Hi, my name is Gareth Davis. I'm an audio producer for The Sound Boutique and today I'm going to give you a tip about dialogue editing. I'm a composer for TV and an audio producer for podcasts and other original content through my company, The Sound Boutique. I've produced four podcasts for myself in the last four years, including this one, Podcasting People.
The first podcast, Making a Soundtrack, started as a collaboration between me and a fellow composer to try and create a drama soundtrack without actually being commissioned. And from the minute I started producing and editing that. as well as hosting with composer Dan Watts. I was absolutely hooked on podcasting. I chose to edit that series while Dan mixed the album, baptism of fire, and I did that really to hone my editing skills.
I wanted to experience that pressure and to problem solve on the go, as it were. And it's a skill I use regularly now, to the point where I fix audio for clients, I edit dialogue, and in one case, repurpose a whole video series as a podcast. The second podcast I came up with was, um, well, my lockdown baby in a way. Creative Cuppa was a series of short form chats with people working in the many different creative jobs.
From photographers, artists, Writers, musicians, actors, um, I produced around 70 episodes of that and it was my way of staying connected with the world and the creative people in it while we were going through lockdowns during the pandemic. Aside from this one, uh, my latest podcast is called The Music Room, which features stories of inspiration from composers, songwriters, and musicians.
Uh, I'm closing in on 20 episodes of that now, and I have to give massive praise to my guests, actually, who go out of their way to make time for me. I really do appreciate it, and I think it shows how willing and keen, even, people are to help each other and pass on their wisdom and experience. For me, there's no better way to learn than by experience.
I love developing formats for podcasts, composing or sourcing the music, approaching and booking guests, figuring out if it's a limited series or ongoing, chatting with listeners, And even in the case of the Music Room, growing a community that popped up around it. Uh, so for me, and I guess much like any other industry, experience shines through.
If you put the work in and are prepared to be a sponge for everything podcasting, then you'll end up as a person who people come to for advice, because your podcasts sound great. My big tip today is about dialogue editing. As much as hosts want to hear all the ums and ahs and silences taken out, There's a balance to be struck between dialogue that sounds a bit all over the place and something that sounds so slick it's almost clinical.
So I'd encourage all the podcast editors out there, and if you have lots of experience, you'll know this already, there's that word experience again, I would encourage editors to only take the silences, the ums and the ahs and all that if it doesn't affect the natural flow of speech. I like to think of dialogue editing as kind of tightening things up, so don't tip the other way into the way of the robot. You can find me at www. thesoundboutique.
com and you can see all of my links in the show notes. Thanks for listening to podcasting people.