Creating ‘The Wire Stripped’ in Dropbox Paper

It has been ten years since the American Crime Drama ‘The Wire’ went off the air, but the show is still a source of creative inspiration for its fans. “For me, it is the show that changed everything,” says Kobi Omenaka. “Each episode was like a chapter in a book. You couldn’t simply dip in and out, you had to watch it all. It was totally unique at the time and I loved it right from the start.”

Kobi is a digital marketing specialist by day and a multiple podcaster by night. His latest podcast project – The Wire Stripped – involves dissecting HBO’s The Wire, episode by episode. Collaborating with Dave Corkery, who runs two other podcasts, including Award winning British podcast ‘The Cinemile’ with his wife, and Tom Whalley – a highly skilled BBC radio and podcast producer – the team set out to create something brilliant in homage to the ground-breaking television show. At the time of writing, the podcast is at number one in the TV and Film chart on Apple Podcasts.

“I knew Tom through cycling, and I met Dave at the British Podcast Awards,” says Kobi. “I’d had the idea of creating a podcast about The Wire for a while and when I mentioned it to them, they were as surprised as I was that nothing had been created before and were keen to be a part of it.”

The team set to work and have been working hard for the past six months. Juggling the project around busy lives, a new born baby, and geographically disperse team members, they have had some hurdles to overcome. “As we all have full time jobs, and are based in different parts of the country, I knew that in order to make this project work we would need to find a way to work together, easily,” says Kobi. “I discovered Dropbox Paper and haven’t looked back since. For example, I think I have only met up with Tom twice in person since we started, but we work together for a few hours a week, every week.”

“The great thing about Dropbox Paper is just how easy it is to grab any type of media and drop it into the document,” continues Kobi. “We would watch episodes, annotate them, grab YouTube videos and drop them in, add audio and all our notes together in a single space and then work together to make sense of these notes. Considering we are doing this alongside our full-time jobs, this simplicity and flexibility was essential to keep the project and our ideas flowing.”

“We will create a podcast for each and every episode of ‘The Wire’, dissecting and analysing it and ultimately sharing why we love it,” continues Kobi. “We then share, comment, review and build out the podcast script in Dropbox Paper too. Dave and I then get together and record the audio before saving that down in Dropbox Paper and asking Tom to work his production magic. It is all so simple.”

Dropbox Paper has given the team the freedom to explore their interests and passions, creating something for all to enjoy in the process. It brought together a team who hadn’t worked together before, allowing them to challenge each other’s ideas openly and push the integrity and quality of the final product. “Using Dropbox Paper has felt so intuitive,” says Kobi. “Even with three or more of us working together in a single space, it has never felt busy, cluttered or difficult to understand. We can comment directly about parts of the script, easily share our thoughts and highlight changes that need to be made to the script. Thinking about going back to email trails now feels like something from the dark ages.”

As some final advice for future podcasters and collaborators, Kobi has this to share: “The great thing about podcasting and collaboration is it is easy to get it up running, all you need is a good idea and a bit of determination,” says Kobi. “It can be too easy to stall and make excuses but until you get things going you don’t know how easy or difficult it is going to be. If people are in disparate places or different work cycles, having something like Dropbox Paper removes many of the traditional challenges. My advice is to get on with it and see what you can create together.”

To watch The Wire Stripped podcast series click here, or to find out more about how Dropbox Paper is helping teams collaborate and improve the creative process, click here.