As technology continues to expand and change, podcasts are making wave as an exciting new entertainment and media form. One of the most exciting things when it comes to podcasts is the seemingly limitless creative opportunities that the platform affords the creator.
When we consider the media, usually our attention fixates on the aesthetic, or what we visually observe. We can identify this purely in the way that we refer to our interacting with media. Just think about it. We often make reference to “watching a movie, television or reading an article online.” But do we put nearly as much emphasis on listening to these same modes. Rarely we do.
That is why podcasts offer such an opportunity: for the producer to capitalise on the creative opportunities that are extended to them by the plethora of audio technologies available today. It also allows the audience to localise their senses and enjoy all that the podcast has to offer as an informative and entertaining mode of technology.
I probably under appreciated the podcast until very recently when I decided to join the rest of the world and listen to Serial. Because I am such a visual person I didn’t really understand what the fuss would be all about but, willing to give it a go, I started the first episode and, rapidly, was hooked. I listened to the entire podcast series within around two days, an impressive feat given that collectively the series covers over ten hours of content.
What separated Serial from other podcasts that I had listened to beforehand was its going beyond being purely another mode of mere information or discussion of ideas. Podcasts that are information or discussion-driven aren’t invalid as potentially riveting or entertaining sources of media. But, after a while, they can become dry and repetitive. Rather Serial pulled the audience in by, in my opinion, basing the entire series on a gripping and fist-clenching narrative. There was a “beginning” that was established early on, a “conclusion” (of sorts) at the end and a mass “middle” that unravelled much of the story along the way.
The producers also went beyond the standard “two people sitting in a room talking” podcast experience and set the story up so that the audience felt as though we were unravelling it with them. They travelled between multiple locations and incorporated evidence of this into what we could hear as well as featured atmospheric music to add another dimension into the podcast. The narrator also produced the episodes progressively so that we were experiencing the events and characters as she was, and not retrospectively.
The elements of the series that hooked me in and retained my attention highlight what an incredible, albeit under-appreciated, medium the podcast is. Often falsely perceived purely as an “information” telling device, the podcast can create and communicate a story as fluently and as powerfully as any other vehicle for story telling, the possibilities with what we can make of this mode almost limitless.
