Oral Rhetoric 2008 :: Blog

The Interview Process:

I chose to interview my younger sister, Justine. I thought it would give me insight on the experience of death from her eyes. She's only two years younger than me, but, even that small gap in age changes such an intense experience such as this.

 I found that she perceived different moments differently from me, she remembered different things than me. Some events that seemed so strong in my mind and so important at the time, skimmed by her. Yet, she noticed things I didn't.

It's odd how only a two year difference in age changes the way we experience things in life. Whether it be how we percieve someone's actions or speech towards us. Different ages pay attention to different aspects. I found this fascinating. I'm glad I had this opportunity to speak with her, as I never would have gained this newfound respect for my younger sister!

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I lost the file!!! My sister was unavailable to do the interview in time, due to her work schedule, so I opted for my mom. I'm thankful this happened, because my mom, Mary, was the better choice! Sorry Justine, if you ever see this!!!

It was a bit difficult in terms of the technical aspect to deal with my mom. She didn't even know where the microphone was! But, I think it came out as a more authentic interview. My mom struggled with her words, even though we had previously discussed the questions! She even had a shaky tone and stuttered. Instead of editing this out, I kept it. I thought it added to the authenticity of the interview and revealed how much this experience still sticks around with her and the family.

She also revealed something that I never thought to mention. I guess because she's a mom she pointed out the grief of my cousins losing a mother. That's what stood out to her the most yet I never thought to mention it! Interesting! A common link between both interviews! What a gratifying experience. I don't we would've had this discussion otherwise.

The Final Recording:

http://www.badongo.com/audio/12160378

From creating sounds to downloading prerecorded sounds to mixing everything on Audacity - I had a ton of fun creating my sound collage! I had been thinking about possible sounds since I first told my story in class, so I began this assignment with a vague idea of how I wanted my finished project to sound. Guess what? It worked! 

When it came to recording sounds, this was my first introduction to "sound file-hosting sites." I was so intrigued by this. I was able to incorporate sounds into my collage that otherwise would have been impossible if I had to record them on my own. The sound collage process ended up taking longer than I thought only because I spent sooooo much time exploring the different free sounds available online.

The only obstacle I encountered was dragging my keyboard upstairs to my bedroom so that I could plug it into my computer and record the piano music that I use at the beginning and end of my sound collage. My grandmother was not too impressed with the mess I was making! On the bright side, I never had a program like Audacity before to let me record my piano on the computer. I'm grateful that my attention has been brought to it now, thanks to this course.   

Working with Audacity was pretty easy, it is a very user-friendly program.  I did not feel like I was "working" on a sound collage, more like "playing" with Audacity. I love the layering feature. I was able to weave together my piano music with the sounds of children playing outside and I think that will really help set the tone of my final piece. "Splicing" also turned out to be very useful in keeping my sound collage within the set time frame. Overall, my experience creating a sound collage was educational but also a relaxing exercise in creativity that I would gladly engage in again.    

You can listen to my interview here: http://www.badongo.com/audio/12150292  

If that doesn't work, try this link: http://www.box.net/shared/vforax8iyf

I recorded my interview with my mom, who was the deciding factor in letting me keep Shady. When I listened to the rough cut of the interview, I realised her point of view on bringing home Shady was much different than mine! For the record, my reasonings were purely emotional, and hers were practical, but the reason Shady got to stay was emotional for both of us: we fell in love with him!

Cutting the interview was the hardest part. I originally had twelve minutes of sound! I started by cutting out quiet moments, then all of the "um's" and "ah's," then I had to start seriously cutting out uneccessary material. I really enjoyed the interview, and I thought my subject had a lot of valuable things to say. So, it was hard to cut out pieces to keep within the time range.

The Interview Starring Kevin Kishundat [My BFF]

I knew exactly who to interview for my Linkin Park story --my bestfriend Kevin. I called him last night and told him I needed to interview someone who understood my obsession, he naturally obliged. It was so much fun, we laughed through the whole thing because we were reliving the concert itself.

Kevin came with me to see Linkin Park but on my third time (it was this past summer). He knows what it's like going to a rock concert with me and he gets my unhealthy infatuation with Mike Shinoda. He wasn't there in 2004 but he knew all about it so it was fun hearing him talk about a story I told him almost 5 years ago. It was hard being serious at some points, there was a lot of rambling and laughing going on which I had to cut. When you interview your bestfried they often know you so well that you don't need to ask any questions, they pretty much tell all. I stupidly asked close-ended questions but Kevin kept going and carried on which made my interview easier to accomplish. 

 Editing took a while, there was over 8 minutes of material and I had to cut half of it! It was really hard because I loved everything we talked about. I had to cut things that absolutely had no correlation to my Linkin Park story. At some parts he talks about my journal and my non-esistent "depression" when I found out Mike Shinoda was married. Lots of bloopers I wish I could keep.

 What I liked about my interview was that it was laidback, easy going and fun. There's a lot of laughter which is highly infectious so I really hope people get a hoot out of this.

 Interview with Kevin --  http://www.box.net/shared/idvaj3bdjd

         As a reminder, 'January 18th' is the story of the night I was left to look after a group of drunken students and ended up with my soon-to-be-partner at a hospital the following morning, and the effect that the night had on my personal development. 

Recording the Interview

       I actually recorded two interviews. I first interviewed my friend Chris, who was present and mostly sober throughout most of the night and is very close to both myself and Alex. He has seen our relationship develop firsthand and he is also a good friend whom I trust and value dearly. The next day, I interviewed Alex himself to get his unique perspective on the night itself-- or at least what he remembered of it!

Throughout both interviews, I ran into simiar problems:

• Getting the interviewees to use expressive, animated voices instead of sounding monotonous 
• Interviewees both had a tendancy to repeat the question before they answered it, disrupting the flow of conversation
• Getting the interview to seem more like a conversation than an interrogation
• Focusing the questions so their answers would relate to the aspect of my story I  was trying to highlight
• Getting the interviewees to say what I wanted them to say without coaching them

       Overall, I'm happy with the way the interviews worked out, but I think I might re-record a few questions to make them more focused and meaningful. At the end I thought you all might be curious to hear Alex's point of view, so that's the one I'm handing in.

 Interview MP3: listen to Alex's interview here: http://www.box.net/shared/x9jp8pipvm. 

 Story Soundbites- Antagonist v Protagonist

I'm not sure if this was supposed to go in last week's blog or this one, but here are two versions of my story soundbite- one from my perspective, and one from the antagonist's perspective (alcohol, intoxication):

Protagonist: The police officer muttered to the dons that they wanted to bring Alex to the hospital. As they dragged him out the door, I yelled, "you're not taking him anywhere  without me!"

Antagonist:  The gleaming, brimming bottles of rum sat patiently as the bored, groggy teenagers reached and grabbed them one by one.

Creating the sound collage was a pain in the ass, so I'm not gonna bother going through the experience again, I'd rather let it be.

 The interview was quite amusing since directing my younger brother was quite entertaining as you would suspect from listening to our interview. He is rather clueless and semi-retarted; but i love the poor bastard.

The Interview Experience 

I actually really enjoyed doing my interview. This wasn’t just because I interviewed my best friend, Julie, it was also because it gave me a new perspective on the red panties incident (Julie was the friend who was with me during throughout the story). One of the first questions that I asked Julie was to re-tell the story as best as she could. I ended up cutting this portion because it was 3-5 minutes on its own. What I found interesting was that our details about the individuals involved and their actions were almost exactly the same. Luckily, I had a number of questions lined up about her reaction to specific incidents such as when the manager claimed that I was the thief, how she felt being escorted around the mall by security, and her opinion on discrimination against the youth. Her answers verified what I had already thought, as well as expanded on her personal feelings and memories of the incident. Since, Julie is a major character in my story, I will definitely be using this material towards my final recording!

Interview Audacity Recording

http://www.box.net/shared/drif9mukgc

Let me start off by saying how surprised I was to find that someone as technically dense as I could use audacity with ease - and enjoy it much less. The actual recording, on the other hand, was a different story.

I decided to record what I could for my sound collage (I just bought a new recorder; I'm eager to try it out...). First I tried to record a car door slam. This took my several tries, none of which succeeded and I ended up using one I found from a website. The only sound that I used and recorded myself was the one of a car starting. The only thing I learned from the actual recording of my sound collage was that my car needs a tune up (seriously, the sound my car made when starting on that recording was no good at all...)

 The editing was fun. I took great pleasure and pride in finding the places where the sounds should end and start and how far apart each sound should be for a desired affect. The only thing I had trouble with was saving the file as an .mp3, but once I figured that out, I was feeling like a self-made millionaire in Silicon Valley.

The interview accompanying my story and sound collage can be found at : 

http://www.badongo.com/audio/12149217 

My sound collage is also on Badongo.