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I’ve talked before about WHY we started the Comic Book Queers podcast (http://www.popsyndicate.com/column/story/nothing_less_than_fabulous/), and now I’m going to talk about HOW we did it.  Prior to CBQ, none of us had any experience with the technical aspects of podcasting, or sound editing, or anything like that.  In fact, Stevie is still mystified by his toaster oven, and believes that magic spirits allow him to reheat slices of pizza.  But I digress.

Once Stevie, Katie and I met and decided to do the podcast, we hung out several times to get to know each other.  We went to Wizard World Chicago 2006 together.  We talked about ourselves, our interests, our hopes, and our fears (e.g., toaster ovens), and about all the things that we wanted a podcast for LGBT comic book fans to be.  Then we threw all that out of the window, turned on the microphone, and spent two solid hours screeching like rutting howler monkeys.

We’ve recorded almost every episode of CBQ in Stevie’s apartment.  He has a lot of space, and direct access to the roof of his building.  Roof access is very handy, in that Brett and I can duck outside to have a quick cigarette, and Lindsay can run out and flash her boobs at people who live in the high-rise apartment building across the alley.

Here’s the technical stuff:

We downloaded a free (yes, free) software package called Audacity.  You can find Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.  The controls on this program are pretty intuitive, and you can figure most everything out just by tinkering with it for about three minutes.  We also had to download something called the “LAME library”, a little icon that sits on your desktop that allows you to convert Audacity files to MP3 and WAV files.  That, too, is free, and available at the same website where you can get Audacity. 

Stevie spent $25 on a USB microphone; I think he could have gotten one for $20, but he elected to get the one with the “sneeze button”, a little switch that allows you to temporarily mute conversations (which I don’t think we ever used, in the year-long history of the show).  Our microphone’s name is Betsy.

After recording an episode at Stevie’s, he converts the file to MP3 and burns it onto a CD (or we put it on Pluggy, which is a 1GB USB flash drive I got for $20 at Best Buy a few months ago, because using all those CD’s felt wasteful).

I take the footage home and open it up in Audacity to do the editing.  I always have to amplify the sound.  For reasons I don’t care to understand, Audacity records us at very low levels.  I never thought I’d like sound editing, but with Audacity, it’s easy and fun.  I add the opening, closing, and transitional music, and cut out extraneous sounds (i.e., Stevie’s constant burping), unnecessary pauses, non-sequiturs, and all the other stuff we don’t want in the final release of an episode.  Editing an episode usually takes 2 or 3 hours, maybe a little bit longer if Stevie has had a lot of Diet Mountain Dew.

Before getting our own site, we released our podcast episodes on Podomatic (http://www.podomatic.com).  Podomatic is free, but if you upgrade your account, you get more detailed statistics and more bandwidth and storage.  Greater bandwidth allows more people to download your show, and more storage allows you to keep past episodes available, if for some crazy reason people want to listen to those.  The basic upgrade is just under $15 per month, or it least it was the last time I checked.  We were podcasting for about three months before we had to upgrade.  We were pretty pleased with Podomatic.  It lets you know exactly how many downloads you’re getting, where your listeners are, and provides these really cool little tools so you can post content on MySpace.  They also have easy instructions about how to set up a call-in line, so your listeners can send you sexually suggestive voicemails (always a plus).

In sum, when we first started, we only spent $25, and could have spent even less if someone had warned us about the uselessness of the sneeze button.  That’s it.  That’s all it took to get started.  And we had no technical knowledge whatsoever.

Since then, we’ve made a couple other investments.  I bought Betsy Junior, which is a handheld digital recorder so we can record in the car, on the street, or at conventions.  Betsy Junior cost $125.  She’s an Olympus DS-2 Digital Voice Recorder, and she’s lovely.  She’s tiny enough to carry around in a pants pocket, but large enough so it looks like we’re really, really happy to be interviewing David Mack as we approach him at his table at conventions.

When we decided to do video, we invested in a low-end digital video camera and a tripod, as well as make-up, evening gowns, wigs, and false eyelashes.  These are clearly not typical expenses.

We recently bought a podcasting kit, which consists of a soundboard and a couple of microphones.  Our sound quality has increased sharply as a result.  The whole set cost about $250.

The main reason why I’m writing about this is that it still blows my mind how easy and cheap it is to start a podcast, and there’s really no good reason for you not to do it.  All you really need is twenty bucks and an idea in order to get started.

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