The BBC Academy Podcast

The BBC Academy Podcast teaches the craft of making media, and its recent episodes teach at close range. Among them is a numbered set of minipods on smartphone journalism, billed as bite-sized. Mark Settle voices them. He works at the BBC Academy training staff to get the best out of the device in their pockets, and he treats the phone as a serious tool, calling smartphones the most widely owned item on the planet. The settings minipod is largely about staying connected. At a football match where tens of thousands of people are on their phones and 4G is swamped, he switches to 3G, which almost nobody else is using. He also mentions apps that bond mobile and Wi-Fi signals for faster uploads, and suggests checking network coverage maps. The photos minipod accepts that in news any shot of the moment beats none, then asks for more when there is time to compose and expose, including a mode that lets you set shutter speed to control how moving objects look. The exposure advice carries into video. Tap the part of the frame that matters. On many phones, tap and hold, then slide a finger to brighten or darken the whole image. If in doubt, underexpose a little, because a dark shot is easier to lift in post than a bright one is to bring down. Video runs across two minipods and also covers slow motion, time lapse, the iPhone's cinematic mode and the choice between landscape and portrait. Filming twice solves that last problem, he concedes, though few guests will agree to it. The audio minipod is the most tactile of the set. Settle records a stretch in his own kitchen, with a glass table, a fridge and a bare wall, to show how hard surfaces make a voice ring, and he argues for closing windows, switching off air conditioning and making a room sound deader. Podcastology has a different temperament. Eli Sessions, a BBC product manager who previously commissioned and curated podcasts for BBC Sounds, calls it a bit meta: podcasts about where podcasting is now and where it is going. In his introduction he asks why anyone should trust him, then cheerfully undercuts his own job title. In 'Podcastology episode fourteen: How to win an award', a speaker grows choked up recalling a woman who was filling in a grant form for a centre's Christmas meal, and the parting advice is to make work with passion rather than with a prize in mind. For a first listen, the smartphone minipods suit anyone whose phone footage looks flat or sounds hollow, and Podcastology suits someone who makes podcasts. The back catalogue behind these episodes is large.