The first ten seconds decide whether anyone hears minute forty. We cut a cold open that makes leaving feel like a mistake.
A cold open is the first 30-60 seconds of your episode: one moment, pulled from later in the conversation and cut to make a promise the episode then keeps. Most shows lose the biggest share of their audience in the first minute; this is the minute doing the work.
STANDARD ↔ ADVANCED · DRAG THE DIVIDER · TAP A SPEAKER TO HEAR IT
Where the ten seconds come from, the same four steps on every episode.
We watch the whole episode before we cut a frame of it. The intro isn’t the first thing that happened, it’s the sharpest thirty seconds anywhere in the conversation: the claim, the number, the story that earns the next forty minutes.
Hook first, context second, cliffhanger last. A retention intro runs 30–90 seconds and ends on a question the episode answers, so pressing pause feels like walking out of a film at the twist.
Music isn’t decoration; it’s the metronome. We cut lines to the beat, drop the track out under the cliffhanger, and let silence do the last two seconds of work.
Before delivery, every intro is judged the way viewers judge it: thumb hovering, sound off, zero patience. If the first ten seconds don’t earn the eleventh, we recut it.
Straight answers to what every show asks about this module.
It's cut alongside the episode edit, so everything lands together, under a week after your files arrive. Revisions until you're happy, and most notes are turned around within a day.
Yes. The tier is part of each episode's spec, not a contract, run advanced for a big guest and standard the rest of the time, and the price follows.
No. The intro is cut entirely from your existing episode footage, we find the moment, we don't ask you to perform one.
Standard is a clip-based cold open with hooks and cliffhangers, set to music. Advanced adds B-roll, animation and transitions cut to the beat, a broadcast-style open.
Yes, the same principle drives audio feeds. We cut an audio cold open that hooks listeners before your theme music lands.
Related field notes, written by the crew that does this for a living.
The comparison is usually framed as a choice between two formats. It is closer to a choice about one recording session, because the camera decides what you can publish later far more than it decides what people hear.
Dynamic beats condenser in every real room, USB has caught up with XLR, and the best cheap podcast microphone has been the same for years. Named models at honest UK prices, plus the accessories that quietly waste your budget.
Most studio guides start with gear. The room decides more than the microphone does. Here is the full build in order: room, treatment, audio, camera, lighting and layout, with three honest UK budget tiers and the point where hiring beats building.
