This YouTube vlog follows Nicolas Cole during a major studio content day near the end of the year. Cole explains his plan to run a monthly large-scale content day through 2026, describes team roles (including an AI training lead, Mitch), and walks through the production process for immersive fiction audiobooks: Cole records narration, editors apply vocal transforms and reverb for characters (e.g., Verdant the botanist), layered sound-effects (atmosphere, movement, textures, world/game sounds), and a hybrid synth-orchestral score. Production is time- and resource-intensive (Cole: chapters take about a month; one project contains roughly 700 tracks). The video mixes tactical workflow details, logistics (team holiday break, recording hooks and shorts), and reflections on AI's role in repurposing scored IP for future visuals/animations.
Questions this video answers
January 12, 2026
The team is given off during the last two weeks of December (a 'Christmas break').
Monthly ("every month all through 2026").
About one month ("it takes us like a month to do a chapter").
About 700 tracks.
Chapters
I'm a big fan. Could you sign this for my girlfriend? She also is a big fan.
Huge fan. Yeah. Okay. Here you go. So here's my Social Security number. All right. Another big content day. We got the whole team here setting up. We're, like, two weeks away from Christmas, and usually the last two weeks of December, we give the whole team off inside pga, we call it Christmas break. So we let everyone catch up on. You know, we have so many materials in there and replays and masterclasses and assignments, so we find that it's a really great time of year to let everyone get caught up. And then also we let our team rest because they gotta sleep at some point. So this is gonna be our last big content day of the year. We learned a lot from the last one. And I probably spent double the amount of time prepping for the day trying to consolidate as many different video ideas into one notion document. And so the way I have today structured, hopefully we can squeeze out double the amount of content that we got from the last day. So I'm going to be doing this every month all through 2026. So I'm hoping that every single time that we do this, we get more efficient. We create better and better content. And if there's any ideas that you want me to cover or any questions that I can answer, just leave me a comment and I'll add it to the. I didn't realize you were standing there. Sorry. Okay. What's up, bro? Didn't want to interrupt. So, this is Mitch. If you can't tell, he used to be a former model. He now runs our AI training department, which is awesome. Do we have an official name for that? No, it's still a work in progress. We're figuring it out. The cohort was called AI Content Agent, and we're building on top of that. Yeah, so we'll figure it out. So that's great. He's been with the team for a long time. And then Mickey and Troy are with my publishing company, Different Publishing, and they've been working on these really cool immersive fiction audiobooks. How's it going? How's it going? Finding an Empyrean. But beware, Skyline is fully immersive. And the obstacles you will face here will feel as real and threatening and catastrophic as they would in real life. Some students have even died. Just kidding.
All right, so welcome to the world of immersive audio. So the first and most important part of immersive audio is the storytelling. So we have Cole do the narration. So he does all the narration and sends that to me. And then I do some editing with it, put some compressed compression on it. And then after the audio, I start working on some of the different characters. So in this specific chapter, I have Verdant the botanist, who is one of the quest characters. And so I put some vocal transformer on there to give each character a different texture and then adding reverb to. To make the character feel like it's in the space as we're listening to them. After I do some of the characters, we put in the sound effects. So I have these in different track stacks. One for atmosphere, one for movement, one for different textures, the world sounds, and the game sounds. We have lots of different layers, and each one of these different types of sounds are mixed differently, and the player can feel like it's a part of their headset. So then after sound effects, then we start working on the score. And so with the scoring, we do a hybrid of synthesizers and orchestral instruments. Because this is a sci fi fantasy world, we blend a lot of different textures together to create that sound. So this is a new type of composition because no one's ever done scoring to a narration before. So although there's all these different immersive aspects, these are long chapters, and we want it to feel spaced out and give the story breath and also give it life.
Yeah. Super. That was great. Really well articulated. Yeah. Just for context, it takes us like a month to do a chapter. Yeah. Like minimum. So these. These things are long and there's, you know, how many tracks in here? Like 700 tracks.
Yeah.
You know, so.
Yeah.
Yeah. When this is all done, this is going to be a little masterpiece. Yeah.
Super fun.
Awesome. I think immersive audio books are going to be the biggest thing ever. And the reason why is because you've already taken the time to write it and you've taken the time to score it with music and sound effects and everything. So I can see a world where in the not so distant future, all of a sudden, you give an entire audiobook, or immersive audiobook, to an AI model and it will create the visuals for the entire story. Because it's already written and it's already scored. So, yeah, why can't it animate the entire story from start, start to finish? So the whole. I think everything from here with AI is all going to be a game of ip. So I want to be in the business of creating valuable IP that can get reused, you know, a thousand different ways, bro. Jeez.
Getting tiles.
Get ready. Let's I feel like michael jackson. This is a dope setup. We got. We got the whole rig going here.
I'm a big fan.
Could you.
Could you sign this for my girlfriend? She also is a big fan.
Huge fan. Yeah. Okay. Here you go. So here's my Social Security number. Who should that be? Here's my home address. So you can knock any time of day. If you want to wake me up in the middle of the night. Are you serious? Yeah. So 9 5, 5.
95 5.
Yeah. So you can find it right there. And then anything you need, just, you know, knock 2:00am, 3:00am just give it a knock and I'll answer. Thank you so much. Hug. This is a real interaction. This was not theatrics at all. 100% organic, 100% real. I was unprepared. What are you thinking through? I was. Some of these are full scripts, and some of them are scripts with, like, just a loose outline. And I think this is just an outline. So I have the first hook scripted, and then I basically just have notes to myself. So I think what we'll want to do is take this section by section so I can just leave a section up, paused so I can stare at it. All right, so let's. Yeah, let's just record the first hook, and if you just press start, and then I'll just stop it after that and then two in the shot. If we can have, like, this little stack, that would be great. So then the last one are the shorts. Do we want to do shorts somewhere else? Yeah, let's do short somewhere else. Gonna get our coffee. It's. Because what happens. What happens is you. You make the coffee, and then. And then it brings you back to the original screen, and then the button turns gray, and it says, do you want to add this to your cart? It's like gray means inactive. Yeah, that makes. Why is the button gray so done? Yeah, yeah. See, it's not added. Now you have to add. See, now you customized it. Now you have to add that to the cart, and then it turns green. I don't understand. This is a multi billion dollar company. What's the current. What's the current bottleneck right now, Cole, that we're going through? We're trying to get eight coffees coordinated.
And we're just trying to get a coffee.
Unbelievable. Because you ordered twice already. I already ordered twice, and then I had the wrong address plugged in. And then I give up.
But thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, and hopefully you guys did enjoy everything. You know, I gave my best shot, you know. And you. Did you eat this yet?
I'm waiting until the end of the day because if I eat that, I'm gonna go to sleep right now.
That's.
I'm the same way when I eat breakfast. It's like I get tired all of a sudden. Just give me the coffee. That's all I need. Here you go.
Daniel.
Yo. What's it like working for Cole?
I tell him.
He's not here though.
It's fun. It's fun. It's good.
Not working for working with. Working with small distinction. Yes, yes, yes. But it's fun.
Ye.
How's the summer on steel from last time and the time before that? Way easier. Yeah. Hopefully a year from now these are just clockwork. I mean, we're already getting there. You know, I, I honestly think the only thing that's really going to change is we're going to do more and more advanced stuff like printing out big objects or doing, doing more things that are engaging rather than just ripping it straight to a camera. But otherwise, I mean, this is about as efficient as you can make it, you know.
Cool.
Give me a little tap on that microphone if you can. How's that? Yeah, just keep going on it. Cool. We'll get there. Here's why the holidays are actually the best time of year to get work done. So I'll tell you a little story. When it was 2018, I'd been running my ghostwriting agency for, I don't know, two years. And you know, I was 28 at the time, which is like you're old enough to be an adult but you still have that part of you that's like, oh, Christmas, Christmas break. I just want to hang out, like chill and do nothing, you know. And I was home at my parents house and it was the day of Christmas Eve and in the middle of the day I had an email intro come through from a really well known vc and they had just helped this health and wellness company raise. It was something stupid, like $300 million. And this was the last round they were going to raise before going public 18 months later. And the VC on the day of Christmas Eve was like, if you want this person as a client, you need to get on the phone with him today because he's going to be swamped starting Christmas tomorrow. They just raised all this money. They're. They're going to be crazy busy. So I remember I was upstairs in one of the bedrooms at my parents house and I'm sitting under the covers in, like, Christmas socks, you know, like, my whole family's downstairs, everyone's making cookies, like, enjoying the day. And I'm sitting upstairs on the phone with this guy, CEO of this company that just raised all this money. And you could just hear how stressed out he was. You could hear how, like, it didn't even occur to him that it was Christmas Eve, you know? And I remember being on that call and sitting in the bed wearing my Christmas socks, taking this call and being like, my days of being a kid are done. Like, I now have real responsibilities, and I'm trying to build a company. And obviously this guy's built a company, you know, a thousand times bigger than mine. But it was sort of the same lesson, which is, he's working Christmas Eve, and I'm working Christmas Eve, you know, And I don't think the lesson is, you know, don't spend time with your family and grind your face off. And I don't think that's the takeaway. But ever since then, I have thought of holidays more as a time to get ahead. You know, like when everyone else is relaxing and everyone else took the week off, or most people, as soon as December hits, like, right after Thanksgiving, they just check out for the rest of the year. And ever since 2018 and that experience, I've really pushed myself to do the complete opposite. You know, I work all the way up until Christmas Eve. I'll take Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, but other than that, you know, before Christmas and after Christmas, I'm right back to work. And I'm sure even the day of Christmas, I'll probably try and sneak away and get in an hour or two of writing, you know, so holidays are a really great time when everyone else is relaxing for you to get ahead.
