I listen to a lot of podcasts, Today Explained from Vox network happens to be my favorite. This podcast focuses on interviewing a variety of people on topics that are relevant in today’s society. I knew this podcast would be my go-to when creating the vision for what I wanted my interview to be.
My topic, the Paid Family and Medical leave program, has been widely discussed around the state most times in a positive light, and at other times in a negative manner. I wanted to conduct an interview with a customer care team specialist because these are the folks on the front-line processing applications and assisting employers with reporting. My intent was to produce an informative interview by asking the specialist questions that would lead to answers that have not been widely discussed. I found it quite difficult to incorporate all the information into just 3 minutes. I had to trim a great deal off the interview in order to fit it within the time constraint. I know I will need to strengthen my storytelling skills so I can better fit a story into the allotted time. More times than not there will be a time limit on the content that I create in the future for health communication, and learning how to incorporate everything I need into an allotted time slot will be an acquired skill.
The following clip is the unedited footage of the interview.
Even though I feel I did a good job of editing the final project, I feel so much more could have been done to enrich the interview such as varying questions or injecting more personality into asking the questions. In retrospect, I wish I would have had more of a conversation with interviewee vs a standard question and answer type interview. The final draft interview is located below.
I created my interview with the following steps:
First, I used my iPhone to record the interview. I then uploaded the recording to my computer and opened Audition to begin a new multi-track session. I really like the fact that Audition allows content to be ‘dragged and dropped’ into the app, this is a really a user-friendly feature. Once I had my interview on the first track, I magnified it by using the zoom tools in the bottom right corner of the mixer box. At this point, I played the interview about fifty times pausing each time I heard an umm or uh. I used the razor tool to crop these unwanted pieces out of the final footage. Once the pieces were cropped out, I selected the move tool to bring the remaining footage seamlessly together. Cropping the unwanted parts out of the interview took quite a bit of time, but once I was done it was simple to add the background music. I selected each cropped piece of the interview by holding the ctrl key and clicking on each piece one by one. Once they were all selected I right-clicked and selected Group>Group Clips. This grouped the pieced interview together and allowed me to slide every cropped clip of the interview back and forth easily on the track as needed. Next, I downloaded my background music titled “Swan Song” from Free Music Archive and performed the drag and drop into track 2 to get the clip into Audition. I started track 1 at about 8 seconds to allow for the intro music to play. I attempted to smooth the transition from intro music to interview by using the fade in tools that we utilized during the tutorials. I ended the interview with a slight fade out and a disclaimer not only because I do not want the program held liable for anything said in the interview, but also because I felt it helped with the closing of the story. I am excited to incorporate everything I have learned this week into my final Audition interview, including feedback from you all.
Credit:
I would like to thank Lindsey Q from Paid Family and Medical Leave for doing this interview and Free Music Archives (https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/Creative_Commons) for providing the background music which is titled Swan Song by Paper Navy.
Washington state's Paid Family and Medical Leave 
Hi Jessica,
I really like your intro music and introduction statement. I do think you sounded more comfortable in the intro then in the first question – so I agree that more of a conversational style might fit you better! Your interviewee did a GREAT job! After hearing the original I realize you did a wonderful job clipping out distractors like ums, etc. I wouldn’t change a thing about those parts. You already aced that editing in my opinion.
I’m not sure of your position/expertise on this topic but since you work with this program, if you are also an expert, it can be nice to change your open ended questions into statements that you’re asking someone to confirm, e.g., I know XX is true regarding family leave; why do you think it’s difficult that misunderstanding? That way you also sound like an expert. We do videos in my Division for FDA and we’ve had to adapt to that format after seeing our draft videos where our Director was the host/interviewer and came across looking uninformed on certain topics because of asking open ended questions.
I’m sure you already tried but if you could cut down the road noises even more, that would be helpful. Or maybe add to your intro that you caught up with XX on a busy street, something to acclimate the audience to expect the road noises. It caught me by surprise and was therefore distracting, and I wonder if I’d been expecting it, if it would have jumped out at me as much.
I also love your disclaimer at the end! I wish I’d thought of that! I also saw you left pharmacy for this career change. I’m a pharmacist too so that caught my attention!
Lindsay
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Hi Jessica,
Thanks for sharing your audio draft on this important topic. I really appreciated the disclaimer you added at the end as well.
You have obviously done a great job of editing the raw audio and pairing it down for the right length. I struggled with that as well! I would suggest maybe masking what is left of the background noise with light music. I think both you and the person you interviewed sounded very professional in the audio and your introduction was clear and upbeat.
If you wanted to change it up a bit you could re-record you asking the questions in a different way and editing them into the audio. I think your interview is well done, but if you wanted more of a story told like you mentioned in your blog post you could try this. Overall, great work!
Best,
Lindsay
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Your description of the drafting process is fantastic! It provides extensive detail as to the steps you took to prepare for the assignment, as well as the steps you completed to create your draft file. It shows you have a strong understanding of the content taught through this unit.
Our professor provided an overview of a few advanced Audition tools in his “Advanced Audio Techniques” (https://com561.wordpress.com/advanced-audio-techniques/) blog post. The portions of the recording done by your interviewee have significant backgrounds noises – traffic, office movement, etc. – that may be able to be removed by one of the tools he recommends. I am thinking that using the noise reduction or hiss reduction tools (https://helpx.adobe.com/audition/how-to/noise-hiss-reduction-audition-cc.html) will eliminate some of the unwanted sounds.
As the rubric indicates blog professionalism and style accounts for a portion of the overall assignment grade, I feel inclined to mention that there are a couple of grammatical errors that could easily be addressed prior to final submission of the blog post. For example, your usage of “front-line” should actually be written as “front line” if you are referencing it as a noun. I would also recommend proofing the content and watching for areas that may be in need of commas.
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Self-Critique
Truth be told I am not satisfied with my audio draft assignment and it will take me quite some time until I feel I am comfortable with the work I have presented. I feel that I may be nervous when speaking in an interview, and it shows. My fellow classmates provided wonderful tips on how I could improve my clips such as rerecord my questions to make it sound like more of a conversational piece vs an interview. Another tip that was suggested is to rid the background noise. Unfortunately, I underestimated the background noise and I will need to find a way to eliminate the noise from my final audio draft because, as those critiquing my work suggested, it could be very distracting. I am pleased with the editing work I have done, and I am also satisfied with the chosen music. My focus going into the final audio draft will be to rerecord my own speaking parts to make the interview feel like more of a natural conversation.
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