The Admiral’s Log
Notes on podcasting from the Seaplane team.
How Much Editing Does a Raw Interview Need Before It Becomes a Real Story?
There's no universal ratio here, whatever rule of thumb you've heard about hours of editing per minute of finished audio. The real answer depends on what job the piece is actually doing. A tightly structured documentary segment often needs heavy shaping to hold together. A conversational, hangout-style interview show usually wants a much lighter touch, because part of what people are there for is the unfiltered, unpolished feeling of two people actually talking. The amount of editing should follow the format's job, not a fixed formula applied the same way to everything.
When Silence Works Better Than Narration
The instinct in editing is to fill every gap: cut the pause, cover the dead air, keep things moving. That instinct is right most of the time. It's wrong at exactly the moments that matter most, where a beat of silence does more emotional work than any line of narration could.
How Many Interviews Does One Episode Actually Need?
Not a number. A question: does this next voice tell the listener something the episode doesn't already know? If the answer is no, adding it doesn't make the episode more thorough. It just makes it longer.
How Much Narration Is Too Much in a Documentary Podcast?
Narration should do the work tape can't do on its own: move time forward, supply context a listener has no other way of getting, connect one scene to the next. The moment it starts explaining what the tape just showed you, or telling you how to feel about something you already heard clearly, it's doing too much.
How Long Should a Documentary-Style Episode Run?
Forgive our bluntness: that’s the wrong question!!!! (mostly.) A better one would be: how long does this specific story take to earn its ending? A documentary episode should run exactly as long as the material supports real depth, and not a minute longer just to hit a number that sounds standard.