This week I was faced with starting a new project, creating an Audio Story related to my topic using Audition. My first time using Audition was for the tutorials requested for the class, which I found to be a lot easier than our last medium used, Illustrator.
I started my draft by writing down ideas of what I wanted the audio story to be like. I read through our class materials and looked at the different formats I could potentially apply to my audio. I chose to have an interview with a rescue owner, so I could share their story with my audience as a way to promote the importance of rescuing. My audio story is going to be a podcast for Pawsitive Rescue, my animal shelter, which I will share on our website so potential clients and past ones can hear stories of others that have rescued. (Pawsitive Rescue is a dream of mine, not an actual rescue shelter at the moment)
I decided to interview my supervisor from work, Allison, who rescued her dog Lexi (pictured on my audio) about 7 years ago. I wrote down a list of questions and gave them to her to review, this way she had an idea of what to expect before we sat down to record the interview. These are some of the questions:
- Tell me a little bit about yourself.
- What made you decide to get a dog?
- When thinking of getting a pet, did you always consider rescuing or was buying from a store/puppy mill an option for you? Why or why not?
- What drew you to pick Lexi?
- Looking back at your decision to rescue, are you glad you did? Would you do anything differently?
- What is the best thing about Lexi? Give a funny story or memory if you’d like.
In this audio story, I basically want to share a story of a young woman who chose to rescue and the love it brought to her for years now. This is not going to be an audio of me asking each question and her answering them, but one of her telling her story.
To record her I used an USB attachable microphone that I plugged into my laptop. We sat in a small meeting room at work that I reserved and started the conversation. I also made sure to test the microphone and audio throughout the interview to make sure everything was working correctly. I was left with about 8 minutes of material to use, which I was happy about but also a bit nervous to edit. I later also recorded myself giving an intro to the audio story as well as different sounds that I could incorporate, like dog barks and squeaky toy sounds.
Once I had my audio, I began the editing process on Audition. This took some time since I had different audios to put together and edit. I made sure to cut out any “um’s” and long pauses by using the razor tool, which breaks the audio up, and to remove any unnecessary sounds or parts of the audio that I did not want to use. In some parts of the video it was a bit difficult to cut the audio to remove an “um” or “like” since they were used so close to the next word, so I struggled a bit with some transitions for this draft (but hopefully it still sounds good!).
After a lot of editing and making sure the story had a good flow, I am happy to present to you my first draft!! Listen below:
7 Comments
Bre Kelsey
Sinais, I love the topic of your audio story and I think it was a good choice to have your story focused on a rescue owner instead of heavily narrated, since rescuing is your focal point. Getting to know Allison a bit more through hearing her perspective humanizes her and lends an emotional quality to the story, since you can hear the sincerity in her voice, and I think you did a great job of editing it. One suggestion I have is to try re-recording your intro in the same room you interviewed Allison in or, because the quality of your intro is better, use Audition to try and get rid of the background hum in her interview (see this week’s reading), and/or adjust the volume between your intro and her interview clip. Right now, when you transition to her voice you can hear the background hum start, and her voice is quieter than yours.
I smiled reading your post because I had the EXACT same problems you had, both with having a really long interview to start with, and having trouble editing out “ums” and “likes” because my interviewee said them really close to the next word. Most of your transitions in her interview clip are actually pretty seamless, but there are a few where you could experiment with adding silence recorded in the interview room into the middle of the awkward spot and fade in/out perhaps. Also, your intro and ending narrations sound more natural, but the couple times you ask her a question in the middle sound a bit rehearsed. Perhaps try re-recording just those middle transitions and envision that you’re speaking to Allison again, or even have someone else in the room and speak to them. Overall, this is awesome!!
sinaisalvarado
Yes, I will have to consider re-recording my parts in the same room as I had the interview with her. Otherwise, I do plan on using our reading as a guide to remove some of the background hum (thanks for that suggestion!). Thank you for your feedback!
femaleflyingsolo
Hello Sinais,
I’ve enjoyed following your journey with animal rescue. We have been in a few groups together, and it is fun to see the progress of your dreams. I think the strength of your piece is in the interview with an actual animal rescuer and her journey in getting to know her animal. The way she adapted to the animal and thought of the animal’s comfort. I too had trouble editing between segments to make it sound smooth. I think you accomplished that.
As far as insight to your audio draft. I think perhaps adding some emotion to the message would impact the audience to what you are trying to imply. Through music or emotion to your voice, either might add an element of sadness, happiness, or excitement at the adoption. Perhaps try to choose music or a happy dog barking at the beginning or end of your audio. See how that affects the emotion of the piece.
Thank you for sharing the story. I love animals finding homes and believe in what you are doing!
Emily
sinaisalvarado
Thank you so much! Adding music was in the back of my mind and I think I will do it, like you said it could add more emotion/impact.
sinaisalvarado
After receiving some feedback from my classmates, I am ready to reevaluate my draft to make some changes that will hopefully enhance the final result. I received comments from Bre and Emily. I am very appreciative of their feedback, as it really helped me to see some ways that I can improve my audio story. Bre suggested I use one of our class readings to help me remove some of the humming noise in the background of some of my audio. I plan on doing this to enhance the quality of the overall audio. Emily suggested I use music on my audio to add more emotion to my audio and the overall story. It was also suggested that I re-record the middle two questions as they sounded too rehearsed and could use more emotion. Also, suggested was to work on smoother transitions, so there’s no cuts between the audio. I hope to enhance my audio with some music and by removing some of the background humming noise on my recordings, while also making everything sound smooth. Overall, I received some great feedback that I will put into my work to hopefully create an improved final audio story.
cyclesafe409136694
Critique for Sinais Alvarado
Your post topic is a Great choice. I also have a huge passion for this subject; pet adoption. I really enjoyed and appreciate your blog post. Your blog theme seems very general to me, so I believe your post topic works with your blog theme as per assignment rubric. You did not have any issues with copyright infringement concerning background music or sound effects since your bog was original recorded material. I do have one suggestion that I felt would fit well with your audio blog. Perhaps record sounds or find a Freesound music bed featuring shelter animal sounds to bring a shelter pet ambience and intrigue to your blog. In my opinion, it needs some kind of happy dog ambient sound track added to bring more fullness to your blog. Your audio blog design has a lot of originality. It demonstrates unique qualities that present an engaging concept. I was really impressed by how you featured the picture of the rescue dog, Lexi, in your audio blog, this is a nice technical proficiency aspect of the draft. I like the honesty and personable aspect of your story. I can actually hear your voice telling about your draft process in your written blog. Allison seemed very relaxed and natural in your interview and she made some pertinent comments about adoption and her feeling that dogs understand that they have been adopted and appreciate their owners more for this fact. My second suggestion would be to possibly raise the volume of your interview track. It seemed a little bit thin and quieter than your voice introduction. Try to get them to be more compatible in tone and volume. Good Job! Thank you for sharing this post.
Cheers, Barbara
sinaisalvarado
Thanks Barbara, you make some really great points regarding how I can improve my audio story, I really appreciate it and will take it into account.