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Off-Campus Story Rough Draft

Off Campus Story

I tried to give this video a documentary-type feel. I wanted to include some history of the local area as well as provide a sort of virtual tour of the campground. For this project, I really would have liked to have had more time at the campground. Unfortunately I was only able to be there for a weekend, and the weather was not ideal for shooting video or pictures. However, I did have a lot of fun making this project and I hope everyone enjoys learning a bit about my family’s campground. It is a beautiful place and it was nice to have an excuse to get away from the city for a weekend.

Kelly Interview Audio

Kelly Interview (rendon)

This piece took me about 7 hours in total to edit. I was not having trouble using the system, but more so deciding what to cut and what to use. She had three different stories, one about her explaining the positions, how she enjoyed her team, and how her dad was her coach. I decided to focus on how she enjoyed playing soccer with her team mates and developed the story to just be a personal reflection of the character’s past.

In the background I used footage of a recorded soccer game, fading it in an out through out the piece. I thought it would add to the moment for when she was talking about playing with her teammates. As soon as she begins to talk about her and her sister playing after hours always breaking things in the house, I fade out the soccer game and just added room tone. Something I would do different is add glass breaking for she explains how she broke things in the house, such as the lamp. Later I will add this to the finishing piece.

Even though there was a lot of info, I was only able to make a story of a about a 1.48 sec. Later I would like to go back to see what else I can possibly add into the story line without it being confusing. One more thing I did have trouble with was being able to blend different parts of the conversation together. I was having trouble having it sound like a natural conversation. Some parts you can notice some “hiccups”. It was difficult being able to catch that right point in time to cut it, even with the zoom tool. Once I was zoomed in, the line was going to fast for me to pin point the exact part to cut out.

edited audio

My interview with Symphonie was about ten minutes long so I found it difficult to edit this piece to only three minutes. My main focus of the interview was to discuss the club she is involved with here at Wagner. Since this was the center of the interview, I made the decision to edit most of the other topics out. I chose to start my piece with the “natural sound” of her stepping because this is what Symphonie does in her club. By beginning with this audio piece, I thought it would set the theme for the rest of the interview.
I chose to edit my questions out of the entire piece. I found it unnecessary to have my questions on the piece because Symphonie repeated my questions in her answer. When there was silence, I either cut it out or I edited the room tone into the interview so it would sound natural. There were a few times where I left the silence because it gives more realness to the piece (such as you can tell the interviewee is thinking,ect.) I also kept the most important moments when you could tell she was passionate about what the was discussing in the interview. I edited out pieces where you could hear movement around the microphone to make the piece more clear. Some recording decisions that affected my editing is that during the “natural sound” I had to cut the beginning out because I had recorded too soon. Also I had recorded the natural sound without headphones so I did not realize the microphone movement.
For a future interview, I will know that instead of asking too many questions, I should let the interviewee speak more so that it flows better as one audio piece. I also should not be too responsive to everything the interviewee says, that way it makes it easier so that I will not have to edit out my voice. I also know to wear headphones at all times because it picks up more audio.

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.

Audio Profile

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

Naya and Mike

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.