What it’s About

About a month or two ago, my friends and I (members of the 90% Bloopers team) were encouraged by our tutor, Nick, to find different ways to present our opinions and creativity. We landed on recording a weekly podcast every Wednesday. The premise of it is to just have a place to discuss movies, the film industry or any ideas that we have with each other.

After our first run-through in the professional sound booth at college before the lockdown in December was a lot of fun as we talked about our opinions on the Star Wars saga as well as anything we knew about the making of it. To jump off of our original all-around name, the podcast has now been called ‘90% Babble’ – it really reflects the outcome of our podcasts well. As of now, we have recorded 3 episodes, one of which was the Star Wars test, another being a more insightful talk on each of our favourite movies and why we think they’re great (some included 1917, Rogue One and Garfield). The last one recorded was about our thoughts on how Corona Virus has impacted the film industry, for example, the production of movies and our own experiences (i.e. not being able to utilise equipment).

How we Record

While we still had access to the sound studio at college, we crammed six chairs and two microphones in the small booth. The microphones we chose to use were ‘Behringer UltraVoice Xm1800s’, one of which we put on a stand facing one side of the room, and the other facing everyone else in order to get as even sound as possible. These were plugged into an H5 Zoom recorder that we meticulously set to the right level (we quickly banned passionate shouting so it wouldn’t peak but I later broke that rule).

Although it was a great set up, we of course can’t do that now. At the moment, we speak through ‘Discord’ and have a designated person to record the audio (usually with ‘OBS’). The microphone I personally use is a ‘Guitar Hero’ one that has surprisingly good sound quality!

Doing this has been a lot of fun, especially since it’s a medium that I’ve never really explored before, however it’s difficult to find the right topic to talk about due to there being six of us to cater to. I’m hoping to continue this throughout the academic year and to share our thoughts with people also interested in film.