Greetings. I'm Kyle Bondo, and this is between the pauses. The behind the scenes of the making of pause for dramatic effect. And today, we'll talk a little bit about gear. Now, you're probably thinking an audio drama requires a lot of gear. And you would be right because there's a lot of different ways to approach this this production. 1 way is to put everybody in a room, get everyone a microphone, and everyone read their lines, they can see each other working.
That can be quite an effort because it requires a a studio or soundproofing a lot of audio treatment, microphones synced up so they don't bleed in each other. You really want to to build yourself an environment that can control sound. But it is an interesting way because you can see actors faces and the actors can play off each other.
For positive dramatic effect, I created an environment where I only really kind of did 1 offs, where I did my own voices, I did the other actor's voices 1 at a time. And how did I do that? Well, I didn't really use a whole lot of gear per se. I would say probably it's all my podcasting gear. So it's really it really consists of, I would say, total budget wise, less than $400. And I'll tell you what parts of it. The part, of course, is the primary piece that I use, which is the zoom h 4 n pro.
Retail is about $220, get on Amazon, Black Friday sale, things like that. But it's kind of the the little workhorse because I can plug in XLR microphones into it. I can plug in regular 3.5 millimeter Jackson to it. I can plug in for a quarter inch Jackson to it. It has its own built in microphone or I can add microphones to it. So that's really kind of a little workhorse there. It's like my little mobile studio because from that,
from that, I can record all the audio files. And I have everyone everything saved there. Not having edited them yet, but I can record them. So it doesn't I don't need a laptop. So I'm independent of the laptop, which is kinda nice. The next thing I do is I have a h 4 or zoom pro accessory pack. What that what that gives me is a dead cat,
where I can use the onboarding microphones of the h 4. That's it's like a giant hair thingy. This is on top of it that really kind of clears up any of the ambient noises, breathing sounds, wind, and things like that. It has a handle on it too, which is kinda nice. That's only about
what? $30 came with a lot of that, came with a power cord, things like that. It's an accessory for this device that makes the device extend because it uses batteries. So you definitely want a power plug sometimes because you know in places, you don't have batteries. Next thing is a is an external microphone. In this case, I'm using an audio technica ATR 2,100. Retail is about $60. Simple all around microphone, not only is it XLR, it's also USB. So it's got a lot of different versatile functions.
With that usually comes an XLR cable, but you could probably buy your own. Cable matters as a good 1. 3 feet cable, XLR cable. The key with cables is you definitely wanna remember you wanna know is it in any ear and Audi or male or female connectors that's important because
many many times I bought cables and they are both either male or they're both female and that doesn't always work their gear. So you have to know what the connector pieces are so you buy the right cables. But you definitely want a good cable. It helps eliminate sound. With that ATR comes usually a tripod comes with it, which is kinda nice. I use the tripod as a handle, or as a baseplate to kind of talk into the closet I'm in, and that's a nice little feature,
but I use a pop filter. Now dragon pad makes a good pop filter by $13, I put it right on the stand, right over the top of the microphone, and now I have a pop filter, piece of cake. What's left? Well, inside the zoom itself, gonna need a little hard disk. So something like a scan disc micro SD card, 32 gigs. You don't need a whole lot. You can get 3 hours of audio off of 32 gig. Those retail for $30. So all in all, I have a portable recorder.
I can use the microphones on board and the microphone that I bought. As both microphones make a different sound. So you can really create 2 different characters off a 2 different sets of microphones. It's just kinda nice. I have the ability to go anywhere to record anywhere. I have the ability to pretty much set my studio up wherever I need to. Plus, with the audio recorder with a portable 1, that's what I use to do sound effects with when you make sound effects on the fly.
So that's really all the equipment is there. The only thing left to have here is a a piece of paper with a script on it. Some sticky notes that give me some of my direction. I have some pillows here that kind of round out the studio sound. And of course, a water bottle because when you talk a lot or you do some weird voices, throw it's gonna get sore. But as far as the equipment goes, I will record this, and then I will go down to my laptop.
I will put this file on laptop. Couple of edits. Start doing the files to it. Add the music. That all is done in post production. But as far as production with recording goes itself, this is it. This is it for this audio drama. Now in the future, I may upgrade. I may try the everyone in the same studio. For right now, it's a 1 on 1 with just this little tiny footprint. It's kinda nice. So give that a try. And thank you for listening to Pause for hepatic effect.
Almost finished with chapter 10, so it should be kind of nice. Hopefully, have that out by, you know, in a few days, if not tomorrow. And I really appreciate you listening to this interesting podcast audio drama experiment for national podcast post month or mad pod polo. Thank you very much. And for more tales of woe, please visit pausefordramaticeffect.com.