"Essential Salt" from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies: Podcast Trailer Analysis

0:00I've got a few questions for you right at the top of the show. Do you ever think about what it means to belong to a place, or to be from somewhere, or to move to that somewhere, or to feel like you're part of that somewhere? That's the subject of today's trailer. From the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, the show is called Essential Salt. Welcome to the show, Trailer Head. I'm Ariel Nissenblatt, the host of Trailer Park, the podcast trailer podcast. On this show, I share a podcast trailer with you, and then I break it down. What works about this trailer? What grabs me? What grabs you? What is really not working about this trailer? What's missing? That's the focus on the content of the trailer itself, and sometimes we get deeper and sometimes we stay a little bit more on the surface, but we also focus on the packaging

1:01of the trailer. How is this trailer named? What is the episode title? Is there episode specific cover art attached to this trailer? And at times we'll even look at YouTube, the show's website, and social media, and see how the trailer is being portrayed there, possibly, probably, and hopefully, as a lead-in for the show on the whole. Ultimately, we're looking at the question of, does this trailer do a good job of getting listeners interested in checking out the rest of the show, or viewers, if we're looking at shows that have video components as well? So back to the questions that I started this episode with. A bit about me and my relationship to place and being from somewhere. I'm from the suburbs of New York City, and I now live in Brooklyn. But I've lived elsewhere. Mississippi, St. Louis, Los Angeles, even Portland, Maine, where this show takes place. I'll explain that. I'm going to hit play on the trailer for Essentials Salt Now, and then I'll be back to talk about it with you. Oh, there's one.

2:07Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay. Uh-oh. Did you really think this out? I mean, there's no rhyme or reason. A lot of people say I'm tenacious. This is... I didn't know. Okay. You with me? I'm Jess Miller, from Maine Public Radio. Essentials Salt is a show about the power of local storytelling. We made it some gentlemen, start your engines. Join us for Wild Rides. Hi. Powerful moments of connection. I relive that day every single day of my life. In windows into small scenes of life in Maine, that all add up to something very big. What it means to belong to a place on your own terms. I had to figure out what am I going to do, you know, for all of us.

3:07Coming July 28th, find out more at mainpublic.org slash storytelling. Thank you to the team at Essentials Salt for sending in the trailer for the show. I mentioned briefly that I lived in Maine for a bit, that I lived in Portland. That's because I actually went to the Salt Institute for documentary studies back in 2020, and I got a certificate in audio documentary work. It was a really great experience, so I have a soft spot in my heart for the show, for the institution behind it, and for the stories that are shared within this podcast. Salt allows students to get really creative in the way that they find stories, and they take real pride in telling stories about the people that make Maine what it is. To me, this is really reflected just in the trailer of this show.

4:09We get a sense, not just from the scripting, but also from the soundscape that is included about the tone and the vibe of the show. The narration is also natural sounding, and it brings us into the story in a way that is not too prescriptive, but allows us to get a sense of how the show is going to unfold. The beginning of the trailer is more on the artsy side, as compared to a lot of the other trailers that we feature on this show. I think it works, and I think it was actually the perfect amount of streetscape and soundscape that gave us a sense of things without letting our minds wander too long. Pretty quickly, the narrator comes in and orients us and lets us know what's next and what to expect. One thing I want to point out is that the title for this trailer is not trailer colon essential salt, or introducing essential salt from the salt institute of documentary studies. It's not something more obscure, it's not super on the nose, like a lot of the trailers

5:14are that we've featured on the show, and I don't necessarily know that they're doing this on purpose, but the title of the trailer is just coming July 28th. I think a few years ago I would have said this doesn't make any sense, avoid doing this, and that advice might still be true now, but I think there's something cool about it, it's kind of gritty, it's just telling us exactly the date that this is going to happen. That's the name of it. Coming July 28th, that's when the show is starting. A few days before when this trailer dropped, July 28th was in the future, that's why the trailer is named coming July 28th. Interesting choice, not one that I would necessarily make or advise people to make, but like I said, I think there's a grittiness to this that flows together nicely with the show. Could this work for you, listener? I don't know what that would look like as it relates to your show, but that's something to think about. Is there something that you could do a little bit off the beaten path in order to give your show unique naming conventions for the episodes? Just to give you a sense of how the rest of the episodes were titled in this season of

6:16Essential Salt, let me read a few of those out loud. We've got a ghost anchors and innkeeper and main sounds tell stories. An archite stuns main and a hawk baffles burders. A body is buried in a backyard and a woman helps save her language. What stands out to me here is that each of the titles of these episodes tell you what's going to happen in the show, but still leave a lot of intrigue. And they also sound really artsy and undeniably I must listen when I hear about a hawk baffling burders just because it sounds cool. So that's the trailer for Essential Salt and my analysis on that trailer. It's brief. Sometimes on the show I'll get more in depth. Like I said, sometimes I'll stay more surface. For this one, I just wanted to share a few quick insights because we have a voice note from one of the creators of the show. So let's hear from Brenna who put together the trailer for Essential Salt, which was produced for Main Public. Hello, hello, this is Brenna and let's see, when did I start thinking I needed to

7:23make a trailer? I mean, I think probably right away I knew I needed to make a trailer. But then what was interesting is that, so this project has a collection of stories that were all reported by salt students, so they were all reported in Main and they were all about Main. And when we chose the stories, I kind of knew they all had a theme. They were speaking to things that were important, I think, for our listeners and for me, about you know, interrogating like what is Main, what does it mean to live here, work here, what does it mean to be part of this place? But I think for me to kind of figure all that out in my head as we were putting the show together, I was just drawing on these pieces of tape that kind of did the work of that argument for me, like hearing specific voices, hearing tones, hearing emotions, that all kind of helped me to figure out what this show was going to sound like. And so I ended up making what became the sonic ID pretty early in the process before I think I'd done most of the scripting.

8:24And that kind of helped me kind of set the mood and the vibe and kind of the existential stuff that informed the show itself. And then I used that sonic ID as a launch point for the trailer, which then I kind of used like all of this digested thinking to actually write a real script and use even more little bits of tape to make that case. Thank you to Brenna for sharing both the trailer with us for essential salt and a little bit of the lore behind how the trailer came to be. That's it for this episode of trailer park podcast trailer podcast. If you are interested in submitting a trailer to be featured on this show, you can go to trailerparkpodcast.crd.co. There you can see a form, you can submit, you can let us know a bit about your show. And we will be in touch if your trailer has been selected to be featured because we will also want a voice clip from you telling us more about how you made it. Before I close out this episode, I want to make a quick note that I have not been super

9:24consistent with putting out this show. I work on a lot of things within the podcast space and this is truly one of the things that I enjoy doing most, but I admit that it can be hard for me to sit down and record. So this episode is part of a big push that I'm making right now. I'm recording this on a random Sunday and I'm going to record a bunch of episodes. Hopefully this is the first in a long line of a comeback season for trailer park the podcast trailer podcast. If you find value in the show, I would love to know. You can let me know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or leaving a comment on this episode on Spotify or by just getting in touch via email. You can send me an email at arielatirbuds.audio. In the show notes, you will find a link to the trailer for Essential Salt, a link to the submission form in order to submit your trailer to be potentially featured on this show. And you can learn about the person who produces this podcast, his name is Adam Flaherty, and he makes a lot of really cool things. Thank you Adam. Thank you for stopping by the trailer park. We'll be back soon with more and until then, happy trails!