Podcast Development for Invisible Women

Dr. Diane Greig had spent years researching women who worked as spies or for in the resistance during World War 2. The research was for a Ph.D thesis. While the research had been done 15 years earlier, for Diane, their stories and experiences seemed to grow in relevance in terms of societal norms and how women are treated in society. Diane had no previous experience with podcasting, but thought it would be a good way to bring these women’s stories to a world-wide audience.

Bigsnit Media worked with Diane to develop her idea into a concept for a podcast. We then directed and produced the series.

Full end-to-end production

Invisible Women is a good example of our end-to-end services. Along with developing the concept, we negotiated and managed union contracts, and cast eight professional actors to be the voices of the women featured in the series. We booked and directed studio sessions and all aspects of pre-production. Our podcast production includes script editing, all music selection, and performance coaching

Bigsnit Media created an online presence for Invisible Women that included a website, newsletter, social media channels and a YouTube channel.

Additionally, our digital content services include finalizing article publication on the website, posting to social media, and editing and publishing the newsletter.

COVID production challenges

Invisible Women was produced during the COVID pandemic, which created some challenges around production and source recordings. Planning and pre-production meetings were conducted using Zoom, Slack and Trello. We also used Miro for visual identity planning. For our own safety and to meet union requirements, we had to find a recording studio with a stringent COVID-19 protocol. The Sound Kitchen Studio was exemplary in their preparation and practice. For some of the professional talent we worked with, it was their first foray into a studio since the start of COVID. For Diane’s narration, we wanted the flexibility of being able to record various versions and re-takes, so opted to have her recorded remotely from her home. We set her up with a professional microphone and DAC, and used Pro Tools Cloud Collaboration. This allowed Diane to work at home, while seamlessly bringing her audio directly into our Pro Tools workstation at the Bigsnit studio, without additional expense.

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An example of one of the ways we reformat a podcast for distribution on YouTube

Along with podcast directories like Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher and others, distributing a podcast on YouTube is a good way to find new listeners. We wanted to do something a little different than a static slate, and created this format for Invisible Women on YouTube.

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Promos for social media

In addition to posting still images on social media channels, we also create a series of audiogram-style promos. These are short animations that feature a clip from the series, or pull quotes from comments.

Services