2.4+Radio+Cut+Reflection

I had many issues whilst making this file and it was a lengthy process to solve them and in the ended cost me a lot of money. Originally, I thought that this would be a fun and interesting task, which in the end it was, however there was definitely patches when i wanted to give up and forget about it. After looking at this task and seeing what it required I immediately began planning, I decided to do something that I am passionate about and know a lot about, skimboarding. The main reason why I selected skimboarding was because there were a lot of international riders here in Adelaide for a board viewing so I thought i would try and interview one of them, however risking that if I did it wrong i would have to find someone else to interview. After organising the interview and writing up my questions my interviewee pulled out...that left me very unsure what i was going to do. Finally an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time was also at this board viewing night so i asked him if he would conducted the interview, which he kindly accepted. Simon Davis would be my skimboarder that I would interview, although this is not as high profile as I had originally organised, after viewing the criteria on the assessment task it was the ‘edit’ that we would be marked on, so that was relieving.
 * Assignment 2 - Radio Cut **
 * ** What were the issues involved in making this file and how did you solve them? **

I conducted my interview using my iPhone as it was the only available recording device that I could get my hands on that I would not have to pay a fortune for, in theory this seemed like a good idea. After finishing the interview in a very relaxed manner and listening to it back, I was happy with the interview and knew that with some editing it would be perfect. This is where the dilemmas started, having conducted my interview well in advanced I faced the problem of not being able to get the ‘voice memo’ of my iPhone...after viewing countless videos on youTube (actually about 20 or so) about tutorials on how to get ‘voice memos’ from the iPhone and onto the computer it seemed almost impossible....unless you have a Mac which I don’t, and don’t know anyone that has one. I continued researching on the internet and using blogs and so forth to try to sort out this problem, however it was not going to work.

Finally I went down to my local JB-HiFi store and purchased a Sennheiser headset, that was reduced from $119.95 down to $79.95, although this was an expensive piece of equipment the guy said that it will have top quality and I will be able to use it to record using the microphone. I reorganised my interview with Simon Davis, luckily he was able to do it again, I got him to wear the headset and recorded the interview through a program I downloaded called ‘Total Recorder’ – this program is a great and easy to use program that records in very high quality....which brings me to my next issue. Once recording again, this time cutting down the questions to just 21 as I did not want to hold Simon up anymore, the second interview having duration of just less than 9 minutes. Now that I had the recording done I looked at the properties of the file and because it was recorded with such high quality it was around 90mB which is very large for a file just less than 9 minutes. Getting the file and editing it in Audacity was not my problem, however posting the original onto my Wiki was, as the file was so large the Wiki would not allow it to be posted up, I then had to put the original back into ‘Total Recorder’ and compress it and lower the quality, then upload onto my Wiki. With the final product as the file was only 2 minutes, I could keep it in high quality and just had to compress it and make it into Mp3 so it would load onto my wiki.

So after reading this I’m sure you can understand that I had a lot of trouble with this task, but eventually I was able to work around it, after spending some money and reorganising my interview, but with it complete now I’m happy with what I have achieved. 
 * ** In what way would the ability to produce an edited sound file be useful? **

The ability to produce a sound file is very helpful, as from an education perspective if the teacher was unable to attend the class they could simply play the voice memo or recording and the students will understand their task and could carry on with it. Another benefit of an edited sound file is if a teacher was at a meeting or a conference the teacher could record the file, edit it and reuse the important information or replay it back to others that could not attend the conference. Even just recording a sound file is useful, especially for lectures etc as you can replay and notice information you may have missed the first time.

** Reflection **

**//1. Summarise what you learned as a result of doing this task and how this may (or may not) be useful to you//**

I have learnt a lot whilst doing this task! Firstly, I did not know that programs like Audacity existed, let alone free to download. I learnt how to conduct a proper interview, with open ended questions, organising an interview and ensuring that the microphone has to be a certain distance way from the speaker (this was hard when using a headset, as Simon’s voice was very loud) or the actual words just sound muffled. I learnt how to use Audacity and edit sound files, while using different sound techniques, such as the fade in and out, silence and also the benefits of using room tone on a separate track from your interview so that it during the interview there isn’t silence. This task we very helpful, not just for this particular topic, but also for when I’m teaching I now know how to record and edit things that i can reuse for students that missed the class or at a meeting or conference. In relation to this topic if I had not produced an interview the following task – digital story – would seem almost impossible and I believe that by doing the radio cut has helped me a lot as I have an understanding or different tools and editing software.

**//2. You should mention what planning you did, issues (if any) with the editing/publishing process, and how pleased you are with the result. Note that it is the quality of the reflection that counts, ie, you may be less that pleased with the results but understand and are able to say why and how you could do it better in future.//**

Overall, I am happy with my product, it was very time consuming and the issues I had i was able to resolve. The actually editing/publishing was harder than i thought, but with the use of blogs and YouTube videos I was able to successfully work out how to use Audacity and all the tools I needed were easy to use once viewing a tutorial online. My actually editing and sound quality of my final product is good; I think that it has a lot to do with your actual recording device or program. At times the editing was hard, especially with the ‘umms and ahhhs’ before they begin a word, but with the use of zooming in on Audacity I was able to cut them out quite well. Certainly, a benefit for me was the amount of time I originally recorded for, it gave me a lot to edit and to select what i wanted to make up the 2 minutes of the final product. In the end, it was definitely a valuable learning experience.

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