Tag: story catchers

Story Catchers Practicum: Week 2!

Since this is only a 1 unit practicum and progress of the project is dependent on many partners including KLCC, the City of Eugne and Story Catchers, I have decided to only post every 2 weeks. This posting schedule will better reflect the pace at which this project will most likely move and thus keep me from repeating redundant information. With that said, here’s what’s happened in the first 2 weeks!

Prior to the start of the term, I met with KLCC to discuss the possibility of putting Story Catchers on the air. They were very interested and offered an opportunity to air edited versions of Story Catchers once a month on NPR’s Here & Now. Thus, I would be editing one story a month and work with KLCC to create an intro for broadcast. KLCC was worried about release of the stories and while each participant in the interviews signed a release form, they thought I should still check to see if further release was necessary. We agreed to talk again in October and thus I embarked on setting up the practicum to work on this project.

Since my main supervisor Marsha Barr will be in Spain till Janurary, it took some time figuring out the paperwork. Marsha thus suggested that I also rely on Clare Feighan as a second supervisor, because she is in Eugene and more available. I met with her this weekend and filled her in on the current state of the project and she offered her help in furthering this term’s progress. Together we decided that it would be best for me to focus on broadcast of Story Catchers interviews this term and continue the indexing when Marsha returns. Hence, we decided that my main goals for this term are to secure releases, work with KLCC to air Story Catchers and publicize the segment on Story Catcher’s website. I am currently working on figuring out the release by talking with Jan at the City and I will hopefully be meeting with KLCC next week to further discuss a plan for the broadcast. I have given Don & Tripp my example of an edited story that I made last year and Tripp has said that the story was good. I am interested to hear what other notes they have to give me. I am sure that we will have to re-tool the intro, but I don’t know yet if I will be doing the intro or if they would prefer a trained professional to do so. I plan to figure out these details in our upcoming meeting. Perhaps, if things go well, one of the stories can be aired by the end of the month! Though considering there are only 3 months to a term, this practicum is going to go by really fast. I do however, plan to continue this project through the year. Don said that overtime, they could increase the frequency of the segment. I guess we’ll have to see! So excited!

Story Catchers Practicum: Week 8

This week Marsha and I met and mapped out the plan for the rest of the term. I will be focusing on finishing Alito’s story and cleaning up the audio for other stories. Marsha gave me about 10 stories to work on over the last few weeks. We will restart the index project next year and probably continue editing audio. I emailed Nancy and she is fine with the extended project timeline. She also complimented us on our index so far, so we are moving in the right direction! I recorded an intro to Alito’s story, but I still need to add music. Once I have done that, I will email KLCC about airing the story. At least we will have an example of an edited story to use for next year. I have sent Marsha the evaluation and she will be getting that to me when we have our last meeting next week.

The process of cleaning up the audio has really showed me what not to do when recording. For instance, it is really difficult to edit out loud sounds like coughs or interruptions. Some of these stories were recorded on a stereo mic with left/right speakers and some were on a mono mic.  Not everyone who used the stereo mic used it correctly causing one side of the mic to be really quite while the other is very loud. This is what happened for Wilma Crow and Twila Souers story. You can hear Twila clearly (as well as her breathing) but you can barely hear Wilma. This made it difficult to boost Wilma’s sound because it made Twila’s sound even louder. So, if Twila breathed into the mic or made any noise, it would drown out Wilma. So, I tried my best to boost the sound and reduce the noise, though there are some areas that it is impossible to fix without cutting out important info. However, KLCC did use this interview for one of their Eugene 150 spotlights. I listened to their story and the audio sounds decent. I’m not sure what they did to fix it. Perhaps they used their fancy normalizer algorithms. This being said, many of the stories that involve fixing the volume end up taking longer to edit than I expect. I still plan to finish the 10 stories next week, but it’s good to know for future planning. It’s always easier to record good sound than to edit later.

Story Catchers Practicum: Week 7

This week I focused on editing the stories Marsha gave me to clean-up. This has allowed me to hone my audio editing skills such as cutting and adjusting volume, so that I will be even more prepared for creating stories next year. Although many of the cds Marsha gave me where blank, which delayed the project somewhat. Hopefully we will meet this week to discuss this issue. I also emailed Nancy to check in on the indexing project. I have informed her that the indexing will probably not be finished by the end of the term and so we will have to pick it up again next year. I believe this will be fine since there was no set deadline. This will also give us time to perfect the audio of the collection.

In general, it’s pretty easy to use Audacity. I would like to eventually learn more its complicated features, but overall the program is intuitive. I’m not sure how many more stories there will be to edit, but I will hopefully finish those this term along with Alito’s story. I have not made the intro to his story yet, but I will be working on it this week. Then I can finally contact KLCC and get that conversation going for next year!