19: How many times can an idea evolve?
The story of Voix Collective's first podcast
Version 1
In March, Ebiye and I decided that we needed to put out an audio story. We had been working on a number of different projects for three months and Ebiye was beginning to grow anxious about the absence of output. I was feeling similar anxiety and a certain unhappiness because I was spending only maybe 10 per cent of my time doing the part of the work I actually liked.
We both wished to have published work to show for our efforts. But projects take time. It would be months before we finished any of our projects (a naive and optimistic estimate)
We both agreed that as a company, we needed to announce ourselves and we only needed a single story to do that. We could set up a company RSS feed and put out an audio piece. The RSS feed would serve as a central directory for future projects. The audio piece would contain a story but also some narration that would introduce us to the world.
So that’s what we did.
First, we needed a story. One brainstorm later, we had potentially had two.
Idea 1: A story about the lives of Paralympians
Idea 2: A story about the success of emergency services in Nigeria and what it tool for them to run.
After 3 days of chasing both stories, I decided the second idea was a more realistic one to do considering my timeline (The entire time between when we had our first conversation expressing our anxiety and when we wanted to have a complete story was 2 weeks)
My intention was to do a 20 to 30-minute audio doc on emergency services in Nigeria. It would have two acts. The first act was structured as a non-narrated story about how emergency services got to the places they needed to get to. I interviewed three people, one person in a car accident, one in a shoot-out, and one who witnessed a hit-and-run. In each of the stories, there was a call made to an emergency service and a response team that arrived to save the day. My first edit was about 13 minutes long.
The second act was going to be a narrated report on how emergency services worked, their logistics and the real people whose job it was to make sure we got saved. I booked two interviews but never had any of them.
One problem with the interviews in my first edit was their audio quality. While they were all very audible, only one of them was super crisp because it was the only one I was able to do in person. Last year, with all the money I had saved up, I invested in my first audio gear, a zoom h2n recorder. With this recorder, my intention was to never do any of my interviewees remotely if I could help it. I would take on the cost and stress of travelling to wherever my interviewees were to record our conversation. For this story, this was sadly only possible with one of the interviews, for the other two, the subjects were either too far away (literally in another city) or could not make a physical interview happen due to a hectic schedule.
My first edit was met with mixed reviews. None particularly good.
Incase you are new here: My name is Mo Isu. I am an audio producer based in Lagos, Nigeria. I am currently attempting to build a career in audio journalism. I have taught myself everything I know so far. You are reading issue 19 of my newsletter detailing this segment of my journey. Today’s isssue is a little different from others. It’s the story of my new podcast.
How to bring a podcast to life
Version 2
After the relative failure of the first edit, we decided to go in a different direction for the launch story. We threw away the idea of a full-feature audio doc altogether and zoomed in on making a simple story. I describe a simple story as one that follows a plain 3-act structure.
A setup
An action/event
A recovery.
I was walking home under the sun when some dark clouds suddenly appeared
Before I could get home it started raining heavily on me
I had to walk home drenched and I caught a cold.
It’s a very simple structure, and it is easy to follow from a listener's perspective. I also think from a storyteller's pov, it’s the structure you should first acclimatise yourself with.
You can get it in a story that’s as short as 4 minutes.
Ebiye was more concerned with making a story with clear audio and if possible, a story we could upload not only to the RASS feed but also to social media and youtube (where attention spans are shorter).
The result of both our shifts in direction was a stripped-down version of the original mix. First, the second act was scrapped entirely. I also two away two of the stories in the original mix and kept just the interview with the clearest audio mix - the story about a car accident.
I wrote a script with the help of our communications lead at the time, Aaliyah, and a day later, we jumped into a studio and recorded it.
A week later, we had an edit-ready. We called it ‘introducing voix’ and published it. Officially making Voix Collective a company that made audio stories.
Start small.
Version 3
I like the idea of making short stories. There’s a particular joy I get from completing a story to the point of publishing it. Short stories are the quickest way to get to that point. They often remove the need to answer one of the most important questions of storytelling, the why?
You need to have an answer to that question.
Last week, I sent a few stories to a list of experienced storytellers asking them for their opinion and one feedback I got had a lot of notes about shifting the story in a direction that answered that question.
What is the point of this?
How can we use this to shine a light?
What overacting trends can we draw from this?
These are essential questions. I don’t think it’s possible to get a story published at a publication without being able to justify its importance. It’s often included in the pitch. And when you work with an editor on a story, they are likely to help point you in a direction that includes the story’s importance in how you go about telling it.
But sometimes, stories don’t need to serve a bigger need than exist. Most of the things that happen to us don’t come attached with a note on how they are part of a bigger trend
Short stories are the place these stories can simply happen without being more.
The podcast This American Life has a popular story structure that goes
sequence of events___ reflection.
sequence of events___ reflection.
sequence of events___ reflection.
I wondered what if a story was just a sequence of events. no reflection and no bigger narrative. Could stories be that?
After we published ‘introducing Voix’, we went quiet on the internet for a bit. Our projects were running into all sorts of blocks. We went back into a dry spell and I went back into not publishing any original audio work.
Around the same time, I started playing with the idea of these short stories. I wondered what other events could follow this structure. What’s a small singular event that can have a compelling narrative arc without needing a narrator to justify its existence?
One idea stuck with me and I posted a quick question on my Whatsapp status. Whatsapp status is often the first place I workshop potential story ideas. A friend responded to me saying something had happened to her a few years ago that fit my description.
The next week, with my recorder and a new microphone I ordered from Alibaba, I visited her and ended up recording a 40 minutes long interview, sitting inside a car with the slight backdrop of raindrops pattering against the window (a sound you can still hear in the final edit)
After my interview with her, I edited another non-narrated story. This time running about 8 minutes long. I remember I did the editing on a coworking date with my friend and ended up having her record some lines that made it into the story in form of internal dialogue.
I shared it with some friends who all gave me very constructive feedback.
Then I shared it with my team.
and then it was done and we didn’t have a home for it.
Everyone agreed it was a good story though.
Version 4
September 2022
I created a concept note for an unnamed project. In the podcast description, I described it as an exhibition podcast.
A podcast whose reason for existence was to show what we, Voix Collective, could do.
It’s a weird description but at the time I did not know what the podcast would be. I knew it was going to be a podcast of short non-narrated stories, produced with care and attention. But what would be the thing that held them together as a cohesive project? Why did they live in the same RSS feed? We would get there.
I put a team together. The podcast needed a host, and for that, I reached out to my friend, Hauwa Lawal.
We needed a podcast cover art. For that, my friend from the gym, Ayomide Ayonaike was my go-to.
For sound, I would need help, so I messaged my friend Dan Akins.
By this point, I had already begun to have other interviews with people.
I was sitting on 4 hours of raw tape.
I prepared a production process and timeline. I prepared a small strategy for rollout which I later tweaked with the help of our comms associate, Imelda Odudu.
Then over the next couple of weeks, we worked on converting a string of short stories to a podcast.
A podcast about moments.
The idea of a podcast about moments came to me once I started creating documentation for it. I cannot overstate the place that writing holds in helping me think. I cannot understand people that do not use writing in the same way.
Unnamed podcast: A podcast about moments featuring stories that follow a simple three-act structure.
Version 5
The interview for what is now going to be episode 3 was one that challenged the idea I had for the podcast. It also broke the consistency in the story structure. The episode is longer than the others and the story is not as simple.
While the first stories I did cover very specific moments, this one did not. This one dragged over a span of time and it actually had a real reflection that needed to happen.
I remember sitting in the interview and feeling around for where a narrative arc could be built and what I needed to get in the interview.
Non-narrated stories are tricky because you need to make sure your characters say everything that needs to be said in the interview itself.
It gives the characters a lot more to do and gives you as the editor a much harder time making a story out of the interview.
It’s not simple with a simple story. IT’s much harder with a complex one and that third episode was a complex one.
The subject matter is delicate and the narrative curve is not straightforward.
For most interviews. I start by having the interviewee tell me what happened in chronological order. I might interrupt but not as much. I try to get a story told. Only when they have gone from top to bottom will I go back and ask questions, fleshing out details. I might ask a number of questions that get them to report a detail to me and then I will ask them to rope all the details they just told me together into a single storyline.
This is how the first two interviews went.
This interview was less straightforward. I first had to talk together with the subject, a friend, to get a sense of where we should start. We jumped back and forth in the story a lot. We talked of her childhood a little and some things that I wanted to get a story out of I could only get a piece of detail. An unclear piece of detail that did not make for compelling audio.
I remember sitting down with the final edit and actually being quite happy about how it turned out.
Another way this podcast deviated from what I might usually make was how the episodes were made. I did not write them.
Usually, to make a podcast episode, I will transcribe my interviews so I can wrangle the story on paper. I also usually write a script around which I can form a narrative.
As I mentioned before, writing helps me think. For this podcast, I did not do any of this. All the editing happened in the Digital Audio Workspace (DAW)
So rather than visualise the story on paper, I had to visualise it in audio. This is easier for a chronological story but as this was not a chronological story, not entirely, it was trickier.
This is also the episode that made me realise the stories were not all going to just be super simple. Some stories would be a little more complex, more slow burn.
Some stories would change the characters. And that’s the thing I searched for in that episode. Where the change happened.
By the time we got a name for the podcast, it had gone from just a collection of stories to a podcast about moments that changed people told by the people they changed.
This week, that podcast went live.
And it’s called “It happened in Nigeria”
I am currently in the process of editing the second half of the podcast but the first episode goes live on December 2022.
This is Voix Collective’s official first podcast. It took a year to come out.
I learnt a number of things about trying to start a company. I learnt a number of things about where I’d like to channel most of my efforts. All lessons I hope to take into the new year.
So that’s it. the story of how a podcast is made.
Thank you for reading.
You can listen to the trailer now
And the Pilot episode (the story that started it all)
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