Although I received positive feedback and great critiques from my fellow classmates, I felt that my draft interview had too many mistakes to be salvageable. The content worthy clips from the interview that I would have liked to of used for the final audio project included heavy background noise that I was unable to reduce or mask. I would have loved to do another interview with Lindsay Q, as I felt she did a fantastic job, but with the prevalence of COVID-19 we are now teleworking and I did not want to record audio over the telephone for fear that the audio may not have been clear.
For my final attempt at this assignment I have chosen to create a public service announcement (PSA). It is short at just over 1 minute and is intended to be played on radio stations across Washington state. I chose the discussed content because working at Paid Family and Medical Leave during this pandemic we have received numerous calls from individuals wanting to know if we will provide paid leave at this time. This PSA will address those questions.
I chose the background music because it struck me as calming and caring, which is something that I imagine would be welcomed during this time of need. I carefully placed the voice audio over the music track to capture variations of the music that I felt complimented the PSA at the perfect time. For example, the variation in the music aids in bringing the PSA to its conclusion. I learned from my classmates’ critiques that my voice could be more upbeat, and one of my own critiques was to inject more personality, so I have tried to incorporate that into this final audio project. I received positive feedback on the disclaimer that I placed on my audio draft, so I decided to incorporate that into my final project.
Once again, I used my iPhone to record the voice audio. 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 voice audio 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 voice audio to listen for disruptions such as ah or um. 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 together seamlessly. Next, I downloaded my background music titled While She Sleeps (Morning Edit) by The Lights Galaxia from Free Music Archive and performed the drag and drop into track 2 to get the clip into Audition. I moved the voice audio back and forth across the background music until I felt the fluctuations in the background music complimented the voice audio. I ended the PSA with a slight fade out and a disclaimer not only because I do not want the program held liable for anything said in the PSA, but also because I felt it helped with the closing of the PSA.
Please listen to the PSA below that I have created for COM561.
Credit:
Free Music Archives (https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/Creative_Commons) for providing the background music which is titled While She Sleeps (Morning Edit) by The Lights Galaxia
Washington state's Paid Family and Medical Leave 