The Cassette Diaries
Hi angels! In March, editors Kailah and Sarah interviewed Isabella Pantoja, the creator of The Cassette Diaries, a fiction podcast about endings, the whimsy of girlhood, and lost arcane things that hide in your attic — yearning to be discovered.
Kailah Figueroa: Hi, I’m Kailah, head editor for Mid-heaven.
Sarah Diver: I’m Sarah, executive editor for Mid-heaven. Can you say a few things about yourself?
Isabella Pantoja: So nice to meet you! My name is Isabella. I am currently a student studying audio production, but I consider myself more of a storyteller using audio. I’m twenty-three and I created this new thing that I’m talking to both of you about!
SD: Well obviously, first of all, loved the podcast, it was so enjoyable to listen to. The first episode explores themes of passion and the adventurous nature of girls in their girlhood. We were hoping you could talk about what led or inspired you to tell this story through audio?
IP: I think I had been playing around with these concepts of girlhood and feeling that freedom and the magical quality that you have as a teenage girl, but also as a teenage girl with other teenage girls. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to tell that story because I hadn’t ever written anything. And then I realized that I knew how to make sound, and I felt like it would be a cool way to show a story that is such a short moment in someone’s life but can feel so all-encompassing and just, dense with experience. I feel like audio is also something ephemeral. You listen to it and then it’s gone, and you can listen to it again but it exists separate from everything else. I felt like those two qualities fit really well together and I also liked the idea of having people listen to this and become a part of it. Put on their headphones and suddenly they’re there and not separate from it like watching a movie and you’re just a spectator, but with this, you can really feel like you’re there with these girls.
SD: Yeah. Especially with the ambient environment and everything. It really puts you right in the middle of it.
IP: Yeah, I feel like the environment and the landscape of it also sort of works as a literary theme by having the sounds of summer. Youth can feel like the summer of one’s life, I guess.
SD: The sounds you use are so engaging and interactive. How were those sounds achieved? Did you use foley or did you source them online?
IP: It’s a combination of a lot of things. I actually recorded foley and also looked for foley online, and looked for field recordings online of environmental sounds, and then I layered everything together. There is also some sound design. At the end of the first episode, when we are in, Jane’s bedroom, there’s a fan that I wanted to have in there. But if I had just recorded a fan, it wouldn’t have come across the way I wanted it to so I had to make that with like, synth stuff.
SD: That’s so cool. It feels really immersive. One of the things we really liked was the echo effect of the voices in the cave, it really put us in there. I know you talked a bit about this earlier but what role does audio play in the overall storytelling? Why did you choose audio and not video?
IP: At the same time that I was doing this (The Cassette Diaries), I was also doing research for my final dissertation on how audio specifically can create an immersive experience. And I feel like, you can hear things and you imagine them in your head as fully as you possibly can. And that can become personal because then you’re gonna imagine them, even subconsciously, with things that you’ve experienced or seen. It’s automatically familiar to you in a way. I just love sound. And I wanted to find out for myself if I could use sound in a way that you would use metaphors in a book.
SD: It really aids in creating the pictures in your mind. Like if you have that element to go by. Obviously, the podcast follows a script. What role does writing play in your creativity? Would you be someone who writes quite a lot?
IP: Writing, I think, is really important, not just for the dialogue but also to make sense of the scenes and to realize what mood I wanted them to have. Like in the beginning, at least the first three or four scripts, I would be really descriptive [in the directions], and my friend who directed the actors, he was like, “why are you using up so much of these really nice words and they’re not gonna be in the story?” But I feel like it also works for the actors so they can fully understand what it is that they’re meant to embody and what the moment is. It’s helpful to me and I think it was helpful to them. It’s also fun to write and figure out what it is that I’m trying to say, and then figure out how those words can become sound.
SD: Creating that whole world.
IP: Yeah, that’s so fun. I feel like it’s everything that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, to create a world that exists separately and just have that be a thing.
SD: For the girls!
IP: For the girls!! So they can just, have that. And I like that because I feel like before I was trying to do some music, and I feel like that was too much me. I wanted to have a little touch of me but also something that exists on its own.
SD: And have that collaboration as well like, with all the other girls and who do the voices.
IP: Yeah the collaboration aspect was amazing, and it’s not just for the project to become something that has a part of everyone, but also for like, the journey of making this and not being alone doing everything yourself. That was also really great about it.
SD: Definitely. And was this recorded like, obviously, I don’t know how things are where you are but, with all of the lockdowns happening, how did get it recorded?
IP: We recorded every actor individually so it was me and the director in the control room, and then the actor in the live room, and we were just talking to them through a communication microphone and they’re in their headphones. We had to keep a really tight schedule, so one actor would leave and another would come in. But it worked out. And we did manage to have really long rehearsals before the lockdowns, so at least we had everyone in the one room at least one time so they could at least like, get what everyone was bringing to their role.
SD: It sounds like fun as well.
IP: Super fun, oh my God.
SD: So like, the podcast tells a really specific story, but there’s a lot of universal experiences communicated. Did you consider what girlhood experiences may be universal when creating this story in order for it to resonate with a wider audience? And maybe just with you personally, are there specific things that you would consider to be pillars of girlhood that everybody can relate to?
IP: Um, I definitely thought about my experience and the experience of my friends because I think like, there are common experiences but everyone is so unique and, you know, you’re not just a girl or young woman, there are so many aspects of one’s identity that can make one’s life experience so different. But I was just really thinking of girlhood and that feeling of creativity and experiencing so many things for the first time and like, starting to build your identity. I feel like that’s definitely a common experience for everyone and I wanted to talk about that because sometimes when talking about coming-of-age experiences in media they are really personal. But we don’t talk about that thing of wanting to create things and I feel like all these girls have that. Eventually in the other episodes, they branch out in terms of subjects but they start from this point of, yeah all the girls are excited about life and their interests and meeting together to create their own world and do their thing.
SD: Yeah, like there’s your individual experience but there’s also a communal one with the other girls in your life.
IP: Yeah, definitely. And I feel like you can see that when the girls are together, and then you see the more personal aspects when Jane is just talking to herself.
SD: So the last question I have, and then Kailah’s gonna take the wheel, is that there are some references in the podcast to Catholic school. I was wondering is that a personal experience, like did you attend one? What inspired that choice of setting?
IP: I was definitely thinking of how everyone says “write what you know about,” and I just really wanted to like, have that in. I thought it was the fun touch of my personal experience and my Catholic school definitely wasn’t an all-girls school but it was so funny because it was like, 80% girls, which was a very unique experience, especially where I was from where that’s not common. I also thought it was a fun tidbit because, whenever you say “Catholic school girl” you immediately imagine an outfit even though [in the podcast] they’re not going to school, they’re not wearing those outfits. But with audio, you can’t help but imagine them in that. And I thought it would be a fun and easy thing to picture when imagining characters as well. I also wanted to include some religious imagery, like when Mary in the first episode is baptized, but it’s more of a ritual than anything. I thought it would be fun to have it there so we could later do those things.
SD: And even earlier when you were talking about how a lot of your individual experiences shape your identity, I feel like Catholic school must have shaped a part of your identity for you to put it in the podcast.
IP: Definitely.
KF: You mention this idea of girlhood being this time of building identity, and how youth is like, the summer of our lives. I’m curious as to what your creative influences are as an audio storyteller?
IP: So many different things. When looking at the sound design of this, along with the environmental and ambient sounds, I was really inspired by Sharp Objects. I really love the book but the TV series just managed to make something that was so unique and its own, with like, the flashbacks and the way sound was used to move through past and present, that was really cool. And I also loved and was really inspired by The Paris Review Podcast, just because they used scoring in such a subtle way where it really enhances the poems or short stories being told, and I wanted to see if I could use music in a way that does that as well — which is not that strong in the first episode, but later on, that aspect gets a little bit more present.
KF: In your creator’s statement, you write that “making The Cassette Diaries was your way of saying goodbye, but it turned out to be more of a hello.” I love that line. What role does The Cassette Diaries play in your own girlhood and this kind of transitional period?
IP: I feel like it was a way of me understanding that that part is gone. It felt so endless and so dense and I was just so confused as to how something that can feel so large can just suddenly disappear. And I think after making this I was like, “it didn’t disappear,” and I feel like that understanding really shifted things for me. I also understood that these moments that feel really dense with experience, they don’t only happen when you’re really young; there are various stages of life where they can happen. I feel like this past year has been that for me and I didn’t expect it to be. But yeah, it definitely felt more of a hello as in a wake-up call to my own life as to… there’s still so much to do. And then I got really excited because I’m like, “oh I’m writing about my teenage years because now I have some distance from it.” And that’s really cool because I know a few years from now I’m gonna be writing about my early 20s because there’s so much to still make sense of.
KF: Oh my God, I love that. That’s really beautiful! What does the evolution or future of The Cassette Diaries look like to you? Whether in the next coming episodes or maybe another season?
IP: I think the next episodes are gonna be a really great exploration of time and of what it means to find things and to lose things and to understand that time and experiences are circular. I feel like you can get to the sixth episode, which — this season has six episodes — and even if there isn’t going to be a second season, you can really feel like it’s done because it’s very much a circular snapshot of one’s moment in life. I started thinking about it a lot like the people who made Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They were like, “This is the perfect movie because it is such a short moment and there’s never gonna be anything like that.” But this movie talks about this moment, therefore we can only do this thing with it. I feel like this [podcast] is very similar to that. I mean, there can be a second season, but I feel like you understand by the end of [season one] what it’s about.
KF: That’s amazing, we’re so excited about it. Again, we really loved this first episode, oh my gosh. I was in my room listening to it like, okay! I’m ready for the next one!
IP: Thank you so much! Thank you, I really appreciate that. I was so nervous about sharing it just because I hadn’t shared it with anyone before that hasn’t seen the entire process. But yeah, I’m excited for you guys to hear it. The first two episodes are gonna be released on Friday the 19th March so you’ll get that.
SD: I can’t wait! Literally, it just feels like it really captures the aesthetic that I really wanted to embody when I was like, 15, 16, 17, you know? It’s so interesting to listen to, like “oh my God, this is what I wanted!”
IP: 100 percent! I was writing it through my experiences but also “oh it would have been cooler if it was that way instead of this way.” I also love it. It’s very much me putting on the headphones and reliving my youth, but better.
Other things we talked about include making friends with other girls on social media and how we are the first generation of girls to have that and college. The Cassette Diaries is available to listen to on all streaming platforms!