All posts by Cameron Alexander

On Campus Story: Paul Schloader

By Cameron Alexander

This project was a difficult one to come up with because I couldn’t think of anything on campus that was worth a story.  I then decided to do a story on a student because they all have really different stories.  Paul was an obvious choice because of his workload and stress to attitude ratio.  He works hard all the time but never gets so overwhelmed that he stops being super nice and friendly.  We recorded the interview and it went great because Paul has astounding conversation skills and then went through and found good places to add in B Roll and did so.  The editing process took a little while but was fun; now that I’ve gotten the video to export correctly I’m fairly pleased with how it came out.

Skateboarding Slideshow

This project was very enjoyable.  Part of the culture of skateboarding is making videos, so I’ve had a good amount of experience with editing videos.  I never made a video like this before however.  The interview aspect and showing more than just tricks was a new experience, but I didn’t really run into any problems and it went smoothly.

-Cameron Alexander

Skateboarding Interview

Video Storytelling February 11 2013

Cameron Alexander

Editing Audio

2/11/13

 

When editing the audio from my interview, I did it in steps to help organize it in my head.  The first thing I did was went through and edited out the parts I didn’t want in.  Following that, I grouped the now chopped up clips into segments that each held the edited version of the answer to a question, leaving a small space between questions so I could organize it better later on.  The next thing I did was put the questions in the order that I thought made the most sense to tell the story I wanted to tell.  I then added in the extra sounds to give the interview more depth and give the listener something more than just a person talking.  Finally, I tweaked the volumes a little to get a good mix and exported that jawn.

The reasoning and process behind each step is fairly self-explanatory, but I will go into depth anyways.  When editing out parts of the audio, I went through and removed every long pause, every stutter or stumble, and words such as “like” or “um”.  The next step was simply grouping the clips from each question with their partners, which took no creativity or thought really, it was simply click and drag.  When deciding what order to put the answers in, I knew which one I wanted to start with and just picked which ones seemed to flow well or relate to each other.  I then added various sounds to make it a little more interesting, and the sounds I chose relate directly to the topic of the interview and go along with what is being talked about in the answer.  In one instance I added audio from the story the interviewee was telling which had a really cool outcome.   To finish up I raised and lowered some of the highs and lows and then was finished.  If I were to do more with this project I would probably do a lot more mixing and maybe master it a little but as far as content and structure I’m very pleased with the end result.

“Misfire”

Misfire

Cameron Alexander

Podcast response

“Misfire”

0:00-0:21:  Old recording of a man enthusiastic about Dr. Pepper, a violin, and static

0:22-0:40:  Heartbeat, a deep voice saying wake up over and over then saying do something about it

0:41-1:25:  Soda can opened and poured, footsteps on something like small pebbles, thunder, dog panting, rain, violin

1:26-1:45:  Man talking up soda

1:46-2:03:  Heartbeat, Man saying wake up over and over then saying do something about it

2:04-2:44:  ominous noise and faint beat and violin, water droplets in water, eerie music

2:45-3:25:  someone slurping the end of a soda through a straw, soda opens and pours, footsteps and violin music, dog panting, ocean sounds

3:26-3:28:  Drinking from a straw, soda opens

3:29-4:15: violin playing

 

The piece was comprised of many different segments one after another.  Each had something to do with soda, refreshment, or thirst and included sounds that pertain to those ideas.  The different segments had very different ways of getting the idea across, but what was interesting was the refrain back to earlier segments that were then familiar and had more impact.  The sounds came together and did a good job of making one want a soda or a refreshing drink and was a very interesting use of this kind of media/art.