Evaluation

For my sound project I chose to create a podcast/interview with Sesame Street puppeteer, Tau Bennett. I chose to do this for my project because I am a big Muppet fan and I really enjoy listening to interviews from Muppet performers so I thought that I would make one that other people could enjoy. 

For my research, I needed to understand how to conduct an interview and what type of questions I should ask. I looked into three podcast/interviews to understand this. I looked into the True Geordie, Dapper Laughs podcast and two podcasts related to my topic. One with Bill Barreta and one with Noel MacNeal. Listening to these podcasts really helped me get an understanding how I should conduct my interview. Each of these podcasts discussed different things and asked a variety of questions, some more sensitive than others. And each of these interviews allowed me to understand  how to approach, ask and follow up on questions with my guest. I also researched into my target audience. I sent out a survey to some people on Instagram and to people on the site Discord to fill in the five question survey, I asked mainly Muppet fans to see if they would be possibly interested in listening to an interview with Tau and the feedback I received from the survey was very positive and gave me assurance that there was an audience for my project and showed me that my target audience was Muppet Fans. I feel that my research enabled me to go ahead and prepare for my interview 

I knew from the beginning of the project that I wanted to interview someone from The Muppets, I considered three different performers: Tau Bennett (who I eventually chose), Matt Vogel and Noel MacNeal. As previously stated I my blog, I could not choose Matt because of how busy he is and I have previously interviewed Noel before so I chose Tau. I have gotten to know Tau Bennett quite well over the last year and I felt comfortable to ask him if I could interview him. Another reason I wanted to interview him was because there are no previous interviews of Tau Bennett so I thought it would be very interesting to hear about someone who has not been interviewed yet. That was a big reason in me choosing Tau. 

When planning my interview and preparing questions. I had to work hard to find out about Tau Bennett because as previously stated there are no interviews about him and there is very little information online so I had to work with the information I already knew. For Example  he was in Being Elmo and he and Kevin Clash became friends, how did that come about and questions along that line about his friendship with Kevin, Kevin leaving Sesame Street, working on Sesame Street etc. I also thought about questions that I would ask myself and incorporated some of them into my interview, such as “what are your early memories of puppets? and "what are you career goals as a performer?". These questions while generic, allow for follow up questions for Tau to expand into even more detail. 

I feel like I used my planning time effectively because I only started planning in early January and by Mid-January I had already completed my interview which left me a lot of time to edit. I wanted to get the interview done as early as I could which would allow me to work on other sound elements and the editing process. 

When I filmed my interview, I did not use any of the recording equipment such as the zoom or shotgun mic because of how we recorded the interview. As stated in my production page, we recorded over Anchor and anchor needed me to plug in my earphones to record, this meant that there wasn't a need for my microphone or Zoom. This worked out okay because the sound still sounds pretty good, it’s clear, no real distortion and we are both at an acceptable volume. Other people may have better quality audio because they used the zoom and shotgun mic, however I am still happy with my audio quality and it is something that I now know that Anchor won’t let me use the shotgun mic so I may have find an alternative way to record with someone who I cannot meet in person. 

I had very little Foley sound in my final product, I think this is because I chose to do an interview and there was really very little place for Foley sound. I think in future, if I was to a sound project again I will do something that could incorporate more Foley sound effects because it just didn't feel appropriate in an interview.

I had some issues with Audition during the final few weeks of pre-production. My audition file would not let me edit my interview portion with Tau Bennett, it kept on saying there was a problem with the file so I had to start again, luckily it did not mean I had to reedit everything as I continued to update the original files as I went along meaning I didn't lose work 

I feel, I have learnt a lot of skills that will be transferable onto other projects such as my interview skills which I learnt on this project, I took over onto my documentary project. It enabled me to conduct a couple of interviews which were vital for my documentary. I have also learnt how to use Audition, which will be really helpful on future projects when I need to edit audio.

In conclusion, I am very happy with how my sound project turned out, I have received a lot of positive feedback from people online which I am very pleased about.