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.