Day 12 — Audio reporting and editing

Deconstruct a story

See if you can identify elements of beginning, middle, end; the central complication; and action in this story from NPR about a Marine who was discharged for trying to warn other Marines.

A U.S. Marine Tried To Warn A Comrade, Now He Faces A Discharge

Audio reporting

Here are some points about how to do good audio reporting, courtesy of my colleague Jill Bauer:

• Conduct your interview before taking photos. It will give you and your subject time to get comfortable with one another. It will also give you ideas for photos you can include in the story.
• Find a quiet space to conduct the interview with limited background noise, foot traffic, etc.
• Turn off fans, AC units, refrigerators, clocks, computers, cell phones, or anything else that may create a humming or buzzing that disrupts the audio.
• Have your subject remove all jewelry, such as necklaces, rings, bracelets and long earrings.
• Capture 60 seconds of “room tone” before starting the interview. This will help you make cuts and also help if you need to EQ the audio to lower background sound.
• Wear headphones when recording and listen for any distracting background noises or rustling.
• Brief your subject on the interview before it starts. Tell them the format and answer any questions they may have.
• If possible, record in mono to minimize background noise.
• Make sure your audio levels fall in the -6DB to -12DB range.
• Ask your subject to introduce themselves at the very beginning of the interview. If you’re profiling an everyday person, just ask them to introduce themselves with their name and where they’re from. If you’re profiling someone in a very specific context, such as a teacher, they can introduce themselves with their position or title.
• Be conversational.
• Be quiet. Never interrupt your subject. Nod your head instead of saying “Yes” and “Mmhmm.”
• Pause for a few seconds after your subject responds before moving on to the next question.
• If you’re using one device for video and another for audio, get them both in place and started recording, then clap your hands in the middle of the frame. This will help you sync the two tracks in Premiere.
• It might make sense to delay recording. Conduct the interview normally while taking some notes, then go back and ask the subject if they could explain again, this time for the recorder, the most important points. If your subject likes to ramble, this allows you to focus your recorded interview so you don’t have to go through an hour of tape to find two minutes of audio.
• However you record, note timestamps of important quotes. When you hear something surprising, thoughtful, meaningful, or otherwise potentially important for your story, make a note of when it appears in the recording and jot down what it’s about. This will be useful as you go back through to assemble your story.

Adobe audition tutorial

Download these files: Interview and natural sound.

We will learn to:

• Normalize levels
• Reduce noise
• Cut and splice
• Fade in and out, crossfade
• Edit multitrack audio
• Export files