Year in podfic meme!

[sophinisba]

Some people said I should do a "Year in podfic" meme like the year in fic meme, and I didn't see one around, so I did this!


List the podfics you made this year:
I’m too lazy to do links, but they’re all on my podfic tag, and here’s a list of titles!
Yes I'll Go With You (Merlin)
Now, the Matter (The Little Mermaid)
The Box (Merlin)
Lessons for Boromir (Lord of the Rings)
A Rose by Any Other (Merlin)
Change for the Better (Merlin)
Something to Squeal About (Harry Potter)
Gondor Has No Buttons (Lord of the Rings)
Building Destiny (Merlin)
Merlin/Arthur's Armour double podfic (Merlin)
Bind His Hands (Lord of the Rings)
A Connecticut Caterpillar on Prince Arthur’s Leaf (Merlin)
Four Times Arthur Was Seduced by Magic and One Time He Wasn’t (Merlin)
The Secretary (Merlin)
Trust (Lay Down Your Burdens) (Merlin)
Glory Hole (Merlin)
Piquancy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Pastimes and Lifestyles (Merlin)
Stargaze (Psych)
There's No Backing Up Now (Anthropomorfic)
thee-part disharmony (Homicide: Life on the Street)
The Pie Job (Leverage)
La Adelita (Like Water for Chocolate)
Five Things That Never Happened to Stokely Mitchell (The Faculty)
Stripped Bare (Merlin)
Birthday Toes (Lotrips)
Silk & The Strange Magic Remix (Merlin)
Be So Bold & The Boys' Own Remix (Merlin)

Stats: 28 or so podfics in 12 different fandoms, total time about 7 hours and 51 minutes, average length 17 minutes

What was the best podfic you made this year? I think “La Adelita”, though it’s probably the rarest of the fandoms so will never get a lot of listeners. I was proud of the editing.

Most popular? I think the podbook for T’wings’ birthday got the most "Yay downloading!" comments but I ended up hearing from more people who’d listened to "Pastimes and Lifestyles".

Most underappreciated? I expected the porny Arthur/Merlin ones to be more popular, especially "Four Times Arthur Was Seduced by Magic", since that was also one of the longer ones.

Personal favorite, for whatever reason? "Pastimes and Lifestyles". There’s nothing like epic femslash!

Most difficult to make? Also "Pastimes and Lifestyles" - long is hard! I also had trouble getting through the recording of "There’s No Backing Up Now" because I kept laughing so hard. Oh and just today I had to sit in a very cramped closet in order to record the Be So Bold Remix while it was raining (but the editing went pretty quickly).

Most "ah ha ha I can't believe I'm doing this"? “Birthday Toes”! One of the porniest in the text itself, plus I had to make snoring noises and then heavy breathing for the sex scene.

Must fun to make? “Stargaze” was a fun, sweet, short story, where the words flowed really well, and I really enjoyed doing Gus and Shawn’s dialog. I also liked doing “Bind His Hands” and “The Pie Job”.

Was there one that didn't turn out the way you wanted? three-part disharmony was tough. I didn’t really feel like I had the character voices down, and there were a lot of characters, and my throat wasn’t in good shape that day either. I also thought my reading of such_heights’s story “Trust” was kind of flat.

Biggest learning experience? The first one I did was so short that I just read it over and over until I got through the whole thing without any mistakes and I didn’t have to do much editing at all, so the second one, “Now, the Matter”, was huge for me learning how to edit, especially since I decided to get all ambitious and add a sound clip from the movie into the podfic.

What's next? Do you have any podfic goals for next year? meri_sefket and I are planning to do a collaboration on two very short fics that I've been meaning to do for a really long time, so that’s what’s next.

I have many plans for the new year, the most ambitious of which (which I just came up with tonight and which I haven't told the author about yet) is to record all 50K of srin's Timing Verse, starting off with the epic femslash part. \o/

In general, next year I would like to work on longer ones, specifically I’d like to keep the average length at or above 30 minutes. I like doing short ones and they’re less likely to crash my computer, but I think longer ones are nicer for most readers, and the upside for me is less coding and taggins and updating of links as things get archived.

<b>Stats:</b> <b>What was the best podfic you made this year?</b> <b>Most popular?</b> <b>Most underappreciated?</b> <b>Personal favorite, for whatever reason?</b> <b>Most difficult to make?</b> <b>Most "ah ha ha I can't believe I'm doing this"?</b> <b>Must fun to make?</b> <b>Was there one that didn't turn out the way you wanted?</b> <b>Biggest learning experience?</b> <b>What's next? Do you have any podfic goals for next year?</b>

Comments

[zulu]

Neat! I've only ever done short podfics, the kind you can just do again til you get them right. I think I'm intimidated by the thought of all that editing! I don't generally listen to podfics (or audio books, for that matter--I've been decluttering around here and I just found four or five that had never been taken out of their packaging) but I really enjoy meta about them, so thank you for posting this.

[sophinisba]

I think I must misspeak more often than you because the longest one I was able to get through that way was 200 words. I've gotten to kind of like editing in a way, like, just relaxing about the fact that I'm going to screw up a lot and have to say certain sentences ten times and then spend a lot of time fixing it later takes a lot of pressure off. And once I got the hang of cutting and moving stuff around it's mostly become, like, tedious but not all that frustrating. It's one of those tasks that takes up time but not a ton of thought, like reposting or organizing one's fics at an archive.

Thanks for reading! I like podfic meta a lot too - I think, especially, this sorta mundane kind of meta that's like, "These are the parts of podficcing I like, these are the parts that are hard" more than anything super thinky. :)

[themadlurker]

Looking at the complete list it is obvious that I still have a lot to look forward to, listening-wise. Your podfic goals for next year are very exciting! :)

The things that you do for your art! I am very impressed that you actually went and recorded in a closet (and probably overly amused by how appropriate it is). I agree that it's surprising the "Four times..." podfic didn't get more notice. I wonder if there's some fundamental disconnect between text fic fandom and podfic fandom to explain that.

[sophinisba]

I had read early on before I started podficcing that some famous person (maybe jinjurly?) did theirs in a closet, and this was the first time I needed to, but yeah, doing it for this particular fic was way too apt.

I also had this theory that maybe Arthur/Merlin fans are so used to getting long podfics made for them that they don't take much notice of anything shorter than an hour. (There's also the fact that that particular fic had dubcon, which always keeps some people away, though with fic at least it also tends to attract some.)