PodFlash! Podcasts in Vogue. Vogue in Podcasts. What you should know?
Imagine doing a podcast with Eartha Kitt, Quincy Jones, or people like Ozwald Boateng (BTF) Before they were famous.
Aha, Aha. I did. I did. Ms Kitt sashayed, no, glided into the studios, with I might add minimum fuss. “Don’t ask her to to do her famous purr” warned her publicist, “she hates that!”. Then she purrs. We walked out of the studio arm in arm. Bliss. Q, sorry, Mr Jones be like, “Yeah I’d love to come to Ghana”. Where’s a Ghana tourism authority when you need one?
Then Ozwald. Yep, them days, 1990 Notting hill Gate, his first promo we put together Chris Cleverly, Jo Mosaku etc. I’d just finished working on Janet Street Porter’s uber youth BBC Reportage. You direct. So I direct one of the first films featuring Messr. Boateng.
Celebrity by itself. Nah! Personalities, people who’ve experienced the brittle winds of success and remain rooted in a desire to fulfil a quest with their life on earth, get them on a podcast, and you’d listen all day.
This week, Vogue goes podcasting and the host, who is cast material by himself, is none other than Academy Award-Winner Steve McQueen. “This project has been bubbling in my mind for a number of years”, he says in an interview with InPublishing. The inaugural edition is August 6th and will feature in Adwoa Aboah, Daniel Kaluuya and Gwendoline Christie.
The news raises an interesting question. If you’re a brand, super brand, you should have a podcast. You should have your own television station i.e. YouTube and Vimeo station, offsite conversational platform alongside, snapchat, Instagram, twitter. And your own in-house cinema/Netflix-ish franchise. These are water cooler spots for your community and admirers to gather and cash tills to sound off into the night.
I once got asked to consult for the FT.com in video journalism podcasts. My raison detre was that instead of viewers going to the BBC for Budget Day, they should all be going to the FT, first. Exactly !
Podcasts is radio with shiny digital bits hanging on. If you’ve ever listened to Alistair Cooke’s amazingly brilliant Letter from America, or Desert Island Disc, on BBC Radio 4, in which someone imagines themselves marooned on an island and chooses their best records to keep them comfy, it was brilliant when it was conceived, it’s brill now. The interview is Queen; the packaged story, the King; and the full monty of interviews, live 2-ways, music, and some, the Emperor.
Video Podcast
Vogue’s announcement evokes this thought about brands. Imagine Vogue as follows:
Thanks Steve, we’re now going over to London Fashion week with Naomi. Hi Naomi what’s going on?
Naomi: “Well we’re just getting ready for the homage to the late McQueen. Some exciting new talent, Steve.
Steve: Thanks Naomi, now to our editor who’s in Japan.
Edward: Yes, Steve, you join me with Shinsuke Takizawa…But before then, here’s Kanye West with his exclusive new single on V1- ogue
The tech part is the new fix, ones and zeros digitally plumbed through tricasters for simulcasts, proper omni mics and an awareness of ambient sound if and when you’e on location. In two years time, however, the new way of listening to podcasts will be via binaural sound — being honed by amongst others the BBC. It gives the perception as you skate to work, or jog that you’re physically in the same space as omni sounds come at you.
But the key all along to great podcasts will always be having deeply interesting, sometimes conflicted people, and a great producer, who’s got the research primed and the presenter ready. “I told anytime James Brown turned around and pointed at a band member on stage, that meant you were having your wages docked”, I asked Brown’s principle band member Maceo Parker. Parker laughs incredulously, before answering.
Did I tell you about the time I was interviewing Grace Jones at Ms World, Sun City an asked her about her famous moment on Brit TV… That’s for another time.
Podcasts: Eartha Kitt (aka Bat woman), the great Fela Kuti pioneer of Afro beat, and film maker Ernest Dickinson. (see 2007 iTunes library here for JB band).
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Dr David Dunkley Gyimah currently heads up the disLAB at the University of Westminster which prototypes story forms in VR, podcasts, and other innovative media. He is an international award winning journalist with thirty year career working for top brands in the media as a producer/ radio presenter, journalist and director e.g. BBC and Channel 4 News and has consulted for several organisations such as the FT, UN and World Association of Newspapers. He was a catalogue model in his youth. He publishes www.viewmagazine.tv
