Workshop 3 - Interviewing

                                                     Media Workshop - Interviewing

For this workshop me and my partner, Alfie, decided to interview each other with random topics we decided upon. Because our interview only used audio and no filming it meant it was much easier to do in pairs, because it was also an interview it meant we didn't have to worry about adding anything in post production.

The Questions we were going to ask each other

We started by drafting up topic ideas we would decide to ask questions about, we just wrote the first ideas that came into our head and then we both selected for ourselves what topic we would feel more comfortable answering questions for.

After we had decided on a topic we then decided to draft some questions out and rehearse them to get an idea on the kind of answers we would respond with and if we felt comfortable with the questions. Since Alfie wanted to keep his favourite and least favourite food a secret until the actual recording I used "X" and "Y" as a placeholder for whatever the answer was going to be.

The final product of Alfie's Interview

We also changed a few of the questions and the way they were worded to make it sound more professional and what you would expect to hear from an interview. After we were happy with the questions that were going to be asked we decided to find a location to record, we decided on a empty area where no one else was so we wouldn't have any unneeded background noise for the most part, finding a location that fit this environment was easy enough for the most part. We started off by doing Alfie's interview where I asked him questions relating to food, the recording itself went perfectly fine for the most part, I did mispronounce a few words during recording and Alfie let out a few bursts of laughter but we were finished with Alfie's interview within 5 takes. Then we moved onto my interview, for this one we decided to do it in the canteen so there was a bit of talking in the background but not too much so the audio couldn't pick me up. This time Alfie asked me questions about Politics and my views on it and I answered accordingly, we didn't need to do as many retakes as Alfie's interview so we finished a lot faster.

We decided for time efficiency and ease of use we would record using my iPhone 5s and the built in microphone and record audio using the voice record application, Apple doesn't publish the microphones specifications, but it's reasonable to assume that the mic is omnidirectional, with a frequency range of typical smaller microphones of 50-15,000 cycles which made it sufficient enough to record audio and make it come out sounding as professional as possible.

After we had finished recording the next step was to get the audio clips on Garageband so we could edit the clip in, thankfully, because I recorded on my iPhone I was able to send Alfie the audio clips via email which didn't take up any time what so ever, once we had access to the files on the Macs we opened Garageband and dragged and dropped the audio into a Garageband file which when then saved. We didn't need to edit the audio at all because it was an interview and I wanted to keep the natural sounds.

To conclude, going into the interviews I believe that me and my partner handled it really well, we were able to plan quite a bit with the script which helped when it came to the actual recording. However, one thing I would do differently is get a few more audio clips in different locations to spread out the variety of the interview audio.