Exploring the Metaverse: Zuckerberg Edition
A reflection of our final creative project:
Aidan Reilly-
Putting together this final creative project was a fantastic experience. Needless to say, we did run into a slew of issues. Nate and I originally had the idea to work together on this project since we both had strong opinions towards the Metaverse, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and the timely re-branding of Facebook. A podcast was a perfect creative outlet to express our thoughts on this matter to our target audience. Our initial problem arose since there is a lack of information pertaining to the Metaverse itself. We also wanted to make sure that we tied in key topics we had discussed throughout the year in COM 520. We overcame this by making the recent whistling blowing incident a reference point for this project. We spent nearly a week gathering articles, watching videos, and narrowing down talking points.
Neither of us have ever produced a podcast before and we were a bit ambitious towards the start. Our goal was to record for at least an hour (we were a few minutes short) and have our recording take place in a professional setting. We reached out to the Harrington School Media Department a week before recording our audio to lock in a reservation for their professional audio recording studio. This studio was set up like a podcasting studio, with two boom mics, a mixing board, a video camera, and a sound system. We were on our way to producing a kick-ass podcast in a really neat environment.
On the day of the recording, we were stopped by the media manager at the Harrington School, and were told we needed “professional training” to access that room, and that no one on their extensive staff would be able to assist us. This came as a surprise– since no one had told us that we needed prior training before accessing the recording booth. I worked for the Harrington School while working on my undergrad degree. We were told to tell incoming Harrington School Students that they would have full inclusive access to any equipment the Harrington School offered, regardless of professional training, since the staff was there to help with student projects.
In reality, we found that was not the case, but alas–we prevailed and completed the assignment professionally on our own terms. We used a zoom recording mic to record audio, and I edited all four segments of the episode right within the Anchor app on my laptop. In hindsight, we should have recorded it on our phone since the audio would have been better ironically (the audio picked up Nate’s voice more than mine, even though we were equally close to the microphone…). Editing the recorded audio was new to me, but after some trial and error, I was able to figure it out! I think I did a pretty good job fixing the audio and removing several “umms” and “uhs.” I had no idea what a “Ummm” sound wave looked like until I removed about 50–60 of them from the recording.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I couldn’t have been happier working alongside Nate on this creative project. We think this podcast sounds pretty professional for two podcast novices.
Let us know what you think! And give it a listen if you have the chance, we go over tons of topics covered in class while tossing in our insights and humor. Truly, this was the most fun I’ve ever had working on a final project. Thank you, Renee Hobbs, for allowing us to showcase our work through a different medium! #COM520
Nate Stevens-
As far as problems go, Aidan and I faced a few to say the least but we were able to come together and solve them and complete a project that we are very pleased with. Aidan approached me a few weeks ago and brought up the idea of doing a podcast together discussing something to do with Facebook, Metaverse, rebranding, and Mark Zuckerberg, and of course I obliged. It was a hands-on project and a very new experience for the both of us. An initial problem we ran into was narrowing down the topic enough to where we could fit it all in with enough content and natural conversation into an hour-long podcast. We met a few times via zoom and in person, broke down talking points and focus areas, and boom — problem solved.
A one-hour podcast was our goal, and surprisingly we hit just under an hour in length. A following major problem was finding studio equipment to use on campus. We had approached the Harrington School department about using sound and recording equipment in one of their soundproof rooms to record the podcast. Initially we were given the OK on it — great, we can start recording the following day. Well, long story short a person in the department the following day an hour before we were wanting to start recording, informed us that we were NOT allowed to use the equipment due to us being liable out of fear of us breaking something. We had a quick moment of panic, gave a little attitude, caved, and asked for “less expensive” equipment to use. We were then handed a small recording device the size of our iPhones, gave Dr. Hobbs a quick phone call to get the all-clear on the production value, and made do with what we had available to us. Also — the person working in the Harrington School was kind enough to put us in an office the size of a small closet which you will see in our teaser video — so thank you for that Harrington School. This added an extra three hours or so to our day for recording, getting everything prepped and set up, but we were able to understand that issues might arise, and we simply worked through them and got it done.
Other than that, we really did not face too many problems and we were both happy with how the project came out. We each took on our own separate tasks for editing the teaser video and podcast and got it done for the timeline that we wanted. Editing a video was a new venture for myself and trying to learn iMovie quickly and play around with it was challenging but enjoyable. I hope you all enjoy the teaser video and Podcast because I know for myself and Aidan, we had a great time experimenting and accomplishing something that was out of our comfort zone and very new to us.
