For this assignment, I wanted to focus on the emotion of sadness for this interview. Before recording, I told my subject to talk about the days before our grandpa passed. When I listened to Rosenthal’s HowSound podcast “Interviewing For Emotions”, he talks to Liz about how to interview for an emotional appeal. I learnt that when you reflect on a memory, this would give you an emotion already. But Liz mentions to have patience since the interviewee is reflecting on a hard moment, you don’t want to be consider insensitive with wanting your questions to be answered. I think the reason why I chose the moment before grandpa passed away was because nothing feels sadder when hope is taken away. The questions that I told her was what was on her mind? And most importantly, what does she see? This allows the audience to be in her mindset. I also hope to gain some empathy as I used foley and music to position them in an environment. For music, I recorded some synths and soundscapes and edited in Reaper and Adobe Audition to have a sad valance but also in a soft way in order to focus on my subject’s voice. I used many tracks to create more texture but also included some long fades in and out so it does not sound sudden. However, I used freesound.org for the sound effects to create the environment. For future reference, I will like to record Foley with my own phone for next project considering in a professional field, it’s better to create your own.
As Roberts (2010, p. 16) states in “Finding the Poetry”, that people speak with “pauses” and “stutters”, it gives depth and emotion “to the words they speak”. I think I reflected on this while listening to my subject as what she was saying highlights her emotions of being sad. During editing, I didn’t remove majority of the stutters or repeated words as I wanted the listener to think that this podcast was not fully edited to sound like the subject has a confident voice with no emotions. If readers read the transcript, they would not know how the power of the voice can impact to its listeners when there are stutters and long pauses. It shows realism and emphasizes on her emotions as she was saying spontaneously as there are no scripts. The fact that her tone changes throughout gives the words a deeper meaning to it. For instance when she cries out “I need to see him”, demonstrates not just the literal meaning at the time but she was thinking about him in the moment. In the editing, I also rearrange some words to deliver the story more clearly and smoothly without getting out of context. The advice to write a transcript was very helpful as it allows me to read the words and help with cutting out and what to put in order to meet the time constraint.
References:
Roberts, D (2010) ‘Finding the Poetry’ in Dilworth, A, & Biewen, J Reality Radio : Telling True Stories in Sound. The University of North Carolina Press, pp. 116-127
Rosenthal, R (2019), ‘Interviewing For Emotions’, [HowSound] Available at: https://transom.org/2019/interviewing-for-emotions/ (Accessed: 14/08/2020)
Sfx:
Heartbeat looper by b-train : https://freesound.org/people/b-train/sounds/410378/
Car Door Handle by Rutger Muller : https://freesound.org/people/RutgerMuller/sounds/50697/
Car Driving Ambience by priesjesen : https://freesound.org/people/priesjensen/sounds/495795/
Release form:
rmit personal release audio interviews & features
Soundcloud link: