PB4 Reflection

The successes, challenges and what I learnt from Project Brief 4

As this is my first time creating a purely audio work, I was nervous about how to approach this project and how the final audio piece would turn out. I believe the opening soundscape of our audio piece was quite convincing; where the listener can close their eyes and feel themselves running with the characters away from the violent student rally and feel immersed in the uproar of the whole made-up scenario. Furthermore, as our audio piece moves into the studio where we discuss our research, I was really happy with how professional we sounded and the good quality the recording turned out to be. Earlier in my blog posts, I mention that one of my main goals was to achieve a very professional sounding audio piece as if we really were experts working at a radio station. So, thanks to Jon’s feedback in Week 11, compressing our audio as well as me and my group’s quick pick up on learning the Zoom H2n’s functions has allowed us to achieve this goal.

Problematic aspects of this project would include our time management and the final assembly of each of our sections. As Ben had a lot going on in his personal life, Joey and I knew that we had to figure out a way to avoid a complicated production process, but also have intriguing subjects to discuss in our audio piece. As I misunderstood the task and thought we had to include our research in our audio piece rather than creatively adapt our research instead, we decided to give each other about 2-3 minutes to have a documentary styled narration of our individual research focuses on media attention. I reckon we all did well in our research regarding media attention. Although contrasting, this just proves how complex the relationship is between media and audiences. However, looking at our final piece, it does feel a little disjointed and rushed because we tried so hard to fit everything under the time limit. Opening with my section of the modern, university-lifestyle take on the Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, I decided to discuss my research on the early theories of media attention and how these have been applied to said radio broadcast, as well as the nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew. As these early media content raised a lot of discussion on the powerful influence the media has over audiences, I chose to discuss these theories and use this as a warning from my character’s radio personality to her audience. Transitioning to Joey’s segment about trending memes and how the media effects audiences in the contemporary era, his research acts as a contrast with my research that applies media attention to the early 20th century. Furthermore, ending with an interview with Ben who takes on the persona of an online content creator, Ben’s research coincides with Joey’s research on how the media has become such an ever present force and has such a huge potential to be exploited and used to affect individual lives.

From this project, including the other audio piece I created and the multiple audio pieces I’ve listened to in this study section’s lectures and workshops, I have been opened up to the huge creative potential of what audio-based media can offer. As I mention in a previous blog post, audio-based media acts as a stimulant to audience’s imagination, thus allowing a lot of room for very creative interpretations of storytelling. When creating our opening section of the fake student rally, I spent a lot of time fiddling and playing around with how different effects, placements and fades between each sound effects and atmospheres can create different storylines. Furthermore, unlike visual editing, audio has so much more potential for layering that I really enjoyed playing around with when creating our audio piece’s opening soundscape. Furthermore, this is quite a small thing, but more specifically in my segment of the audio piece, I had my examples fade through my spoken research that I hoped added more colour to my messages. Especially when I quote from The Eternal Jew, just as the narrator begins to talk, I really hoped for that stylistic decision to have a strong impact on listeners to be able to visualise in their own way how this propaganda film affected its audience during its time.

As this project is my first collaborative project, excluding my cinema studies group project, it was a huge learning experience and contrast to group projects in high school where we have lots of opportunities to see each other. For PB4, where we could only see each other once or twice a week, we really needed to trust each other and be very clear about what our goals are and what each of our delegated responsibilities are for this project. Definitely through the learning experience of this collaboration, each member needed to be aware of their weaknesses so that others’ strengths will be able to step in and help out. Thus, as I expect future collaborations will be more like PB4 than high school group projects, I definitely have a better idea of how to approach meetings and work as a part of a creative team.