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.

Interview

Barbosa, Isabel_Interview with Steven Agro

This piece was challenging to edit for a few reasons.  There were a few moments in which an “uhm” or “like” was embedded deeply into the speech, which caused a bit of a struggle when trying to remove it.  This lead to a few jumps in pitch throughout the piece: something I am not entirely sure how to edit out at this point.  Another difficulty I ran into was based on the order in which I proposed the questions.  Initially, there were a few out of place responses, which I then had to rearrange and insert accordingly.  Though, at the start, I had been concern about the laboriousness  of this task, it did turn out to be easier than I anticipated.  What I also found to be relatively simple was removing my voice from the piece.  There was only one or two points where my voice overlapped with Steve’s, so I did not have a struggle to remove it and maintain the quality of the piece.

I struggled with inserting my room tone and natural noise, which, I believe hindered the piece.  It is something I would like to adjust before the final project.  At the moment, the piece feels rather empty during his speech, as there are no other layers playing at that times.

Next time I lead an interview, I will organize my questions in a more methodical manner, so as to simplify the editing process.  I will also make sure to consistently ask double-barreled questions, as I ran into one or two instances in which I had neglected to.  I will also record environmental and natural noise that alines more appropriately with the piece.

Isabel Marie Barbosa

01 VST Mikes Interview

I honestly found the whole project itself very difficult. I don’t have any experience with Audacity so when using it I was very lost.  The frustration I felt with in those few hours was nothing I’ve ever experienced before. The most difficult part was adding the natural sounds. The natural sounds didn’t fit anywhere in the audio and I had to figure out a way to make it work. I thought that the project would be fun however I found it more stressful than anything.

When recording the audio I didn’t realize how often he said “um”,  “and”, and  “yea so”.  It made the editing process harder but not too difficult. Cutting out the words was the easiest part. He also held the mic so you could hear all the sounds of the mic moving and that also made it a little harder, but overall I was happy about the way the interview went. The questions we decided to ask made it hard to add in the naturals but that’s something I would change the next time this kind of assignment is done.

Some things that I would do differently next time is put the mic on the table facing him, or just hold it strictly to him. I would choose more interesting questions to make the editing process a little smoother. I would ask him to repeat the question in his answers so that things don’t seem too random. I would become more familiar with the program I’m using, but all in all, things went pretty okay for our first time with this kind of assignment.

In this audio piece I am interviewing Laura and trying to connect a series of questions to make a story out of why she made her choice at Wagner. The process was somewhat long and drawn out due to not knowing what to exactly ask at first then settling to write some questions down before hand to help the question and answers run smoothly.

During the editing process i needed to pinpoint what pieces of audio would be sufficient to make the interview sound smooth throughout. i started with the empty spaces (silent areas) to break down the audio to a shorter length. Next it was onto the cutting of the voices asking the actual questions, that was not too difficult. It was rather tedious due to where to cut the file, or when the last word ends to make it somewhat sound clear.

After the silent spaces of the audio file are cut and the pieces where the questions are asked, we are left with nothing but the person being interviewed and their voice. The room-tone and environmental sound are places in the background of the audio as well.

Iacono_AudioProject

Reflection:

I think the biggest struggle when putting my audio piece together was trying to figure out the order of topics that I wanted to use.  At first I listened to the interview and divided it up into the different themes that were present within the conversation.  As I wrote down times, I quickly found that this was not going to be very useful.  This is because once I had organized and divided to audio on my paper, I then had to go back and delete the footage of my voice.  This completely changed the times of the occurrences, which meant that I needed to go back and find everything again.  Organization was definitely a major challenge in this project.

I also found it difficult to make the big decisions on what to include and what not to include.  In a way, it felt strange to just cut out parts of the interview that seemed important but were no longer useful in the final piece.  However, as I deleted more and more extra material, it became easier to organize it and space it out.  Also, transitioning from one theme to the next was tricky.  I tried to include gaps in the interview where the theme would change and fill them with environmental sound that would lead to the next part.

While listening to the interview I realized that as the interviewer I did not do such a good job.  There were times in the interview where I asked a question and I could not include it because the listener would not have been able to follow what my subject was talking about.  By having simple “yes” or “no” responses, interesting information that could have been included was instead deleted.  Next time, I will try to include more double-barrelled questions.  I could also ask the person I am interviewing to repeat my question in their answer so that I can include everything that I believe to be necessary.

Video Storytelling final

The process of creating my audio file was very long. The most difficult part was deciding which parts of all my audio I wanted to use. It is very hard to limit over 20 mins of audio into a short 2-3 minute clip. First I started with editing out my voice in the conversation audio. Then I analyzed the entire audio and took out peices I wanted to use for my audio profile. I chose the parts of the conversation audio that I thought would tell the story of my classmate and would be worth sharing with an audience. I started with a timeline and broke up the profile into 3 main parts. The first part lets the audience know what the peice was going to be about and a little about my classmate. The second part was the bulk of the information my classmate had to offer and the main focus of the profile. The last part tied everything together and ends with a cliff hanger leaving the audience hopefully wanting more. Breaking the profile into parts made it a lot easier to come up with the final peice.

In the previous assignment  4 sounds were recorded: Natural, Environmental, Room Tone and Conversation. The ways in which I recorded these sounds had a large impact on how this profile was created. I chose very dull places to record these sounds and it made it difficult to encorporate thesm into the profile becuase I felt as thought they didnt belong anywhere. Also I felt as though they had no link to the story I was trying to tell. For example, the natural and environmental sounds I recordered were nothing but voices and it became hard to find a place to put noise in  between my converstaion sound in which the background should be silent. The most helpful sound was room tone because I was able to use that audio too fill in silent gaps and pauses during the interview.

For the next assignment there are a lot of things I will do differently. First off, I will choose audio that relates to the story I am trying to tell. Not only will I do that but I would plan better. This includes already knowing what I want my peice to be about, how I will go about getting It done and what can I do to make it better.  Secondly, I will try to connect more to the audience. I may think that my peice is very amusing but to others it may be nothing special. I plan to do all that I can to get a good reaction from the audience and hopefully grow by learning from my mistakes.

http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library/136-scared

Narration-00

Baby sounds- 10

Music (lullaby)-15

Convo between dad and baby- 26

Narrations 35

Baby noise40

Toddler speaking48

Narration

The same child speaking at different moments (age) “growing up” 100

Music stops at 150

Outside dark (crickets) 156

Young girl speaking 203

Telephone message 212

Music enters back in 227

Convo between girl and dad (music still there) 237

Music ends it

Up above are the different sounds I was able to catch through out the 3 min blog post. When at first listening to the podcast you think this is about a lover talking about the body of another. As baby sounds come in at 10 seconds with a nursery tune “itsey bitsey spider” following 5 seconds later, you realize that this is about a father and child. This sets the tone differently from what was heard before, grasping the listener to continue to be intrigued.

Throughout the audio clip you realize that the sounds of the baby begin to mature into a young teen. You then realize getting closer to the end of the clip that the father had been recording his daughter since she was a baby. At least this is what the producer would like the listener to think. However, after listening closely and noticing how each baby noise recorded is similar in quality of sound to the recording of the teenager, I’m thinking all of those recordings are from different children, not just one. I like the effect he gives it, the room tone probably helped with this set up. It really made me think that he had been recording him and his child for the past 13 years.