What is the Virtual Studio?
The Podcast Discovery Virtual Studio is our answer to remote recording in a world where video podcasting is increasingly relevant.
Remote recording is convenient and expands the pool of people you can speak to on your podcast to include anyone with an internet connection. But let’s be honest; visually, remote recording just can’t compete with a professional recording studio.
Performance data from our Podcast Rex social channels, which have racked up over 63 million hits across all sorts of different shows, shows professionally shot social clips are over twice as likely to go viral as clips shot remotely on a webcam.
People who see those clips are also more likely to associate them with the podcast in question if those clips have a consistent visual identity and regularly appear in people’s feeds from the same well-branded studio.
That’s where we come in.
How do we fix this?
First, it’s crucial to boost the quality of the video itself.
We send out easy to install box kits to everyone who’ll be using the Virtual Studio. These include cameras, lights and green screens; everything you need for great looking video at home.
Then we work with producers and contributors to set up the lights and cameras for the best possible results. This includes setting up cameras at an angle to give the appearance of speaking to other people in the same room rather than looking directly into a camera. This can be done in person or via a remote call.
The green screen in the box kit makes it easy to remove that messy, unwanted background and replace it with something much more exciting.
We build a bespoke virtual studio in 3D modelling software and deck it out with your podcast branding. Our Virtual Studios are designed by experts in building real-life podcast studios, meaning they consider questions like “Does this space represent the podcast’s visual identity on Spotify or Apple?”; “Will there be branding on display once we crop vertically, for social?” and “Does the space offer enough detail and depth to be visually exciting?”
Then we place your virtual camera at the same height, placement and angle as your actual camera in the real world. Repeat for all contributors and you have realistic, believable shots of everyone podcasting from one brand-consistent studio.
Have a mix of studio-based and remote contributors? Let’s recreate the real studio in 3D and insert the remote speakers into the room.
Sounds like a lot of work?
That’s because it is! The good news is that Podcast Discovery handles all that work and lets you get on with podcasting. We’ve worked with all sorts of different podcasts and understand that most have spent years honing their production process to be as efficient and perfectly suited to their needs as possible, and we don’t want to disrupt that.
Love recording on Riverside? Great, we’ll keep it that way by using the new professional cameras as “virtual webcams”. Can’t bear the thought of ditching Descript? No problem, the Studio can absolutely be plugged-in to a Descript edit.
The Virtual Studio has been designed to put as little pressure on your productions as possible, so we will analyse each client’s process and configure the Virtual Studio to work with what you’ve already got.