I’m frequently asked if we intend to make InsectaPod Cast a video podcast. Video Ipods are pretty popular now and digital video cameras more prevalent, so it seems like a reasonable action to take, but I’m hesitant myself for two reasons:a picture of a video ipod

  1. Our podcast is too long. We always envisioned InsectaPod Cast as something people listened to while doing something else, and the format it takes is a result of that. We can’t expect people to sit and watch 15 minutes of bugcasting. Most of the video podcasts that I see being successful are short, and alarming (like Will It Blend). I’m just not sure if the small screen and mobility of the Video iPod can appropriately accommodate a longer, narrative program like ours.
  2. It would be a lot more work. If your podcast involves recording one or two people talking in a studio, making it video isn’t to difficult: you record them talking (any rhetorical gains from doing so are questionable, though, I think…who wants to watch two geeks talk to each other?). We’ve already made a lot of work for ourselves with InsectaPod Cast, though, by using narrative, field interviews, and environmental recording. To mirror that in video would be incredibly difficult because we’d have to video record all those different steps, too. And edit them all together in sync with the audio. It sounds like a nightmare to me.