The final deliverable
The final deliverable
Introduction
This project was initially a podcast that focused on how the Covid-19 virus has affected the Asian community especially young people in Brisbane. Ironically due to the Covid-19 virus the social distancing laws enacted meant that we were unable to organise young people to come into a studio to record for an interview. In the end we changed our scope to interview young people from around the world affected by the Covid-19 virus. The interviews that we were record was done online via video chat Zoom.
Project Management (CLO1)
Covid-19 escalation of pandemic resulting in change of scope (negative)
Drop out of an interviewee (negative)
Reaching out of unlikely sources (Positive)
Creative processes (CLO4)
How was the planning
The document was not followed to plan
The plan was effective in putting the stages in place, not effective in us following
There was huge divergence to the plan, Covid-19 created chaos to the setup
Planning for creating a podcast (CLO2)
(Insert photo of planning document) (Figure 1)
Worked badly, We tried in week 9 to deliver an interview in a video format which our team lacked the skills to create something that had any audio production and was limited in scope
Worked well, took on feedback from Nick to change our scope to create a podcast and not a video, also to incorporated feedback after demoing the track in class
Looking at other works in the similar genre (LO1)
Short summary of the blog breakdown for the BBC Podcast
(Insert the link to the blog post)
Production: people skills (LO4)
Reflect on working with asking people for an interview cooperate, how it was actually easier to ask someone to download an app so I can interview them online vs asking someone on campus and people in person.
Talk about how easy it was to ask people online to record themselves on their phone while talking on the zoom chat.
Reflect on the issue of getting noise bleed from peoples computer speakers vs interviewees using headphones
Reflect on the aesthetic choices (LO13)
After conducting the breakdown on the BBC Podcast, we identified the following creative choice in making our podcast.
Add a branding tagline with same start tone
Transitions between each interviewees location will be signposted by passenger jet flyover noise, signify switching locations
Beginning and ending of each interviewee will be led with ~5 secs of sound design to give context of the location of the interviewee
During the interview sounds from their locale will be in the background to give the interview a more live feel
EQ of Main narrators voice, Deeper Bass and less background noise.
EQ of Interviews has more background noise even when Narrator is interviewing to give
Loudness standard (LO14)
ReplayGain doesn’t specify a measurement unit for loudness, so we’re unable to give an exact measure in LUFS used by ITTU 1770. However, we adjust tracks to 3 dB higher than ReplayGain algorithm specifies, which is roughly equivalent to -14 dB LUFS, according to the ITU 1770 standard
Spotify loudness -14dB (Insert link to Spotify definition of loudness)
Contract Release (LO16)
In the recording state your name and date of the recording and that the person being interviewed understands that the recording will be used in the "project name" in whole or in part and releases all right
If you are recording the interview, when you turn the recorder on, introduce yourself by name. State the date of the interview, and the interviewee's name so it's clear who is being interviewed. Make it clear that the interview may be used in whole or in part, in your book (tentatively entitled __________________) and in other media, in all languages throughout the world, in perpetuity. Then ask if you have permission to record the interview and their answers to your questions.
Comparison and summary
Compare the final production to that of the BBC report which is considered the gold standard of audio recordings
Aesthetic choices, the EQ of voices for the narrators
Overlay of background sound that are location specific for each interviewee
The Podcast came very close to the BBC Podcast in terms of production value for the final mix
The sound design in the final deliverable reflected pretty close to the final
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PLANNING DRAFT
Initial idea and plan
Socially Conscious based Project required by end of week 12
Ideated project Idea in week 2
Interview how due to the Coronavirus breakout in Wuhan China people of Asian appearance were targeted and discriminated against
During week 4 Gilang and I searched for a few potential people to interview.
Thought of using BBC podcast as the gold standard aesthetic to replicate and learn how they did and what decisions they made in making the podcast.
Our scope was to be Brisbane only
Initially I lined up a student from Film Major Lark Lee and Oliver Shum from Animation to hold interviews and Gilang tried to contact Gary who was stuck in China due to the outbreak. We also contacted Robin from audio.
After week 5 unfortunately Gilang was uncontactable and I was under pressure to work on A Quiet Place 2 trailer so I left the project sit on the back burner.
After delivering the AQP 2 project, the world became a different place due to the seriousness of the COVID-19 virus.
In Week 7 I became unable to work in my Taxi shifts due to the dangers presented and the new social distancing laws.
At week 8 I began to have financial problems and was on the cusp of quitting the course due to the family pressures and financial pressures. I was going to take the financial hit but I was not going to take an academic hit due to this bs virus
In week 9 I rescoped the project and decided to make a short video of the interview we were able to get from Robin during week 8 to just use some audio editing skills to present but this was deemed too little and there was no audio processing. I then phoned and maintained contact with Gilang and we both agreed to find different contacts as quick as possible. After the feed back on Monday from Nick I decided to change the scope since I was unable to contact people and talk to them directly.
The new mode of online delivery forced me to adapt and overcome by changing the scope and making me contact old contacts in China and my friend who was studying in Chicago. Gilang contacted a friend he knew in Indonesia and then we tried to contact Gary again.
Gary was intermittent and was no reliable as an interviewee where he tried to use a VPN to phone out he said it was not possible with his VPN to use Zoom.
I asked my old contact in Huizhou and he was able to use Zoom for and meeting so go figure.
We were able to get the recording meetings with Gary from Chicago and Joe from Huizhou on Monday of week 10. Gilang was able to setup the meeting with Anisa on Tuesday.
During the meeting we asked them to use their phones to record their own voice during the meeting but we forgot to ask them to record themselves while using head phones, The issues faced was that even though we had clean takes of the meeting of their voice, our voices came through and bled over into their recording.
Thus this rendered our recordings useless even though we did get very good takes for our parts. Lesson learned here is that if we are to do recordings like this again we should ask our interviewee's to use headphones while they record themselves.
We mitigated and finally we were able to recorded ourselves by recording ourselves at home. Due to the coronavirus social distancing laws we were note able to go to Uni and use the RX 7 software to clean up the vocals to remove the noises and background effects. We had to make do by EQ and the clever use of basic compression and using the Desser in Pro tools. Had the Covid-19 virus not that happened I would have cleaned up the vocal takes with RX 7.
Learning taken from the project
After completing this project it really was a hard project to complete from the beginning because I had never recorded a podcast before in my life. Luckily after pitching the idea in week 2, Gilang had previously made comedy podcasts in Indonesian and have knowledge in publishing a podcast online. Gilang showed me the free site called Anchor it is a podcast management site which does the service for free'ish they earn revenue from the getting a cut from the advertisers that place ads in front of your podcast. So the actual workflow is really quite simple, once you mixed and mastered your podcast to the correct loudness levels you just have upload a WAV file to the website under your account and it will be published on Spotify within a week. I guess I did not research enough and had this fear of the unknown. Finishing this project really taught me a great deal in publishing methods as there are other services out there operate very similar to Anchor.
After doing the research on how to record podcast I found out that you can actually rent out rooms meeting rooms in the city specifically to hold podcast meetings. This is something that I did not know, in the past I thought that you had to either rent an actual recording studio which would be expensive, or buy the equipment yourself. Doing this project has taught me there were theses services available and is quite cheap to rent.
Because of the whole Covid-19 virus, I got sick in week 7 from using bleach to clean the house. Getting sick essentially made me lose a whole week of productivity. Because I did not have a backup plan to this project I began stressing out really bad and at one point almost quit the course because I did not want to take an academic penalty as well as a financial one. I was moonlighting as a taxi driver and all of sudden it became dangerous for me to go out since I live my parents who are both over 65 and my wife and baby are in the same house. Loss of work created mounting financial and family pressures. This project has been a real test of my mental fortitude to remain focused and sane when completing this project.
Skillwise to produce some of the video initially I spent about 3 to 4 nights on learning Adobe Premiere to cut the first draft for the podcast. I initially thought to publish it as a video podcast like a vlog style but this was not suitable after getting feedback from Nick and even at week 9 I was struggling to understand the aesthetic of a Podcast. Eventually I had a light bulb moment when Nick reminded me to use the BBC podcast as a model for creating a podcast. Like how I would break down a song that we learnt in Trimester one I broke down the BBC podcast not into song sections but into the interview sections and I then started to see the whole picture. This was an invaluable technique in understanding a mix and it was a tool that could not only be used on songs but also on movies, trailers and even podcasts.
After breaking it down the BBC podcast I wrote down in Google sheets a plan for our podcast for Covid-19 and how it affects people from around the world. Gilang and I brainstormed a central question and we all just wrote the script on the fly.
The initial contacts several of them fell through like Lark and Oliver from animation since they were busy and could not help out. Gary was intermittent since he was located in China and it was hard to message him. We tried to use Wechat which is a like a China version of Facebook to contact him and we were successful but Gary seemed to be busy as well so it was hard to get a fixed time to interview him. I found it strangely funny that I had the resources from my past job to contact people but I guess because I was the one who was preventing me to contact them.
Once I was pushed to a corner I decided to contact several friends I knew Gary who was in Chicago and Joe who was in Huizhou China. Gilang contact Robin and also Anisa from Indonesia. I tested Zoom with Gary second since he was in USA to test the stability of the Zoom connection I have never done before. This was a great learning experience because I was able to connect with him and ask him to record himself over using his phone. As Gilang and I found out recording through zoom you will get delays and a very bad recording. Luckily we worked with Robin first but we got noise bleed into the microphone since Robin was not talking to us while using headphones and the laptop speakers were in the mix. This made it almost impossible to edit out in post production so we had to adapt a better process. Reflecting on this it was strange that I found it much easier to contact my old friends overseas than it was to contact people who were local for an interview. My mates were more than happy to try talk on a Zoom especially Joe who had clients in USA and in Europe, this was another tool that he learned as well to use.
Learning this I requested that Joe record himself while using headphones and talking to us. He then send the recordings back to me for vocal editing. This process was a little long winded but it gave Gilang and I a clean take in which we could edit in post. During the Zoom meeting we also recorded all the interviews which was used as a scratch track in the post sessions to sync the vocal conversations. This was a weird workflow that no one ever taught us and it was one that Gilang and I worked out under pressure. But this was a really good learning experience and I I ever interview another person again online over Zoom I will definitely ask them to use headphones and to to try to stay still while we have a meeting since the volume levels will change if the move around their phone.
Learning to clean up the vocals was a real challenge since I was not able to use RX7 from the school computers, but I was able to source a similar product online that had a free trial period called Acoustica 7.2 This was very similar audio editing tool to RX7 and after viewing a few online tutorials I was able to use the spectral cleaning tool inside Acoustica to remove the background rumble, clicks and pops to get a cleaner take from all the recorded voices of the interveiwees and also from Gilang and I. This project has made more aware of more tools other than Rx7 but the they all operate in a similar way so after using Acoustica it's just the same workflow for Rx7.
Our team worked quite well for the short time that Gilang and I did spend working on the project, Gilang put in a good deal of effort as much as I did in recording his takes, cleaning up the vocals and sending them to me so that I could mix them in the final project. Life circumstances sometimes got in the way for us to be able to work together earlier on in the trimester but we both pulled through together to create an engaging talk. I wrote the script for introducing the questions and since my English was a bit better than Gilang's I edited the script mostly. Gilang still participated really well in finding Robin and Anissa as our interviewees and coupled with my old contacts Gary and Joe we had enough people to interview. Although Gary Chen from Audio was not available he was able to recommend another student Godwill from design, who helped design a logo for our podcast.
In Conclusion it was a great ride but also a very stressful ride in making this podcast with Gilang.
I learned so much in terms of software and creating unorthodox workflows to get the same recording result.
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