Podcaster Bio

Nicholas Schein is a student of Freestyle Academy, where he takes Animation as well as Digital Media and English Honors. His passions include: cars, watches, clothing, video games, typewriters, film cameras, drawing and sketching, manga, anime, and painting. He pulls his artistic style from the world around him – from movies, video games, and even traditional art – to create a unique style of his own.

Introduction to the Podcast Project

Podcasting offers a unique and powerful storytelling experience—whether covering the realm of fiction, being a source of comedy, or even a retelling of/commentary on real events. The podcast project was relatively loosely structured—it allowed students to pick whatever topic they fancied, and to tailor their podcast to that idea, as they saw fit.
As an avid music listener, and self-proclaimed audiophile, sound is very important to me—which is why I chose to focus on it in my podcast. In fact, I originally intended to add a completely original score to the podcast, but that proved to be too ambitious an idea for me—perhaps I’ll work on it over the summer for my own enjoyment.

About this Podcast

My podcast covers “immersive sound effects”—the utilization of sound to make the listening experience more in-depth. In theory, ambient noise, panning of audio, and the addition of music can draw the listener in further, and make them feel less like they are listening to a podcast, and more like they are watching the events of the cast unfold before them.

Process

A screenshot of my script that I read for the podcast. The majority of the reading (the play itself) I didn’t screenshot—find the play on my website as one of the junior year productions, or listen to the podcast!
A screenshot of the creation process for my podcast. The top line of blue audio is my voice: the play I am reading. The line below (which appears empty) is my music layer: while I originally intended to have music running throughout the podcast, matching the tone of the play, I ran out of time, and resorted to using music only during the ads, introduction, and conclusion (in short, everything except the reading of the play itself).

Soundcloud Podcast Production

Reflection

I enjoyed the podcast project—a big reason was what I chose to focus on. The combination of sound, and utilizing possibly my favorite work in English class (my own, original play) as a medium made the project much more interesting to me than it could have otherwise been. I was far too ambitious in attempting to compose a whole 15 minute musical piece to accompany my podcast, but I would really like to do something like that in the future—using something such as Reason or ProTools.