My Ultimate Sensation

As they say everything had its beginning, and most certainly this is my beginning. In all sanguinity, I must say it is the longest journey in life that marks a fair end.

The whole online journalism course has been such a pleasing experience for me. I have learned so much in these few months that I am starting to feel like a professional journalist. I felt the utmost satisfaction of reading the article I wrote, the audio stories I edited, the photos I took, the interviews I conducted and the blogs I posted. I must say the challenge of the course have certainly paid off.

Individual Soundslides Project

I think from all the projects we did for this course, I have a little more to say about this project. I really took my time and effort in to completing the individual soundslides project. Everything went according to plan except one person I scheduled to interview was not able to get back at me.

I decided to do my story on the gains and detriments of Interstate 80. I recently hear a lot of accidents happening on I-80 particularly, on the road between Laramie and Cheyenne, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to gain information from an expertise and a victim. Ross Doman is a public relations person at the Wyoming Department of Motor Vehicles. He was very helpful and cooperative in making my story a success. The other person I interviewed was Sonia Nana from Cameroon who recently had a dreadful accident on I-80. She was also very cooperative making time for me after her physical therapy.  The third person I was supposed to interview was also a victim of an accident on I-80 who also lost a loved one on the accident.

  I encountered the most surprising experience when recording my ambient noise. I decided to put a voice of traffic on a busy road as my ambient noise. As I was recording, a white Chevrolets came rushing and hit the back of blue Ford Taurus that was leaving a parking lot. You could hear a squeaking noise in one of the parts of my ambient noise. The accident was not big but I thought the squeaking noise from one of the cars holding the brake added some spice to my ambient noise. The other noteworthy experience I would like to mention is the sad emotions I felt when I was taking the pictures of the memorials placed for fatality victims of car accidents on highways like I-80. The Wyoming Department of Vehicles takes them off the side of the roads and places them at the back of their office building due to road safety issue. There were victims from seniors to adults to children, which was very sad to me.  

The most challenging part of this project was editing the audios together. I really took time making sure that the transitions were as smooth as possible and that background noises where removed. The other challenging task for me was making sure the photos matched the statements of the interviewees so that story would have a flow.  

I had a very good time interviewing my interviewees, taking photos and gathering information on a topic I was very curious about. I think this project is very helpful in developing our audio news presentation skill. The very important thing I learned from this project is to always have a backup person to interview for you don’t know what might come up. I would have been so much happier with my story if I had the chance to interview the third person.

Soundslides Project Critique

Getting through my soundslides group project was a very long ride for me.  I had a good time working with my partner and I was very happy with what we ultimately came up with. I was wondering how the soundslides project experience might have been for the other groups and I was very excited to listen to what they had come up with.  

The first soundslides story I decided to listen to was by Tracie Perkins and Nic Behnke on Laramie Animal Shelter. I was very excited to listen to this story because I thought the topic was very interesting.  I believe in animals rights as much as I believe in human rights. I admire people who dedicate their lives up to protecting them. The soundslides was done well. The transitions were very smooth and I also liked the ambient noise they chose. The photos were also very good and relevant to the story. I don’t believe there is anything I would change about the story.

The second soundslides story I listened to was by Brad Estes and Tom Hesse on Wresling Profile. I wanted to aware myself with the status of the University of Wyoming’s wrestling team.  I have actually gained a good amount of information from their story.  I specifically liked the photos and the ambient noise they used in the slide. The only possible problem I would mention is the sound quality. I don’t know if it was the headphone I was using or the recording device they used, but there seemed to be a weird noise that I hear along with the voice of the interviewees. But other than that there isn’t any problem that came to my attention.

The third soundslides story I listened to was by Dyann Diercks and Brooke Eades on Wyoming Cowboy Basketball: A Legacy. Even though I am not a big fan of basketball, I was very engaged in to listening to their story. I thought it was very organized and well arranged. The ambient noise in particular was the best part. I liked how they used the voice of various people in the story. The photos were also good and had variety. There were very few rough transitions but I didn’t think they had significant effect.

Soundslides Group Project

I had the chance to work with Jamie Crew as my partner for the soundslides project. I had a good time working with her. We both had a very busy schedule but we managed to work with the limited time we had to finish the assignment.  We both contributed in taking the pictures and interviewing the people we need for our audio story.

Our topic was on how Laramie’s unique weather affects the enrollment of mainly international students. The best part about this assignment was conducting the interview. I had fun conversing with Jill Johnson, Associate Director of the International Office. Jamie did her interview with an international student from Korea.

http://www.klandreville.com/crew_negussie/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=465&embed_height=400

The most difficult part of this project was editing the audio and pictures together. I took the part of editing the audios and putting the two interviews together. It took me more than 5 hours to edit the audio. I thought it was very frustrating. I had a problem opening the edited audio after I saved it, however, it worked well at the end.

I thought the soundslides software was fun to work with. We had a problem uploading our photos on soundslides, which was very overwhelming but that also worked well at the end.  Personally I think I would say this was the most difficult project from the previous ones mainly because of the limited availability of the soundslides software. It was also hard to make sure the sounds and photos in the story well harmonized.

Overall, regardless of the difficulty of the project, I learned a lot and had fun with it. I was very excited to listen to the story after we were done with everything. I believe this would be very helpful in our future career. The project included combining the skill of both photojournalism and audio journalism, which I think was great.

Story Ideas

Finding a crucial matter to write a story on was somewhat a difficult task for me because I had to put the idea of finding a reliable source, photos and interviewee in mind. My partner, Jamie Crew and I decided that we are going to come up with our own three story ideas and then decide on the best one to write our final project.

The three story ideas I came up with are:

• The impact of Wyoming’s unique weather in regard to foreign and out of state student’s enrollment at the University of Wyoming.  I think that this story is news worthy because weather is one of the basic issues students consider before choosing to enroll in a college or university.  I personally know a lot of students who transferred to other colleges because of the harsh weather condition in Wyoming. The best sources for this story could be international, exchange and out of state students and the university’s admissions office staff.
• The other story idea I came up with was the issue of campus employment. This is a very crucial and news worthy issue because college students need to work to have pocket money or even pay for school tuition. Some students work in order to go to school, therefore, employment is essential in a college student’s life. The best sources for this story could be students of University of Wyoming , on campus service providers  like the Panda Express food service and the Department of Human Resource.
• The third story idea I came up with was about alcohol and drug policies at the University of Wyoming campus residences. This could be a newsworthy story because alcohol is one of the most abused drugs by college students, and the impact is very significant.  The best sources for this story could be students that live on campus and the Vice President for Administration’s Office who is responsible for the legislation and execution of alcohol and drug policies in campus. Other possible sources could also be resident assistants (RA’s) and also may be parents.   

 

My partner and I will be deciding on which story to choose for the final project when we meet on Friday.

Audio Profile Critique

I did my interview with Audrey Jensen, and I had a great experience listening to the different things she talked about.I was very eager to listen to the others audio interview and I found most them to be very interesting. I randomly chose the audio interviews I decided to assess.

The first audio interview I listened to was by Adrienne Morency with Courtney Wilhelm. The interesting part of this interview for me was hearing about Courtney’s hunting experience because, I grew up in a big city where the tradition of hunting is seldom practiced. I liked her excitement when talking about hunting with her father and the time she caught a deer. The unedited part of the interview was good however; the only problem I noticed was background noises. The background noise was not like a significant noise that caused huge distraction in the interview but more like a noise that came from the room the interview was made. It seems like they had the interview in a very wide and empty room or like a hall way. I also think that it would have been great if she added an outdoor ambient noise to compliment the story.  But overall I thought it was interesting.

The second interview I listened to was by Anna Rader with Rachel Ross. I thought that the edited part of the interview was very nice. It was very inviting to listen to and I really liked what Rachel talked about. The audio was very clear and there were no background noises that distracted me.  The only criticism I have is in the unedited part of the interview. I had fun listening to it but I can barely hear Anna’s voice. It seems like she was very far from the audio recorder. Other than that it was a nice work.

The third interview I listened to was by Tiffany Le Gal with Zak Bolender.  I thought that it was the clearest and loudest from the other ones I listened to. I think that Tiffany did a very good job in the unedited part. I liked how she started the interview with a beginning statement. I think that she has a good interviewing skill. The edited part of this interview was also good, and I didn’t notice any problems to be cited out.

Overall I had a good time listening to the others interview. I learned a lot from each of the audio interviews.

 I did not encounter any surprises when completing this assignment because the audio editing practice we did prior to this assignment was very helpful.  I believe, this project was very beneficial for those of us who are planning to pursue a career in journalism.

I took my time in to completing my audio interview, and so there is nothing I wish I could have done differently.

Edited Interview Audio

Edited Interview by Egla Yet

I worked on my edited version right after I did the raw audio version. I played a lot with the Audacity software. I came to discover a lot of things I didn’t know before. The zoom button in particular has been very helpful in making my audio editing more fun and easy.
In some of the audio pieces I put together, I faced a lot of problems in making sure that there were no rough transitions from one statement to another. I tried adding pauses in between transitions of statements I put together from different parts. Audrey has made  the editing process very easy for me because she talked a little bit more about why she wanted to become a journalist and specialize in public relations. I was not required to look for many other pieces to fill out the two minute time limit.

I had a little bit of frustration when I was editing my audio, because I keep on losing the place of the audio part I was editing, however using the ‘zoom in’ button has made the process much easier for me because I was able to see the details of the audio parts.

I recorded my interview with Audrey twice because of background noises. There were some parts from the interview I had to leave out because the background noises were huge distractions. Recording my interview twice has greatly helped me for I was able to put clear and quality audio parts together.

I had a great time working with this project. I am hoping it would be more fun when we put photos with our audios and create sound slides. I like that I am able to efficiently use different audio editing equipment’s and softwares, have fun with them and at the same time enhance my journalism skills.