Dan Benamor ‘05 Crosses New Frontiers with “Borderline”

Last month, we got the chance to sit down with Dan Benamor ‘05, who has been breaking ground in the true crime genre. Dan works for Voyage Media, a production company that brings together a community of storytellers who bring stories to life in film, television and podcasts. 

Dan has been working on the podcast series Borderline, which tells the true story of Jayson Woodward, who managed to escape the assailant that kidnapped her from in front of her home. The story contains interviews from Jayson and others that chronicles the harrowing, and uplifting story of Jayson’s courage, and the capture of her assailant. Listen to the trailer.

Christine Pappas, Director of Alumni Relations & Engagement, and Kwesi Billups, Development Assistant, joined Dan to talk about this and more…

You caught me at an interesting time. We started yesterday morning at #179 among the top Apple True Crime podcasts. By this morning, we were #28 out of all True Crime Apple Podcasts, which is by far the most-trafficked category of podcasts, and the most difficult to claw your way up in. That was an incredible validation and a really big deal for us.

CP: That’s awesome! I’ve listened to podcasts, but I’ve got a three-year-old now, so my podcast listening has gone down in the last couple years. Here’s a technical question:` you work for Voyage Media and you all produce a number of podcasts to sell to iTunes and Spotify - is that how it works?

We don’t sell them because podcasts are “free to distribute.” Anybody can create a podcast and release it on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, etc. For the most part, if you have a little bit more infrastructure, you have a better chance of getting people to listen to it. In our case, we got Paget Brewster from Criminal Minds to narrate the show. She has a strong, enthusiastic fanbase and we got feedback from her fans that really liked the show. 

We were also able to put some marketing dollars behind it and we have a community of storytellers that have a relationship with Voyage Media and all of that helps to make it a bigger thing. I mean, I did my own podcast by myself before this and it’s hard! It’s definitely a crowded marketplace.

CP: Well, congratulations for climbing the charts that fast! I love True Crime - watching Investigation Discovery and OWN is something that my husband and I do make time for. It’s all murder and death at my house past 8 o’clock. So, do you get paid-by-the-listen? How does that work?

There’s different ways that it works. In general, the way it works with podcasts, you can have programmatic ads where you are a receptacle for ads that are sent out to a gazillion different podcasts and you get a rate per/1000 downloads. Then, if you become really popular, people will buy ads on your specific show. Let’s say, for example, a million people listen to Borderline. Companies that specialize in ads for this type of show might ask for what’s called a “host read” where the host of the show says, “Hey! If you’re a fan of this show, you should listen to that other show.” And you can get ad revenue that way.

I think, for a lot of entertainment companies in the podcast industry, arguably the bigger thing they’re focused on is eventual TV or film adaptation. Selling the rights for film and television is a huge part of the equation.

KB: I looked into your previous work and found that you have experience in TV and film production. Do you see your work in the podcast arena as an extension of your time in TV and film production, or as a transition into a different medium?

They’re all co-mingled with each other. I always joke and say that I function as a poor man’s showrunner. It’s not to the level of running multiple TV shows, but it’s like a micro version of that. I oversee all these different podcasts and get to use a lot of the same muscles that I would use in television or film. I come from an independent film background, and it’s really a lot of the same skills and business practices - just in a different space. We do a bunch of scripted podcasts, so it’s really similar to what I did in TV and film - just, now, formatted for audio.

KB: I’m also wondering if the True Crime genre is your “thing.” Is that storytelling what you knew you wanted to be a part of?

I was really obsessed with Dr. Death and Dirty John. I thought those were both extraordinary. Dirty John has a narrative arc - there’s a set-up and pay-off that is the same thing you would do with a script. Dr. Death I just could not stop listening to. Anyone who ran into me during the two weeks that I was listening to that would have to hear me tell them the whole story like, “Can you believe this happened?!”

The chance to get to do a longform true crime was really exciting to me. Actually, we’re doing another one which is basically like Dirty John in Australia with luxury yachts. I’m really excited about that one and I’m just going into the scripting/post phase.

CP: Can you tell us a mini-story of your career?

I graduated from Friends, and when I went to the University of Maryland they didn’t have any sort of film degree, so I created one and got my degree in that. Then, I went to film school in Vancouver. After that, I moved to Los Angeles, got a film internship, and eventually became Head of Development at that company. I left that company because I just wanted to write. I was out in the wilderness as a writer for a number of years. I had a relationship with Voyage Media, first, as a writer. I really have a producer’s mind, for better or worse, and had done my own podcast during the pandemic, so eventually they were like, “Hey, we want to get into podcasts and it seems you know something about it.”

Once I had learned how to do podcasts, and had already learned how to write, direct and produce, I had all the skill sets for scripted podcasts. 

KB: I was interested to see production development on your resume because I think of development from the nonprofit lens. What does production development entail?

It’s, basically, taking charge of things from soup to nuts. Like “hey, why don’t we do this?” and then a year later we’ve released a show.

CP: So with Borderline, someone stumbles across Jayson’s story and says, “Oh, people would really want to hear this story.” So then you’re putting together who you want to narrate, who is script writing and all of the other people?

Borderline isn’t scripted, but the narration is scripted. It’s primarily interviews with Jayson and a variety of people who were personally connected to the story. The overwhelming majority of it is unscripted, and then there’s post narration which I wrote.

KB: Is that your voice in the trailer?

Yeah! We had already recorded Paget’s voice for the series, and for the trailer we needed more flexibility, so it made sense to have me do it.

CP: I listened to the teaser. “She stepped outside her home and was kidnapped.” Did you get to listen to the interviews?

I spent hours and hours doing the interviews!

CP: Tell us about some of the other podcasts.

Otzi The Iceman Must Die is a historical fiction podcast - basically, our version of “what if?’ based on historical fact. There was this guy whose body was found perfectly preserved in the Italian Alps and it had been there for thousands of years. They did an autopsy on his body and figured out what he ate for his last meal and all kinds of things - it was an unbelievable archaeological find. They also found that he was murdered. 

Obviously they don’t know who killed him or how, but they have facts about the last days of his life, based on science, to a ridiculous level of detail. They know the elevation he was at, down to the items of his last meal. We decided to tell his story almost how they did Amadeus from Salieri’s perspective - we told it from the perspective of the guy who killed him. What was unique about Otzi is that he was found with a copper axe, and this discovery re-framed the time period that historians believed humans used copper for tools. Finding Otzi totally changed that. 

Whoever killed him, left his axe there, which means that he was killed for an emotional reason, not for a robbery or something like that. We came up with a narrative about who killed him and why, and we got Ethan Suplee - a great actor who is in Remember the Titans, Wolf of Wall Street, a great Hulu series called Chance - and he plays Rube, who kills Otzi.

KB: What’s your intent when you produce stories like this? It’s funny hearing Christine say she listens to true crime in bed with her husband.

That’s my intent, I wanna get there! I always tell the people we work with on shows, chances are the podcasts will be listened to in 12-minute increments while doing the dishes or taking a drive to the grocery store. You have to design it with that in mind and hope that it will be compelling enough that people are like “lemme run an errand so I have an excuse to listen to this podcast.” I think if you can get to a place where it’s so compelling that you’re stopping your day to listen to it, that’s an amazing achievement.

Audio is different from TV, in that with TV we’re comfortable sitting down just to watch a show, but it’s not common that people stop to listen to a podcast - it’s almost always while you’re doing something else. I just want to make stuff that replicates the experiences I’ve had with podcasts - where you’re so sucked into it that you’re like “I have to finish listening to this.”

CP: What’s next, do you have anything cooking?

We have a series called Fever Dreams: A Pulp Collection (the first episode aired March 14th) starring Iain Glen who was Sir Jorah on Game of Thrones. Each episode has a different pulp story which is fully scripted and fictional - that’s our Twilight Zone-y anthology. We have a true crime anthology called Allegedly, where every episode is a different true crime story. The first episode stars Micahel Emerson who is probably best known for starring the creepy guy on Lost. He is also on the CBS show Evil and he was on Persons of Interest - he’s an incredible actor. 

We also have Jonathan Frakes from Star Trek in that and we’ll be getting a few more main actors as we finish production. We recorded with Malik Yoba from Cool Runnings and New York Undercover and we recorded with Catherine Bell from JAG and The Good Witch for a scripted miniseries called Red Meat Village, which is like film noir. Then, we have another longform true crime story like Borderline about a well-to-do Australian woman who met this guy in Australia, fell in love with and married him. Then he conned her out of a million dollars and tried to murder her on their yacht. She survived, so we’re telling her story and it’s going to be similar to Dirty John.

We’re excited to see Dan’s work evolve as his compelling storytelling continues to reach new audiences. You can check out the Borderline series and Voyage’s full slate of exciting titles at voyagemedia.fm!