Reflection on an Audio Interview

As a typical college student, when I initially received the assignment to get an audio interview and edit it into a “tellable” story I did what any true academic would do, I forgot about it until four days prior to its due date.  On the Monday before the assignment was due, I went to the equipment rental room and reserved a camera for the following day.  Upon arriving to pick up my camera 24 hours later; however, I found out that the prior rentee of my required equipment had not returned it in over 48 hours.  Luckily, the kindly folk in the tech rental room were able to help me out and get me the equipment I needed.  What they were unable to help with, though, was getting in touch with my interviewee, who had not returned any of my phone calls from the day, before, or the day, present.  In need of someone in crunch time, I resigned to just use my roommate, figuring that everyone is capable of thinking up a good story from some summer job in their past.  This inclination could not have been more wrong.  Fortunately, my original interviewee got back to me about half way through hour 2 of trying to get a usable tale from Ian, my roommate.  Praising my lucky stars, I walked over to my CA’s (that’s community advisor, rough equivalent to an off-campus RA) apartment, and proceeded to record her story.

I had heard the story in an earlier pre-interview, and I figured she was the perfect candidate for the assignment; well-spoken and with a good natural cadence.  Another inclination, on my part, that was not entirely accurate.  As soon as the tape began she turned into an “umm…-er” and a “like, so, you know…-er.” In addition, it happened that she had a bit of a sailor’s mouth, which, I must admit, humored me slightly.  Nonetheless, I recorded a “tellable story.”  In typical fashion, my bravado told me that it would be a breeze to edit this down; an hours work at most.  This was simply and totally untrue.  The next day, I spent four hours in the lab attempting at first to delete every individual pause and “umm,” only to find these so entangled within a coherent thought that it was impossible to extract the undesirable information.  I was able, thankfully, to remove any colorful language.  After I toiling over the cadence of the interview, I realized I was still 50 seconds over the limit for the audio clip.  There I spent another hour.  Finally I was done, and with extensive frustration from a technical standpoint, I submitted my clip, which I believe turned out rather well.

The next time I do this,  I will most certainly allow more time, but more importantly have some sort of a reliable backup.  The last thing I wanted was all the frustrations that come with doing and assignment like this at the last minute; I would account for as many variables as I could.  I would also advise my interviewee to take it slowly and calmly, and I though maybe I’d even discuss some sort of hand signal beforehand if the audio is getting too jumbled and unclear.  All in all, it was a fairly simple assignment that really opened my eyes to how complex some of the software/hardware is available to us as journalism students.