Transcription
Tell us a little bit about what you do?
We are a full-service production company for audio content. A lot of the stuff that I’ll do is music and sound design, and Jasmine will do story editing, writing and producing. Together, we’re a little podcast team.
We’re an independent, full-service podcast production company. We do stuff for clients, and then we also create our own shows that we’re working. So we’re relatively new, but we’re working on a lot of things and growing our whole idea. And we’re hoping to turn our little company into sort of an audio collective, so working with other people in the field in Brooklyn or elsewhere and creating that community feel that already exists in the podcast world a little bit.
What problem(s) did you face before getting your Studiobricks, What was life like?
We live underneath where the planes fly over to go to LaGuardia, so every two minutes I had to take a break for 30 seconds and then try and get it and then come back. And you know, you get there, but it would take hours.
We were looking for a new space. And you know how difficult it is to find space at all that’s affordable in Brooklynt. We found a lot of spaces that were in basements and just not terribly welcoming environments, like a lot just raw spaces. So we were talking about doing a build-out for a really long time, but then with that, it’s also the possibility that they raise the rent really hard after three years.. So when we found this, we were happy we could build the booth and take it away with us and keep it as a piece of equity. And just like that we could make the space what we wanted it to be, but we didn’t have to be attached there for 10, 15 years and build out a whole space.
We really solve that problem of starting a small business together and just being like, « Okay, we’re investing a lot of time or investing a lot of money, and we’re really making these big decisions that are going to be long-term. »
One of the best things we did was decide, and this was Justin’s idea, to instead of building out our little studio, is having something portable that we can create and take with us in case we want to leave, which could happen. We can move, we could find a different spot, so it really just rested our fears about investing that money for that reason.
Where did you start your search?
I used to have a walk-in refrigerator, like this crazy 8 x 5 aluminum insulated piece of equipment. I asked myself « Do I just find a freezer somewhere, is that kind of how we do this? » But I had another friend who had another modular booth, but they just notoriously suck. They just suck, and you can just tell that they’re just not constructed very well, and it’s just kind of nice looking.
I had a friend of mine who had a Studiobricks, and we just went inside and it was just like, « Oh, finally like, yes. It looks so much better, it seems like it’ll work. » Mixing engineers and stuff are vouching for it, so I was just like, « Great. »
What was the obstacle that almost prevented you from choosing Studiobricks and what put these concerns to rest?
One of the biggest things, I think, is we wanted it to be slightly bigger than the regular model, and so just kind of reining in how big we could get. I was a little bit worried at first about just getting the regular VO model that’s basically the size of my shoulders, you know, but when we figured out that the Pro model, you could expand it later or you could make it taller and stuff like that, I think that was probably the thing that got us over it, over the hump.
Being able to customize it and have it exactly fit our needs was great. And we worked with Studiobricks, which was nice to have that sort of process. It wasn’t just sort of like a corporate, plug in. We talked it through, and so that, I think, made us feel a lot more comfortable with our decisions.
We put two windows in, even though we only have one window that has light facing out, kind of thing, so it’s just… Yeah, being able to do stuff like that really, I think, got us there. It works.
What surprised you the most or made you the happiest about buying your Studiobricks?
Occasionally get a lot of outside noise, and the first time we closed the door we’d be like, « Okay, can you really not hear the trucks from the street? » And it actually worked, that felt really good. And it genuinely just looked so good and made our space feel really nice and perfect. It wasn’t like a big box in the middle of our nice office, it was like… It felt like a part of it. And being inside of it, actually feels not claustrophobic at all. It feels really nice.
I was very skeptical that one of these would work, I think, until I saw it a couple of times… I saw it at the Studiobricks place, my buddy had it, and I was like… I was worried that there was something that was not going to be exactly right, but so far so good.
It’s been great, yeah. And then we have decorated it and really make it our own, which makes us very happy. We feel like we made a sort of tiki theme in here, and it’s actually really fun to hang out in here, even if I’m not recording, I’m like, just hop into the club house for a minute.
Did you see our puffer-fish? We have our puffer-fish up here. He’s our little on air light. We have a little poster over here of Hawaii and our lights, and our… Yeah, It’s very fun in here, which I enjoy. I think that it’s intentionally a really nice looking space that you can dress up.
I would say the reasons that it really worked for us is that the price really makes sense for what you’re getting. Like Justin was saying, notoriously, there’s so many of these things out here that don’t work and you’re spending money on something that doesn’t end up working. It is what it says it is.
Why would you recommend Studiobricks to someone who might be on the fence?
Yeah, it’s the fact that you can take it apart fairly easily and then still carry around to a different locations, I think, is just infinitely valuable. This thing was really expensive, but just to put up some drywall and go through the whole acoustic construction is hell. I would pay almost any price to not ever do that again. And, so again, I was very skeptical at first, but it’s just really heartening to see how much care was really put into it. You figure out all the fail-safes of where the sound could come from. I’m a believer.
Let’s see, probably our best thing that we’ve contributed to this is the puffer-fish, I gotta be honest, and our…
Yeah, the puffer-fish is very important for fun.
Is there anything you would like to add or maybe share an exciting project you are working on?
We’re pretty new, and I gotta be honest, the fact that our start-up expenses could be wrapped up in a way that makes this sustainable, where we could move to a different space, and it’s not like you’re just sinking money, it just really made a lot of stuff possible. I think, specifically with podcasting you’re almost like democratizing this whole process where you can make really good quality stuff, and you don’t have to be a huge company to be able to do that. I think it’s really exciting for us. We’re working on a couple of fun projects. We have like a rock opera musical project.
We have a lot of our stuff that we’re doing is really highly produced, very carefully planned sound focus. Like the sound quality, and also sound design is a big focus of ours because we really are strong believers that the audio world has a lot of room to grow. I mean, podcasting is blowing up, which is awesome, but I think, and we both agree, that there’s so much untapped potential in terms of what you can do with sound that people haven’t even gotten to yet. And so we really love the idea of working with sound and using it as a medium.
Take a moment to watch this short video where we interviewed Jasmine & Justin from Sea Plane Armada, and they tell us how their Studiobricks booth has made a difference in their podcast and sound production startup.
