The Voices of History

As part of the Ismaili Special Collections Unit’s Oral History Project, I was tasked to help develop and produce a podcast entitled The Voices of History.

Background: The Oral History Project collects recorded interviews from members of the Ismaili community around the world, with a special focus in the Northern areas of Pakistan. One of the outputs of the project was a podcast to share some of the stories collected.

Conceptualisation: As the digital content coordinator for the IIS, I was tasked with creating a podcast that utilised these recorded interviews in a way that was engaging for listeners, useful for researchers, and could stand alone from the larger Oral History Project. Using examples from other podcasts I enjoy, such as 99% Invisible, to create a consistent, replicable framework for Oral History interviews.

Voice acting: I was also requested by the Ismaili Special Collections team to lend my voice as the narrator for the English-language podcasts. I was able to apply my experience in narration and voice acting to achieve this quickly and consistently.

Audio production: Many of the Oral History Project interviews are recorded in the field, often on phones or handheld recording devices. This presents a unique challenge for each episode to process and edit audio to provide a clean, consistent, and enjoyable experience for listeners regardless of equipment limitations.

Animation: Although podcasts are primarily an audio format, the IIS insisted that this podcast also be distributed on YouTube. Instead of creating a static image for the video, or a slideshow of images, I opted to create a bespoke animation. The animation should be simple enough to not distract from the audio, but engaging enough to hold the attention of viewers. For this, I created a simple composition of the audio waveform with a random background motion, which I then made a staple for all IIS podcasts, including Alumni Voices. At this point, modern animation was completely new to me so, with a vision in mind, I had to teach myself all the techniques and software to create this outcome. I also had to create animation templates for the editors of the non-English episodes to use.