New student-produced podcast tells campus stories in 5 minutes
The trio of seniors behind the production of the IU podcast Through the Gates have a new weekly student-focused mini-podcast, The Sample.
Journalism major Emily Miles, journalism and international studies major Abigail Gipson, and liberal studies senior Terick Warner are the producers of the two podcasts, which are both collaborations between the provost’s office and The Media School.
After nearly two years of working with Through the Gates, a weekly podcast hosted by Media School dean Jim Shanahan that features an interview with a person connected to IU, Gipson said she and the other students were looking for the potential for what she called “a dual space”: an opportunity to tell compelling stories with a creative spin on the audio side. The Sample bills itself as “the little cousin of Through the Gates – warm, useful, short.”
“We wanted a space where we could be more creative with audio, just because Through the Gates is more formal, in that it’s a sit-down interview,” Gipson said. “We wanted to see what stories we could tell about IU through a different format.”
These stories, Gipson said, are youthful and student-centric. She said they plan to interview subjects they find personally appealing. Miles said she loved the idea of a shorter-format audio piece now that they’ve had a lot of experience with the art of producing long-form podcasts.
“It’s stuff that we find interesting but doesn’t necessarily fit the flow of Through the Gates,” Warner said.
This might include an interview with a female mariachi band and a game design professor, and some non-traditional content.
Those ideas come from their own interests and the topics their friends interested in, Miles said. The students also hope to create more interactive content around the process of adapting your home traditions to your life on campus, Miles said.
“We’re sort of bringing home to IU,” she said. “We’re looking to do an episode where we go get a pumpkin and carve it, which is something we all probably did as kids. It’s a little bit more difficult to do actually, and if you’re living in a dorm especially.”
The student producers also plan to do a Friendsgiving episode when the holiday arrives.
The first episode, released Friday, tells the stories of this weekend’s Lotus World Music and Arts Festival through volunteer coordinator Tamara Loewenthal and Media School senior lecturer Norbert Herber, who led the artistic development for Big Tent, an octagonal multimedia presentation that performed at Fourth and Washington streets during Lotus.
The 5:19 narrated episode tells the stories directly through Loewenthal and Herbert and incorporates background noise, a sign that the interviews were recorded on-site rather than in a studio.
Each episode takes hours to produce, even these five-minute episodes. The students alternate editing and production responsibilities for the podcasts, collaborating on the multi-hour process of paring down and editing full-length interviews with important subjects.
Miles, Gipson and Warner met through American Student Radio, an on-campus organization and learning laboratory that produces radio shows. Gipson was the first to join the provost’s audio storytelling initiatives.
She began working on “Stories from Home,” a StoryCorps-style initiative to tell the powerful stories of those in the community, in spring 2017.
The Sample is the brainchild of the team of students, though Miles said they often joke about how no one can quite remember where the idea came from.
The students agreed that both The Sample and Through the Gates have allowed them to build up their portfolios with work they are passionate about, as well as learn by listening to interviews with interesting subjects.
“I get a different perspectives on things — different from other students,” Gipson said.
A new episode of Through the Gates is released each Wednesday, and The Sample is released each Friday. The podcasts are available on Soundcloud, iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms.
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