SpectreVision Seeks To Transform Podcasting Landscape

Strange Familiars with Timothy Renner

Courtesy of SpectreVision

Just one year after launch, SpectreVision Radio is hellbent on taking the podcasting medium where no one has gone before (with all due respect to Captain Kirk).

The above-mentioned podcast network run by SpectreVision, the horror-focused production banner founded by Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller, announced today “a bold expansion into video podcasting” by turning their 50-show catalogue into full-on productions.

“When we started this thing, it was with the intention of just making audio podcasts,” Noah tells me over Zoom. “We had a couple shows with a video component, but then, come December, the data started trickling in to the industry that consumers were overwhelmingly favoring podcasts with video. We found ourselves in this really unique position, wherein we were one of the only networks that were also filmmakers. So we started to realize that there was a demand that we could answer quite directly.”

For Noah and his two co-founders, “the notion of bringing real, cinematic storytelling techniques to podcasting is not just novel — it’s necessary,” he affirms. “Just a short time ago, the Joe Rogan format of a couple people sitting around a table was pretty much the only game in town. But we look at this as filmmakers and say ‘Why can’t we get up off the desk move things around?’ We’re trying to get creative. In some cases, it is just windows with people talking to each other. But even in those cases, we’re really trying to make them look very pretty and professional.”

As of this writing, they’ve already begun the process of converting shows into novel, chimeric configurations. For instance, Soren Narnia’s short fiction podcast Knifepoint Horror was “the big proof of concept” that it could done effectively. “The way I described it to Soren was, ‘Let’s think of this as the visual equivalent of a Brian Eno record. It’s not necessarily meant to capture your full attention. It’s there as a seasoning, a flavor. Something to zone out to if that’s what you want to do,’” Noah recalls.

And so, they added the visual element of a dark road viewed through the windshield of a car driving at night for an episode about a road trip. Not long after, the podcast was among the Top 10 titles on Spotify. “That was when we realized, ‘Okay, there’s something happening here,’” Noah adds. “We have 50 shows that we’re rolling out, and nearly every single one of them is in some process of converting to video. We’re working very closely with the creators and saying, ‘Listen, let’s, figure this out together. What is a natural and organic visual expression of what you’re doing that isn’t just a ring light and a Yeti microphone? How can we really up the game?’”

The end goal is to create a fresh medium that defies all current definitions, falling “somewhere between podcasting and traditional television,” explains the SpectreVision-co-founder. “There is an understanding that this will not be as fully-produced as traditional, institutionalized television, but there still will be an understanding, or an expectation, that there will be something creative.”

The best part? Neither Hollywood nor the wider podcasting community have yet to grasp the true potential of this burgeoning entity.

“I think that by the time they do realize what’s happening, they will be so far behind the curve,” Noah continues. “Because the content creators who are aware of this and already running way out ahead of the pack will be the trendsetters and the leaders in this space. I think what’s so thrilling about it, is it belongs to the artists. This is a very rare dynamic when artists are dominating and owning a space.”

This trailblazing podcast endeavor marks the latest stage in the company’s evolution into a multimedia juggernaut. Just last month, Forbes Entertainment spoke with Noah about SpectreVision’s forthcoming comic book series at Oni Press, High Strangeness, which will shine a more accurate light on popular paranormal topics like cryptids and the Men in Black. “These things, when they happen, are very strange and very confounding, and don’t necessarily have easy answers,” concludes Noah, who is overseeing the project. “We’re just leaning into the ambiguity of all that.”