Research and Idea development
My Idea for my podcast is the topic of witches.
I got this idea as i am obsessed with supernatural movies and tv shows, mainly the ones that tell the story about the history of witches. My audience target for this podcast would be all ages who like witchy supernatural shows and that are interested in the history of withes. Mainly teens at the age 15-18, as teens are the main age group that watch tv shows and use Netflix to watch these said shows.
In the podcast i will discuss the history of witches (the Salem witch trails) and how these women were treat just by being themselves. During the time of the Salem witch trails, it was seen as a sin for women to mingle with other women, when they did they were accused of being sinners and inviting the devil. I will try and explain how in these movies and tv shows, the writers and producers portray these roles with their characters and actors. I will talk about how the producers and writers of these shows and movies show the empowerment women have as using them as witches (powerful women).
The Salem Witch Trials- The Salem witch trails occurred in colonial Massachusetts between early 1692 and mid-1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft,”the devil’s magic” as they called it, and 20 were executed. In the medieval and early modern eras, many religions, including Christianity, taught that the devil could give people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. Salem believed that Satan acted on the world, disease, natural catastophes, and bad fortune, they believed all these things were the work of the devil and that witches were those who summon him and work for him so they hung and burned them. In June of 1692, the special Court of Oyer and Terminer sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft. Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem who was found guilty and was hanged on June 10. 13 women and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows on 3 hanging days before the court was disbanded by Governor William Phipps in October of that year.
As years passed, apologies were offered and restitution was made to the victims’ families. Historians and sociologists have examined this most complex episode in our history so that we may understand the issues of that era and view subsequent events with heightened awareness. The parallels between the Salem Witch Trials and more modem examples of “witch hunting” like the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s, are remarkable.
The women accused weren’t even witches. They were innocent, it is known that witches aren’t real, that they’re mythical creatures, in movies they’re seen as hero’s and Villians
According to the Smithsonian Magazine: “What does it mean to be a witch today?”-by Kate Wheeling, many women of today had relatives that were apart of the witch trails. One woman in the magazine, named Frances Denny has two ancestors who was involved in the witch hunts of 17th century. Denny, who has long focused her lens on the ways that female identity is constructed in America, began thinking about the term ‘witch’ as a “primordial female archetype”. Denny wrote a book, titled ‘Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America. In this she captures how the word “witch” has evolved from a deadly label to something embraced by many people today.
In shows and movies, witches are seen to dangerous and dark, as they venture through dark paths throughout the shows (e.g chilling adventures of Sabrina- Netflix). They are perceived as dark, wicked and powerful women who invoke fear and provoke evil.Posted on.
Podcasts
Podcasts are audio streaming programmes that are made available for downloading and listening via the internet. Podcasts are hosted by individuals who lead a conversation, share stories, or report the news. Podcasts are to entertain its audience. Podcast listeners mainly subscribe to podcasts and listen to the daily episodes because they relate to the hosts thoughts and feelings about the topic of the podcast or that they find the host of the podcast funny and entertaining. Podcasts make money as the podcasters promote and sponsor different products in their shows. The price of the money the podcaster earns from a sponsor depends on how many downloads and listens they earn.
Usually, Podcasts are created by individuals that already have a social background like tik tokers for example, some people that have already made a successful background tend to breach out to their fans in podcasts, music, movies etc.
For example, The internet sensation Grace Keeling Barry (famously known as gkbarry) is a TikTok content creator with 1.8 million followers on the app. She gained this fame by sharing her embarrassing stories, comical skits, beauty and fashion videos, Grace is highly relatable to many women. Barry has started her very own weekly podcast which goes by the name of ‘Saving Grace’, where she shares more of her stories and brings on special celebrity guests into her studio to interview them and ask them about their embarrassing stories and how they started off with their fame etc. She airs these podcasts every Wednesday on 3 Streaming platforms, Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Barry’s podcast style is positive and whilst listening to her podcast, each episode brings off a natural vibe within the conversations she has with her celebrity guests. Her style of this podcast gives a positive vibe and is interesting and entertaining as she and her guests have alcoholic beverages whilst having a one-on-one interview. Her target audience is mainly for middle age adults (18-30), and teens as she started her career on the social media app TikTok , which is mainly used by teens 17-30. As she does use some a fair amount of curse words, i think her audience is mainly for 17 and above who like a good gossip and like listening to Grace’s embarrassing stories. This is evidenced as she says in her podcast, “we are taking saving grace on tour in 2023, in UK and Ireland, and you get a chance to meet me, we can have a few vodka cranberries together and talk about embarrassing stories in a live podcast with amazing guests so get your tickets now”. -Saving Grace Ep 28. If she is joke offering her fans alcohol, then it would assume that her audience is mainly to 18+. The format of this is a combination of interview and conversational as she interviews people that also have a successful social background (TikTok creators), the conversations she has gives an impression of a natural flow conversation, like there isn’t really a script and she asks questions from the top of her head.
Her podcast has 100% helped her success in her career as she has had other opportunities, for example she recently joined the ‘Footasylum: locked in’ series on Youtube.
Another example of a good podcast is ‘The Rewatchables’ hosted by Bill Simmons along side a fellow podcaster Chris Ryan. Simmons and Ryan are hosts of the podcast ‘The Ringer’. There has been hundreds of episodes, with Simmons, Ryan and fellow ‘The Ringer’ podcaster Sean Fennessey taking an extensive look at those films you can watch over and over again. As well as 3 hosts, there are numerous guests who also feature in the episodes of the podcast show, including media commentator Van Lathan, Amanda Dobbins, co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Showtime’s Billions Brian Koppelman, and director Judd Apatow. The podcast includes the movies , Jaws, The Godfather, Predator, Mean Girls, Fletch, and Father of the Bride. It is clear that the podcast is a real mixed bag with something that interests all listeners.
Simmons’ audience is for all ages as he breaches out movies for all listeners interests. Simmons, Ryan, and Fennessey mainly talk about action/thriller films as they include movies like, Jaws, Predator etc.
Script
Director- Leon Whiting
Cast- Leon Whiting
Topic- History, Film&Tv- The History of the Salem with trials and how movie producers use this as an example.
Duration- 10 mins
Creepy witch background music throughout the whole podcast.
13 innocent women executed for witchcraft.
Back in 1692, the Salem witch trials took place and 13 women were accused of witch craft. This happened as the citizens of Salem believed that if something went wrong within nature, they believed that the devil was poising nature and that witches invited the devil to poison the earth. In the medieval and early modern eras, many religions, including Christianity, taught that the devil could give people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. Salem believed that Satan acted on the world, disease, natural catastophes, and bad fortune, they believed all these things were the work of the devil and that witches were those who summon him and work for him so they hung and burned them.
Today, witches are seen as mythical creatures that live in the supernatural world of Film & Tv but within this presentment, they are also seen as powerful, unstoppable women, who either soon to figure out that they’re apocalyptic or that something in there lives will cause them tragedy or for the ones they love. For example, in the early 200s, the series comedy series “Sabrina the teenage witch”, witches where presented as comedy, quirky beings with a tad bit of wickedness. Whereas the Netflix spin off “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”, ventures down the more dark path to the character of Sabrina and the other witch characters in the series. This shows the dark, villainess impression witches are given today.
In these movies and tv shows the directors work with the actors to make sure they bring the tragedy and sadness of witches as characters as their story line always ends in a tragic or they suffer with pain throughout their whole life. In my opinion the way the actors portray the pain of these powerful misunderstood women is a powerful movement and shows how powerful and inspiring women can be as it presents strength and responsibilities.
Not only do the producers and actors capture the tragedy and pain of the past of witches, the movie editors and colour artists behind the movies add the magic to capture both power and pain as you mainly see the edges of the movie scenes faded and a gloomy, unsettling colour to the movie. The colour schemes of the costumes the character wears or the power colour they have (eg Wanda Maximoff- red powers) tend to match to the colour tone of the scenes including the colour. This really captures the effect of power as it shows how much the witch character is capable of.
The famous children’s book author, Roald Dahl wrote a book named ” The Witches ” and his views were that not all women are disturbed and inherently untrustworthy, but that some people can appear other than they are. This message shows that some things need a second look, a second glance at things that seem self-evident.
The tragedy falls into the film industry as the watcher of the movie or Tv show goes through the characters journey of their life and how they grow in beauty within their powers, but they always have some sort of sacrifice or unfortunate event that occurs in there life and it shows the cataclysm of the Salem witch trails and how they suffered for something that they didn’t even do. The way the movies and novels have presented this in todays generation is a magnificent way to portray something so devastating in a way of feminism and strength and power within misunderstood women who destroy anyone within two seconds powers or powerless. It shows that being witches don’t define them as women it just makes them better and powerful but that their power doesn’t define them as women either. Yes of course witches don’t exist they are mythical creatures obviously, which is funny as someone asked me if I was a witch, due to my obsession with them, but my point is that the fact that creative and talented people like myself, use these characters to show their thoughts and views on how they feel about these mythical creatures and how the unfairness tragedies of those innocent women should be shared, so that their story is heard.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the wishing hour. I hope you all have a wicked time.
Evaluation
I think the project overall for me was very overwhelming but exciting.
The process through task 1, i thought it was easy and exciting to research the different types of podcasts and the different formats of them. I think this process is very important as it shows the influence from different podcasts and the podcasts other peoples recommendations of different podcasts. Whilst researching, i decided to take the influence from the podcast “saving grace” as an interview podcast as the host Grace Barry (gkbarry), entertains me with her funny jokes and content on Tik Tok. I decided that an interview podcast wouldn’t really be a good idea as interview podcasts star celebrities or people with a social background (influencers). Me being a 17 year old college student, no body knows who i am therefore it wouldn’t be likely to get someone with a social success into Bradford college for an interview. So thats why i decided to make the topic of my podcast based on my interests and something that i have knowledge of.
Task 2: Planning and Producing.
Task two gave me an anxious, nervous feeling as i have never done anything as practical as recording my own voice speaking about a certain topic. As soon as i got my idea development done i had more confidence in recording the podcast.
The idea i came up with at the end was a unique idea as i didn’t really find any other podcasts based on the same topic. The idea i finally came up with was to talk about the topic of witches. To explain the tragic past of witches and how they are seen today in the Tv & Film industry. I got this idea as i have an interest in witchy supernatural movies and tv shows and how they are portrayed with their pain as powerful characters.
I feel like with writing the script i could have added more research for the witch characters in different movies as i only referred 2 characters. I feel like if i did this then the podcast itself would be more interesting because i feel like i am repeating myself a lot in the podcast.
Task 3: Distributing a Podcast
This task was difficult to figure out how to work both illustrator and photo shop but it was also fun to explore more creative facilities. Branding the podcast was fun as i got to play around with shapes and colours and fonts until i liked the final product of the logo and the branding.
With the logo i wanted it to be more plain and simple that exciting and crazy as a creepy, witchy font with a plain background shows the effortless power that it has. I wanted to show this to foreshadow the effortless power witches bring.
Overall i think this project altogether was very nerve racking and it made me feel a little bit anxious and uncomfortable when presenting the podcast. On the other hand it was a also an exciting, adventurous experience as it helped me explore and develop my idea skills and taking one of my ideas for something that I show interest in and making it into something other people can relate to.
I confirm that the attached assessment is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself and sources have been appropriately referenced.
Tutor Feedback
Evaluation on my grade.
From the feedback given for this project i feel that i have to improve on giving myself more time to finish the more detailed sections of the project like the research and idea development and not rush through it as it doesn’t meet the grade i should be hitting. To improve, i need to work on my attendance to complete the tasks or complete them at home when off sick.
For the next project i think i need to improve on my confidence for presentation of my work as i get really nervous and i think that is why i rushed it because i was so nervous.
With the research, i feel as i could improve with adding more effort and detail with primary and secondary research and exploring the audience and their demographics. this would have helped me a lot more to understand and explain the audience of my podcast. I should have given myself more time to complete this instead of rushing to finish it.