Have you ever read statistic after statistic about a certain topic until every number eventually meant nothing to you? The difference between blurting out stats and using data to tell a story is giving the audience a reason to care.
According to an article by digital marketing performance management platform Team NinjaCat called “How to Tell A Story with Data and Analytics,” a data story takes information and integrates, illustrates and inspires inequity by synthesizing data into addressable issues that the audience cares about.
With a data story, you’re able to illustrate the impact of an issue and guide readers, listeners or viewers into insight.
“Data stories are simply; visualization, plus context, plus narrative.”
– NinjaCat
This concept, also known as statistical storytelling, was what I was hoping to accomplish with the first episode of my podcast this week.
After focusing on my social media artifacts last week, I went into week five of my bike safety campaign wanting to focus on audio. Because this is the introduction to my entire bike safety project, I knew there was a lot I needed to talk through to lay out the groundwork and offer a baseline of facts, statistics and background information.
The key, however, was being able to do so without overwhelming the listener with too many numbers.
Throughout the course of the week, I used articles, podcasts and videos from my bibliography to research everything I could about practices and laws currently in place, statistics from different states and cities across the country and looked to Europe as an example of where the United States should strive to get to one day.
My project will consist of two podcast episodes (in addition to the audio from my videos that can be converted to a podcast) that will tell stories that video cannot. After researching for several hours this week, I concluded that my goal for the first episode was to answer the following questions:
- What is bike safety?
- What does sharing the road mean?
- How does the United States rank in bike safety compared to other countries?
- What are the current laws or ordinances in place?
- Is there punishment for breaking them?
By answering these questions in the first episode, my intention is to focus on the cyclists and their personal experiences for the remainder of the project.
The final portion of this project will end with a podcast episode that will explore what cities and communities need to do to catch up and be safe, potential infrastructure and what our next steps as a country are. Because I hope to get that information from soundbites and interviews from cyclists, I was only able to create an outline of the final episode and will fill in details as I receive them.
PRODUCTION
The final version of my script ended up at about 1,300 words and about 30 minutes of raw audio. After scrubbing through it to get the best takes, I was able to edit it down to just over seven minutes.
After laying out the story on my timeline, I now had several creative decisions to make in the post-production process, such as do I want to include sound effects? Do I want to add music? Will either of those take away from the important information I want the audience to hear? If I do add either, how loud or soft do I want them?
I ended up adding both sound effects and music, then removing both, then keeping just the sound effects, removing them, then adding just music, then taking that track out, too. There was a lot of back and forth before deciding that I wanted to keep both after reading an article by author Ryan Allen about how additional effects can enhance your podcast.
As I listened to how the episode was coming together, I did find several details I felt could have improved the overall episode. One being that I didn’t realize until after I exported the file and then uploaded it to Adobe Audition that there were several instances the mic popped my Ps. While common, they are also very frustrating and near-impossible to remove in the post-production process. I did determine that I will record my final podcast episode directly to Adobe Audition so I can play it back as I’m recording and re-record anything I’m not happy with.
Check out the first episode below. Should I keep the music and sound effects? Is it better without them? I’d love to know what you think!
WRAPPING UP
On a personal note, this week was a lot more hectic than I was anticipating. I spent most of it moving to a new city four hours away. The day we arrived at our new home, my boyfriend tested positive for COVID-19, which meant needing to quarantine while getting settled and working on this week’s artifacts. Unfortunately, I was also not able to interview the person I was hoping to speak to for my video series because of scheduling conflicts.
However, a couple of bumps on the road does not mean we should hop off our bicycle and call it a day! This does mean that there is a lot of work to be done in the next two weeks. After my partner and I are both out of the woods and it’s safe for me to go out without the fear of infecting anyone, I will seek out cycling groups in my new city and work to get solid interviews for the video-portion of my project. After editing my broll and interviews, I will use that content to write and record my final podcast script. I also hope to schedule all my social media posts and finalize my bibliography by the end of this week.
Off to a new week!