It’s a tad gritty analysing your percieved failure.

At the inception point of this making media subject #bcm114, I was trepidatiously elated to embark upon a structured journey to what I hoped would birth my long-awaited podcast desire.

Through the ideating phase, I turned my gaze toward what I liked about podcasts I engaged with and what was a turnoff. Don’t shoot me but I was tempted to mirror the exploration of consciousness in the making sense podcast or have a simpler discourse about my time living tiny on a hops farm in a trailer so I worked through several ideas in my mixed bag of pods from my plot holes and ecstasy pod to take a mind hike mate as I sought skills and a niche that could be a workable formula.

All in, I made 7 podcasts, not the 12 I originally set out to as my intention at the outset was to make one a week. Hilariously I had to delete a few along the way as Soundcloud only allows for a set number of minutes as does Buzzsprout (which I stopped using) if you want to stay in the free zone which after a reasonably hefty outlay for equipment, I did.

I discovered early on I didn’t like talking about myself #fefo, which surprised me, I really dove into why this was and if I could solve this conundrum. The vulnerability was too much and I enjoyed the injection of energy from talking to another and hearing their story and as the primary audience, I was leaning into my own critiques. The biggest takeaway for me was I didn’t actually realise that my initial ideas had a serious intention and that I’m not that person (observation). In saying this I have still not landed on what my voice is despite playing around with several modalities of this.

‘When you’re starting a creative career, you will go through a long period when your work is disappointing to you. That’s fine.’

I’ve always adored the getting curious podcast but disliked how chaotic the interviewer is so as I was listening on a deeper level (on the verge of disliking podcasts) throughout this semester in hope of sequestering viable insight; I tried out various styles to emanate or play with whatever I was interacting with at the time.

I genuinely feel like I traversed in and out of subject material interaction because I couldn’t figure out how it was relevant for me and this is where hindsight and reality clapped back with the truth pill that I should have been more disciplined in #fist. I observed that I was creating in a vacuum but didn’t know how to move beyond that, but I gained a depth of knowledge on tiktok and Reddit and that there are actually several different podcast platforms and that a lot of people position themselves across several platforms. The internet is fickle, if I gleaned anything from this semester it’s that you don’t know where you’ll find your audience or how. I wish I tested out these possibilities more but lining up friends to interview and editing was more time consuming than expected. Lockdown tripped my heartstrings and I went into a kind of weird stasis.

All feedback from friends and Reddit communities was positive albeit not very constructive. I did throw out the ideas ball to the internet in hope of garnering insight into what topics I could focus on. This is what reality said about me.

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Learning moments from this semester;

• The digital artifact project starter was incredible helpful at simplifying my aims and structuring my plans. My continuous pushback in this step allowed me to cycle through multiple ideas.
• Discovering creative commons was especially useful for non copyright infringement music.
• The simplicity cycle spoke to me in my language and taught me that I can pivot, evolve or simply start anew.

• ‘The meme is not the dancer but the dance‘, as a meme dummy, this contextualisation around something I blindly participated in was eye opening.
• Content curation is an obvious idea but brilliant and a path I could/ should have pursued.
• The Amalekites – don’t give in.
• I read the book, You’re not listening to attempt to get greater insight into audiences and interaction. This is so typical of me, trying to absorb everything which in turn detracts from doing. Go figure.
• I also sought out podcast planning from external sources such as trello to demystify the process. This was a useful template to stand alongside the subject materials.

I could literally do this subject over again in a million different ways which for me is foundational and fundamental in understanding the process of this subject and the core intention of making media. I feel seen but equally empowered. This semester and subject has injected me with a myriad of ideas, I’ve gone as far as the 5th dimension. With the tools garnered here, I feel I can fully embrace the idea that we are all media machines as dystopian as that sounds.

All in all, I feel like this has been a reconnaissance mission of exploration. I wasn’t able to produce what I wanted but through this process, I have gained actionable insight into what I don’t want and the steps required to create productively. This in itself was worth the work and I am grateful to everyone that let me interview them and the skillset I have acquired.