We are coming to the point in the project where the production stage of things will soon be wrapped up. This means we are identifying the forms that our content is going to take. We have two short film pieces in the works – the interviews with Donna and Tommy. These edits are coming along quite nicely and Nolan and Campbell have done well at consolidating these stories to a manageable amount of time. We are planning to use Danny’s interview for an audioscape, and with a limited amount of time we have it seems best to do another audioscape with an upcoming interview we have lined up with Enza Gandolfo, author of The Bridge.

While audio is the best way to go at this point because of how time – poor we are, I’m confronted with something: I’ve never really worked with audio. I’ve been undertaking the media degree here at RMIT for four years (!) and the most I’ve edited audio is a few tweaks editing out ums and ahs in interviews and adjusting gain. Why have I never worked with audio very much? Well, I’ve never really sought it out, this is true, but it’s never really been highlighted to me as a major thing I should be focusing on.

So I’m an audio beginner.

I listen to a lot of long-form podcasts so I have some idea of what can be achieved just with sound, but the short – form audio pieces that are going to fit well with this project are new territory for me.

So I have been seeking out some audio pieces which may help me to get an idea about the kind of piece that I could produce using this interview.

The poetry piece below is rather structured in that it is presented as a monologue but it includes very subtle noises – footsteps, voices on the street, sounds from outside – alongside his words. It intertwines quite well in that the listener can pay attention to the poetry piece without being distracted by the audioscape that is being created. It builds an environment that as a listener you can be immersed in. This is something I’m thinking about trying to do as I launch into audio work.