My journey into Podcast sound design & scoring began with Mark Ramsey and “Inside Psycho”.
Episodes 1 & 2 (of 6) were released on Wondery on this day - March 23, 2017.
It actually started in 2015.
I had been editing Mark’s semi-monthly podcast “Media Unplugged” where he and Tom Asacker would dissect current headlines from the media space and offer their insights. Mark and I shared common views on many issues on the media space, specifically that Commercial Radio (where we both earned our keep) wasn’t using audio to its full creative potential.
Mark wanted to do something to demonstrate that belief for his upcoming “Future Audio Festival - HIVIO”. HIVIO was a cross-media “un-conference” of people specifically interested in, well, the future of audio. Mark asked me to create a :90 piece of audio that would demonstrate the “Power of Audio” to be played at the festival. You can hear that piece here:
Afterward, the piece made the rounds in commercial radio management mainly as an example of how to sell clients on the “Power Of Audio/Radio” ….advertising.
Cue sad trombone.
That wasn’t really the point I was trying to make - and it certainly wasn’t the point Mark was trying to make. We were interested in harnessing the “power of audio” to create compelling content.
But all was not lost. For one, the piece was the first real demonstration of my attitude about audio - that audio lets us CREATE ANYTHING and GO ANYWHERE - so why don’t we?
Mark pitched me the idea of creating an “inspired by” docu-drama style podcast about the making of a classic movie - in this case, the Alfred Hitchcock thriller PSYCHO! The concept for the series was very simple. Inside Psycho was not going to be a film history, critical review, or talking head/interview podcast.
Instead, it would use a single narrator who would dramatically tell the tales of the making of the film and occasionally assume the roles of characters in the stories. It would feature elaborate sound design, and production. Mark wanted the sound to be its own character in the series. But…. we would not use the original soundtrack or any clips/audio from the film.
Crazy, right?
What the hell - it was podcasting in 2016, so we went for it.
We started with a 6 minute "proof of concept” which was eventually used as the series trailer. Listen below.
Mark had already targeted a potential platform he thought would be a perfect fit for the project, but they were only interested in video. They didn’t understand why anyone would “listen” to something like that. Ahhh 2016, we don’t miss ya that much!
But Mark had more than a few other ideas. After all his future audio conference HIVIO brought together lots of forward-thinking people. One of whom was Jeffrey Glasser. Jeffrey was an NBC TV Executive who had just left a prime TV Programming role to start a little podcast company with fellow TV Executive Hernan Lopez. That company… Wondery.
According to Mark, Jeffrey heard the 6-minute trailer and thought it was unlike anything he had heard at that time. Plus, it didn’t hurt that the entire team behind this “unique” production was just Mark and me. Wondery wanted to know if we could make 6, 25- 30 minute episodes. Mark checked with me - we agreed to do it and Wondery supported us to make “Inside Psycho” - which launched as I said - on this day in 2017.
Over the next few years we followed up with series like Inside The Exorcist, Inside Jaws, Inside Philadelphia, and Inside Star Wars. Each series grew more elaborate in writing and production but always remained true to the same two-man show of Mark and me.
During that time Wondery took the basic concept we had created with the “Inside…” series and learned how to deploy it to tell all kinds of stories. The approach had become a kind of Wondery “house style” as it was used to stand up many of their most popular series.
It started with Business Wars, which I helped launch with the debut series Netlifx vs HBO. The “Inside” approach also drove the series American Innovations, American History Tellers, American Scandal, Imagined Life, and many others including recent ambitious series like Against The Odds. It’s a very versatile format in the right creative hands and Wondery proves to be a true master at it.
So it was Inside Psycho that introduced me to Wondery and that led Wondery to invite me to work on many of their high-profile investigative mini-series like Dirty John, Dr. Death, and… well, you can see the credits on the “works” page.
So this post is just a quick trip down memory lane and a tip of that hat to the podcast series and creative partner Mark Ramsey that started my “official” podcast career. I’ve had so many great podcast series to work on because of that one special show.
The Inside… series might be over - but Mark and I have a few other tricks up our sleeves that I look forward to talking more about in the coming months.