Consider in what ways you hope your final work engages its audience and communicates a key concern of the studio? Draw upon your experiences from attending the studio exhibition.

My final work, The Last Supper aims to engage the audience through its multitrack format allowing for a surprising listening experience throughout the 18 minute piece. Having multiple characters means the listener should be able to relate to at least one of them (despite all characters being slightly unbearable). The different ‘moments’ of Anna’s final dinner party each display a slice of her fateful night which hopefully makes it easier for audiences to maintain focus throughout, avoiding boredom or fatigue considering the absence of visual accompaniments. Furthermore, the ability for listeners to skip through or skip back to previous tracks allows for a level of interactivity. As Huwiler (2016) stated in A Narratology of Audio Art: Telling Stories by Sound, ‘The interfering listeners can actually influence the sequence of the different parts of the story from time to time, and thus they can take part in the storytelling to a certain degree, or at least they believe they can take part in it’(pg. 110). This was something Niamh and I wanted to explore in our Final piece. After talking to people who listened to The Last Supper at the studio showcase, I believe niamh and I accomplished that.

Outline the singular most successful and singular most problematic aspect of your process/finished work

The most problematic aspect of the finished work would be, in my opinion, the quality of voice acting. Considering time limits it became unfeasible for me and Niamh to hire voice actors. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to have friends to step in and contribute to our work. Whilst I am very grateful for their time and effort, I believe the final work would be of higher quality if we were able to use professionals. I also believe the listener would be able to immerse themselves more in the story, as some of the line deliveries sound a bit strange (breaking the fantasy a little bit). However, I thoroughly enjoyed recording Cam, Bella, Lexi and Jack as I haven’t laughed that hard in a while and it was a fun activity to do on a winter night. I am so grateful for their efforts. Despite this, the final work was completed in a timely manner and we were both proud of what we accomplished. This, for me, was the most successful aspect of this process. Having done group projects before in other studios, the fact that I was able to complete a fully fleshed out audio piece of 18 minutes is very impressive to me.

Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece, what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?

If I was to continue working on the concept of The Last Supper I would like to improve the story, more specifically, how the story was divided amongst the tracks. I believe that we could’ve made it more dramatic and really lent into the ‘slice of the night’ aspect of the piece. Ideally, each track would directly link to how Anna was murdered and really focus on the mystery at the heart of the story. However, niamh and I were always conscious of how to create an audio piece that made sense. As Ferrington (1993) quoted, ‘The audio designer recognizes the limits of the medium and strives to engage interaction between the sound stimulus and the listener’s interpretive ability (Zaza, 1991)’ (pg. 2). This is one of the reasons we opted for tracks that focused around dialogue as this would avoid confusing the audience. In a remake, I would probably be less worried about this and I would focus on creating textually interesting tracks like track 4. I think it would also be interesting to create visual accompaniments for the piece.

Outline one key thing you’ve learnt from your studio experience that you will take into your future thinking and practice

A key lesson I’ve taken from this studio would be the endless possibilities in creating an audio narrative and how sounds can impact storytelling more than I understood previously. I believe removing visual aspects from media creation pushes you to work more thoughtfully and creatively with audio. In future thinking and practice I will never ignore the affordances of audio. Furthermore, upon watching students work in other studios that were visually focussed, I couldn’t help but notice how much better their projects would be if the audio was as equally favoured as the visual. Within film, sound is often under-utilised, ‘Sound contributes significantly to the materiality of the image, despite its intangibility, fleshing out the movement of objects and bodies through increasingly fine detail’(Donaldson, 2017).

What’s one key takeaway about working collaboratively? Or, if your work was solely independent throughout this studio, what aspects do you think would have been improved and/or detrimented by working collaboratively?

Working collaboratively with Niamh was incredibly easy. A key takeaway for me is that creating something alongside another person is infinitely easier if you have a shared vision and are both passionate about making good work. Compared to other group projects I’ve been in, this creative process cannot be faulted. Another key takeaway for me is to always be open to suggestions as two minds is truly better than one when it comes to story making and storytelling.

Include at least 3 x references to readings from the course/individual research to support your reflection

Donaldson, L. F. (2017). Feeling and Filmmaking: The Design and Affect of Film Sound. The New Soundtrack, 7(1), 31–46. https://doi.org/10.3366/sound.2017.0095

Ferrington, G. (1994). Audio Design: Creating Multi-Sensory Images For the Mind. Journal of Visual Literacy, 14(1), 61–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/23796529.1994.11674490

Huwiler, Elke. (2016). A Narratology of Audio Art: Telling Stories by Sound. 10.1515/9783110472752-007.

Do you think your major work is effective as a media object/cultural product and if so, in what ways? How could similar work be improved/ what would you do differently if you were to make a similar work in the future?

I believe my major work, The Last Supper is effective as both a media object and a cultural artifact. Having written, produced and edited a completely original 18 minute long multitrack piece I believe Niamh and I should be proud of the work we submitted. By choosing to cut the story into separate tracks, the work is effective in capturing the audience’s attention and I could see listeners tuning in across different parts of the day to eventually solve the murder mystery. By basing our story around the lives of young people, The Last Supper mirrors the youth of now and will one day become (hopefully) a time capsule of what it was like to be 25 in 2025. Niamh and I hope that the audio narrative is painfully relatable and feels true to our audience and will in turn be an effective cultural document. More often than not, I begin with an idea I’m quite passionate about but I slowly lose steam as the project comes to fruition. If I could create this project again it would sound pretty different as I could use all the lessons I learnt along the way during this semester and the creative process. The main place I would work on would be the script. Through editing and listening to it over and over again I realised I would’ve liked to focus more on the mystery of Anna’s *murder* and lean into the camp and comedy (like seen in track 1- Death becomes her or track 4-4:20pm). 

1. What was your personal contribution to the work? Please provide evidence, e.g. screenshots or documents of your work in progress. 

Throughout this project Niamh and I worked very closely, partly because we live together but mostly due to the shared passion for this project and the mutual desire to oversee each point of production. In saying this, each of us have strengths and weaknesses to which we respected throughout the making process. Having a background in illustration (and an obsession with procreate) I was in charge of the cover art for the CD and Soundcloud album. I also focused on the pre-production organisation, creating a google drive where we held all of our documents, work-in-progresses and inspiration.

Throughout this stage I also created a project timeline to hold us accountable and ensure we got this done efficiently and without stress. Niamh and I collaborated across the scriptwriting and editing, splitting up the work in half whilst helping each other out when needed.

2. What worked well and what could’ve been improved about the collaborative process? 
4. The collaborative process was very smooth and kink-free. I truly have nothing to complain about.

Did you learn any lessons that you can take to future collaborations? 

I learnt that I can be a bit of a control freak when working collaboratively, especially when the original concept was my idea. However, working with Niamh (someone I can talk very openly with) made this a bit easier. I feel it is very important to work with a team you can trust but to also have trust in them and understand that your idea is not the only good idea in the room. In future collaborations I will focus on good organisation and open communication. 

1. What are some of the most important lessons about working with audio that you have learned in our studio? 

When working on audio that accompanies visuals, the audio tends to take the backseat. Whilst this might mean less work it also means a very powerful part of the work as a whole is incredibly underutilised. Building a strong soundscape and having clear, crisp dialogue can impact an audience’s reaction to the piece exponentially.  Take for example Girl V. Horse by Nicole Teeny. Sure, this podcast would be a great t.v show or film but having audio only forces the listener to hear every layered sound, creating their own personal visuals in their mind. I also learnt that audio is very delicate and takes skill to coordinate an even soundscape with a focus on balance. 

1. Having had a focused period of time dedicated to working with audio, how do you think audio fits into your future as a creative worker? 

I chose this studio because I wanted to focus on audio to further enrich my creative pursuits in the future. I hate to admit it but previously, audio was something I would just throw in and focus on the bare necessities like syncing and volume. Engineering Audio Narratives has provided me with the knowledge and inspiration to ensure my future works are polished, both visual and audio aspects. 

1. Where do you think audio fits into the future of media in general?

I see the future of audio evolving further away from radio as streaming becomes more popular and moving towards having an even larger internet presence. However, it will be interesting to see how it evolves alongside AI as we are already able to make any script a podcast, talk to AI celebrities and listen to AI made music. 

1. Do you have any parting thoughts or comments?

This studio has instilled in me a greater understanding and appreciation of audio works and their production. I am very excited to transfer the skills I have acquired into future projects, be that audio only or audio-visual. I look forward to displaying The Last Supper at the exhibition as well as exploring the other audio pieces created by the class of Engineering Audio Narratives 2025!