My podcast is based around reddit stories that me, my sister and our friend share our opinion and relate to our own life. The genre of my podcast is pop culture and non-fiction story telling. I thought that the best format for it would be conversational/panel and my podcast is round 45 minutes long.

When I look closely and listen closely to what I created, I have noticed that I have used specific codes and conventions, which other podcast, such as "My dad wrote a porno" and "who shat on the floor at my wedding", have also used. For example, the biggest and main one that I used in my podcast is the intro/outro, nearly every podcast will have one of these, but I thought it would be key to sit and spend time to edit my sound to make it stand out from the others and give it more of a unique touch. Not only this but, I also stole the use of music in my podcast from the two listed above. They use a short clip of music to help break up their podcast, and this is exactly what I did. I used the original sound I had found and trimmed to create a four second clip to put between and break it up so it didn't feel so heavy on talking. Moreover, I really wanted the use of mode of address to come through as we reading storied written in different formats and use of tone than our own, I thought it was key that we talked the way we normally do, especially when asking the audience to do something particular like interact and leave their opinion. This leads me into my next code and convention of call to action, I tried to do this throughout and asked the listener to leave their opinion on each story. At the end of the podcast as well I was able to do a long one asking the to subscribe and tune in for the next episode. The other Code and Conventions I wanted to included didn't make much sense when I had finally put my piece together. their wasn't any space for field recording's and it didn't feel like they matched with the stories. The others were never apart of my plan to use and that was mainly because they didn't match the genre and format. 

The codes and conventions listed above help with the flow of the podcast and make the audience come back for more. More specifically, the intro/outro will not only the listener identify the certain podcast but it will also make it stand out from others, leaving them wanting more, and the extra music helps the listener understand that we are moving onto the next part of the podcast. 

My early research and analysis of the sources, really helped me distinguish what the sources were about and what questions I could ask. I felt a lot more at ease by having all this extra research and analysis at my fingertips when needed, during my podcast instead of panicking mid-recording trying to find out something last minute. It made production got a lot smoother and easier, as well as post production as I was able to go back over certain research to help me and edit and see what information was important for me to keep in. 

Overall, I found the project quite fun and easy to do. I got to read stories that I love looking through myself and read them with two of my closest friends, while we joke around and give our opinion. Personally, I believe production and pre-production went really well. I feel like all the information I gathered and developed was really useful and helpful to me when completing the other parts of the project. Not only this, but it made it feel like it went a lot smoother with this extra information that I had. Production was also supper easy, we had everything we needed and the thing we had to do was focus on the stories and try not to sound to monotone and forced. However, post-production was more difficult as I faced issues with different software, making it more difficult for me to upload. Until finally, I had to delete my previous edited podcast and remake it on podcasters with the original voice recordings. Where again I struggled with uploading my edited intro and outro. I manged to solve this by simply voice recording from another device, sending it myself and adding it in that way. 

During recording, our biggest struggle was sounding to monotone and trying to stay serious. We simply solved this by pressing play of the voice recording and letting it run until we had a certain part so it would trigger normal conversation and help us get out of our heads. We solved the staying-serious-stuff by taking them breaks after recording certain things and then taking a gap between the next. It did make production take longer but it helped with the finished product being in better quality and professionalism. 

I have learned that that codes and conventions are key when making a podcast. Next time I will find and use more research to help me add these in to make my podcast the better version of its self. I believe it will help make it more interesting to listen to and help break it up even more so it's also easier to listen to.