My role: Production sound recordist (on location), mix engineer (post), sound designer.

Background
Working with audio production company Tellori I was part of the team commissioned by OKA to produce a new podcast series that explored peoples relationship with their homes. With episodes structured around themes including generations, living and entertaining we wanted to showcase the role of the home and its importance in the lives of the various guests featured, highlighting the importance of factors such as design, place, age and memories and how these things bring meaning to life…

Production
Recording was a combination of on location, remote capture (for overseas guests), and a hybrid of the two when the host could not be on location, which made for some interesting production logistics!

As the production schedule began to take shape early on, it was clear that there would be some travel for recording, and that for each episode there would be both a seated conversation and some movement around the house/grounds, including a rolling one take intro involving a host walk up to the house to be welcomed in through the front door.

Process
To cover everything I designed two recording scenes; one in the conventional interview format, seated with microphones on stands; and one using wireless personal/lav microphones. I wanted to capture some additional ambience and ‘feel’ of the different spaces around the homes when the conversations were seated and moving around, so I used a hand held follow stereo bar on short boom to bring a little more of the acoustic spaces. Thankfully the homes we visited had good reason for conversation to naturally flow outdoors, which added yet another sonic dimension to the conversation mix. I also spent time gathering ambience recordings at each location to help paint the sound picture of each home, and for a natural addition to sound designed segments.

Locations
The final 8 episodes featured guests in six locations around the UK, two as hybrid interviews, plus two remote records; from Sweden and the U.S.

For more, head over to: https://www.oka.com/podcast