Reflection Post

My favorite projects for this semester were the SoundSlide projects. Even though they were difficult at times, especially when trying to line the audio up with the photos, I thought it was an interesting concept. I also learned that I enjoy editing audio because there are a lot of things that can be done with audio that I never realized before.

 

One of the skills that I learned about was how to edit audio. Once we started learning about audio I was fairly nervous because I never worked with it before, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. It was definitely tedious, but it wasn’t as hard as I would have thought.

 

I also learned a lot about html coding that I had never learned before. This too is a tedious process and I never knew that a web page was created through coding. We only did a few web page projects and I struggled with both of them, so I hope I will learn more and become better at html coding in my Advanced New Media class.

 

Though I don’t think that I would like to do web pages for a living, I think it is a skill that can be useful in many career fields. At this point, I am not sure exactly what field I will go into but I am applying for internships at ESPN and NBC and both networks put a lot of emphasis into their web pages so I feel like these skills could be beneficial to my future career choices.

 

I do wish that we could have learned about web page design since I have never had any experience in that area. I think learning how to design a web page could be interesting and could also be a valuable skill.

Individual Soundslide Project

The purpose of the Soundslide project was to become familiar with the Soundslide software as well as using Sounslides as a professional tool. This was also a follow up of the Soundslide projects that we did as a group.

This project was a little more difficult to do without a partner because all of the responsibility falls on you and it was stressful to get all of the audio, photography, and Soundslide done by myself. However, I think I preferred working alone because I had the freedom to do whatever topic interested me and I was only responsible for my grade.

There was one thing that I really liked when I was recording the audio. I interviewed Heidi Deisch in the Fine Arts Building and there was a saxophonist practicing next to us and the saxophone can be heard throughout her interview, but the music was not overwhelming or obnoxious and it did not drown out her interview and I thought it added nice ambient noise to the audio.

My biggest difficulty with this project was timing the photographs just right so that they would match up with the audio which I did not think was going to be that difficult but it took a lot of messing around with and good timing to get them to match up correctly. I also had a difficult time getting photographs for Dawn Anne Davison’s interview. I think I was just mostly more intimidated to go to the Health Sciences Building to get photographs than I was to go the Fine Arts Building.

If I could change anything, I would probably just man up and go to the Health Sciences Building and get better pictures for this project. I would also take more photographs for the entire project. I thought I had learned my lesson to take more photos than I needed to earlier on in the semester, but I think I have learned this lesson even more so now. I would also start seeking out people to interview earlier. I had originally planned to interview two music majors but my time ran short and I had to interview someone from a different major and I had to take it in a different direction.

SoundSlide Critique

http://klandreville.com/knous_peck/

Andie Knous and Jessica Peck’s SoundSlide project was done really well. I like how the slideshow begins with ambient noise and how there is ambient noise between the interviews because it made the transitions smoother and less choppy. I also liked how they interviewed a few different men from SAE to get their varying outlooks on the haunted house and how they also interviewed people who attended the haunted house to get third party perspective.

The photos were also done really well. They were all very clear and the color in many of them really made the photos pop. It was also interesting to see what went on behind the scenes of the haunted house.

The only suggestion I have would be to listen to the ambient noise after it’s recorded or to have someone listen to it who doesn’t know what the ambient noise is supposed to be to see if they can tell what it is because there were times when I wasn’t sure what the noise was.

http://klandreville.com/alfred_garrison/

Sarah Alfred and Otis Garrison had a very interesting story. They took the life of an average college student and made it about how involved he is on campus, but what was even more interesting was that they didn’t focus on what he wants to do with his life in the future, which I think a lot of college students tend to focus on. Instead, they made it about how “in the moment” he lives and how he is trying to influence those around him right now and how much his community seems to mean to him.

I really liked a lot of the photos because they gave snapshots into the interviewee’s everyday life, but some of them were a little blurry.

My only suggestion would be to not focus on one source so much. The story was about Eric Ensor, so it was good to hear him tell his story, but more information about him from another source would have been good to hear too.

http://klandreville.com/greubel_stevens/

Zach Greubel and Peter Stevens did really well on the storytelling aspect of their SoundSlide project. I liked how they started out by having the head brewer give the background and then moved to a longtime visitor of the Library. I also thought the idea of the beer brewing story itself was very intriguing and gave me insight into something I know nothing about.

I also thought the photographs did a great job of following the narration and they were all very clear and really fit with the story.

A suggestion I have would be to take the interviewees to a quieter place next time because the second interview was difficult to hear. The interview also ended abruptly so some ambient noise at the end of it I think would make it end not so abruptly.

SoundSlide Project

The story for our SoundSlide project was about domestic violence. The purpose of this assignment was to create a SoundSlide, which is a combination of audio and photos. This assignment was a group effort and it is a precursor to our individual projects of the same nature.

The idea for this project came about after we attended Lundy Bancroft’s lecture, which was about domestic violence. After the lecture, we decided to interview Bancroft for our project.

For our second source, we interviewed Jules Arthur, who is the coordinator for the STOP Violence Program. Both interviews were interesting and taught me a lot about the topic we were researching and helped us greatly with our project.

SoundSlide was also interesting to use. I have never used a program like this so it was interesting to use and it was good to get experience using a program like this.

http://klandreville.com/jenkins_wilson/

The most challenging thing for me was editing the audio because I usually forget to export the audio as an mp3 file before I save it so it won’t save properly. I would also say that I had a problem getting usable audio for one of the interviews because I did not realize how loud the background was when I was conducting the interview.

If I could change anything for this project I would have asked one of my interviewees if we could go somewhere quieter for the interview so that the audio would be better and cleaner. For my individual project I will most likely check the audio before leaving the interview to make sure that it sounds clear. I will also be sure to take too many photos instead of taking only the bare minimum because I think we struggled with having enough photos for the SoundSlide project. I think if I take more photos than I need for my individual project then I will be able to have my pick of the best photos instead of having to use whatever I have.

Three Story Ideas

The first idea I have for my soundslide project is to investigate the dangers on campus related to ice in the winter time. In the past there have been a few people who have suffered injuries due to a lack of clearing the ice on campus. I would be interested in finding out more about how many people have suffered injuries, how serious those injuries were, and what other preventitive measures can be taken to prevent these injuries.

This would be newsworthy because it is of concern to people on campus as well as to people in the community who use the university for various things.

The sources I would look in to interviewing would be University of Wyoming officials as well as the staff members who clear the ice during the winter. I would also interview a few students who have suffered injuries due to the ice or students who are concerned about the ice.

Another story I would be interested in doing would focus on music majors and how their majors differ from traditional majors, such as business. My main interest would be to focus on how they progress from freshman to senior year and where they see their lives going after graduation.

I feel like people would be interested in this story because I often hear people talk about how artistic majors are pointless and I think this would shine a new light upon that.

I have a friend in the music department so I would start by asking her if she knows any students who would be interested in participating. I would try to have a music performance major and a music education major to show the differences. I would also look into interviewing a faculty member in the music department.

I am also interested in interviewing students who are married and have families or just non-traditional students and seeing how different their lives are from traditional college students. This story would be interesting because typically when people think of college students, they think of people in a specific age group and often don’t think of non-traditional students and I think people would be interested in seeing their differences or struggles.

I would start by contacting the Non-Traditional Student Council to see if they have any students who would be interested in participating. If possible, I would also interview one of their professors to get their point of view as well as a member of their family to see if there are any struggles on their end.

Audio Profile Critique

Cody Hess’s interview with Patrick Pajak.
http://codyhess27.wordpress.com/

I think Cody Hess did a good job on his interview with Patrick Pajak. It’s interesting to see the story go from golfing to the Tiger Woods scandal. Usually in stories about sports people don’t like to talk about the negative side of athletes and sports, but with this interview it discusses the personal life of the athlete while mainly discussing his golfing career and how it has been effected by the scandal. I also like how he goes from talking about how Tiger Woods used to be the prominent athlete when it came to golf and how he feels Rory McIlroy is beginning to take his place.

I think it would have been nice to have Patrick talk a little more about why golf is so important to him. I also think some ambient noises could have been used, such as a news clip from the Tiger Woods scandal or a crowd cheering when referring to his career. I also think the interview was cut abruptly at the end, but overall Cody did well with this audio profile.

Jaron Jenkins’ interview with Justin Trygg.

Audio Interview

I like the direction the interview takes; it goes from Justin talking about his experience as a tattoo artist and then he discusses certain aspects of tattooing outside of the United States. I also like how the story develops. There was a very nice transition from Justin talking about his own experiences to visiting the tattoo shop in Japan and how it influenced him.

I also think some ambient noises could be used in this profile. A good example would be noises from a tattoo shop, such as the buzzing of the needle when someone is getting a tattoo. But overall, Jaron’s audio profile was done well.

Even though my biggest suggestion for the other two audio profiles was that there were no ambient noises, I too am guilty of not having any ambient noises. I wish I would have played around with getting certain noises for the background, even though I’m not quite sure what I would have used I think it would have been a good experience to at least try to get some ambient sounds.

Edited Audio Profile

This is the edited version of my interview with Jasper Fitzgerald. This assignment was surprisingly less complicated than I thought it was going to be. The only thing that is difficult about editing audio is cutting exactly where you want to cut and having each clip flow smoothly into the next one.

I learned that it is more time consuming than it seems because I only had a five minute clip that I was trying to get down to two minutes and it took a little longer than I thought it would. I also learned that’s it diffcult to choose what to edit out because two minutes only allows for so much content and you have to choose parts of the audio that are the most important to the story and that flow the best.

For this assignment I enjoyed doing the interviewing and the editing because I felt like both are important in the field of journalism. The only thing I did not like was trying to save it because I am not used to saving audio and it was slightly confusing; however, now I know what to do next time when saving audio clips.

What was most surprising about this assignment was cutting exactly where you want to. There were several times when I had to continuously re-trace the clip to get it exactly where I wanted to without cutting parts of the next clip while still cutting out everything that I wanted to. It was also surprising to find that even when I did cut exactly where I wanted to, the transitions were still sometimes not quite as smooth as I would have liked them.

The only thing that I wish would have gone smoother where the transitions from one clip to another. Occassionally the transitions would happen too soon and the interview sounds slightly choppy at times.

Raw Audio Profile

This is an interview with one of my fellow classmates, Jasper Fitzgerald, about her interest in skiing. This assignment was fairly awkward because it was difficult to think about what to say and what to ask. It was also difficult because if you wanted to phrase something one way but ended up saying it another way then you weren’t able to go back and restate it as easily as you would if you weren’t being recorded. However, it was nice to be the interviewer and the interviewee so I could see what it was like to be on both ends of the spectrum.

One thing I learned is that is important to have a few questions that you might want to ask in mind when you go into an interview. Even if you don’t ask those questions in the way you wanted to or if you don’t ask them at all it is still important because then those questions can sometimes spark other ideas.

It was enjoyable to learn some new things about a classmate that I would not have learned otherwise. It was also nice to have your partner to help you out with the interview because I think we both made each other aware of things that could go wrong with the interview (such as background noise) and we both tried our best to work around it.

The only thing that I think could have gone smoother was avoiding more background noise, but it is incredibly difficult to do, especially on a college campus.

Three Audio Stories

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#/lynn_true

This story is about Lynn True, a documentary filmmaker who religiously watches New York Giants games as a way to escape the pressure and stresses of her career. She prefers to watch the games alone and not be bothered by people, which I found interesting because usually people like to watch games with their friends or in large groups of people. I liked how it showed how different she is from the typical sports fan and the journalist did a good job of emphasizing that with her quotes, especially when she said she doesn’t like going to parties to watch the games because she likes to see how the games develop. The journalist also did a good job of representing how she preferred to watch the games alone by focusing in on her watching the game by herself in a bar full of people. I do think it would have been nice to have ambient noise in the background. Ambient noise from the bar or from a game would have added more to the story.

http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=140875965&m=140891228&t=audio

This story was about how senior citizens are not as satisfied with retirement as they thought they would be because they generally do not have enough money to retire or because it is not as enjoyable as everyone had led them to believe. I mostly felt depressed when I heard this story because it talked about how elderly people were struggling in retirement, but the end of the story was better when a woman talked about how she was making retirement more enjoyable for herself. I thought the journalist did a good job of getting different perspectives of people in retirement and experts who have researched this topic. The only thing I think that could have been added was research on how retirement contentment has changed in the past few decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#/joy_seligsohn

This story is about Joy Seligshon, an older woman who is making her way as an actress for the second time around, who refers to herself as a “mature actress.” This story was inspiring because she talks about how when she does not get a role she gets up and moves on with her life, even though not getting the role does hurt. I think the journalist did a good job of capturing her lifestyle and personality through photos, particularly the ones of her holding her own headshot and her chatting with people on the subway. Again, my only suggestion would be ambient noise.

Audio Recording

The “Grocery Store” sound clip was recorded at Wal-mart near the check stands. I think this clip could be used in a story about inflation since grocery stores often bear the brunt of increasing prices.

The “Singing Grace” clip is from dinner at my sorority house. We have a song that we sing before every dinner and I thought it would be interesting to record. This clip could be used in a song about local choirs, particularly church choirs since it is our grace.

I recorded the “Dining Room” clip when I was having dinner at my house. There were a lot of people over so there was quite a bit of commotion and you can also hear noises from the kitchen which made it sound like a restaurant. This clip could be used in a story about a local restaurant or even a food festival in which local restaurants are participating.

The “Traffic” clip was recorded on the corner of 15th Street while I was walking to class. It’s mostly cars but the sound of a bus can also be heard. It could be used in a story about public transportation, particularly if it was a story about the public transportation in Wyoming and the need for more.

“Classroom” was recorded in one of my classes and I think it can be used in a story about any type of classroom related story, but especially about the increasing cost of tuition and how it might be effecting enrollment.

“Footsteps” was recorded by the stairwell in my sorority house. It can be used in a story about how the shoes we wear effect our feet and back problems.