By Cameron Gordon, Cassidy Gordon and April Clark
Future Storytellers’ Academy (FSA), powered by CultureVate and based in La Plata, Maryland, is a youth media and storytelling program for middle and high school students. Through hands-on instruction in podcasting, video production, journalism, and public speaking, FSA students learn to own their voice and build the skills to shape their future — one story at a time.
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This week, six middle and high school students learned how to make a podcast and got a sense of the process of making a podcast. During the week, we learned skills that would not only help us in the studio but also in the real world too, like projecting your voice when talking to many people, and how to adjust to the camera.
August 3rd was the first day of camp. In the morning, we got to know one another with introductions. We started by going over the basics of digital storytelling, journalism, podcasts, and videos. Getting to know the studio was the main part of the day, allowing us to learn lighting and how to set up a studio.
Tuesday afternoon, we had a guest, Shameca Oliver, who told us how to express ourselves and let our voices be heard. We acted out a story and expressed different characters’ points of view. This was the day we first learned about our camera presence. We introduced ourselves to the camera and told our personal stories of how we became who we were today.
Wednesday, we took a field trip to the Black Box Theatre. We were shown the set, backstage, and the different aspects of an acting theater. We interviewed the executive director, Pam Frank, and the owner, Evie Hungerford, about their lives and daily routines. We even went on stage and, once again, learned to express ourselves so our voices can be heard. We told the stories of our lives to practice stage presence and confidence. When we got back to the studio in the afternoon, we were educated on the functions of movie cameras and how to get certain shots with different camera equipment.
Thursday was a big day for us as this is when we recorded the podcast. We started the day talking about the movies we liked, why we relate to them, and the emotional connection we had towards them. After our warm-up, we began coming up with a concept for our podcast. When we collaborated with each other on a topic and a name for it, we had a disagreement. Some of us wanted to do anime but others wanted to do the new Spider-Man movie, so we came to a compromise. That compromise was Animarvelists, which was a fusion between the two. We talked about both anime and Marvel. We worked on the script and then we recorded the podcast. As scholars, we learned how to project our voice. We called this our “mountain voice.”
We decided the name of the podcast would be Animarvelist, an anime and Marvel podcast, where we would talk about the similarities and differences between anime and Marvel. We talked about characters like Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia and Loki from Marvel.
We also decided to ask how each genre impacts the audience — like how they make their fanbase excited and make the fanbase want to watch even more movies based on that genre. Other questions we asked included:
- What Marvel movies/anime have you watched?
- What are your favorite Marvel/anime characters?
- Do you prefer anime villains or Marvel villains?
- What do you think about the new Spider-Man movie?
- Name a scene in Marvel or anime that impacted your experience watching it.
- How are anime and Marvel similar, and how are they different?
- What are your opinions on anime and Marvel?
- Marvel comics vs. manga — which do you prefer?
Why We Chose This Topic
We picked anime versus Marvel because both worlds are having a massive moment right now, and we wanted to dig into why they connect with people our age. Here’s some of the research that shaped our questions:
- Emily, a crew member at the AMC Hoffman Center, shared in a phone call that they had seen over 22,000 guests in just three days for the opening weekend of Spider Man: Brand New Day.
- In fact, Spider-Man: Brand New Day just set the record for the biggest domestic box-office debut in movie history, pulling in $360 million over its opening weekend and roughly $932 million worldwide in its first three days — beating out even Avengers: Endgame.
- Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle became the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time, crossing $600 million globally within weeks of its release, driven by a passionate international fanbase and Ufotable’s acclaimed animation style.
- On IMDb, viewers have described Infinity Castle as a visually stunning, emotional standout, praising Ufotable’s animation and fight choreography.
Seeing how both franchises are pulling in record-breaking, global audiences at the same time helped us understand why our own fanbase couldn’t agree on just one topic — and why a mashup made sense for our first podcast.
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