# RESOURCE 1: Podcasts and Video Essays

## Podcast Workshops

1) Unpacking layers of a podcast as intro exercise — we often use the intro to the Serial podcast, but here a couple other interesting examples we used over the course of the year:
* Episode 9, 2:54 to 4:30 of The Big Dig podcast: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1205152723/the-big-dig — this is my favorite one, because there is narration and interview audio, but the environmental sounds and music are very carefully designed to create immersion and an emotional response about the good that was done for the community by putting the highway underground.
* Episode 7, 26:55 of the CrunchyRoll Anime in America podcast https://www.crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica/ (this one is nice because it has transcripts for each episodes so you can find promising segments by skimming)
* Episode 8 from this podcast called Ways of Knowing, this one is about Nina Simone and translation (in general, this podcast is worth checking out because it has short episodes, useful for our purposes): https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/ways-of-knowing

2) Simulate a podcast
- GarageBand Basics (see Resource 2)
- Students can practice recording with a podcast mic, and/or can practice using their phone (especially if they will be doing this for their course), using a jacket to simulate a “dry” studio setting.
- One effective format:
- Step 1: Students start by delivering some sort of “source” audio — that is, a clip in which they are pretending to be some sort of “expert witness” for the podcast. For French language classes, we even had students recite tongue twisters on a handout as though they were expert witnesses on the nonsensical topics!
- Step 2: Then, the students rotate. The new student at each computer must listen back to the “source” audio and supply “host” narration to frame the source audio on either end, possibly introducing their imaginary podcast episode.
- Step 3: The students add a music bed using free sound libraries. One particularly great sound library is [Blue Dot Sessions](https://app.sessions.blue/), which has various mood sliders and does not require creating an account to download its tracks.
- Step 4: Students learn automation so that they can adjust their levels of music and source audio volume over the course of their podcast clip.
- Step 5: share!

3) Other possibilities:
- Utilizing Notebook LM feature, which generates AI conversational podcast that allows for evaluation of the tropes of conversational format, what makes it compelling, what the advantages are of more complex formats (Experimented with this for GOV 940L)

## Video essay workshops
1. Examples to unpack
* A learning lab classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V10kWLh71U -- the Vox chair video showcases some crucial moves of the video essay: a strong opening hook and the deployment of several visual examples in close succession, which could not be concisely demonstrated in written form
* My favorite video essay to use this year was this video essay about the Matrix's soundtrack from the Listening In YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXGyCp6aQPo
* The advantage of this essay is that is more serious and formal, if not quite academic, in tone, and develops a complex argument (even if this is not totally apparent from the clickbaity title). I focused on two sections of the essay:
* From 1:13 to 1:53 -- illustrates the utilization of written sources and background context in video essays; how images, music, and footage are chosen to complement these sources
* From 8:52 to 10:24 -- a great example of film and musical analysis through the video essay medium, with a quite compelling argument about the coordination of chaos into order and quite subtle editing moves like the shift from out-of-focus to in-focus in both audio and visual.
* In this exercise, I would usually ask students to identify the different categories of sound and visuals in the essay, and then to articulate what the author's argument is.

Note: Listening In is a decent channel for music-related video essays, but often the arguments are a little thin and melodramatic, focused on the greatness of the subject in question above all else. A lot of video essays about media, while widely varying in tone, don't go too far beyond "this is cool" so it's good for students to be on the alert about that.

Some other music-related video essay channels worth checking out:
* Adam Neely: https://www.youtube.com/@AdamNeely -- many of his videos strike an effective balance between more casual/conversational and analytical modes. It is also nice for students to see a very popular example. They tend to be quite long, though, so not always a great model for the video essays students will be doing for their courses. Plus, the fact that Adam Neely has a very large fanbase impacts the presentation of the videos.
* Game Score Fanfare: https://www.youtube.com/@GameScoreFanfare/videos -- the arguments in these essays tend to be on the simpler side and don't often use much evidence beyond the media object under analysis, but some of them are good models not only because of their short length but because they are very clear and to-the-point in their organizational structure (e.g. the Sayonara Wild Hearts essay).

2) Key considerations when teaching video essays:
- How do you coordinate the viewer's **attention** onto different aspects of the audio and visuals?
- Beginning from the **essay** -- having a coherent essay structure, finding the moments when the video/audio can shoulder the load of description. Really zero in on such moments of "value add" from the video format. Acknowledge that the editing takes a significant amount of time, and that that time can't be at the expense of a strong, well-supported argument, so what can it replace?
- For optional video essays: Why should your topic be a video essay? Why shouldn't it?
- Doing a video essay well is extremely hard. Students shouldn't mistake it for being an easier task just because it seems more fun.

3) Hands-on video essay practice

* Because it's often not practical to teach video editing within the workshop, a good exercise can be to have students do a paper prototype of a video essay under the overhead cam. This could take two forms:
* Using paper/crafting materials to diagram the overall structure of a video essay horizontally (sections, etc.) and vertically (different layers of audio/visuals: music, narration, speaking to camera, video footage, on-screen text, etc.), showing when different elements enter and exit the essay.
* Using paper/crafting materials to simulate the flow of the video essay in real time -- a sort of "performance" of what the video essay might be like. One student may narrate, another may move paper elements (e.g. stills from a movie, drawings) into and out of the overhead cam frame, another may stand on the green-screen stage and gesture to particular items under the cam. This way, students learn the importance of coordination of points in the written narration with visuals, and even music.