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Jan 12, 2018 at 10:00 am – Jan 14, 2018 at 5:00 pm
The Podcast School 2018
With lead instructor Megan Tan, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, Tobin Low, Hillary Frank, Andy Mills and Caitlin Kenny.
An exceptional group of professional podcasters, radio writers, producers and entrepreneurs help you develop your audio practice and podcasting vision.
Today, anyone can become a broadcaster, but hosting a successful listener-supported podcast is a professional engagement. A successful podcaster has a great dose of imagination and a strong entrepreneurial initiative along with many technical skills, from audio engineering and radio journalism to sound storytelling and online marketing.
This seminar, designed by UnionDocs in partnership with Mathilde Walker-Billaud, will offer mid-level to advanced producers tools and skill sets for navigating through the podcasting revolution and finding their own path in this emergent medium.
Over the course of 3-days, 15 participants will learn from a team of seasoned practitioners from the radio and podcast industry— public radio reporters, sound engineers, radio auteurs and editors, successful podcasters and media entrepreneurs. Through guest presentations, listening sessions, discussions, group and individual exercises, case studies and work-in-progress critiques, they will explore the creative and production processes behind podcasting: audio storytelling, interviewing, script writing, editing, voice performance, mixing, sound design to audience engagement, distribution, advertising and more
This workshop is three days; please only enroll if you can commit to the entire schedule. Everyone will be invited to present his/her/their podcast project to lead instructor Megan Tan and to the group (during students’ presentations). In preparation of this short presentation, an audio (or written) work sample will be requested prior to the workshop (early January).
Details
This seminar is geared towards audio producers who already have a podcast, or are in pre-production for a specific upcoming podcast. This workshop is not suitable for complete beginners, and will not have a technical focus. If you are interested in audio production and/or don’t feel you are ready for this course, please consider signing up for Radio Boot Camp, or The Podcast School in August 2018 (dates TBC) also at UnionDocs. Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The fee for the intensive follows the schedule below. $385 – Early Bird Registration (December 20th, 2017) $450 – Late Registration Participants coming from outside NYC are responsible for their own transportation and room and board during the intensive. UnionDocs can provide assistance in locating housing and guidance for getting around town for those not native to New York.
Should you need to cancel, you’ll receive half of your registration fee back until December 20th. After December 20th, the fee is non-refundable.
In order to keep costs down, this workshop is a BYOL, i.e. bring your own laptop. Students must be fully proficient using and operating their computers.
Schedule
DAY 1 – Friday, January 12th - Podcasting from A to Z
AM: Megan Tan
PM: Sruthi Pinnamaneni
DAY 2 – Saturday, January 13rd - Writing with Sound
AM: Tobin Low
PM: Hillary Frank
DAY 3 – Sunday, January 14th - Producing
AM: Andy Mills
PM: Caitlin Kenny
Each day follows this general structure, with some minor variations and substitutions:
9:45a
Warm up, introductions
10:00a
Presentation by guest speaker
11:30a
Discussion / Case Study
12:00p
Students’ presentations / Work-in-Progress Workshop
1:00p
Lunch (on your own)
2:00p
Presentation by guest speaker
3:30p
Discussion
4:00p
Students’ presentations / Individual Work-in-Progress Critique
5:00p
End
Bios
Megan Tan is a freelance producer based in New York City. She’s currently working on a Gimlet Media podcast series about Mars with Lynn Levy and Peter Bresnan. Previously, she hosted and produced the Radiotopia podcast Millennial, and worked alongside WNYC’s Radiolab. When she’s not in front of her computer organizing audio waves, you can find her dancing down the street (usually to some kind of salsa song).
Andy Mills is a producer and reporter with The New York Times, and helped create their podcast The Daily. Before that he worked for Radiolab and before that he made stories in his apartment between shifts at restaurant jobs.
Hillary Frank is host and creator of The Longest Shortest Time, the parenting podcast for everyone. Hillary’s written and illustrated three YA novels, and she has been a contributor to This American Life since 1999, when she got her first story on the air using a microcassette answering machine and a shiny red boombox. Hillary has won several honors for her audio work, including three awards from the Third Coast International Audio Festival.
Tobin Low is the co-host and co-managing editor of Nancy. He also served as a producer on the first season of More Perfect. Tobin’s work has appeared on Marketplace, Studio 360, and the Codebreaker podcast. He’s a graduate of the Transom Story Workshop, and was selected by the Association of Independents in Radio to be a New Voices Scholar in 2014. Special skills include moderate circus tricks and a truly awful British accent.
Caitlin Kenny is the VP of Programming and New Show Development at Gimlet. Before joining Gimlet, she was one of the founding members of NPR’s Planet Money, where her work on the Planet Money t-shirt project earned her an Emmy, a duPont-Columbia, and a Gerald Loeb award. Prior to that, she worked as a producer at WNYC, WBUR, and NPR’s Bryant Park Project.
Sruthi Pinnamaneni is a producer at Gimlet Media’s Reply All. Her work has aired on Studio 360, Radiolab, Freakonomics, Marketplace and Love + Radio. She worked on the award-winning feature film, Kumare. As the audio/video correspondent at The Economist, she traveled between cities and villages in India to produce a series on rural education and the informal economy in slums. Sruthi grew up in South India. She has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
