The interview you are about to read is a figment of your imagination.
Conrad Miszuk is a film director, composer and- if you believe the cover story- the creator of the Kakos Industries podcast. Conrad was nice enough to sit down and discuss everything and anything one would ever want to know about the process behind making a podcast. Being a big fan of the show myself, I was pretty excited.
Would you mind introducing yourself?
I’m Conrad Miszuk. I’m the creator of Kakos Industries; the writer, director, producer, composer and I do several of the voices (Corin Deeth III, Junior, Most uncredited voices).
What is Kakos Industries? If you had to give a summary.
Kakos Industries is an audio drama podcast series. It’s sort of like those old time radio plays, kind of like Welcome to Nightvale but dirtier. Kakos Industries is a company that specializes in helping it’s clients to ‘Do Evil Better’. And the listeners of the podcast are the shareholders of the company which entitles them to their monthly announcements telling them all about the advancements in evil and all of the very strange occurrences inside the Kakos Industries building.
And where did you get the idea for this mega evil cooperation?
Well, I have a film degree. And at the time I was working for a television show as an editor and I was looking for some sort of creative outlet. So I had these ideas for short films for a while, where there would be little glimpses inside of this evil company and so you’d be part way into that universe. I had something I wrote into a script but then had to remove. It was a lot of the more classic type stuff where they were a little more bervado and cavalier about the evil they were doing. And they’d be doing all these awful things right in plain sight. But making videos is hard. And expensive! Later on a friend of mine had put me on to Nightvale and thought ‘Well, shit, I could do that.’
Did you intend on making yourself the voice of the main character?
In the past I haven’t always had the easiest time working with other people or getting my vision across. So with four years of film school and a fairly diverse skill set I tried to imagine what I can do on my own. For me, fortunately, throughout middle school and high school I was learning music and always kept that alive, in college I spent a lot more time writing, directing and I learned a lot more about sound. Being the tall guy on set they needed someone to hold the boom pole; I actually worked with sound fairly often. So when I first started I already had all the equipment. The barrier to entry for podcasting is pretty low, when you’ve got all the stuff it’s even lower.
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Who would you say your favorite character is?
That’s a tough one because I think that so many of the characters in the show represent so many different, wild aspects of myself that I’ve drawn out to extremes. I think Dirk is fantastic, I think Silkie Wilson is probably one of my favorite things that’s happened on the podcast because the end result was so different from the script. I told Anwar (Newton) “On this last take just do whatever feels right. Do whatever you want.” And he just went nuts with it! It was so funny I’m surprised you can’t hear some of us in the background laughing.
So, Kakos has been around for about four years now. In that time what would you say is your happiest memory from working on the show?
Honestly, one of the things that makes me happiest is seeing people engaging with the material online, when I see people dressing up as characters and things like that. The first live show we had in Phoenix Comic Con was awesome, I feel like we had and great audience, great reactions. Creating on the internet can be kind of quiet but of you’re doing any sort of live production there is at least applause, actually getting to hear people respond as it played out is pretty awesome.
What advice would you give to someone that wants to get into podcasting?
I think now is the time, you know? I think there has never been quite so large an appetite for this type of content. For those of us that have been around a while (Kakos, Nightvale, Wolf 359) I think we’ve done a pretty good job of creating a culture that people really get into after listening to the podcast. Now is a good time, the barrier to entry on this medium, as opposed to all others, is pretty low and getting from story to finished product is pretty easy. I think the most important thing is just to do it because we really wanna hear it. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen on social media ‘I’ve just finished this show, this show and this show but now I need more’. So I’d say no matter what your equipment, no matter what your editing software, no matter what free music you’re finding on the internet, if you’ve got a story to tell then do it.
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Thanks again to Conrad Miszuk for agreeing to chat! Catch a new episode of Kakos Industries every month wherever you get your podcasts!
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