Our podcast episode in the Longest Rainy Sunday is about the game KIDS. We had a late start to this episode, meeting with Mr. Morgen on Thursday night to discuss about the content of our episode with it being due on Sunday. That being the case, there was effectively 3 days to complete and turn in this episode. Looking back at how we have worked, I have to say the efficiency and quality of our collaboration exceeded my expectations, creating an episode I am overall content with.
I was the producer, Wendy was the assistant producer, and Roy was the line producer. As a producer, I set up the time schedule for our meetings and job assigned, as well as leading the discussion/conversation we had in meetings. The assistant producer Wendy served a role similar to a manager in the group. She would take notes of conversations we had in meetings and organize work we have done. She edited the image we used for our thumbnail as well as putting together and submitting our final product. Roy was the line producer, but he really did much more than that. Since he has experiences producing music, he voluntarily took up the role of putting together and editing our audios and inserting the background music. The background music used was actual one produced by Roy himself! All members in this group contributed equally to the content of the episode as we pulled what we were going to say from previously written ideas and conversations we had about the game.
Our primary goals of this episode were to introduce the audience to the game KIDS and analyze how the simple form of this “interactive animation” is success full as a game, looking into some of the themes of the game, as well as sharing our own perspectives. I would say we achieved these goals in general, though not as in depth as we would like to. We first laid out points in our collaborative document, then each of us put down and elaborating ideas under them. This was done in the form of comments, since it would them be easier to make into a conversation. This form of brainstorming and script writing is very different from the usual essay writing I am accustomed to. When we “met up” to talk about our episode, lots of new ideas and more in-depth analysis came up that couldn’t be included in the episode due to the time limitation and the speaking format the podcast episode is in.
Comparing our episode to the first episode in the series that talked about Minecraft, the main difference seems to be tone of the speakers. While the first episode sounded more like a conversation, our episode seems more directed towards the audience due to the way our script written. My recommendation for later groups producing episodes would be to set up a general framework and communicate frequently.
