Production
On Saturday 18th January 2020 , I sat down to record my interview with puppeteer Tau Bennett. We had agreed prior to recording that we would chat over Google Hangouts as that was something Tau was comfortable with, however I had never used Hangouts before so i was slightly sceptical on how to go about using it especially recording it because there was no feature to do so. To combat the event that Hangouts was not a suitable recording feature I decided to download Audacity and Discord to my computer.
Audacity is an open source, multilingual audio editor and recording software. I decided to get it in order to record our interview on Google Hangouts.
Discord is a text, voice and video chat app designed to bring people together for their love of gaming, fandom and many other things, unlike Hangouts, I was familiar with Discord and knew all the features and how it worked. It does not have a recording feature however i would have used Audacity to record off here.
However Audacity would only allow me to capture my audio from the recording and not Tau's over Hangouts or Discord which meant I would have to use my third and final option... Anchor
Anchor, is a podcast making app that allows you to record edit,distribute and monetise right from the app. Anchor is something I am familiar with as I have used it before so I now it all worked and i had no trouble with recording from it.
I decided to go against using the Zoom recorder and the shotgun microphone when I recorded as I was going to be way to loud using that mic so I decided to use my microphone on my earphones that way I was at the same volume as Tau (he was wearing the same type of headphones). I was very eager to make sure that we were both at the same volume because when I recorded my interview Noel MacNeal, Noel's mic was a lot quieter than mine meaning we at different volume levels which did not sound good. I checked with Tau twice that I sounded okay and that I was not too loud.
Anchor was easy to use for both of us and we managed to record just over 45 minutes of footage, all of which was too a very decent standard in terms of the audio quality.
I decided early on that I wanted to have an outro a song, and I wanted to have a song that was Muppet Related. And the song I decided on was the Bear In The Big Blue House song, The Goodbye Song which appeared in each episode of Bear In The Big Blue House that aired from 1997-2006 and was sang by puppeteer Noel MacNeal and actress Lynn Thigpen. MacNeal played the titular character, Bear and Thigpen voiced Luna The Moon from 1997 to her death in 2003. Many believe that Thigpen's death was one of main reasons that Bear ended despite it's massive popularity.
The Goodbye Song is one of my favourite Muppet related songs and I thought that it wold be a nice note to end the interview on. However, I did not want the entire song however, only the chorus which has both Thigpen and MacNeal singing together. I decided to cut it to about 10 seconds before the main chorus kicks in and slowing fade it in under my voice and as it goes on gets louder until the chorus kicks in, when that is the only thing you hear.
I wanted to keep the entire interview as the interview is very much like a narrative. It starts from Tau's beginnings as a puppeteer and we end in talking about present day and future goals. So I feel that if I chopped it up and only put in certain parts, it would have been confusing for the listener because a lot of important information could have been cut. So I decided to not cut too much to stop it from being a mess and confusing.
I also wanted to keep the audio as normal and as clear as possible. I played around with certain effects and settled on the vocal presence boost which put much more emphasis on the vocals and made it clearer.
I knew early on into the editing process that I did not want much Foley sounds because I felt they would be very out of place in a formal interview. So I decided i wanted very subtle Foley sounds like rustling of clothes. So I went into the recording studio to rustle my clothes and make subtle movements. I edited my Foley and clipped it up and placed in parts of my audio.
There were some technical issues with the audition file. It would not play the interview and would not allow me to edit the file.
However I created a new audition file which did not experience the same problems and allowed me to complete the project.
Audacity is an open source, multilingual audio editor and recording software. I decided to get it in order to record our interview on Google Hangouts.
Discord is a text, voice and video chat app designed to bring people together for their love of gaming, fandom and many other things, unlike Hangouts, I was familiar with Discord and knew all the features and how it worked. It does not have a recording feature however i would have used Audacity to record off here.
However Audacity would only allow me to capture my audio from the recording and not Tau's over Hangouts or Discord which meant I would have to use my third and final option... Anchor
Anchor, is a podcast making app that allows you to record edit,distribute and monetise right from the app. Anchor is something I am familiar with as I have used it before so I now it all worked and i had no trouble with recording from it.
I decided to go against using the Zoom recorder and the shotgun microphone when I recorded as I was going to be way to loud using that mic so I decided to use my microphone on my earphones that way I was at the same volume as Tau (he was wearing the same type of headphones). I was very eager to make sure that we were both at the same volume because when I recorded my interview Noel MacNeal, Noel's mic was a lot quieter than mine meaning we at different volume levels which did not sound good. I checked with Tau twice that I sounded okay and that I was not too loud.
Anchor was easy to use for both of us and we managed to record just over 45 minutes of footage, all of which was too a very decent standard in terms of the audio quality.
I decided early on that I wanted to have an outro a song, and I wanted to have a song that was Muppet Related. And the song I decided on was the Bear In The Big Blue House song, The Goodbye Song which appeared in each episode of Bear In The Big Blue House that aired from 1997-2006 and was sang by puppeteer Noel MacNeal and actress Lynn Thigpen. MacNeal played the titular character, Bear and Thigpen voiced Luna The Moon from 1997 to her death in 2003. Many believe that Thigpen's death was one of main reasons that Bear ended despite it's massive popularity.
In terms of the edit, I was eager to keep all of the interview in however I wanted to try and cut the length from 45 minutes to around 40- 42 minutes. And there were a few bits that I could get rid of. For Example, Tau's mother came in and interrupted one of Tau's answers and he had to go back and start again, also there were a few stutters, sneezes and coughs in the audio so I have removed them in order to have a clean audio.
There was one moment where the sound glitched out and it cut up one of Tau's answers for a second or two which is annoying however, apart from that the audio is still very clean.
I wanted to keep the entire interview as the interview is very much like a narrative. It starts from Tau's beginnings as a puppeteer and we end in talking about present day and future goals. So I feel that if I chopped it up and only put in certain parts, it would have been confusing for the listener because a lot of important information could have been cut. So I decided to not cut too much to stop it from being a mess and confusing.
I also wanted to keep the audio as normal and as clear as possible. I played around with certain effects and settled on the vocal presence boost which put much more emphasis on the vocals and made it clearer.
I knew early on into the editing process that I did not want much Foley sounds because I felt they would be very out of place in a formal interview. So I decided i wanted very subtle Foley sounds like rustling of clothes. So I went into the recording studio to rustle my clothes and make subtle movements. I edited my Foley and clipped it up and placed in parts of my audio.
There were some technical issues with the audition file. It would not play the interview and would not allow me to edit the file.
However I created a new audition file which did not experience the same problems and allowed me to complete the project.
Comments
Post a Comment