My new audiodrama show, The Believer, is right in the middle of pre-production. This is a nebulous time, especially for this show since I’m the only producer. All the deadlines are for me. All the goals are for me. The mammoth to-do list is...for me.
Pre-production is essentially working backwards. Imagine everything you need in order to record an episode: actors, script, equipment, space. Then work backward to get all those things in place. To get an actor, I need to cast one. To do casting, I need character breakdowns and audition lines. To have audition lines, I should probably have some version of the script. And so on and so on until the beginning of time.
This is also my time to set up everything around the show. Obviously when I start publishing, I want to have episodes to publish. But to publish on Apple Podcasts you also need a title, description, and logo. For listener engagement and promotion, you need a website and social media pages. If you want to allow listeners to support you with donations, you’ll need a Patreon.
It’s a lot.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
A title (Believer! Because it’s about not believing in things!)
This website
Show accounts on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram
Start-up funding
Tentative schedule/deadlines
An iffy-looking budget
A target premiere date
One show overview and pitch information
One season outline
Three episode outlines
One episode draft
So like I said, it’s the middle of the beginning. Next up is a logo, social media content, and seven more episode outlines. Then it’s scripts, casting, and recording.
So there’s my target start date. I chose February 18, 2020, because it’s my birthday and I can’t think of a better birthday present to myself than a WHOLE LOT OF WORK. Plus, I figure it’ll give me extra juice to guilt my family into learning how to download podcasts if I make it a birthday present to me.
Now we work backwards. Before the first episode goes up, I need a trailer. The trailer is helpful because you can use it to get yourself up and running on Apple Podcasts ahead of your premiere date. The amount of time it takes for Apple to approve a new show varies, so if you want a set start date to announce ahead of time, you’re best off putting up a trailer first. That also allows people to subscribe to your podcast ahead of the episode coming out, if they want to.
I know I’m going to need time to mix and edit the trailer, and I want to be especially generous with my early content because I’m still learning the best process for this show. So let’s say I want a month to complete the trailer.
So I’ve got February 18. I want to submit the podcast at least three weeks before that, which is January 28. I want a month before that to finalize the trailer and podcast info. So I need to have all the recorded content together by December 28.
That means I need to know what’s in the trailer, cast any actors, and schedule recording sessions with them by the end of December. See how quickly we’re headed toward October? Eventually we’ll get to what I’m working on now, which are these two steps:
A logo
Episode outlines (so I have bits to pick out)
Trailer content
I plan to write about each of these things as they come along, so you can get a glimpse of what goes into them. Or at least, what a first-time solo producer who mostly only knows things in theory puts into them.
This is a space for you to follow along, if you’d like. You can even pitch in in the comments. Just be nice, please.
My start date is February 18, 2020. That’s 130 days from now. So let’s call this Day -130. Let’s go.
Further Reading
The fabulous Wil Williams has a podcast that follows their process of creating an audiodrama called Scoring Magic, which I highly recommend. They have a team of collaborators and much more complex sound design than my show, so it’s been really interesting to listen to that as I go through this process.
Speaking of descents into madness, check out The Diary of a Madman, by Nikolai Gogol. It’s a short story written in 1835 that consists of diary entries from a man experiencing a mental break. This was obviously written before our modern understanding of mental illness, but it actually holds up surprisingly well. It’s in the public domain in the US, though certain English translations might still be copyrighted. You can read a free version on Wikisource.