. Some of my favorites so far of the series!

In production presently is a very cool series I can’t name yet, written by my frequent collaborator Mark Ramsey. In 6 audio rich episodes we dive into the life of one specific former Undercover agent and their experiences drawn from a 20+ year globe spanning career. Big action and some surprise names in this one.

Also in production is a pilot for an original anthology horror series by Mark Ramsey and myself. This show NEEDS to happen! :)

I’m hearing rumors that POPS! - The Amazing Story of Louis Armstrong staring Reno Wilson might finally be published this year - I will be thrilled to get that out there.

Plenty of other projects in the hopper - a few pilots with some incredible names attached, another season of Inside____ (insert famous movie) and of course expect more crazy true crime stories too!

As always - I’m super grateful to be able to design audio for incredible stories like these - I look forward to sharing even more cool stuff in the weeks and months ahead!

Till then - THANK YOU for listening!

WRITING FOR AUDIO #1

First rule of writing for audio is - you don’t say the sound.

The second rule of writing for audio is - you don’t say the sound!

“The dog barked loudly” (sfx: dog barking loudly)

“His heavy boots pounded across the hardwood floor” (sfx: heavy boots pounding across hardwood floor)

See?

It’s redundant.

Sound tells it’s own story so liberate your narration and dialogue from telling listeners exactly what they’re hearing. Conversely, liberate your Sound Designer from having to put specific sounds to sounds that are said.

You can and should reference sounds in the production notes so the designer has an idea of the environment the scene is taking place, what is happening there, etc… but let sound speak for itself and the narration and dialogue will be free!

FAVORITE SCENES: Inside Jaws: From Dealey to Duel

Inside Jaws offers up lots of great scenes and this is one of my favorites.

Since Inside Jaws is really a Spielberg story, the origin of his work up to and including Jaws is central to the series.

As we learn later in the series there is no Jaws without Steven first making the TV movie Duel about a truck terrorizing a lone motorist on mountainous California roadways.

And how did the story of Duel come about? That’s what this scene is all about.

Dr. Death series launches to incredible response

Over 36,000 Five Star Ratings (a record) 1000+ raving listener reviews on Apple Podcasts in the first month of release - and already optioned for adaptation for a Television series - DR DEATH has been a wild ride and holds an interesting lesson.

I was fortunate enough to work on last year’s break out hit audio series Dirty John and it was hard to imagine I’d get the opportunity to work on something that connects with such a large number of people that powerfully and that quickly. Enter Dr. Death.

DR. DEATH is 6 episode investigative mini-series about a medical system that failed to protect 33 patients in Dallas. Reported and hosted by Laura Beil produced for Wondery - Sound Design and Production by yours truly.

The series has gotten coverage in The Cut, Popsugar, The Daily Mail, Vice, Rolling Stone , Esquire among others.

The audio production on this series is more forward, designed and cinematic than public radio journalists and listeners are accustomed or even prefer. It’s the kind of work I most enjoy doing - scoring these stories as I might a film.

It might seem a risky move from a pure journalism point of view - but when it’s done right it can get quality journalism into the ears and minds of people that might not have previously consumed it.

While a few from the public radio corner of the audio space will comment with concern that if the journalism is that good “you don’t need” that kind of sound and production approach - I’d argue the opposite. It’s easy to forget that podcasts are still not consumed by most people (only 17%) and most of those listeners came from the public radio space. That’s a small space, relatively speaking.

If the journalism is that good and important - you absolutely DO need that kind of audio design and production so that it can reach as many ears and minds as possible.

This view feels vindicated by the fact that those concerns are not echoed by listeners in the 1000s of reviews and comments about the series. Instead they comment about how engrossing and terrifying the series is and the need to tell everyone they know about it.

That is how the podcast audience expands beyond the 17% of the population.

But that is not really my aim - my aim is to use powerful sound to make great audio stories resonate with ever wider audiences.

Podcast Movement 2018

YES!  Jeff Schmidt Productions will be in Philadelphia for Podcast Movement 2018!   If see me walking around looking dopey please say hello!  

JUNE 2018 UPDATE!

Lots of work has been going on behind the scenes. The results of which will be hitting your earholes soon!   

First -

INSIDE JAWS: 

The follow up from Mark Ramsey & I to Inside Psycho and Inside The Exorcist.  7 Episodes of our signature style audio rich single narrator story-telling inspired by the stories behind the making of a classic.  This is a great follow up for the Inside series - and you'll definitely want to bring it to the beach!

Next

POPS! The Remarkable Story of Louis Armstrong: 

Written by Mark Ramsey, acted/narrated by Reno Wilson and audio design by yours truly - this is a mold breaker.  We take the single narrator audio rich approach of the "Inside" series and make it a first person account by Louis himself - from birth to death and 6 episode of goodness in between.  Can't wait for you to hear this.  

True Crime?  Check!  Sept is the release - will share more information as soon as I can.

Several more in early stages. 

Will update as allowed.  

Happy listening!

--jeff schmidt

PODCAST: BEHIND THE SCENES OF INSIDE THE EXORCIST

Just a wee bit meta here - Mark Ramsey and I chat about the making of Inside The Exorcist podcast.

We cover: 

Why The Exorcist? Why tell the story of the film and its makers in podcast form? And why choose a fresh audio graphic-novel storytelling approach? Those are just a few of the questions answered in this “behind the scenes” look at the making of one of the hottest podcasts of the year. Series creator and narrator Mark Ramsey talks with the show’s amazing sound designer Jeff Schmidt. Don’t miss the discussion about the secret “Easter egg” hidden in the audio that was only recently discovered by a Russian fan, or the inspiration for the chilling ending (hint: It is a movie, but it’s not The Exorcist).

LISTEN HERE:

BEHIND THE AUDIO OF "INSIDE THE EXORCIST" WITH A SOUND EFFECT

Sound effect library website A Sound Effect is a terrific resource for indie sound effect libraries which I use quite often. Beyond that -  It's also an amazing resource for behind the scenes interviews with some of the most creative sound designers in media - film, TV, video games - and now - podcasts!  

I was honored to share the behind the scenes of my audio work on Inside The Exorcist and a bit about Dirty John as well. 

Check it out HERE and make sure to check out all their other interviews as well - lots of inspiration and stuff to learn!