Podcast recording day - 101

We had an amazing recording day at the Birmingham Podcast Studio and managed to record six episodes in one day - there’s definitely pros and cons to this approach!

The recording schedule was planned in this way mainly because of budget constraints. It keeps hire costs down and means your pool of guests can all travel on one day and contribute to more than one episode if that works for the format.

The down side is our host had a lot of heavy lifting to do and was a bit brain dead by the end! We also had to turbo speed the learning process that comes from episode to episode. It was a challenge, but so fun to do and the energy was flowing from a brilliant team and group of guests.

🎛️ Here’s our advice for a successful recording session:

🟡 We already covered the pre-production (see previous post), but can’t stress enough how essential an airtight plan is, making sure everyone involved is well briefed ahead of recording.

🟡 The quality you gain from a recording studio will elevate your podcast, but if a studio is out of budget make sure you are using professional mics and have done your research on the best remote set-up.

🟡 Create a relaxed and energised environment - we took a collaborative approach with guests to make sure everyone felt heard and part of the process. This meant we were all working together to make each episode the very best it could be, you can hear this positive energy in the recording and it makes for a more engaging listen.

🟡 Learn from every episode. We found the structure of each episode naturally found its flow but we all made suggestions and crucially asked for feedback as we went. This made guests more confident as the day progressed and recording became more efficient as we all got into a rhythm.

🟡 Document the session as much as possible. We took loads of pictures, group thumbnails and video clips to promote the podcast series. This was all made easier thanks to our pre-production promo plan and having tasked a specific person to make sure this happened.

🟡 Make sure you know what files you are getting at the end of the session and have an editor briefed and ready to go. Our sound engineer did a great job of labelling every audio feed with the name of each speaker and adding notes for the editor so they have a clear and well organised set of files to work with.

🟡 Enjoy it! Unlimited tea and coffee is a must, next time we’ll be bringing some biscuits as well.