We Make Each Other Better
Sound Escape Productions wants to attract people with a passion for creating audio content and the ability to respectfully work with others to create something better than an individual can create alone.
We are always interested in meeting and working with new people, especially non-heteronomative, non-cis, and non-white people.
Experience helps, but respectful people willing to learn are better, even if they have no experience.
We are always looking for more:
Directors
Directors help actors shape their performances, making the space for the emotional truth and how to bring that out. Directors handle casting, scheduling and recording of episodes, and offer feedback on performance, and pacing.
Marketers
Marketers design and implement our strategies for presenting our shows on social media. They take everything generated by production to reach new people and encourage them to check out our content.
Performers
Performers bring words to life, working to understand their characters, their motivations and the emotions they are feeling. They’re the lifeblood of our productions, becoming the people within them.
Sound Designers
Sound Designers work with sound effects and ambiance to immerse the audience into events as they play out. They give us a sense of place, and what is happening in the world around us.
Dialogue Editors
Dialogue editors trim, cut, and assemble recordings into the initial episode. They know that the audience’s attention is valuable, so they find ways to make the pacing natural while choosing the right take and trimming unnecessary chatter.
Musicians
Musicians create wonderful compositions, either in scoring or theming for our productions. They have a passion for music and how it can bring emotional depth to a scene, or even tell stories of their own in audio.
Script Editors
Script Editors bring their talent and skill to help guide scripts and assist writers in conveying their story in audio as best as possible. Some will serve as Sensitivity Readers to ensure covering cultural, explicit, or adult topics are Hippocratic.
Writers
Scripted shows, both fiction and non, need content and format to flesh out their pages with. Writers do the research and tap their imagination, bringing their talents and skill to bear.
Department Heads will review applications before passing them on to showrunners. Showrunners are welcome to bring in and hire people to fit their current needs.
If you don’t hear from us after 60 days, feel free to reapply. Again, We add people to the collective based on need; it might be the case that we merely do not have a need at the moment. However, we retain all applications we receive
Pitching a New Show
There’s a misconception that podcasting is easy. Two people and a microphone, and now you’re off to the races. Sure, you can do that, but it takes years of experience and skill to just hit record and spin gold. And even then, it’s hard to continue; harder to sustain. Many podcasts fail in their first year. This collective exists because it is easy to begin a thing, but much harder to pull it off successfully.
Podcasts with a Future
We want to make podcasts that have a vision and a plan. The kind of shows that people are excited to tell people about, piquing their interest. Podcasts are discovered more by word of mouth than anything else.
In our modern age of podcasting, you cannot just be two people with a microphone. You need to be two people with a microphone saying things that people want to know, or two people who they know who they want to hear. Then you need to be entertaining, comedic, and/or dramatic, so people come back.
Podcasts that People Need to Listen to
We need our audience members. Their downloads encourage our sponsors to support us, and our audience can support us directly if they’re invested and able. That allows us to continue to make productions and to pay our people. We need productions that bring people to the table.
We need to give the audience a reason to pull their phone out, open an app that they might barely use, find you and subscribe. Then they have to remember to open that app and select you. That is a lot of effort to complete those 6 steps. That is your opponent.
Before You Pitch
Before pitching a podcast, you should be an active listener to podcasts. You should take notes on what they do, and how they use audio. HowSound by Rob Rosenthal/PRX/Transom.org is a great way to learn more about general storytelling in audio.
Then do your research. Amanda McLoughlin’s More Pre-Pro, Less Problems is a great guide to the basics you need to develop your show.
If you’ve done the work and your research, you’ll have everything you need. We use this sheet for our official pitches. Please complete it in detail.
Once we receive a pitch from outside the collective the executive producer will look it over. If they feel it is ready to present to the collective board, they will bring it forth for a vote.
Pitching Already Existing Shows
We are open to shows that fit our values and wish to do our best to help them. If a show joins the collective it might need to go under a “retrofitting” to bring it in line with our presentation and practices, such as remastering, or adding sponsorship segments retroactively.
As a collective, we want to bring shows that bring people in and encourage them to check out our other shows. Therefore in addition to the pitch document, we are interested in learning your:
•Total downloads by Episode
•Last 30 day downloads
•Current social media followers by each site
We value content over numbers, but we want to know that information because it indicates the audience you’re currently reaching, and we’re interested in reaching audiences outside of our current demographics. If you’re coming in with a backlog of content and an existing audience, you have an advantage over a new show.
As with a new show, once we receive a pitch from outside the collective the executive producer will look it over. If they feel it is ready to present to the collective board, they will bring it forth for a vote.