During the first week back of semester two we were given the task of producing a three-minute podcast on an international issue of our choice. I was given the Production and Dissemination role which immediately made this project feel different from before. Not being as actively involved in all stages of the production process was difficult to adjust to.
Our group itself remained very committed throughout, upon first being put into our group we engaged in discussion about what our topic should be. We were in unanimous agreement that we should cover Net Neutrality, because as media students, we felt this issue would directly impact us should it come to Europe. Similar to before, we made a group chat and met up for around an hour every week. Deciding our topic so early allowed our researcher, Tabitha, to accumulate a plethora of articles from both sides of the argument. The fact we chose such a topical issue also meant there was practically new sources everyday so finding factual content wasn’t an issue.
We encountered our first real issue on our first recording day, we had issues renting the equipment online as none of us had any experience in this before, by the time we did successfully book it out the loans counter was closed until 2:00pm. We overcame this however by recording parts of the script on a mobile phone as we thought this would provide a sense of realism, distinguishing the ‘studio’ audio from the external audio. We also took the time to collectively search and agree for the backing track as well as the jingle track we would use, this was carried out by me.
My main task as Production and Dissemination arose after the audio was complete, it was my role to edit our podcast. Whilst I had editing experience during previous modules last year, this was the first time I had worked with audio only which presented new challenges. Not all of the audio was at the same volume meaning my first issue to overcome was making sure the podcast could be played at one audio level without the need for the volume to be turned up and down as different people talked. This also had to accommodate the backing track which had a tendency to change pitch as it progressed. To fix these issues I cut the audio into separate pieces and manually altered their audio so they all sounded the same. Another issue was that the audio was only playing out of one channel (ear) this meant I had to undertake additional research online as to how to fix this issue. Because I had previously split the audio into separate sections, this meant manually changing the audio on those as well which was easily the most time-consuming part of the project for me personally.
Overall, I am extremely happy with the final project and particularly my role within it. I felt the podcast sounded professional with the transitions between speakers being unnoticeable. If I was taking this project again there would be certain things I would change, for instance I felt the podcast wasn’t conversational enough and came across as too much like a news broadcast instead. Learning to edit just audio, which I first assumed to be easier than both audio and visuals, also came with its own set of challenges, with it just being a sound file there is greater possibility for scrutiny and for errors to be heard so there was an added sense of pressure of ensuring no audio issues persisted in the final product. From this project however I have learnt valuable editing skills which I can use in the future of my university and professional tasks.
Media and communications 