May 14th 2024
Welcome to my weekly diary charting the ups and downs of turning my Victorian whodunnit, Octopus: Octavius Guy & The Case of the Throttled Tragedienne, into a podcast. I'm its author, Michael Gallagher. Beric Livingstone is its narrator.
Where Beric is at:
I've just received the raw audio of chapters six through to nine but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Oddly, Beric has omitted to record chapter five, though I know he has his reasons.
Here we meet Alex and Charley for the first time. Without going into too much detail, this pair become regulars in the series after Bertha takes them under her wing.
"Peepers like those..."
Learn more about Beric here:
Where I am at:
When I was on Twitter, I used a simple ad I'd made on my monthly pinned post. Over time it amassed many thousands of views.
It was so effective at spreading my brand, I made a second ad, this one slightly more upmarket - now lost on a frazzled hard drive. Both had been carefully storyboarded. At some point last year I began the lengthy process of retouching the Victorian photographer John Thomson's prints (yet again) to make a third ad, this time to use on Bluesky, but work on this stalled as life got in the way.
When I realized I'd be needing something to advertise the podcast with, I set to work on a script. It was six pages long and detailed where certain clips from Beric's audio went, the order in which the review quotes appeared, and which of John Thomson's prints were used, and all to a background of Vivaldi. This little masterpiece took two days of meticulous planning and had a running time of a little over three minutes.
It was during an ad break while watching something on All 4 that I realized my great mistake. People hate ads! And with reason: most of them are inane and they steal time from you that you'll never get back. "Are you still using your hands when you put on your shoes?" Why yes, and I fully intend to keep on doing so!
The only ads I don't resent are the very short ones from the programme's sponsors - with the emphasis on short. Thank you Arnold Clark! I've no idea who you are or what you do, but believe me when I say I'm very grateful to you. All was sure of was this: make them short!
My subconscious went to work, and lo and behold! It presented me with an intelligent script for a two-minute ad. It literally came to me fully formed as I was listening again to the prologue.
I already have free video creation software: Olive, the heritage version (I tried the new alpha they're building but couldn't understand how to even begin; the version I use is glitchy and deeply flawed but I'm used to it and I have work-arounds), so instead I googled for royalty-free stock footage for background effects (think smoke and falling embers) and found Mixkit. Though they deal mainly in paid subscription licensing, they really do offer a decent range of watermark-free HD video and audio clips licensed for personal and commercial projects for free. Thank you Mixkit!
Mixkit's smoke effect
Mixkit's cinematic heartbeat
The only problem now was the music: one-and-a-half minutes of perfect (and royalty-free) Vivaldi. Vivaldi! What on earth could go wrong? Join me next week as I find out!