In this sway we will look at:

• Using Adobe Audition for effective recording and editing
• The use of different types of sound
• Recording tips

Last week we looked at the basics of audio journalism with focus on audio news and writing for audio. Please remember what you learnt from this as we progress to look to build on this, with ways of adding creativity to your audio journalism and how to make it a more engaging and lively listen for the audience.

Most multimedia stories rely on four kinds of audio: interview clips, voice- overs, sound effects and actuality. Knowing these building blocks is the first and most important step toward great audio.

Interview clips are recordings of a story’s subject(s). Interview sound bites help bring the characters in our stories to life.

Voice-overs include any scripted narration that’s recorded, to push a storyline forward.

Sound effects - are natural sounds that we can use to add detail, such as a telephone ringing or typing on a keyboard.

Actuality is the background noise that creates a sense of place, for example the sound of the rain, or the chatter of a busy high street.

Know your equipment.

Check internet connections are stable before you start recording online.

Remember to monitor the audio recording throughout, this will help you to notice whether there are any problems with the sound quality while there is still time to re-record. Plug headphones into the recording device and track how things sound.

Do not rely on the built in microphone on a mobile, this not directional and will pick up and record unwanted noise. Always plug in an external microphone for the best quality audio.

Remember, the technicians are there to help you.

You are free to ask any technical questions related to your projects, editing, kit, microphones, Adobe Premiere Pro, Audition, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.

All questions or concerns are welcomed.

If you have any technical questions please email mch.tech@newcastle.ac.uk

If you have questions about your equipment booking please email mch.loans@newcastle.ac.uk

Focus on the core elements of your story first.

It’s imperative to start with good, clean sound for anyone who will be talking in the story. Audiences can forgive a lot of production problems, but difficult- to-decipher audio is probably asking too much.

Voice-overs tend to be easier, since they’re usually created in controlled environments and the opportunity for multiple takes. If you make a mistake in a voice-over, always re-record it.

The sound bites captured from interviews present more challenges. These tend to be recorded on location. That means less control over the recording environment and fewer — if any — chances for re-doing it. This is where you should spend the most effort on getting the best-possible audio. And that usually means preventing or minimizing bad sound, otherwise known as “noise.”

Minimize noise.

Noise is any undesirable sound that creeps into our recordings, competing with the audio we actually want to capture.

White noise is continuous, unchanging sound that doesn’t serve a functional role in a story. There are many sources of white noise; heating and venting systems are notorious — and ubiquitous — white noise generators. Coping with white noise usually means recording in a different location or temporarily disabling the source of the noise, if possible.

Any time a recording happens outside, wind noise is a potential problem. What’s worse, audio equipment tends to accentuate the loudness of wind — gentle breezes can sound like aggressive gusts with a sensitive microphone. The best countermeasures are to record in a less windy place or at a less windy time, employ a windscreen or use a more directional microphone.

Distortion occurs when sound is recorded at a level that’s too high. To avoid this, monitor the audio levels throughout any recording to make sure sound is recorded in a safe range.

If you are editing together several clips which were recorded at different level, you may need to normalise your audio. The video below shows you how to do this.

Use sound to add detail.

Good audio conveys information. Great audio relays facts while adding detail and texture. This detail can emerge from all the sound types, but especially natural sound.

The key to good natural sound is to focus on the seemingly mundane. Even the most common actions — a pencil on paper, a finger tapping a desk, a person sighing or inhaling — can become interesting parts of a story when given proper attention.

Think about natural sound possibilities when planning stories and look for additional opportunities to convey detail through sound in the field.

Use layers to create richer sound.

Layering makes audio more interesting. It’s a way to communicate different kinds of information at the same time, just like a video shot might communicate one thing with a foreground object and another with a background.

It’s most common to layer interview sound bites or voice-overs on top of ambient sound. Ambience offers a natural background layer, providing a sense of location, while the most important audio (in terms of relaying information) resides in the foreground, at a louder level. Natural sounds usually rest in the foreground, but they can also work somewhere in between vocal tracks and ambience.

Combining all the kinds of sounds into one multi-layer presentation can lead to particularly interesting effects. And, by combining changes to volume with layering, we can shift listeners’ attentions by pushing certain sounds from the foreground to background and vice versa.

Avoid editing pitfalls.

Most of the ethical concerns that arise with the use of audio in journalistic stories manifest in the editing process. Since editing, by its nature, involves modifying an original, “untreated” recording, it results in a necessary alteration of what actually happened.

This may involve shortening a long recording into a succinct clip, or it may involve rearranging the order in which certain questions are answered to make an interview more coherent.

These kinds of edits are common and don’t, in most cases, present ethical concerns. But what if we forgot to get ambient sound for the recording we drove across town to capture? So, we go to a similar location closer by, record the sound there, and splice it with the original footage? Would this present an ethical problem?

The answer depends on the kind of story that’s being told, but it’s a problematic practice in most journalistic stories. Never claim to be somewhere you are not.

Use music with care.

It can be tempting to add music to every production since it’s such a powerful mode of communication. Therein lies the problem. Picking a track that evokes the right emotion is a subjective undertaking. Furthermore, the same music can strike people in very different ways.

Remember to consider copyright when using any music in your work.

By this stage you should have researched the story and found out the key points. This will help you decide what actuality, interviews and sound effects you need to record. Add these details to your planning document.

You will need to have some good interviews to help tell the story.

It can be useful to start your audio piece with some sound effects which set the scene. You can then voiceover the sound. Sound effects can be faded in and out between clips and links to make the whole piece sound smoother.

Select the clips - listen carefully to all the interviews and choose the best audio clips. This means clipping pieces from the interviews that will work best in your audio segment.

It’s the interviews that really tell the story, so try to find some useful soundbites and make sure you include the most interesting details.

You may need to write the links around the audio to bring the story together and possibly to let the listener know whose voice they’re about to hear next.

You will also need to write a short cue. This can be as simple as 'Listen to an interview with XXX...' or 'People in Newcastle say what they think about YYY...' Make sure that the start of your audio piece does not repeat what the cue has just said.

Test any script; a good way to do this is to read it aloud and consider if it makes sense and sounds right. If you find that sentences are too long, complicated or unclear, re-write the necessary sections.

Edit it together, ensuring the transitions between different sounds are as smooth as possible.

You only have 90-120 seconds for your audio piece. So you will need to make the most of every second and only use the best audio you have gathered.

For your assignment for this module you are required to produce a 90-120 second audio element to form part of a piece of multimedia journalism.

Think about the opportunities audio offers, which cannot be achieved via video or text, and utilise this in your audio work.

There is no pre-seminar task this week. Use your time to work on your assignment.