UPDATED:
Ideas & Inspiration
Audio tends to feel more personal, and with an interview I am able to capture a relatability factor about ArtX. By interviewing a current member I am able to provide credibility to my source and also expand on what the club has to offer.
Design Process
I took what Ira Glass said about mimicking what others have already done, and kept my life simpler that way. What has already been done? What have we learned in the courses? I applied those two concepts into my first draft but using simple techniques and not getting in over my head. Most friendly and casual interviews and videos have a soft soundtrack in the background to help build a mood and establish a pace. I started out with my question, “why should people join ArtX?” and then found someone who could respond with reasons why they should. It took a few tries to get the words and pacing right for intros and outros, but once those were set it made the flow of the interview more natural and less sudden. Then I ordered my audio files with intro and outro on their own layer, the interview on another and the BG music on the bottom. I turned the music down low enough to hear, but not so quite it is forgotten.
Update
It was suggested to me that I make the intro and outro music longer before adding my voice intro into the interview, so I did that. Then to make the conversation more casual and friendly I added in my old audio of voice reactions to what Tiffany had to say about ArtX. Another suggestion was that I remove the pauses and gaps between questions, but I wasn’t too sure what they meant by that since there still needs to be a brief pause for natural conversation flow to happen. Overall, I think I altered the interview to sound more natural without losing the professional integrity. Thank you all for your suggestions!
Technical Detail
I recorded the interview, intro and outro on my phone. Unfortunately the quietest place I could find for the interview portion, still had a low hum in the background from miscellaneous technology running that I couldn’t shut off, which meant I had to watch a video on how to reduce the sound in production. This caused a slight voice “distortion” for part of the interview where it made the mic sound like it was mildly rattling if we got too loud even though we weren’t talking perfectly into the mic on the phone. Since it wasn’t a major disturbance I settled for the slight rattle that happened a few times over the hum in the background the entire clip.
Update
Listeners suggested that I make the interview sound a little more natural and conversational, so I went in and added reaction sounds in different parts of the interview so it sounded less bland. I had actually reacted in the original audio, but I thought it was more “speedy” and “informational” to cut them out. The only problem I ran into with this was that I had forgotten that I edited the interview track to remove a background hum, so I had to recreate that effect on my sound bites of my “cool” and “nice” reactions.
Recordings
By Elsa Temme, thanks Tiffany for letting me interview you!
Background Music
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/danger-lion-x/the-street-market
License code: QXW9ASTVL9ZWD4LC