CENTRE-PODCAST by Roxanne Moussallem

“CENTRE
A SCI-FI PODCAST ABOUT A MYSTERY TREASURE HUNT.”

Description:

The podcast is a story about a professor named Eliana who receives audio files from her two missing friends who were on the journey to find the “centre”

SYNOPSIS:

Based in Australia, a young female professor Eliana, goes on a mission to find two of her missing friends, Adrian, and Judy, that were on the same journey to the Centre. After not hearing from them for months, Eliana is sent audio files to her email from Adrian and Judy. She decides to record herself listening to the files and tries to piece together exactly what happened to her friends.

Judy and Adrian study at the same institute that Eliana teaches at. They do not know each other but Eliana knows both. A professor states to their students that within the centre of Australia is hidden treasure and so Judy and Adrian decided to take the trip even though they don’t meet till the end.

The two record about their days and Eliana notices that there are parallels within their audios. They go through the same things at the same time without meeting each other. This is because the Centre creates dimensions where people cannot meet each other till the very end.

They both encounter a crazy knife wielding man at the same time of their journey, even though they have different reactions.

I made this podcast by using sound effects that were free of use on YouTube and got two of my friends to do voice overs of the characters. I decided to take on the role of being the professor Eliana to speed up the process.

I used Adobe Audition to piece the sounds and audio together to create the feeling and atmosphere of the podcast.

I researched about story podcasts and the ones that I listened to were, The Left Right Game and Carrier, which had sci-fi elements. I was also inspired by Bedtime Stories and Morte Animations to add the horror feel to it.

To roll back to the start, I wanted to film an episode of a web series that I was writing. Realising corona has no chill, I had to fall back to something else. A few months ago, I was thinking of creating a YouTube channel that was similar to Bed-Time Stories, where I gathered my fiction writing and narrated them with sound effects and images/animations as visuals. But due to University being a pain in the backside, I left it. Until, I realised I needed to do something for this assessment, and I thought, perfect timing!

As I set out to create what I wanted I realised my drawing skills and animating skills were absolutely garbage and not up to standard. I needed a solution to this and, then it hit me. I had been listening to these story podcasts for a while now, so I should make it into a podcast instead. It’ll put my sound design skills to the test, and it’ll be an amazing challenge for me, a learning experience.

The hardest part was getting the voice overs and the right sound effects. Majority of my time was taken up by YouTubing sound effects because I didn’t have a proper recorder to record them individually. I don’t trust my phone to do it. The voice overs were difficult as I wasn’t there to direct them, so I had to add my directions on script. Luckily, my friends were great at understanding what I wanted, so they got it right. I also had to choose the friends that had a microphone to use which means choosing voice actors was limited.

I managed to get it all done and I had to relearn how to use Audition as I haven’t used it in a while. To help with organising the timeline, I coloured the multi-tracks accordingly. Pink for car sound effects, blue for background effects etc.