Various test recordings for TGO Radio were conducted on Saturday, 2 August and Wednesday, 6 August. Here are some production notes.
Several pieces of audio have been recorded, ranging in length from five to thirty minutes. The funniest so far was culled from the Wednesday session and is called “Jenna Jameson is Pregnant,” a delightfully pornographic mix of news, speculation as to the size of Jameson’s womanhood, and a playing of the classic Big Dick Blaque segment from Hardcore.
By and large, though, I am terribly torn.
On one hand, the equipment on which we have recorded the tests is brand new and so much better (i.e., faster) than the old set-up. It requires much more fine-tuning than the old set-up, meaning mainly that I’ve spent a lot of time sitting around, pounding shortbread cookies into my fat maw, drinking water and flat Diet Coke, and watching. (This was quite bothersome to me at first, because I’m a control freak, but in the second meeting Wednesday I talked myself out of most of that.)
We now have a tenable system in place for conducting phone interviews – it’s simpler than you’d suspect, but I’m not going to give it away. And it looks as though Jeff and I will both have access to the Interweb during the shows, which was a very hit-and-miss (and one sided, in my direction) proposition three years ago.
But in listening to and editing the clips, I’m hearing problems that, to this point, aren’t being solved. It will seem silly to read, but a small amount of these are corrected when the clips are piped through better speakers (so remember that, if a second season commences), but mostly the objections boil down to two things. One: Whereas during the first season our voices sounded more like we were sitting next to you, there is something flat and tinny about them as recorded on the new equipment.
Two: We are having some problems finding a proper mix between our voices and any ancillary audio played underneath us. Either the underneath stuff is so loud it splits the eardrums, or it is just loud enough to drown us out, or it is so soft we are burying it with casual conversation. These are problems that would require significant editing (including, probably, far too much cutting) to fix in post-production, which is why it’s better to get them settled now.
For the first set of problems I am at a loss. Regarding the second I believe I know how to fix them. Our problem could be that we are straying too significantly from the meat and potatoes method of recording we employed three years ago. Back then, virtually every piece of audio beyond our voices was played using one program. In that case, when we found a level at which to mix this one player, it was left alone to do its job and functioned well.
It seems that this time out we are trying too hard to be too cute. In addition to our voices, which are obviously recorded at a static level, we are seeking out and playing, on the fly, various pieces of audio from sources that employ different sorts of media players, none of which are pre-mixed to our general specifications. In other words, when seeking previously unforeseen clips in the future, we will have to employ a more deliberate method (which, of course, I have devised).
Worse coming to worse, the old recording equipment could very easily be pulled out of retirement and thrown back into service; like a retired battleship. So whatever is wrong with the recording could be fixed, temporarily with the old stuff, while the bugs are worked out of the new system. What could really cripple TGO Radio is our inability to formulate a coherent format. We both agree that the upcoming elections are far too important to ignore, and that the various idiocies of the candidates must be discussed at appropriate length.
On the other hand, neither of us can bypass the opportunity to speculate as to the exact size of Jenna Jameson’s vaginal opening, on account of the five thousand cocks she’s stuffed into that poor, suffering orifice over the many years, when she ends up with child.
There has got to be a way to combine the two things. Dammed if we can figure out what it is.
