Month: January 2014

Audio Edit – The Interview

microphone-icon

PART 1 (this is simply preparation – Part 2 is what you will upload)
Choosing your interview subject (rules and requirements)

Why so many rules? To push you outside your comfort zone.

  • The subject may not be someone you know.
  • While the subject may be a student or employee at SPU, but must be a person new to you. In other words – this person might be a face you recognize, but you have never spoken more than a “hello” to them.
  • The student must not be your friend or your relative, including by marriage.

The story (requirements)

  • The story you produce from this interview must focus on some interesting aspect of this person’s life.
  • It’s a story you will need to discover by talking with your subject! (BEFORE the interview!)
  • What listeners should hear in your story is something new, something they did not know before.
  • So, this is not about hard news or facts. This assignment calls on you to find a story in a person, and get that person to tell you about it.
  • Some people don’t talk easily about their stories. Make sure you find an interesting person who has at least one good story to tell.

Part 2

NOTE: READ Kern, Chapter 13, BEFORE you edit your interview! Also REVIEW Kern, pp. 219–223. These pages will help you think in a professional manner when you are making editing decisions.

Conduct the in-depth interview with someone you do not know.

  • Edit the interview (using any audio editing software, but you now have some training on Audition) to a length of (minimum) 90 to (maximum) 120 seconds. Note: Getting the length right will affect your grade.
  • Save the file as a mono MP3 and then upload it to SoundCloud. Note: Listen to the full MP3 with headphones before uploading to make sure the sound quality is good. Double-check the length before uploading.
  • Write a short, accurate, interesting title on the SoundCloud page (there is a box at the top of the page for the title), but do not include the person’s name. Reason: We don’t want this to pop up when someone Googles that person.
  • Any reference to an assignment or class is NOT going to make your title interesting.

Other SoundCloud requirements

  • Write an interesting and brief description of the content of your interview — without giving away any key story points. In other words, don’t spoil the story by saying too much about it. Also, please use ONLY your subject’s FIRST NAME in the description (again, so this will not Google for their name).
  • Include in the description the full date of your interview (including the year), and where it took place (Kirkland, Washington, is acceptable).
  • Add several appropriate TAGS to the piece. No more than 10 tags, because more than 10 tags is like spam.
  • Set the use rights for your interview. In this case you probably want All Rights Reserved to protect both your work and your interview person.

Requirements for the edited file

  • Your edited interview must NOT include your own voice. No intro. No questions. Nothing.
  • It must be interesting and also coherent (not rambling, not disjointed).
  • It must make sense as a stand-alone audio piece.
  • IT MUST BE A STORY.
  • It must include a complete ID of the subject (in the subject’s own voice). This means the interview subject must say something like “I am” or “My name is,” followed by his or her first and last name, AND something that identifies him or her, which in this case is probably their job title or why you are interviewing them.
  • DO NOT START WITH the ID. Start with something that is interesting enough to make a total stranger feel like listening to more of your story. That very first bit of audio is vital to getting a listener to stay and hear the rest.
  • The length of the edited mono MP3 file is explained ABOVE. The length is part of these requirements.

How to turn in your assignment for a grade

  • Upload to your SoundCloud account. Write and add all the stuff specified above. Make sure you click the SAVE button at the bottom of the page.
  • After you publish your file on SoundCloud, open the publicly accessible page for that file alone, copy the complete URL of that page, and paste it in a COMMENT to this post, here, on this blog. If you paste a complete URL on a line by itself, it will automatically become a working link. That is what I want.

Deadline

January 26th @ midnight (Monday)  – we will play them, so check the link carefully. If it does not link properly you will lose 50%.

Link to Soundcloud list

Multimedia critiques

We will talk about what makes a good story. Your reading will help as well, so make sure you are keeping up.

We will be working on how to assess good multimedia presentations.

Click through to Comparing “Beastquakes.” Work in pairs and look at all of these – how are they presented? What is the same? What is different? TV, radio, and newspapers are represented.

THEN:
Copy and paste the text below onto YOUR site, answer the questions, and then copy the link into the comments for Comparing Beastquakes. 

Which of the 7 pieces do you think did the best job of telling this story? Think about all of the “modalities” present.  Then for that piece you thought did a good job – look at the following questions and answer:

Which company?: 

Content Modes:

  1. Text (captions only or paragraphs?)
  2. Still images (how many?):
  3. Recorded sound (that is not part of a video) (how many and how long?):
  4. Moving images (video) (how many and how long?):
  5. Graphics (how many and are they interactive?):
  6. Links (how many?):

Content Formats:

  • Video (just write in yes or no)
  • Audio+adjacent images
  • Audio slideshows
  • Interactives
  • Other (what would you call this?):

Which piece of this presentation is the most compelling? Why?

In general is this a way you like to take in information?

What is your overall assessment of this story and how it is presented? Think of other things that might hold your attention – that you learn from without thinking about learning.