Should I re-record my questions on an audio interview I did?
Last week, for https://dailypixel.art, I interviewed a pixel artist over on Discord. It was really fun and full on great insights. My first time interviewing someone, and I thought it did go well, the interviewee even said it to me afterward. But during my listening of the session, I just hated my voice and the way I talk. Should I re-record my side of the conversation to add more dynamism and life to it?
A bit of context if that's help. The interview was recorded in English, I am french and English is not my native language and I don't have much time to speak it. I understand it, can read it and write it with ease. But in this, the pronunciation isn't that great and it somewhat lacks "confidence" in the delivery. Also, I find myself talking really slowly, I fear this might turn people away.
What should I do? Re-record my side of it, at the risk of making in weird but more enjoyable?
I might not even be able to record it well enough tho. I don't know. I just really don't like it.
I might be wrong, be I feel like @csallen did re-record his questions for the firsts interviews they did. No?
+1 to what @csallen said. I also re-record some of my turns and edit the guest's speaking turns. Removing the "hmm" and the "ha" etc. When a guest struggles/stutters during an answer, they can just start from the beginning and we cut it out.
It flows better, and I find it respectful of both the audience and the guest. The same way you would spend a bit of time polishing a product before putting it out into the world, it's good practice to polish your podcast episodes.
I re-record at least one of my speaking turns in almost every episode. I also edit my guests' speaking turns to make them a bit more well-spoken. In my opinion a podcast episode isn't different than any other piece of writing or content: it's something you can work on, edit, and improve up until its publication, so you can produce the best experience possible for your readers/listeners.
Most other podcasters I talk to don't really do any of this. I don't blame them. It's crazy time consuming, and sometimes it's only of marginal benefit. I can't help doing it, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I often get lazy while recording and stumble over my words a lot. In an ideal world, I would just say everything perfectly the first time and not re-record anything. Sometimes I have episodes like that.
So it's really up to you. YMMV.
Most people don't like the sound of their voices :)
When I hear cuts in podcast (I have an assumption that it's almost impossible to edit something so it's not possible) I start guessing: is guest really answering what the host was asking? For me, it is very distracting.
It sounds like the questions and answers turned out great so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Typically the guest is talking for 80% or more of the time and that is what the listener will focus on.
Something you could consider is if you have long pauses, filler words, and shaky sentences then you can cut out those bits to speed up the pace using the audio you've already recorded. You can also re-record, but that will be the most time consuming option.