Last Wednesday, our instructors sent us out to gather some sound to refresh us on how to put together an audio piece. Anytime you gather audio, you look like a fool. It’s a given. Especially when a skateboarder skids by you and there you are running alongside him with your mic pointed at the ground. I’m sure the visual I just created in your head was fantastic. Anyways, the skateboarder just smiled and continued on his way. Most students here, especially when you’re around the journalism school, just know. They understand and many of them are willing to help you out.

So for our in class workshop, we were told to go out and spend 30 minutes gathering sound and come back and put together a short audio piece. It didn’t matter what the sound was. Anyways, here it was I ended up with:

Did you notice the nat pop I used of the coins being dropped in the parking meter? I also used the sound of cars driving by under the interview. I did this to place you in the environment of the story. I did the same thing using the sound of the skate board. I also used it as a natural break in the second interview.

Good audio makes up for bad video. I definitely think this workshop was a good reminder of that, especially since lately we have been spending a majority of our time working on putting together video. It’s easy to forget about audio when you’re constantly thinking about framing and shot sequences.

In addition, with video you have to plan out what video you need to put your piece together before you go out to gather it.  With audio, however, you gather whatever sound you can and then using that audio determine how you want to put your piece together. Sure, I got a lot of sound I did not use, but the more the merrier!

That’s all I got for you this week. I’m still chugging away on my final project. Stay tuned.