Audio Story- Draft

Audio Interview Draft

For my audio story, I chose to conduct an interview. The purpose of this interview is to obtain market research in relation to what candidates look for in a prospective company. I “went to the field” in a matter of speaking. A coworker of mine was gracious enough to let me bombard her with questions. Below you can listen to the draft of the interview conducted.

If the embedded audio below is not working, click here.

Inspiration

Working in Human Resources, everyday discussions include benefits, employee satisfaction, retention, culture, compensation, ect. The intent of exploring Matching Talent through this blog was to provide an opportunity to get in the minds of candidates or employees who perhaps don’t discuss these topics on a daily basis because it is part of their job.

Human Resources is always trying to find the right way to engage current and future employees. However, sometimes I wonder if what our employees really want gets lost in all of the data, policies and initiatives.

This is why I chose to conduct an interview for my Audio Story. I wanted an opportunity to hear from an employee what is important to them. Another reason why I chose an interview for my Audio Story is because I knew I could use some of this material for our next project, the Video Story.

Research and Raw Materials

I started gathering raw materials when we were working on our Audition Tutorials. The first person I interviewed was my boyfriend who is currently a full time student. His interview gave me great material for our second Audition Tutorial and was a nice trial run. After splicing down the first interview for our Audition Tutorial, I realized I was definitely going to need additional material for this Project.

The Interview

I spent some time writing down questions that would be beneficial to reference during the interview, and I reached out to a coworker to schedule some time for us to meet. Although I was ultimately going to need three minutes of audio, I made sure we had at least 30 minutes to accommodate for the set up/take down along with a 10-15 minute interview.

Just finding a conference room to conduct the interview was challenging. We work in manufacturing, so in most of our conference rooms you can hear a light rumbling from the plant. Once we found a conference room that worked, I tried to decompress the interview stress before starting the recording.

In order to get the camera angle I wanted of the interviewee, I had to be in a position where my laptop microphone could not hear me very well. This resulted in me having to make separate recordings of myself asking the questions. This challenge resulted in some additional time editing, but also gave me flexibility to rearrange how I asked certain questions.

Sound Bites

Selecting music to pair with this interview was not easy. There are so many options out there and each will communicate a different feel to the listener. I ended up selecting two clips of music I found on SoundCloud that are legal to use under Creative Commons.

The two audio clips I used are entitled Feelings and Blossom.

Technical Process

The Interview Tracks

Once I had my initial interview recording, I listened to it several times to select the portions of the interview I wanted to use in this Audio Story. I used the razor tool to cut the material down to about three minutes. Next, I re-recorded myself asking questions that paired best with the interview responses I wanted to use. I saved each of these files with appropriate titles to easily differentiate them in Audition.

Using Multitrack, I dragged each of these recordings to the “Files” section of Audition. I went through both of these audio tracks A LOT of times. I used the razor tool to edit out unnecessary “ums” along with other words or sounds that did not add value to the audio.

After editing the track of Tabby and the track of myself talking individually, I aligned the two audio tracks so that the conversation flowed without significant pauses. At this stage I listened to the audio a few more times and made a few more edits with the razor tool. I also overlapped some pieces of audio as you can see in the screen shot below.

The Music Tracks

Next, I added the first music track, Feelings. The Feelings audio track makes up the first 44 seconds and the last 5 seconds of the music used. For the rest of the interview I used the music track, Blossom.

In the introduction, the music fades in at a value of 40 for the first 6 seconds. When Tabby introduces herself the fade peaks, then fades out at a value of 13. I wanted the music to continue throughout the interview, but at a lower volume. To do this I used the razor tool to create 3 sections of this portion of the audio track. When the music fades out, it fades into a lower volume of the same track, at -33.3 dB.

The music maintains this volume until 1:55, at which time it fades out at a value of 71 when I ask “How would you describe the culture here?” This is when Tabby says “passion describes our culture.” I wanted to bring focus to this. During this section of Tabby talking about the passionate people in the industry, the music changes to the Blossom track and fades in at a value of -32. At this value the music gets louder the more passionate she gets in speaking about the people.

At 2:28, the music begins to fades out at a value of 43 before I ask my last question, “What is your favorite part about the company?” There is an intentional pause here before Tabby says, “The people,” and the fade in climaxes.

At 2:34 a different section of the audio track Blossom fades in at a value of -16 before it slowly fades out at a value of -35. The loudest point here is right after Tabby says “the people,” to give emphasis.

After Tabby answers the last question, at 2:53, the music cuts back to Feelings and fades in quickly at a value of 56, then fades out at a value of 13.

Takeaways

I learned a few things through this process that will definitely be good takeaways for next time…
1. Schedule more time than you need.
2. Gather more material than you need, because you’ll probably only like half of it.
3. Find a quiet place to record; doing a test record is definitely a good idea (the heaters in my house are very loud, apparently. I didn’t realize how loud until I heard them on my playback.).
4. Find a way to put who you are talking with at ease.
5. Conduct all recordings in the same environment if possible.
6. Just like some of our readings have said, you’re going to think it sounds awful, but just keep practicing.

Looking Forward to Your Feedback

I am not sure if all of the fading in and out with the music created a distraction or added feeling/emphasis to the interview. I’m also not sure if overall the music is too loud or not. I look forward to your feedback.

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Citations:
Music:
QK Beats. “Blossom.” 2020. https://soundcloud.com/qkumba-beats/blossom
Channel: www.youtube.com/c/QKBeats
Sad Mur. “Feelings.” 18 June 2017. https://soundcloud.com/sad_mur/feelings-chill-free-to-use
Image:
Nikon D7000 “Condenser Microphone.” Pixabay. 21 November 2016. pixabay.com/photos/audio-conden…hone-music-1844798/

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