Project Brief 4 is different in a whole new level. That is because, unlike all the assignments that we had, which were videos, this time it’s audio. Which brings me to my second point, I am unfamiliar with it because I’ve just been mainly doing videos. It is also a group project, which means working with other people, that itself is a challenge. Lastly, for this assignment, research is a must, which means lots of academic reading, interviewing and discussing, which are overwhelming.

Starting off, I was paired up with Aria and Kate. It went along pretty well the first week, we met up, figured out what we wanted to do, did our collaborative contract, and made a group in Facebook. However the following week, Kate didn’t reply in the group chat, thus me and Aria met up without her to figure out the next step we should be doing. By the third week, since there were still no sign of her, we emailed Jeremy and told him about the situation. Fortunately, he understood our condition, so he told us he’s happy with just the both of us doing the assignment, if we are. We were totally up for that, so that leaves our group with just me and Aria.

Moving on to the topic of our assignment, which was attention, at first we were pretty clueless of what we’re going to do. We focused too much on the word “attention” and that made us limit ourselves from thinking outside the box. However, as we gained an understanding, we realized that there are actually a lot of options to choose from. Thus, in the end, we decided to do the topic “female nudity and objectification of women”.

We also made sure that we understand the criteria and requirements needed for the assignment. One of them is the annotated bibliography. Since it’s an individual task, we did it in our own time, although in order not to work on the same one, we notify each other on what we’re doing. It was my first time, so I find it the reading and summarizing a little overwhelming, especially the exhausting process of finding the right material. To help me with this, I did some research, and although I can’t say I’m confident with it, I’m definitely more knowledgeable in how it works now.

For our audio, we interviewed two people, which makes up a big part of our audio piece. The first person we featured is my friend, Jenny. She’s a fashion design student, at the same time, also does life painting, so she often works with nudity. The other person is Dr. Stayci Taylor, who graduated from a PhD in screenwriting, which also includes some context of feminism. A few things I learnt from interviewing is to make an effort to contact the person, book a quiet room, ask the right question, be as professional as possible and also to check the mic level! Because it was too low when we interviewed Stayci.

There was also a feedback session in the last workshop, where we played our rough cuts (just interviews) to Catherine, and then getting some inputs and opinion from her. As I wrote in my last post, she suggested us to redo the interview with Jenny, but unfortunately since Jenny’s really busy with uni, we had to work with what we had. She also suggested a few other things, but more importantly, she told us that we should not let music overshadow our original material, because she told us lots of people do that, and that’s just bad.

Lastly, after we have all the things we needed, it’s time to edit. We decided to do it on Aria’s laptop as she’s used Adobe Audition before. We went with a podcast concept as we wanted to make the audio more fun. This audio is supposed to be an episode of our made up series, Girl Power, with Me and Aria as the hosts. Although it’s edited on Aria’s laptop, we try to contribute as equally as possible, so we both take part in editing the audio.

What we did for the audio was really simple, which was what Catherine had suggested. As we went for a podcast concept, there’s the introduction aka narration at the beginning, accompanied by a background music, which is made by Aria so it’s original! (how cool is that) Then, we had the recordings of the answers of the interviewees. For Jenny, we put a layer of atmospheric sound taken inside her life drawing class, while as for Stayci, the sound of typing keyboard we recorded. Then we had another narration for the end, also accompanied with Aria’s original piece. There were also a disclaimer at the very end, that I almost forgot about, which is a requirement. That’s it, really simple audio work, although we did work hard on cutting out parts from the interview, and since Stayci’s volume is really low, we had to do some noise reduction.

Overall, I learnt a lot throughout the whole process of this assignment. From working in a group, researching, doing interviews, getting feedback, editing, to writing a reflection, every single thing was a valuable lesson. The most important lesson I think isn’t about the technicalities but the moral value. It is being responsible and doing your part in a group, don’t let someone carry all the burden. This project definitely challenges me and Aria as a team. I believe we did our best, so regardless of the result, I’m happy with our teamwork.