Unit 5: Investigating Audio Production and Technology - Task 2: Production and Promotional - Podcast
Thursday 19th March 2020
Today was the day me and Amiliyah were now able to record an episode of our podcast. Again, we were meant to do three different episodes but because of the outbreak of coronavirus, we are not allowed in college for a while and today is the only day we were able to record an episode. I think we were a bit nervous as we needed to try and fulfil our aim on bringing awareness to listeners about the issue of gender inequality in the film industry. Luckily, we both knew a lot from our research about this topic, as I've said before, we are both very passionate about it and want to benefit the future, not just for ourselves, but for all women who also want to have an equal opportunity working in the industry.
Before me and Amiliyah went to record, we started to go over some of the notes from the "This Changes Everything" documentary that I had typed up.
Even though these notes are jam-packed full of information, we found it was quite easy to look at for reference and then just try to have a natural conversation about what our thoughts were on certain statistics and opinions of the women in the film industry. A lot of the facts on these notes are quite negative about women, which is true as the film industry is pretty disapproving of women's work, mostly in Hollywood, so me and Amiliyah also needed to think about the positives of women's work, as well as relating all these issues back to us, personally.
After the first two groups had done their podcast episode, it was then mine and Amiliyah's turn to do ours. Our teacher helped check the volumes of our voices on the recording software by doing some vocal testing on the microphones. He then adjusted the volume so that we weren't too loud on the microphone, as well as not to hear certain noises whilst speaking. Our teacher also told us to try and not to speak for too long, for about fifteen minutes, as the podcast episode only needs to be around five-fifteen minutes long and there would also be a lot to do in post.
So, me and Amiliyah were then ready to do our podcast. We started first with a little intro, introducing the podcast and ourselves. We then moved into our personal opinions about how women are treated in the film industry, and then our conversation started. We talked about the Oscars, especially how women are never recognised for Best Cinematography and Best Director, two jobs me and Amiliyah would like to do in the future. We also spoke about Greta Gerwig, a lot actually. Spoke about the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, as well as the recent events of Harvey Weinstein's sentence to, only, 23 years in prison and the MeToo Movement. We talked about many different topics to do with female recognition and representation, both on and off screen, a lot of it being negative. So, we wanted to end the podcast on a good note by bringing up the fact that women are very talented and hopefully by the time me and Amiliyah get to the industry, there will be a huge difference, having equal work for everyone and benefiting everyone's needs in the industry.
I found it really fun to do this podcast with Amiliyah, as it just became a natural conversation between the two of us, as well as being able to have our voices heard and only our voices. I did talk a lot throughout it, mainly because I was nervous and wanted to fill in the silence with something else, as well as to keep the conversation going. Our podcast length ended up being about thirty-eight minutes long, definitely went over the fifteen-minute mark, but this was mainly because our teacher had recorded when we were speaking to him and then me and Amiliyah having many slip-ups throughout recording. So, our conversation really was about fifteen or sixteen minutes long, we just needed to then correct all of this in editing.
Tuesday 24th March 2020
We had just been sent an email on our college emails that we were now able to download the Adobe Creative Cloud app onto our computers, so I was then able to get Adobe Audition and edit my podcast.
Me and Amiliyah first talked through how we were each going to do our own edits of the podcast but first we needed to think about sweepers that we might have in our episode. Sweepers is music and sounds that can be placed between our audio, this is to identify what our podcast is about and what we are based around, as well as to use between awkward pieces of audio that don't sound right as we try to piece them together. So, me and Amiliyah started to list down audio that we would potentially like in our podcast, that also has to do with what we have spoken about during the episode. This was good to keep a reminder as we would then need to think about what we would want to cut out of the episode to fit these sounds in as we didn't want our podcast to be too long.
Once I got Audition downloaded onto my laptop and placed mine and Amiliyah's audio onto it straight away. As our podcast was thirty-eight minutes long, todays work on the podcast was mostly just cutting down all the audio, taking parts out that weren't necessary and slip-ups from when we were recording.
I just started to listen through the podcast and cut out long pauses between sentences, as well as heavy breathing sounds. I also tried to cut out all the times me and Amiliyah said "umm" in a sentence, whether we were trying to think of what to say or randomly said "umm" during our time speaking. To then piece the audio back together, where I had cut between, I was drag the audio together and either overlap it or place it side by side. Placing it side by side and making the conversation still sound natural was easier if there was a pause or silence between the audio, so then the silent parts from both cut pieces of audio could be placed together, leaving a small gap between the audio and still having it sound natural. Sometimes this didn't work out and I would need to put a fade between the two pieces of audio, which then made it sound more natural, I would also sometimes need to overlap them to create a crossfade to also try and sound natural and normal.
I think this was much harder when trying to piece together mine and Amiliyah's voices together, if there was a gap between or unnecessary audio as we both have very different voices. Amiliyah's voice is much louder and powerful than mine, as most of the time I sound quite quiet. So, again, we needed some silence between the two of our voices, whether I spoke first then Amiliyah did or vice versa. It was quite tricky to still try and make the conversation sound as natural as we recorded it. A lot of the time when piecing together audio between me and Amiliyah, I had to put a fade on the audio so it wasn't too loud when going from me to Amiliyah. I also had to put a few crossfades over some as sometimes when we were sort of talking over each other, it was very loud and didn't sound right when the audio went into only one of us speaking. Another way to quiet down some of the loud audio was by using the yellow volume keyframe line on the top sound wave on the platform. This was useful as you could place small keys on the line and drag the line down to make the volume much quieter. I think I may have made a slight mistake with this as I only dragged the line, of the loud audio on the sound wave, to the bottom of the top sound wave and not all the way to the bottom sound wave, so that the audio that comes through both sides of a person's headphones it won't be too loud. So, this was a mistake I made but a lot of the time, when using the volume keyframe, the volume did adjust and become quieter, making the audio sound much softer. Luckily, there were ways to work around trying to enhance the audio to still make it sound natural and not too loud when coming through the headphones.
I kept repeating this all of this through listening to the audio, cutting a lot out of the audio. What went from thirty-eight minutes came right down to just over fifteen minutes, so I still needed to figure out what was important to the topics purpose and what information would be the most entertaining and interesting for a listener to hear.
After cutting everything down and making sure everything sounded natural and alright, as I had been editing, I had left gaps between audio that didn't sound great when fitted together, as well as gaps between the mention of a film or person. This was so I could look back and figure out what to place between them. I then made a small list of all the gaps I made, figuring out what audio and sounds to put between when I edited the rest the next day. I also needed to try and think of what I could do for the intro and outro music as me and Amiliyah hadn't really discussed what we would like to do.
Wednesday 25th March 2020
I did have to halt editing my podcast for a few days as my laptop got a virus. I use a MacBook Air and I had downloaded Adobe the day before to be able to edit my podcast, using Audition. I hadn't realised that Adobe Flash Player had also installed on my laptop, which is a virus, causing my laptop to stop working properly. This was a nightmare, especially for the virus to happen at this point as everywhere is pretty much shut because of the coronavirus. Luckily, we were able to get in touch with a family member who works for a company that specialises in computers and he was able to come around and take the laptop away for fixing. For the next few days I was without a computer but I still thought about what else to add to my podcast, certain audio clips, music and sound effects, for intro and outro music, as well as sweepers (to cut between audio).
I had informed my teachers about this situation as well, with my teacher, James, sorting out a computer I could pick up from college to be able to work on for the time being. So, this wasn't too much of a problem but it did mean that I would need to try and work quickly for the deadline, or hand everything a little later than the deadline.
Friday 27th March 2020
Finally, my laptop was now fixed but just to be on the safe side on not get the virus again, I went to college and collected a computer. I was then able to set it up at home and get Adobe Creative Cloud downloaded onto it, allowing me to gain access to Audition again.
As soon as it downloaded, I started to work on the podcast again. Firstly, I listened through the podcast again to make sure everything sounded alright, especially between the cuts of audio that were then pieced together. Some of them did sound off, some still do a bit now as it was hard to be able to fix it and also adding sounds between put too much time on the podcast. I just needed to put fade in and outs on audio, as well as putting crossfades over a few, making the audio sound somewhat better and sound a bit more natural.
After I checked through all of that, I looked back at my post-it note with timeframes for the gaps and what types of idents I would like to put between those gaps. I decided to then take out the part when me and Amiliyah discussed the Harvey Weinstein situation, as well as the MeToo Movement as we didn't know whether it was too much of a touchy subject or quite inappropriate. Even though Weinstein is a terrible man and has left a massive mark on the film industry with the horrific crimes he has committed, we felt as being young, aspiring filmmakers and not having a lot of knowledge on the topic, we decided to leave that out. I started working from the beginning, meaning I now needed to create an intro for the podcast.
I remembered listening to the podcast "Black Girl Film Club" and they had a really cool intro where it started with a Director shouting for everyone to get ready to film, then him yelling action and the intro music then fading in. I really liked this idea and decided to do my own spin on it.
I first started by looking on YouTube for the sound of a Director yelling "action!" or "to get into place". There wasn't a lot I could find on YouTube but I did end up finding one. I'm not actually sure who the Director is or if he was an actor in a film but it was a very old audio clip that I thought sounded great to use. The pause between the Director saying "rolling" and "action" was a little bit long, so I cut the silence between them down a bit, and then pieced the audio together. This then sounded quick and not exactly right so I put a small crossfade between the two pieces of audio. It also sounded quite quiet, so I placed marks on the volume keyframe and dragged the line up so that the audio would become much louder. I also had to make sure the beginning of the Director saying "rolling" needed to fade in after Amiliyah had finished introducing the podcast, so, again, I put a small crossfade between the two, making it sound much better when "rolling" fades in and is heard clearly.
After doing this, I then needed to find some copyright free music to use for the intro music. I remembered in one of our lessons, when we started to use the Adobe Audition software, our teacher showed us a few websites where we were able to get copyright free audio, sounds and music. The website we used is called https://freemusicarchive.org/static where I was able to find songs. There were a few songs I found that I thought would suit the podcast but, in the end, I decided to go with a song called "Hotshot" by Scott Holmes. I thought this was great to use as it is very upbeat and sounds like something a young person would listen to, also indicating that me and Amiliyah are young, aspiring filmmakers. I then pieced the beginning of the music together with the audio of the Director, putting a crossfade over the two so it would slightly fade into the music, as well as having the song fade out and slightly fade into the audio of me speaking and me and Amiliyah starting our discussion.
I then started to think back on all the sweeper ideas I made, to place between the gaps of audio but I also needed to think about how I was going to stay in the fifteen-minute timeframe. As I started to look through, I then made my decision of where I would like to place sweepers:
I felt like I didn't need to put music in the background of the podcast as I felt the music would distract from the serious topic and a lot of the time, me and Amiliyah are continuously speaking. So, I didn't think music was necessary.
After deciding to place these sweepers between our audio, I then started to add them in and work them into the audio. I first started with the "This Changes Everything" documentary audio. It was a very long audio clip, so I only cut out the parts that I didn't think were necessary. I placed three short clips of audio to go into the episode, where there were three women discussing the lack of respect for women in the film industry and how it needs to be changed (I believe one of those women speaking is Meryl Streep). I then pieced the cuts together and tried to make it sound good. I made sure to also fade out the audio of me speaking to then fade into the audio from the "This Changes Everything" documentary.
I also did the same for the "Little Women" audio, cutting out some long pauses and some sounds of breathing. I did keep a few in to show how dramatic the scene is, as well as how brilliant Saoirse Ronan's acting is and the amazing direction from Greta Gerwig. I also did the same for the audio where Geena Davis speaks about the lack of representation for women in media. I cut out long pauses and moments where she may have said "umm" or breathed directly into the microphone. I also wanted to place in the necessary and useful information and statistics that may shock listeners, as well as educate them more about this problem.
Most sweepers I had, the audio I placed in between mine and Amiliyah's conversation, was cut down and then placed without editing in between that audio, whether it sounded strange when I tried to cut it and piece it back together with other audio from the clip or felt that it sounded fine without editing it. I did this for "Lady Bird", where I only had the first part of the audio from the trailer, then fading back into mine and Amiliyah's discussion.
I did the same for the audio from the "Thelma & Louise" trailer, only placing audio from the middle of the trailer, showing the beginning of Thelma and Louise's trip before it goes downhill.
After then piecing all of the audio back together, I then started to do the final part of the podcast which was the outro music. This was easier as now I had the music sorted out from the intro. This comes straight after me and Amiliyah have said our goodbyes and thanking listeners for listening to our podcast, which then fades out and fades into the outro music. I used the ending of the song, "Hotshot", to end the podcast. I also found another audio clip of the same Director (from the intro music) yelling "cut". Though in the clip he is very aggressive and frantically yelling "cut", the first time he yells it doesn't sound as angry and aggressive as the rest, so I cut the rest out and only used that part, fitting it onto the ending, fading from the end of the music into the audio and then fading out again to end the podcast.
After finishing the podcast and exporting the audio as a wave format, I then created a SoundCloud account to be able to upload the podcast onto.
Here is the link to my edit of "The Fault in Our Films" Podcast:
https://soundcloud.com/harriet-p-784066030/the-fault-in-our-films-podcast
Before me and Amiliyah went to record, we started to go over some of the notes from the "This Changes Everything" documentary that I had typed up.
Even though these notes are jam-packed full of information, we found it was quite easy to look at for reference and then just try to have a natural conversation about what our thoughts were on certain statistics and opinions of the women in the film industry. A lot of the facts on these notes are quite negative about women, which is true as the film industry is pretty disapproving of women's work, mostly in Hollywood, so me and Amiliyah also needed to think about the positives of women's work, as well as relating all these issues back to us, personally.
After the first two groups had done their podcast episode, it was then mine and Amiliyah's turn to do ours. Our teacher helped check the volumes of our voices on the recording software by doing some vocal testing on the microphones. He then adjusted the volume so that we weren't too loud on the microphone, as well as not to hear certain noises whilst speaking. Our teacher also told us to try and not to speak for too long, for about fifteen minutes, as the podcast episode only needs to be around five-fifteen minutes long and there would also be a lot to do in post.
So, me and Amiliyah were then ready to do our podcast. We started first with a little intro, introducing the podcast and ourselves. We then moved into our personal opinions about how women are treated in the film industry, and then our conversation started. We talked about the Oscars, especially how women are never recognised for Best Cinematography and Best Director, two jobs me and Amiliyah would like to do in the future. We also spoke about Greta Gerwig, a lot actually. Spoke about the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, as well as the recent events of Harvey Weinstein's sentence to, only, 23 years in prison and the MeToo Movement. We talked about many different topics to do with female recognition and representation, both on and off screen, a lot of it being negative. So, we wanted to end the podcast on a good note by bringing up the fact that women are very talented and hopefully by the time me and Amiliyah get to the industry, there will be a huge difference, having equal work for everyone and benefiting everyone's needs in the industry.
I found it really fun to do this podcast with Amiliyah, as it just became a natural conversation between the two of us, as well as being able to have our voices heard and only our voices. I did talk a lot throughout it, mainly because I was nervous and wanted to fill in the silence with something else, as well as to keep the conversation going. Our podcast length ended up being about thirty-eight minutes long, definitely went over the fifteen-minute mark, but this was mainly because our teacher had recorded when we were speaking to him and then me and Amiliyah having many slip-ups throughout recording. So, our conversation really was about fifteen or sixteen minutes long, we just needed to then correct all of this in editing.
Tuesday 24th March 2020
We had just been sent an email on our college emails that we were now able to download the Adobe Creative Cloud app onto our computers, so I was then able to get Adobe Audition and edit my podcast.
Me and Amiliyah first talked through how we were each going to do our own edits of the podcast but first we needed to think about sweepers that we might have in our episode. Sweepers is music and sounds that can be placed between our audio, this is to identify what our podcast is about and what we are based around, as well as to use between awkward pieces of audio that don't sound right as we try to piece them together. So, me and Amiliyah started to list down audio that we would potentially like in our podcast, that also has to do with what we have spoken about during the episode. This was good to keep a reminder as we would then need to think about what we would want to cut out of the episode to fit these sounds in as we didn't want our podcast to be too long.Once I got Audition downloaded onto my laptop and placed mine and Amiliyah's audio onto it straight away. As our podcast was thirty-eight minutes long, todays work on the podcast was mostly just cutting down all the audio, taking parts out that weren't necessary and slip-ups from when we were recording.
I think this was much harder when trying to piece together mine and Amiliyah's voices together, if there was a gap between or unnecessary audio as we both have very different voices. Amiliyah's voice is much louder and powerful than mine, as most of the time I sound quite quiet. So, again, we needed some silence between the two of our voices, whether I spoke first then Amiliyah did or vice versa. It was quite tricky to still try and make the conversation sound as natural as we recorded it. A lot of the time when piecing together audio between me and Amiliyah, I had to put a fade on the audio so it wasn't too loud when going from me to Amiliyah. I also had to put a few crossfades over some as sometimes when we were sort of talking over each other, it was very loud and didn't sound right when the audio went into only one of us speaking. Another way to quiet down some of the loud audio was by using the yellow volume keyframe line on the top sound wave on the platform. This was useful as you could place small keys on the line and drag the line down to make the volume much quieter. I think I may have made a slight mistake with this as I only dragged the line, of the loud audio on the sound wave, to the bottom of the top sound wave and not all the way to the bottom sound wave, so that the audio that comes through both sides of a person's headphones it won't be too loud. So, this was a mistake I made but a lot of the time, when using the volume keyframe, the volume did adjust and become quieter, making the audio sound much softer. Luckily, there were ways to work around trying to enhance the audio to still make it sound natural and not too loud when coming through the headphones. I kept repeating this all of this through listening to the audio, cutting a lot out of the audio. What went from thirty-eight minutes came right down to just over fifteen minutes, so I still needed to figure out what was important to the topics purpose and what information would be the most entertaining and interesting for a listener to hear.
After cutting everything down and making sure everything sounded natural and alright, as I had been editing, I had left gaps between audio that didn't sound great when fitted together, as well as gaps between the mention of a film or person. This was so I could look back and figure out what to place between them. I then made a small list of all the gaps I made, figuring out what audio and sounds to put between when I edited the rest the next day. I also needed to try and think of what I could do for the intro and outro music as me and Amiliyah hadn't really discussed what we would like to do.
Wednesday 25th March 2020
I did have to halt editing my podcast for a few days as my laptop got a virus. I use a MacBook Air and I had downloaded Adobe the day before to be able to edit my podcast, using Audition. I hadn't realised that Adobe Flash Player had also installed on my laptop, which is a virus, causing my laptop to stop working properly. This was a nightmare, especially for the virus to happen at this point as everywhere is pretty much shut because of the coronavirus. Luckily, we were able to get in touch with a family member who works for a company that specialises in computers and he was able to come around and take the laptop away for fixing. For the next few days I was without a computer but I still thought about what else to add to my podcast, certain audio clips, music and sound effects, for intro and outro music, as well as sweepers (to cut between audio).
I had informed my teachers about this situation as well, with my teacher, James, sorting out a computer I could pick up from college to be able to work on for the time being. So, this wasn't too much of a problem but it did mean that I would need to try and work quickly for the deadline, or hand everything a little later than the deadline.
Friday 27th March 2020
Finally, my laptop was now fixed but just to be on the safe side on not get the virus again, I went to college and collected a computer. I was then able to set it up at home and get Adobe Creative Cloud downloaded onto it, allowing me to gain access to Audition again.
As soon as it downloaded, I started to work on the podcast again. Firstly, I listened through the podcast again to make sure everything sounded alright, especially between the cuts of audio that were then pieced together. Some of them did sound off, some still do a bit now as it was hard to be able to fix it and also adding sounds between put too much time on the podcast. I just needed to put fade in and outs on audio, as well as putting crossfades over a few, making the audio sound somewhat better and sound a bit more natural.
After I checked through all of that, I looked back at my post-it note with timeframes for the gaps and what types of idents I would like to put between those gaps. I decided to then take out the part when me and Amiliyah discussed the Harvey Weinstein situation, as well as the MeToo Movement as we didn't know whether it was too much of a touchy subject or quite inappropriate. Even though Weinstein is a terrible man and has left a massive mark on the film industry with the horrific crimes he has committed, we felt as being young, aspiring filmmakers and not having a lot of knowledge on the topic, we decided to leave that out. I started working from the beginning, meaning I now needed to create an intro for the podcast.
I remembered listening to the podcast "Black Girl Film Club" and they had a really cool intro where it started with a Director shouting for everyone to get ready to film, then him yelling action and the intro music then fading in. I really liked this idea and decided to do my own spin on it. I first started by looking on YouTube for the sound of a Director yelling "action!" or "to get into place". There wasn't a lot I could find on YouTube but I did end up finding one. I'm not actually sure who the Director is or if he was an actor in a film but it was a very old audio clip that I thought sounded great to use. The pause between the Director saying "rolling" and "action" was a little bit long, so I cut the silence between them down a bit, and then pieced the audio together. This then sounded quick and not exactly right so I put a small crossfade between the two pieces of audio. It also sounded quite quiet, so I placed marks on the volume keyframe and dragged the line up so that the audio would become much louder. I also had to make sure the beginning of the Director saying "rolling" needed to fade in after Amiliyah had finished introducing the podcast, so, again, I put a small crossfade between the two, making it sound much better when "rolling" fades in and is heard clearly.
After doing this, I then needed to find some copyright free music to use for the intro music. I remembered in one of our lessons, when we started to use the Adobe Audition software, our teacher showed us a few websites where we were able to get copyright free audio, sounds and music. The website we used is called https://freemusicarchive.org/static where I was able to find songs. There were a few songs I found that I thought would suit the podcast but, in the end, I decided to go with a song called "Hotshot" by Scott Holmes. I thought this was great to use as it is very upbeat and sounds like something a young person would listen to, also indicating that me and Amiliyah are young, aspiring filmmakers. I then pieced the beginning of the music together with the audio of the Director, putting a crossfade over the two so it would slightly fade into the music, as well as having the song fade out and slightly fade into the audio of me speaking and me and Amiliyah starting our discussion.
I then started to think back on all the sweeper ideas I made, to place between the gaps of audio but I also needed to think about how I was going to stay in the fifteen-minute timeframe. As I started to look through, I then made my decision of where I would like to place sweepers:
- After me and Amiliyah have introduced the podcast a little bit more, just after the intro music, I placed some audio from the trailer for "This Changes Everything", as we discussed a lot from that documentary within our podcast.
- Audio of a clip from the film "Little Women" (2019) directed by Greta Gerwig.
- Audio from the "Lady Bird" (2017) trailer, also directed by Greta Gerwig.
- Audio from the "Thelma & Louise" (1991) trailer, starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon.
- Audio of Geena Davis speaking about the issue of female representation in media.
After deciding to place these sweepers between our audio, I then started to add them in and work them into the audio. I first started with the "This Changes Everything" documentary audio. It was a very long audio clip, so I only cut out the parts that I didn't think were necessary. I placed three short clips of audio to go into the episode, where there were three women discussing the lack of respect for women in the film industry and how it needs to be changed (I believe one of those women speaking is Meryl Streep). I then pieced the cuts together and tried to make it sound good. I made sure to also fade out the audio of me speaking to then fade into the audio from the "This Changes Everything" documentary.
I also did the same for the "Little Women" audio, cutting out some long pauses and some sounds of breathing. I did keep a few in to show how dramatic the scene is, as well as how brilliant Saoirse Ronan's acting is and the amazing direction from Greta Gerwig. I also did the same for the audio where Geena Davis speaks about the lack of representation for women in media. I cut out long pauses and moments where she may have said "umm" or breathed directly into the microphone. I also wanted to place in the necessary and useful information and statistics that may shock listeners, as well as educate them more about this problem.
I did the same for the audio from the "Thelma & Louise" trailer, only placing audio from the middle of the trailer, showing the beginning of Thelma and Louise's trip before it goes downhill.
After then piecing all of the audio back together, I then started to do the final part of the podcast which was the outro music. This was easier as now I had the music sorted out from the intro. This comes straight after me and Amiliyah have said our goodbyes and thanking listeners for listening to our podcast, which then fades out and fades into the outro music. I used the ending of the song, "Hotshot", to end the podcast. I also found another audio clip of the same Director (from the intro music) yelling "cut". Though in the clip he is very aggressive and frantically yelling "cut", the first time he yells it doesn't sound as angry and aggressive as the rest, so I cut the rest out and only used that part, fitting it onto the ending, fading from the end of the music into the audio and then fading out again to end the podcast.
After finishing the podcast and exporting the audio as a wave format, I then created a SoundCloud account to be able to upload the podcast onto.
Here is the link to my edit of "The Fault in Our Films" Podcast:
https://soundcloud.com/harriet-p-784066030/the-fault-in-our-films-podcast
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