Link to soundcloud HERE

Emotion: sadness

This assignment was harder than I anticipated. Having to edit out my own voice was tricky as I am accustomed to guiding the narrative with interviews. I am proud of the outcome though. It somehow feels more intimate, as if the talent is speaking directly to the listener; rather than the listener observing a conversation. I’ve never really thought about making audio packages like this, as opposed to editing and chopping an interview, and I’m looking forward to expanding on these skills.

Initially, I had another guest lined up. I had reached out to someone beyond my immediate circle, about an uplifting story. Eventually however, they stopped replying. After reading Leila Day’s piece on podcasting, who suggested that sometimes you need to be prepared to change things at a moment’s notice (transom 2017), I decided I didn’t have enough time to wait around and had to source another itnerview. While I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to go with my first option, it was a good learning moment. I imagine in the future there will be lots of deadlines and sometimes you just have to make the call / sacrifice. I was lucky that I still put together an interview.

Moreover, I struggled a little trying to generate sadness. I have only ever done interviews with artists and bands to promote their new work and it is pretty much my job to be positive and make them look good. I wasn’t sure how to balance the interview and felt it was a fine line between getting all the information out of the guest and then milking their pain for a provoking segment. I presume this sentiment resonates with a lot more journalistic / hard news interviews and something I hope I will become more advanced at.

I was happy with the unedited interview, but was surprised when I was stumped on what extra sound to add. One again, in my past experience, I would add songs from the artist / band to help tell a story, but wasn’t confidence with what to add in this circumstance. Rob Rosenthal stated that the best interviews have tension in them (transom 2019). In an attempt to emphasise this I added more pauses / moments for tensions to rise.

I found that a lot of the music I was embedding felt tacky, and was an obvious attempt to ham up the sadness. In the end I opted for a minimal affect. I decided to let the words do the work and just use music and sound as a support. Bec, my interviewee, didn’t explicitly outline the pandemic situation (I did in my questions, but obviously had to cut that out) so I used a couple reporting snippets in there to inform the listener.

I’m happy with the overall outcome and am excited to learn more about audio storytelling, particularly with how to convey narrative in other ways than just dialogue.

Day, L 2017, “I Am My Target Audience”, viewed 28/8/2020 <https://transom.org/2017/i-am-my-target-audience/>.

Rob, R 2019, “Interviewing For Emotions”, viewed 28.8/2020 <https://transom.org/2019/interviewing-for-emotions/>.