This assignment was a massive struggle for me. My MacBook finally decided to give up on me before I was able to complete editing and mixing my piece. There was a frantic struggle to get hold of a new device from RMIT. Luckily I’m a staff member there so I was able to arrange a long-term loan of one of the Student Life laptops. The whole process of having the laptop delivered took over a week, as I was unable to obtain a pass to get on campus. Eventually the device was delivered to me via courier, which was well past the submission deadline for this assignment.
The next problem I encountered was that administration permissions are required for new software to be downloaded onto RMIT devices. The frustration of dealing with ITS over the phone was a huge stress. I haven’t been able to download any audio editing programs at all in the time I’ve had a working laptop. My first thought was that I could at least get a hold of a basic online editing tool, like an online version of Audacity, which would give me a small opportunity to fulfil some of the basic requirements for this assessment. The only online tool which seemed to edit audio which I could upload was twistedwave.com. I had never used this website before, so I was expecting to at least be able to multitrack and layer some audio samples behind the interview dialogue. In the end I was only able to manage the interview dialogue as an individual track.
Overall I am hugely disappointed with the work I’ve had to submit. I expect much better results for audio pieces that I produce, especially since I have training in sound production. The requirements were not outside of my ability and I know that I wouldn’t have had any problem with meeting teh submission deadline. I guess this whole process has been a pretty just example of the stresses we are all enduring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. None of my problems would have been such an issue during a normal period, as I would have been able to work from the RMIT campus or borrow some equipment from a friend.