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How to make visual podcasts
Audio is a visual medium, but what would it look like to actually depict podcasts through illustration and animation? What does it add? And how is it different from, well… a film?
This issue I’m speaking to an audio producer who paired up with a designer to make a ‘visual podcast’. Audio producer Katz Laslo and designer Eddie Stok are the team behind the visual episodes of The Europeans (which I previously featured in the newsletter).
The episodes are part of a series called This Is What A Generation Sounds Like: intimate stories from across Europe, as told by the young people experiencing them. Each episode is accompanied by beautiful animations. Episode one, Josh and Franco, about a father and son from Southern Italy, was shortlisted for the Prix Europa.
Eddie and Katz talked to me about how they approached the collaboration; the challenges and freedoms of diving into another medium; and pushing audiences out of their comfort zones.
Tell us about your collaboration for the visual episodes of The Europeans. What were the first conversations you had?
Katz: The first conversation was really telling Eddie a bit about the story, and asking the dumb questions. What does a visual artist need? I had no idea. I did know the rough contours of how the story would look, how it’d be structured, but we didn’t have a final draft yet. Our podcasts often change even in the last week - so how could we come up with a process that gave us both enough creative freedom?
Eddie: For me, translating pure audio into a visual style was a completely new process. When you’re producing animation for its own sake, you have full control over the length of an action, or the pacing of a scene, and there’s a lot of thought for economies of time. A minute of animation is a huge investment compared to a minute of audio production. For me, the first conversations were a balance between the reality of the production’s limitations and my own excitement, enthusiasm, and ideas for the story.
What’s the starting point when thinking about the visual language a podcast episode might have? What are the influences?
E: There were a number of ideas that made their way into the final visual style of the Josh and Franco episode. First of all, the dual coming-of-age aspect was something that impressed itself on me immediately. It’s what made me go for quite a ‘naïve’ style—flat colours and outlines—to really get that feeling of vulnerability and fragility that you experience at these transformative moments in your life. Then the colours were inspired by my imaginary vision of the south of Italy as Josh describes it in the episode. Sun-baked, bright colours, green plants, cool blue waters, very saturated, lots of almost-primary colours. Working on the visuals was a little bit like being back at school, before you learn complicated colour theory and everything has to be shaded accurately.
Did you know before recording the episode that it would end up being visual; did that influence your approach to making the audio episode?
K: We did know there would be visuals, but we also had no idea what that would mean yet for the first episode. It influenced my approach in that I knew I was collaborating with someone else closely, so I kept Eddie in the loop about drafts and asked him about what he needed from me. It was fun to have another person to talk to about this character, what moved us in the story. But it didn’t change the questions I asked or anything like that. After all, the podcast did also need to work as stand alone audio.
What is the most challenging part of rendering audio in visuals?
K: We realised that visuals give another layer of information, so it can get a lot more concise. A lot of the audio is giving you visual information that in principle could have been cut, but we didn’t have the resources to also make a whole new audio version for the visual editions. The other thing was that obviously if the audio is long, that requires just an enormous amount of drawing.
E: Yes, the amount of drawing was certainly a challenge. But actually the biggest challenge for me was the idea that I had to choose those drawings very carefully. When you describe a scene verbally, you can really take your time to describe every little detail, and so a single moment can be stretched out as long as you want. When you draw that same scene, it is complete the second you put it on the screen, and then you have to do something with the rest of the time that the audio goes on.
So I tried to find things to draw that were tangentially related to what was being said, or something that didn’t feel like it was getting stale just sitting on the screen. Another aspect of podcasting that I was not completely prepared for was the amount of time that is spent in someone’s internal world. Suddenly you have this abstract space of feelings and emotions, where the past, the present and the future all collide with hopes and fears…and then you have to draw it.
What do you hope people will take away from the visual episodes?
K: My biggest hope is just that there will be innovation, that people will toy around with what a visual podcast can mean. I don’t think anyone really knows yet, but it’s really fun to collaborate closely with someone who works in a different medium. I have the same when I work with a composer.
But also, that you don’t just combine audio with visuals, for the sake of it - I think they can also both stand in their own right, so what do the audio and visuals add to each other? A “visual podcast” could also look a lot like a film, but where the audio has driven the process in a different way. How does that feel different? For example that film Flee came out not so long after we published, which was also animation, directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen who’s got a background in radio.
I was completely absorbed - and also, it was a really weird experience because I was sitting in the cinema and I thought…hang on, is this a feature length animated radio documentary?! I couldn’t resist googling and it was! I was so impressed with how well it was done.
E: I hope that this kind of hybrid production becomes more common. There are a lot of different kinds of “media consumers” out there, and I think that through productions like these, new audiences can come into contact with the slower, thoughtful, narrative style of podcast that might otherwise be too far out of their comfort zone.
What’s your advice for audio producers / podcasters wanting to team up with a graphic designer / illustrator?
K: I think it’s important to find a way for everyone to have the creative freedom they need, and to know in advance what your collaborators need so you can keep that in mind throughout the process. And that figuring out how you collaborate is going to take extra time.
I did enjoy asking a bunch of dumb questions - really not pretending I knew anything about visual art. It also taught me things I hadn’t noticed about my own creative process. One thing I learned is that when I make radio I like for it to slow down sometimes and let it simmer. But practically, that means a huge amount of drawing, which takes time. I also like for the audio to get sensory, but if there’s going to be visuals, some of that can be cut.
E: The advice I would give to any designers/animators/illustrators that want to try such a collaboration would be to try to get into the audio mindset before production. Listen to the podcast a few times to get a feeling of the flow, and as you imagine the visuals, try to slow everything down to the pace of the narration. As animators or illustrators, we often have the feeling that we have to condense the message into as few images/frames as possible, because that’s what’s usually asked of us. But slowing down gives a different kind of freedom, that takes a bit of getting used to.
If you want to make something new, even if it’s only new for you, or something that’s just a mash-up of two existing things, it will take a few tries to get it right. To anyone out there that becomes inspired by this production and decides to try it for themselves: be patient and forgiving with yourselves as you tread into each other’s unfamiliar territory.
Classes and more
☀️ Oral History Summer School in partnership with Salt Institute ~ Portland, Maine ~ 2-9 June
☀️ In the Dark x Transmission Roundhouse What’s New listening event ~ call for entries ~ deadline 30 June
☀️ Audio editing and sound design workshop ~ 24 June
☀️ Ableton Live: Intro to Soundtracking and Scoring your work ~ Audiotrain class ~ 27 June
Jobs
🎤 Summer Coaches - Podcast Education ~ Citizen Racecar ~ NYC metro area
🎤 Coordinating Producer ~ Wondery ~ Remote, US
🎤 Assistant to the Head of Audio ~ Proximity Media ~ LA
🎤 Finance Associate ~ AIR ~ Remote (Only permanent residents of CA, MA, NC, NJ, NY, and PA can apply)
🎤 Environment Reporter ~ WABE ~ Atlanta, GA
Thanks for reading and supporting the newsletter audio storytellers! Quick update: my baby daughter turned up a few weeks early so I’m now on maternity leave. I’ll be back in your inboxes in August. In the meantime if you have any audio recos to keep me and the babe company during those long nighttime feeds, hit me up! Wishing you all a creative and sound-filled summer. 📻✨
I really appreciate the stories & updates you are sharing. Thanks for providing this information on audio storytelling. Also, I am Irish born - raised in Dublin