Sean Kim - Process Note

The speaker discusses the process of creating their podcast, "The Fire Pit," focusing on the first episode about firefighter myths. They wanted to correct misconceptions about firefighting and share their personal experiences. They found that a conversational format and the topic of firefighters were more engaging for the audience. They also explain the significance of the podcast's name and title, as well as the criteria for choosing their co-host. They found having a script helpful but would make some changes to add more back-and-forth and depth to the conversation. The speaker faced challenges in choosing a topic and learning the technical aspects of podcasting but overall enjoyed the experience. Hello everybody, my name is Sean Kim and today I'll be talking about the process of making my podcast, The Fire Pit, specifically episode one, Firefighter Myths. The goal of this podcast was to go over different misconceptions that people may have on firefighters and correct them in a way to show what firefighting is really about and what really happens as a firefighter. For example, I went over the misconception on how people think firefighters fight fires every single day. I went over how different calls look like, how this cat on the tree, stuck on a tree hoax isn't as real as people may think because it's not very common that we go on those types of calls. In many ways, it is educational in the way that it shares the experiences of what firefighters go through, the different makeups of firefighters and the diversity among it. I used different NFPA, the National Fire Prevention Agency statistics, to show the makeup of volunteer and career fire departments and much more. I also talked about the difference between volunteer and career fire departments and how they differ and how common these different types of departments are and where volunteer and career departments may be. Ultimately, the key takeaway of this podcast for my audience is just to learn more about firefighters and what we do. To make it more interesting, I also entwined it with my own experiences as a firefighter in River Edge, New Jersey. I think the most entertaining and engaging elements of my podcast was just moments where I spoke about real-life scenarios or real-life experiences that I went through because we hear all these stories and all these things in the movies and shows, but hearing it first from a person who's actually experiencing things, I feel like that's very entertaining, sharing these personal experiences. I also think a very engaging element of my podcast was the fact that it was more conversational. Me and my friend, Cam Redlings, made this podcast in a more conversational format where it'd be questions and answers going back and forth and just speaking, just speaking about real-life, speaking about my personal experiences. I feel like that's really engaging and the audience, especially people in our class, can really connect to it because it's coming from someone they know. In my survey, I think two of the most important questions for the development of my podcast was one, whether talking about firefighters would be more interesting than my previous topic, truth and perception, and whether it should be interview or conversational style as opposed to just having me speak to the audience. I think these were the most important questions because for the interview and conversational, as I said before, I believe it made it so much more engaging and easier to listen to. Just hearing a flow, a natural flow of conversation between two people, I felt like that was more engaging rather than having one person speak such to me and kind of talking in a more lecture manner, which I think would bore the audience more and keep them disengaged. I think my other question about switching topics from truth and perception to the firefighter topic was very important as it helped formulate my plan, my topic for my podcast. Without this question, I think I would have leaned more towards the truth and perception topic, but by asking this, I found that more than 90% of the people who answered my survey would have found that the firefighter topic would be more interesting, which I also think is true because I think hearing about these misconceptions, correcting these misconceptions, and hearing the personal experience of a real firefighter would be a lot more interesting than just discussing the truth. Like I said before, both of the responses that I got from both the questions show that more than 90% of the audience wanted me to change topics and also have the podcast in a more conversational format because originally I was planning to have just me speaking by myself about what the truth is to me and how truth may differ from perception or if perception is the truth, etc. But I thought maybe I could make the topic more interesting. How would I get the audience to enjoy my podcast? Would firefighting or truth be more interesting to my audience? These questions really helped me formulate my idea of what I wanted to do and they were very important in the creation of my podcast because without them, I probably would have gone down a completely different route. I'm really happy that I made these decisions and changes. In considering the relationship with my intended audience and the decisions that I made and how the audience influenced my decisions, again, it goes back to the same thing as I mentioned before to reiterate. I knew my audience would enjoy the fire. I had a really good feeling, which was backed up by my survey, that the audience would enjoy the firefighter topic much more because, I don't know, I think just this notion of a firefighter, what they do is very cool to people. Especially since we're in the military, we're serving people, we're putting our lives on the line for the service of the people around us. I think people would be so much more inclined to hear about that. It comes from a more personal experience. I knew that my audience would be more interested in more of a personal story, more of a personal podcast mixed in with educational aspects, of course, and statistics rather than just me lecturing about the truth and lecture based on research that I found. Just knowing that my audience knows what they like because, again, a lot of people find this heroic stuff so much more appealing and more fun to listen to. For the name of my podcast, I chose to call it The Fire Pit. The significance it has is that I feel like The Fire Pit brings a really comfy and cozy vibe where people are just relaxing and talking about life. The Fire Pit is just a place for people to be comfortable and sit on the couch and just talk about different topics with your family, at home, with friends. I feel like the name gives a really easygoing connotation where people can just relax and listen to the podcast. It also relates to firefighters because it's a fire, so I thought it would work out perfectly. About the title of my podcast, I chose to choose this episode as Firefighter Myth. Because it talks about firefighter myths. I thought it would be a really good, cool topic for people to listen to. Like, oh, I thought this was true about firefighters. But no, it's this. Actually, it's this. Oh, he's a real firefighter. He knows what he's talking about. I thought the title has a really good relation to what I'm talking about. It's nice and simple, so it's not too difficult for the audience to understand. The way I formed the band in my podcast was I made it that my guest, per se, Cam Redlings, was actually the host of the show. And me, the owner of the show, was a guest. Basically, he was interviewing me as the host of the show, and I was the guest, since I'm the firefighter, which makes more sense. The criteria that I had in choosing Cam Redlings as my partner was I just wanted someone who I would feel comfortable talking to and someone I would have a good flow conversation-wise with because I wanted everything to come together well and just feel like it's a normal conversation. I wanted it to feel like it wasn't all scripted, that it was just two guys, two cool guys coming together and just talking. Because I feel like that's the best way a podcast can be formatted because it's so easy to listen to. It goes so well. It's just like you're standing outside listening to your friends speak about a topic, and you're just standing there really intrigued. I also thought Cam has a really good podcast voice. I don't mean to say this in a funny way, but I feel like his voice is very soothing, not a weird way, but he has a voice that a host would have, if that makes sense. The main thing, the main criteria was just having someone that I clicked well with, that I could be very comfortable and easy going with to have a good conversation. I actually found it extremely helpful in creating my podcast and actually speaking it out. It gave me a really good baseline to go to so I wouldn't fumble with my words, so I didn't have blank spaces throughout the podcast. I didn't really deviate too much from it. There were certain areas where I added more elements to it as I spoke because, again, it's a sentence at the very base, it's supposed to be a conversation, but I didn't deviate too much from it where it came to a point where I was talking about something completely different than what my script originally had planned. But yeah, I found it extremely helpful. Again, it was a good baseline, something to follow, and of course I added bits and pieces to add more flame to it that I didn't originally have in the script and to just add more personal or just natural flow into it. In conducting a critical analysis about the podcast after listening to it again, I would change a couple things. Maybe add more back and forth into it. Some questions that I probably would have, maybe what it's like to be a firefighter in high school, how was that? Because I do mention that I joined as a high schooler. Maybe talk about junior firefighting and the academy. I did talk about the academy as well. Maybe go more in depth about that because I think people would be more interested and maybe more stories, more in depth stories. But yeah, I think I did a good job in the podcast overall, but of course there's different finishing touches that I could have added, more areas I could have delved more deeply into. But overall, I really did think I did a good job. First, the most difficult part of this assignment was definitely just choosing a topic. I spent numerous hours just trying to find something that was really interesting to me that was also appealing to the audience, something that I would really enjoy talking about that everyone can enjoy with me, which is why at first I landed with truth and perception because I always found that an intriguing topic. Is the perception reality? Is the truth just what you want it to be? But I also had to keep in mind that this podcast is supposed to be appealing to the audience. It has to be something that the audience enjoys. So that's why I sent out a new survey which asked about the firefighter topic, which again, over 90% of people thought it was a much better idea to pursue. At first, that was very difficult to decide, but once I got that, the ball just kept rolling. I did have some other difficulties, more of the technical aspect, just figuring out the audio system of Audacity and how it works, how I can add finishing touches onto it. Also just adding certain elements to the podcast that maintain the educational but personal touch into it. But honestly, this project wasn't completely difficult. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. Something I would definitely do again because I really got to talk about something I really enjoyed and share it with the people around me, which is something I love to do. Overall, this was a great experience and a great learning project.