Gaetan Harris: Sound Design Tips for Audio-First Podcasts

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Sound Off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast, starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
Gaetan Harris is someone I met a long time ago. I actually hired him to work on the radio in Winnipeg, but today it's the work he did after Winnipeg that I'm interested in, especially his time working for Pacific Content, where he worked alongside Steve Pratt and Dan Meisner to make excellent branded podcasts and pick up a few awards as well. This is going to be a good listen if you are a podcast purist into sound design, production, and just love listening to podcasts. I might suggest that if you have a podcast in the works, today might be the day you meet your producer, editor, and sound design person. And now, Gay Tay Harris joins me from Vancouver.

Gaetan Harris  0:53  
We met in Winnipeg. We always a Winnipeg guy. Yeah, I mean, I thought I was always going to be a Winnipeg guy. You know, I came out to the West Coast. I went to school for two years. I thought to myself, "Yeah, I'll do this, and then I'll go back to Winnipeg. And 13 years later, here we are. I'm still on the West Coast.

Matt Cundill  1:13  
Where'd you go to school?

Gaetan Harris  1:15  
Went to BCIT out here, Winnipeg. I was at Red River College for a couple of years, I think that was before I jumped onto Power 97. I think I recall the first time I was listening to an afternoon show or something. I'm like, "Hey, call in and you know ask us questions. And I called and I said, "How do I get a job? And whoever was hosting, I can't remember who it was, called me back and said, "Get you in touch with our program director. Why do I think it was? That sounds like David Lewis and Jay Richardson, maybe. Yeah, it was one of them. It might have been Jay. Just for context, Jay Richardson is the voice you hear whenever the Winnipeg Jets score a goal. That's exactly it. Yeah, I love that too. That he has been able to keep that going for so many years too. It's just, it's what a cool job! And then you got a job. I gave you a job. Yeah, that's wild. It was the voice. Clearly, it was the voice. Initially, it wasn't the voice because you got me doing. I was operating the board for George Strombolabas' show on Sundays when you guys did the syndication of the Strombo show, and so I I would fire the commercial breaks. That was my first gig before you got me doing weekends, and then filling in once in a while. I think I did a, I did a '90s nooner, and I'll never forget this because it was supposed to be all '90s songs, right? And you know, people would call in with their requests. I just implicitly trusted the listener to request '90s songs, so I forget what what the song was. Somebody called in, "Hey, can I hear this? Yeah, absolutely. Threw it in. Song starts playing, and who's the music director?

Matt Cundill  2:55  
It was Casey Norman or Chris Lynch.

Gaetan Harris  2:58  
Casey Norman. It was Casey Norman. He runs into the studio as the song is playing. He's like, "Dude, this isn't '90s. This is not '90s music. I was like, "Oh my god, no! And I think I got on in the next break, and I was like, "Fool me once, you guys! Fool me once! Shame on me! That was funny. 

Matt Cundill  3:18  
It's just one of those things you just got to double check everything. You know anything's ever called in. You just got to take that information and check it. It's funny because it reminds me of somebody else who took a traffic tip, and the traffic tip was actually for a check stop for alcohol, and we put it on the air. But you know it's tough. I feel bad too because I think I let I let that person go. I shouldn't have done that. Sorry, Brittany. Too harsh, man. 

Gaetan Harris  3:44  
I mean, I was fairly young at the time. I think late 2000s. So I know I was like in my early 20s and really cutting my teeth. Honestly, like learning the whole business and and learning how to be a like a good host. You and I did some air checks once in a while, and you know you're trying to direct me into like you know this is good stuff. Like do this more, do this more. Like what what do you think worked here? I think he always had a really great straight way of asking me questions, or even just kind of getting me to arrive to the conclusion myself. Which I'd be like, oh yeah, well that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, if I'm not if I'm not doing that, then and I'm just telling you what I think, then all you're learning is what I think, and I'm not that good. I'm good. I'm not that good because inevitably, I want the person in front of me to be way better than me. The fact that we still you know talk to each other on on occasion or communicate with each other on occasion. It's just like it kind of blows me away sometimes that we've had this kind of relationship that's lasted this many years. But you know, you helped me cut my teeth through radio, and yeah, I I recall that job, especially like doing the weekends, super fondly. It was just a ton of fun. I love. The guys on Saturday or Sunday morning, they're they're calling. It's like six in the morning, and they're still half cut. I mean, maybe fully cut.

Matt Cundill  5:08  
Well, that's winter in Winnipeg, right?

Gaetan Harris  5:10  
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  5:12  
So let me get this straight: you went to BCIT, you went out there to take what course, and then you there 13 years. How does this happen? Has this happened to one man?

Gaetan Harris  5:21  
Well, you know, I I thought at the time, like I went I went to BC because I thought to myself like I really wanted to work with the public broadcaster with the CBC. That was kind of my thing. I was listening to a lot of This American Life at the time, and I just loved the storytelling. And I, you know, had been listening to CBC my whole life, and I was like, you know, I really want to work with them, but I felt like I didn't have the qualifications for some reason at the time. I mean, it's sort of like lifelong imposter syndrome, right? And came out here and did. I think it was radio arts and entertainment. The program was called at the time. I don't know what it is anymore, but I started the program, and I recall everything just kind of coming easy, and then I was realizing to myself, I do have the skill set. Like I don't know why I didn't think I I didn't have the skill set. That guy Matt knew what he was talking about and taught me everything that I need to know. Yeah, everything you know, just you know, A to Z. But you're not wrong in thinking that you know that they're not going to pick you up in the CBC if it says Power 97 on your resume. Yeah, and I mean I had no, I really had zero experience when it came to like you know the production of that kind of content. So I didn't really have anything to to really go on except for a couple of internships that I had with CBC in Winnipeg, and then one at Radio Three out here in in Vancouver. So I did the program, and thankfully, because I had had that previous experience, you know, I I'm a rather personable guy, apparently. So that really helped me. I know my teachers really liked me, and they said, "Okay, well, there's there's this radio station opening up, and we think that you'd be you'd be great to go and work there. So it was a place called Roundhouse Radio. It's a hyper local radio station that really only broadcasts to like the city of Vancouver. And at the time, I lived in Burnaby. I still live in Burnaby right now, but I remember go home and I would try to listen to that radio station. I couldn't get it. Like that's how weak the transmitter was, and so I worked doing the commercial production there for a couple of years, and they were kind of. It was a bit of a weird wild west too, and in terms of how they were doing the station, the commercials were of an indeterminate length; they could be 30 seconds or they could be a minute, and we were just kind of given carte blanche to like do whatever we wanted. So, like, I started telling stories. I would go to these businesses and I'd interview them, and I would make these commercials that were like little mini docs because I thought that that was maybe a good way of getting people to buy into a business and and maybe purchase their product. I don't know how much success they really had. I mean, they've shut down. So, well, I think in the end, I do remember you know the story of the station. I mean, I think Gene Delitis was on it. I think Jody Vance was on it. It was not short of talent, but the signal was inevitably its downfall. It just didn't go far enough. I think at that time as well, there were a few of us on the team that were really pushing to try to get us to leverage this content in a podcasting form. We thought we have so many great guests coming onto this radio station, but you know we're only serving this very small community, and nobody's hearing this content that we're making. And yeah, I think that for us, we were just thinking like, where are we more widely distributing this? But you know, like they had different priorities, of course.

Gaetan Harris  8:55  
So eventually, there was a coworker of mine who told me about a job listing with Pacific content, and the guy who one of the founders, I knew him from doing my internship out here in '09, and I I followed him on Twitter, and I remember for years after my internship, I would just like every three to six months send him a message: any jobs, any jobs, new jobs. So I applied for this job to do sound design on their podcast episode content. Well, name names if you would. Well, yeah. So the guy's name is Steve Pratt. So when you said CBC Three, I thought I immediately thought of Steve Pratt because he was there at the time. And CBC Three, I think, was it an internet-only music station? Yeah. So it was internet and SiriusXM, and I was just a huge fan. Like I went to when I was at Red River College in Winnipeg. I had my own college radio show. It was called Oh Gosh, the Ministry of Indy. It was called the Ministry of India, and I did it on Friday mornings. And I would just like play indie music and music that I liked. Really, like sometimes I'd just be like, "Hey guys, like listen to this Beatles song I really like. But I I was kind of immersed in that sort of thing, and I loved Radio Three, so I just I wanted to do that. And so being when I came here to to Vancouver to do like I think it was a three week internship, I met Steve Pratt and I met Chris Kelly, who is the one of the founders of Kelly and Kelly, another podcasting company out here. This now owned by New Metric Media. Anyway, so yeah, it was Steve Pratt. It was the boss of this thing, and I did a little bit of of work to kind of start things off, and then they they hired me full time, and so what did you learn working under Steve? Wow, I mean, certainly how to trust myself. That imposter syndrome was so real starting out that job. I couldn't believe that I had gotten a position doing the exact thing that I had decided that I wanted to do. I think maybe eight years previous, I couldn't believe that I'd finally kind of gotten what I wanted, and so I remember the first couple of episodes that I did for you know was Andy Shepard, who was the who was kind of like the head of audio at the time, and I would send something to him, he'd be like, "Great, sounds awesome, and I'd be on Slack, and I'm like, "Are you sure? No changes, no notes. And that really, it really surprised me. But then, as I kept on kind of working through the shows that I was getting, it probably took me two years to really trust myself and trust the decisions that I was making and trust that I knew what I was doing. And then, I mean the the amount of learning that was happening at Pacific Content, we were learning all the time, and I just loved that way of developing. Like we were always kind of getting together, and we would have sessions where we would just kind of like pick a client and then make a show or like brainstorm what we would do for the type of a type of company that we maybe wanted to do something for, and that was a great learning experience of just like that brainstorming process, but also like talking about formats and and hosts and content, and it was always really exciting to be there, and you always felt like you were included. Like everybody was a everybody was a part of it. So yeah, and I learned I learned how to make great audio for sure. Like the the team that was at Pacific Content was just an insanely talented group of people. Everybody I worked with was just so smart, and so whatever you were doing, you were always learning something about pacing or music selection. It was truly like one of the best jobs I've ever had was with Pacific Content.

Matt Cundill  12:53  
Well, I think if you've listened to a Pacific Content podcast in the past, you know, even today, they sound great.

Gaetan Harris  13:00  
And it's funny you were talking about you know your like and your love for this American life, but you also mentioned show notes and mix notes, and a lot of people produce podcasts, but they don't let other ears go and evaluate the stuff and send it back. Because I mean, I'm listening to some podcasts, and I was like, yeah, could have fixed that, could have made that better, could have made that better, but the only people I've ever heard bring up mix notes is Ira Glass, you, and just a handful of others. And you know, sound and sound design is is it's a big thing. It keeps people coming back. It's huge, and that's what I'm try. I'm trying to really stick with that as as I kind of go forward in my career as well is the fact that like it's really important and the audio should not be kind of like left to the wayside. It's something that's critical. Like there are things that I've listened to or even things that I've watched, and I hear the sound and I'm like, why am I going to continue giving my time to this if they haven't kind of given it the attention that it needed in order for it to sound good in the first place, when you listen to a podcast, what's the number one thing that you hear in a show that is just glaringly obvious? That is immediately, if I had a chance, I would send the person a note about this particular problem. What's that problem? Wow, one of the things that kind of always bothers me is I feel like you can put a like a mouth click remover like on almost everybody. I think that there's quite a few people that don't like mouth clicks, and maybe they don't even know that they they don't like it. It's just one of those things, and I wish that more people would process their guest audio with a with a mouth declicker. Yeah, as you as you get older, by the way, there's more of them. Oh yeah, and there's there's more. That's true. The the green apple doesn't solve all. Now you got to go straight to apple cider vinegar, which is you know a 10 minute affair in the bathroom, just trying to work that through. Is it isotope that you use to remove that or anything else? Yeah, isotope is what I will. Generally use to get rid of that, and you know sometimes I think it's just about a bit of simple mic technique. You just kind of wish that somebody would have spent three to five match just showing somebody how to use the microphones in front of them, especially when it's something that like you and I, we both have SM seven Bs in front of our face, and they're not cheap. They're like seven, $800 mics, and you purchase one of these for your host, and then they don't know how to use it properly. You're like, no, this isn't even my microphone of choice. I like the one I had better, which was a Rode, but it was a condenser mic. But I had the right studio for it. I no longer am in the right space, so the sound will, the sound's still not perfect, but the SM7B cleans it up quite nicely. Yeah, I actually bought this years ago, and you know I wasn't even sure it was. I didn't get a lot of use out of it at the time, but thank God I. This is the one that I purchased because it's like a 15-year-old mech at this point. Something I saw on your website about the zooms. There's a Zoom H4 and a Zoom H5 that you do use. When would you go out and record something remotely? Really, most of the time that would come down to like the the points where I'm called in to to do some tape syncing. I've done that a couple of times for a few shows. What's tape syncing?

Gaetan Harris  16:21  
Tape syncing is where, let's say, you need me to, or you're going to interview somebody who's out here in Vancouver, but you need somebody who's got a good mic to basically go over to that person's house or their office and stick a microphone in their face while they talk to you on their telephone or something like that. Oh, is that how that's done? It's done less and less lately because I think that there's you know so many people are like, oh, we'll fix it in post. It's fine, but like I think some of the other shows, they'll yeah they'll they'll pay somebody to go over and make sure that they can get a professionally recorded interview, you know.

Matt Cundill  17:03  
I have an h5, and I have an h5, and I always thought it was hard to use. Listen, when you nail it, you nail it. It sounds great, but sometimes I would wind up with popping peas. It's a very sensitive microphone at the top. Finding a place to set it up. Oh, you put it on the table, and then somebody banged the table. I mean, if you're if you're sticking in front of somebody's face, I imagine you have to hold it for the entire interview.

Gaetan Harris  17:26  
Well, in that case as well. So what I do is I use an external microphone with the XLR inputs on the bottom because yeah, you're right. The mics at the top, like they're really they're X and Y microphones that kind of split like this, and they capture like everything. Like it's they're they're good mics, but they are sensitive, like you say, right? And they're really only good, honestly. I I find for capturing kind of ambiance. But if if you're interviewing anybody, like I just plug in my my interview microphone, and and that's what takes care of it.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  17:59  
Sound design of the Sound Off podcast is inspired by Megatrax, the sound of entertainment, providing music and sound effects for radio, podcasts, and media professionals. Megatracks is your one-stop shop for library and custom tracks. Start your music search now at Megatracks.com. The Sounding Off newsletter delivered free to your inbox, featuring Matt's media hacks, hot takes, and retakes. Sign up now at SoundingOff news.

Matt Cundill  18:32  
Just back to Steve Pratt Pacific content, and you know, making audio for brands. I mean, I would have never thought to have done this, right? Which is why Steve did this, sold it to Rogers, and has a book. And I'm still trying to figure out this sort of stuff. But to tell stories for brands, what is the art of telling a story about a brand and not making it sound like a radio infomercial? Number one, it's it's about trying to

Gaetan Harris  19:00  
find something that aligns with the values of that company. Finding a format, a host, and the types of stories that will speak to a specific piece of that brand's customer base as well. And what I remember from working there, and what Steve would talk about, and he talks about in his book too, and earn it is about using that to present a gift to the customer. It wasn't like, "Hey, here's a show about you know the new Ford f1 150. People are like, "Well, we don't care. Like, why this isn't interesting stuff? Well, here's a show about the history of the Ford Bronco, including, by the way, the story of O.J. Simpson. Ford wanted to do a show, by the way, about the Bronco when they were relaunching it, and so there were a bunch of different companies that were vying for this show, and we were the only ones to go in. And say we don't look away from O.J. Simpson; we look straight at it. And it was in that that we ended up getting that contract and ultimately doing the show. I digress a little bit here, but yeah, making shows for brands-you don't want it. You don't want it to sound like a an infomercial. You want something that people will listen to, and it always comes back to yeah presenting something that's of value to that listener, and if we were able to get that message across to the company that we were pitching to, and if they bought in correctly as well, half of the battle as well was getting the proper buy-in, brands that were going to be brave enough to be able to allow us to present a story in a way that wasn't going to mention that brand, you know, unless we were talking about that show title at the beginning or the end, right?

Matt Cundill  20:51  
Yeah, and by the way, congratulations because you picked up a bunch of awards for sound design, and so now I'm just going to ask you a little bit about sound design because I I know this process from having worked in commercial radio, and I know enough of this process because I've built a few podcasts myself, and it comes from either you know you the sound designer and me the executive producer having a conversation of how can you bring that to life? Give me the sound of an ambulance here. Give me the sound of a car accident. Go get me some music here. So when you go to get that, where do you go to get that? Because I know that there's a lot of people

Gaetan Harris  21:30  
who have podcasts right now who would love to do all this extra stuff, but they don't know where to go get it. I mean, I've been using Soundly for a number of years, and that goes back to my days at Pacific content, you pay I don't know 150 bucks a year or something, and you've got this entire library of sounds. Some of them which have been built by people who there's a website I forget what is like FreeSoundEffects.com or something. People upload their own stuff, but then Soundly also constantly updates their library. They have a staff of people who just goes out and they just they make sound effects. And then one day you'll open up the app and I'll say, "Hey, like it's Halloween. We just dropped this whole new library of door creaks. And you're like, "That's sick! This is great! Beautiful, searchable. You don't need a hard drive for it. If you have a hard drive full of sound effects, then you plug it in. You can have the app like look at that hard drive, so that when you're searching for stuff, you get all of the stuff that they have, and then all of your stuff as well, which I think is like is very very useful. So I've I've been using them for quite a while, and I really like the product. It doesn't doesn't break the bank, and like for anybody starting out, it's one of the the easiest way to get really high quality sound effects that are going to work really well. So I use that. I've been using APM music for my music needs. Now I use APM usually because all the contracts that I've worked on they have music licensing agreements with them, so they could be one of the more expensive options. But I know that there's some other ones that I've used in the past that usually are for like the YouTube videos. There's Epidemic Sound that's not too bad. They have a monthly subscription, and I've noticed even on I think it's on Instagram. I've noticed there's a couple of guys who like have just made production libraries of music, and they're like, "Hey, you know, throw me 10 bucks, and you have this for life. I'll have to grab the names of those guys. There's one guy in particular who's done it, and lots of sources out there have actually of free music or like royalty free at least, where you know you throw these guys 1020, 30 bucks, and they're like, go for it. You know, we want we want to hear this music in stories, and then lastly, I'll mention Blue Dot Sessions, which I really like. If you've listened to any of that This American Life style kind of podcast before, Blue Dot Sessions is used for a lot of that. Another great idea is to start your own, and so I have the Zoom h5, and I would just carry it with me. And if I'm on a bus, I now have the sound of a bus. If I'm on an airplane, I'm just rolling tape, you know, recording the sounds of an airplane taking off. A motorcycle, I've needed a motorcycle. I said, "Well, I'll just roll some motorcycle sound effects here, and the Zoom h5 does a great job of that. And what is actually underappreciated is an iPhone. Oh yes, absolutely. So underappreciated. I've used so many effects that I've just like I've taken out my phone and I've just been like I want to record this. I've got a lot of sports ambiances. I've got this little actually. It's only about three or four files. I took them. I think when I was at a playoff game, it was the Jets in 2018 when they did their run, and I walked around the concourse. You know, I I rolled during play, and I got all sorts of like great crowd sound effects that I viewed. Multiple times over the last, you know, six years, and they've just been recorded on my phone. You know, you do a little bit of light editing to them, you make them stereo, a little bit of you know, bit of EQ, and they're they're wonderful. You layer them in, and you can create something really nice. Have you tried out any of the recovery programs, you know, in Riverside.

Gaetan Harris  25:23  
If there's too much echo in the room, they have a tool that can fix the echo, as they say. Adobe has one as well. Podcast enhancements. There's Studio Sound and Descript that does it. Waves regeneration. There's also another one. Have you have you tried any of that stuff? And what do you think of it? Yeah, I actually I I do tend to use the Adobe one quite often, especially I've been working with some clients that don't have the budget to send out microphones or anything. So oftentimes I'm at the mercy of whatever microphone that guest has, and it can be you know like one of those awful headset microphones, which I generally will just say, take that off. We're going to use your computer mic. As much as I'm a little, I mean, everybody's worried about artificial intelligence and what it's going to do to work, and especially creative work. But it does an insanely good job of making somebody sound just half good.

Matt Cundill  26:22  
You're the perfect person for me to ask this, but is that artificial intelligence that fixes that, or just a really good plugin?

Gaetan Harris  26:29  
Good question. Maybe it's just a really good plugin. Maybe that's all it is. Maybe they can call it podcast enhanced AI or whatever. But and maybe they're using some sort of model in order to operate that, but at the end of the day, yeah, you're you're kind of right. It's just a really good way of processing that audio. I mean, most of them sound a little bit tinny. It's beginning to become a little bit like the Blue Yeti and a little bit like the headset mic, where I'm beginning to really hear and understand that that has been treated by one of those four programs that I've that I've mentioned, and it has to be used really lightly. It's like anything in sound design; like less is more. You just want to get it to the point where you're taking out the maybe the room reverb, or maybe there's like a the hiss or something in the background. I mean, you could do that easily in in any of these apps as well, like any of these DAWs, but yeah, it's just about using it like a little bit because I I encounter it quite often as well, like especially when you're on Instagram and you're flipping through and you hear how much like they've just turned it up to 100% You're like, oh, like it. You don't need that much. You need maybe 30 just to make them sound intelligible and and maybe take a bit of the room tone away if you really just want to do that. So less is more. I feel badly, by the way. I didn't go to London this year to the podcast show because I would have I would have seen you. We would have gone to the pub or something. How was it? What was the experience like? It was awesome. This was my first time going to a a trade show ever. For context, I I've been doing my own freelance stuff for about three years now, but I went public with my own brand called Syrup Sound. It's a boutique sound design studio for for audio first podcasts, and going to London was it was a reason for me to go there first of all for the for the podcast show, but I wanted to make sure that I could hand out my cards and stickers and things like that. And so I met a ton of really amazing people. The space was excellent in Islington. I was at the Business Design Center, just this huge open room, lots of natural light. There's six stages, kind of right in the middle, and then there's a bunch in the rooms on the upper levels. There's all sorts of companies with people who make decisions who were there, who were talking to anybody, and you can walk up to anyone. You know, I I had conversations with people from the BBC and the CBC and Spotify and iHeart, even at the panels, you go to panels and there would be like a couple of celebrities basically, and then after the panel was done, just walk up to them and say hello and say you like their work, and you know it was really awesome. Met a good group of people that I hung out with when I was there as well, and made a lot of connections, so I'll probably go back next year. Just it was a good time. It was kind of like camp, honestly.

Matt Cundill  29:28  
Well, you can save a beer for me. We'll we'll get together and and do our proper catch up that that we would. But I just think like the time that you spent at Pacific Content, where you know it got bought by Rogers, and then later by Lower Street, you immediately have an in with an entire crowd over in England at Lower Street who now own Pacific Content, and so that's yeah. There's some immediate friendships and probably some people that you worked with at that company. Yeah, I mean it's Pacific Content was such a great springboard to the rest of my career so far. You know.

Gaetan Harris  30:00  
Of the contracts I'm working on have come from the people that I worked with at Pacific Content because they know that I do good work and that I'm an agreeable person to work with, and that I'm going to do a good job. So that has fortunately sort of bled out into the podcasting world at large, where I get to mention Pacific Content, and there's this sort of incident, like ah yes, of course, okay, yeah, yeah. That's I know that that's a great company. It's like working for a great radio station. Yeah, exactly. Oh, Power Night Seven. Yeah, that's that was my first springboard. Honestly, was Power Night Seven. If you work at a great radio station that people at one point loved, is so much better than than working at a station that is like long dead and buried because nobody remembers that station exactly. How do you find it now? Where you're in sound design, your company is about sound and audio, and people come with podcasts and are like, "What about the cameras? Are we going to have three camera angles? Video, video, video. What's our video strategy? And they're really only talking about video because that's all they think a podcast is-is two people with sure microphones in front of their face talking to one another. Is that something that that makes you say this might not be my client, or do you have to give them therapy? How does that work? Well, honestly, haven't had a lot of clients come to me and say that video is part of their strategy. You know, the again, the work that I get has been through former colleagues and coworkers that I work with at Pacific Content, and so they've already had a lot of that work already done for me. So when they come to me, it is an audio show that we are doing, which I love. And I think in the last two years, especially as I've been getting my my business going because really it's only been a profitable thing for maybe the last year where things are actually kind of rolling and and I'm getting work a little bit more consistently. But for those last two years, I was thinking to myself like, oh, should I be learning more video editing? Should I be doing more of this? But it always came down to I don't really want to do that because that's not what I'm best at. I know what I'm best at, and that's doing really immersive quality audio, and I'm really paying attention to it. So finally, when I launched Syrup, it was with the intention, like I wrote a press release and everything because I was like, "This is what I'm doing. I'm doubling. I'm tripling down. I do audio. If you want somebody to do like a video podcast, like you should probably find somebody else. But if you want to do audio, you come to me. And so, I mean, time will tell whether or not that's a you know a good a good strategy. Listen, you can still have a video strategy and get your company to do the podcast because we can just make an audiogram of it and put it on YouTube, and that's going to be our video strategy. And we hope people find and discover it there and then listen to it with their headphones. I think that's a perfectly good video strategy. Yeah, I'm starting to maybe incorporate at least those learnings as well, so that I can be a voice that is like, well, because as a sound designer, I want as many people as possible to listen to that show. So, if there's a strategy that can happen that can push more people to listen to that show, then let's figure that out. How are we going to do that? We're going to do it with a trailer, and we're going to get Sydney Sweeney to voice the trailer and star in the trailer and tell everybody about our new audio show. And that will be three minutes, and that will be the video strategy. That is a video strategy. Yeah. Do you like how I think? I haven't changed, have I? We're gonna do it this way. It just is what it is. We're going this direction. That's that's the direction we're going in. That's right.

Gaetan Harris  33:49  
Now, somebody get me Sydney Sweeney's agent on the phone right now. Not now. Right now. Yesterday. Damn it. As you look ahead to the next year, and I think the London podcast show probably opened your eyes a bit. Did you have some takeaways from that about where podcast is is headed for you and what your relationship with podcasting is going to be? I mean, there was so much video, you know, everyone was talking about it there, and I think that that's still in that phase, and that gold rush still hasn't come to an end. Still, we're still there. Okay. Of course, you got all these talks that are happening, right? And so you've got all this video content. What's your video strategy? You know, like all that sort of stuff. You know, Cannon's got a booth. Riverside's got a booth. Like they're all talking about that stuff, but you've got all these talks that are happening, and they are the audio nerds. They're the people who have been in podcasting, making audio shows for a really long time. So what I see, at least in how podcasting is is developing, is yeah, okay, video stormed the scene, and everyone's. Talking about like how profitable it is because there's lots of ad money that's been going to it, and you get more eyes. I mean, they've made tons of money off of advertising on on video podcasts, so that will be its own thing. I think that there's this there's a transitionary period. The shiny thing is catching everybody's attention at the moment, right? But that will become its own thing, and audio itself will return to it being like its own strategy, because there is a subsection of podcast listening. They are, yeah, they're extremely loyal people, and they want to listen to audio. They want that, and so there's always going to be a place for that. And so, the way that I see my position in audio, I think that I think and hope that I've placed myself in the right situation, and I've positioned myself in a way that will make me, you know, a valuable piece of the podcasting industry as somebody who has a a pair of good ears and who really cares about a show, a listener, I think that there's still place for that, and I think that sticking with it will hopefully lead me to you know some interesting projects down the road.

Matt Cundill  36:11  
There's always going to be more available ears than there are eyes, and as a result, people are always going to need to listen first and watch second. They might discover first with their eyes, but I just know that there's just more available ears than there are eyes, and we're here to make great audio and the best sounding podcast, and not a mediocre TV show. Exactly. It is great to connect with you again and catch up. And I'm sorry that we didn't get to see each other in London, but we will next year. That's right, yeah. In Islington, I'll see you there. Thanks a lot, Kate.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  36:49  
Another Sound Off Media Company podcast.