My podcast is called Falling Down Under with an Aussie. The inspiration came from my roommate and friend Natasha, the Aussie and guest speaker in this podcast. I find our differences in taste and dialect captivating. I always catch myself questioning her about her Australian childhood, holidays, foods, everything and compare it to mine. I love learning about the world around me and how people in other countries grow and live and I consider myself very lucky to have Natasha not only as a roommate but more importantly a close friend. I could imagine going through this last semester with anyone else!
This podcast gives a little background information on Natasha and where she is from along, what she does in her leisure time, along with her work, and success. The main topics discussed with Natasha are food, alcohol, and dialect. She talks about the differences and her experiences with the three in America compared to Australia.
The driving idea behind the finished product was for people to get a little insight on another culture/country and this one happens to be Australia. I find different cultures fascinating! I am always wanting to learn more about the world around me and I think travel is very important. I think it helps broaden the perspective and makes people more aware of everyone around them. This podcast topic was perfect and I think the final product exceeds my expectations!
The process of making this podcast was more fun than I thought it would be but also stressful! I think it was so fun for me to make this podcast because I did it with someone I am so close with so if her or I would screw up we would just laugh at and with each other instead of getting embarrassed. This process was super stressful because I am stuck in like the early 2000s when it comes to new computer stuff like iMovie, the software I used to make my podcast. It took me forever to figure out how to transfer the recordings from my phone to my laptop then how to upload them to iMovie, then how to crop and trim out what I did not want, and then finally put it all together. One of the challenges I faced was operating iMovie but thankfully Natasha has some experience with it and helped me out when I couldn't figure things out. Another challenge, probably the biggest challenge, I faced when making this podcast was trying to put all my audio clips together to flow as one in iMovie. I found that where I trimmed some of my clips there were spaces where there was just a pause in the audio. I actually did not figure out how to overcome this obstacle. I thought by saving it directly to my computer it would automatically put it all together but unfortunately that was not the case. I then tried saving it in different formants but that did not fixed the problem either. If anyone reading knows how to fix this please help a sister out and shoot me an email! (Thank you in advanced!) Finally, a final challenge I faced was saving my podcast to my computer with the full audio. In order to overcome this obstacle, I had to save it in multiple formats on my laptop before I discovered how to save the full length audio that I eventually uploaded to Soundcloud.
The form and content work together and compliment each other because of the conversational speaking in this podcast. The outline form of the script also helped the content flow. This form, the podcast, works for this story because there was nothing to video tape so the audio of our conversation was the main focus. I want the listeners to focus on our words and what we are saying rather than if we would have made a video and been focusing specifically on us.
One artistic choice I made while making this podcast was to have Natasha try different alcoholic beverages that are popular among college students today during the filming of the podcast so my audience can hear her real, raw reaction instead of a fake, reenacted one. I chose to do this because I want the listeners to know her initial reaction because I think someone's first reactions, like first impressions, are extremely important. Another artistic choice I made was to use the iMovie software on my laptop. I chose to this because it is free and already downloaded onto my computer. Another reason I chose to use this software was because Professor Marissa referred to it in class. Finally I chose to use iMovie because I think it is user friendly, easy to understand, and has basic editing software that is favorable to new users.
This kind of storytelling is unique because it is all audio with no visual. It is like radio but I feel more personalized because when it comes to podcasts you can choose what you listen to. They can be conversational or informative and my is conversational because that is the kind of speaker I am, from public speaking to presentations to impromptu. My conversational speaking is paired with an upbeat tone. One advantage this medium offers is that it is flexible. When I say flexible I mean that when listening to a podcast the listener is not locked into sitting on the couch like when you watch TV or randomized like a music playlist that is usually background noise. A podcast can be listened to while one is multitasking. You can stream them in the car, at home, in the shower, anywhere and unlike the same repeated music that is always playing on the radio they are informational and keep your attention.
Over the creation of this process, like the photo essay, I learned that even if something is new that does not mean it is scary. Look at it as a challenge to overcome. Jump head first into the deep end of the pool! I also learned that I can work my computer better than I thought I could and I am very proud of myself for that. Throughout all of this and this process I will carry the lesson of trying new things without fear because in the end you might just surprise yourself with your own capabilities you never knew you had.
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