The Brief
For our last project In this course, “Media 1” we were told to create a Video and Audio essay, each around 5 minutes long. Now what is a Video essay you might ask, well for those of you who aren’t aware it’s basically an essay in terms of the research element but in presentation it is… well either a video piece or audio piece. Each group was given a topic on which to base their essay, they were loose leaving it up to us to determine exactly what we wanted to do. We were given Media technology and Mediums, and as one of my group mates had a love for podcast and radio we decided to stick with that theme.
The Audio Essay
Though initially we as a group discussed doing a 2 part essay with the audio being the start and video the end, we instead decided to explore a very specific genre of Radio, the “Radio Drama”. Through our research this term kept coming up over and over again though none of us had ever before heard of the term. For those of you who don’t know a Radio Drama is a series of radio plays, it runs along the same lines as a play or television show only without visuals, though these were traditionally based on books. There were two main shows that kept cropping up, a Radio Drama called War of the Worlds aired in 1938 and a Podcast called Welcome to Night-vale. So we decided to conduct a case study of the two comparing radio drama in the past to its new reincarnation in podcast form.
We had an idea in which the audio essay would be split into two halves the first a radio show when radio had just past its peak popularity discussing War of the Worlds and a current podcast discussing welcome to Night-Vale. We had people calling in to share their experiences on the radio show and Tweets from people in the podcast it had really great texture and complexity. However, it was a lot for a short amount of time, and as a result we were instructed to remove everything extra leaving all my favorite bits out. We were instructed to take this project from one perspective so we chose the podcast, and were told to put in more quotes and in text/in speech references. Admittedly it is much simpler now and probably flows better, however, I maintain that the call in’s and tweets not only signified the affordances of the medium but also gave it character.
In terms of editing this piece is quite simple the footage is cut together from two takes with fades between those that require it, it also has a backing track of ambient noise so there are few awkward cuts. It is also backed by music from Bensound.com.
Video Essay
The video essay, however, remained as a timeline it was set to cover everything from the start of radio to current podcast times. This piece was a lot more straight forward than the previous piece. After the advice we were given by our lecturer we decided to go for a much more straight forward approach.
The video essay consists predominantly of a voice over discussing the facts we have discovered over the course of our research. Along with footage retrieved from various different stock footage sites layed over the top as the visual component of the essay. During our discussion with our tutor she stated that “this was exactly what she wanted.” Though it was less creative, which was what was initially discussed in the brief it definitely catered more to the idea of the essay. In particular the idea of reworking existing information into a coherent piece. This is reflected in the way in which the footage and facts were collected from many disparate sources but reworked to create a media product. This influenced our final decision on whether or not to film our own footage and in the end we decided against it.
The main issue we had with this project was time, as we had to completely rewrite, film and edit our audio essay it left little time for the video essay, this meant only one of our group members had was able to work on each project. I was in charge of the audio for both pieces, Chynnae worked on the production dossier and Nicole was is charge of putting together the visuals for the video essay.