Topic: Create a promotional ad that showcases how SkillsUSA helps students achieve career success.
Since this was the same prompt the Digital Media team had, we assumed that our prompt at States would be similar to this. Starting early, we gathered a lot of information on the topic to be as prepared as possible. Our script was better and included a lot of interviews, but it was still a little long, so we're going to work on that as well as making sure our levels are good because Taylor is naturally louder. When the piece exported, it didn't cut the last 2 minutes of the background music, which is why the piece looks so long. (The real one ends around 1:29)
This script seemed more enthusastic and genuine than the last one, but still needs to be more concise.
In-depth Analysis
Our prompt is more specific than last year’s “Celebrate 50 years of SkillsUSA,” but this way it gives us a more specific topic to research. In addition, the CEO of SkillsUSA put out a letter addressing this topic and the skills gap, so there is a lot of information on it. We took a bunch of statistics about SkillsUSA and how it has helped small communities and our overall society decrease the skills gap and positively impact people’s lives.
To start our project, we used the setup we have been using where the mic is plugged directly into my computer and, in Audition, we can see the levels from the mic. Recently, we found out that we might not be able to do this, so for future projects we will try to use the stand alone mic instead. Starting in Petty’s class, we interviewed students about career success and how SkillsUSA has impacted them. After we got a few interviews, Petty’s class started getting loud, so we left to grab people from our class.
In the audio room across the hall, we asked the same questions, but had a much quieter setting and allowed people to gather their thoughts instead of just spitting out answers like they had to in Petty’s class. This allowed us to get much better quality audio in regards to background noise, content, and inflection of people’s voices because they could repeat themselves in different tones. Each time someone said something again, they changed the inflection and allowed for that specific piece to be used in different parts of our audio, depending on the feeling of that area of the piece.
Taylor spent all class period collecting songs to use for the “music library” we are bringing to States that we can pull from depending on our prompt. This will allow us to spend as little time as possible on creating/finding background audio so our content, script, and interviews can take up as much time as they need and then we aren’t stressed trying to edit and finish our project in the last few minutes of the competition. While Taylor did this, I started logging our interviews so that we can physically see what people are saying and decide what we want to use in our final script. This was extremely helpful and was more difficult than I thought because I had to keep switching from Audition to my browser if I missed something or someone spoke too fast.
After we finished this, we started collaborating on our first draft of our script using sound bites we have, statistics, and creating new script that we’ll probably record tomorrow. Working through Google Docs has proved to be extremely helpful for collaborating and helping us get a feel for how we each fit into the writing, recording, and editing process. I’ve already learned a lot about how I work, but working with someone else, specifically just one other person, has taught me a lot too because I see how I work in a small group setting. So far we have worked really well as a team and each have specific roles in our team. I’m really excited to see how our final product turns out and to continue to better our skills in audio production!
To start our project, we used the setup we have been using where the mic is plugged directly into my computer and, in Audition, we can see the levels from the mic. Recently, we found out that we might not be able to do this, so for future projects we will try to use the stand alone mic instead. Starting in Petty’s class, we interviewed students about career success and how SkillsUSA has impacted them. After we got a few interviews, Petty’s class started getting loud, so we left to grab people from our class.
In the audio room across the hall, we asked the same questions, but had a much quieter setting and allowed people to gather their thoughts instead of just spitting out answers like they had to in Petty’s class. This allowed us to get much better quality audio in regards to background noise, content, and inflection of people’s voices because they could repeat themselves in different tones. Each time someone said something again, they changed the inflection and allowed for that specific piece to be used in different parts of our audio, depending on the feeling of that area of the piece.
Taylor spent all class period collecting songs to use for the “music library” we are bringing to States that we can pull from depending on our prompt. This will allow us to spend as little time as possible on creating/finding background audio so our content, script, and interviews can take up as much time as they need and then we aren’t stressed trying to edit and finish our project in the last few minutes of the competition. While Taylor did this, I started logging our interviews so that we can physically see what people are saying and decide what we want to use in our final script. This was extremely helpful and was more difficult than I thought because I had to keep switching from Audition to my browser if I missed something or someone spoke too fast.
After we finished this, we started collaborating on our first draft of our script using sound bites we have, statistics, and creating new script that we’ll probably record tomorrow. Working through Google Docs has proved to be extremely helpful for collaborating and helping us get a feel for how we each fit into the writing, recording, and editing process. I’ve already learned a lot about how I work, but working with someone else, specifically just one other person, has taught me a lot too because I see how I work in a small group setting. So far we have worked really well as a team and each have specific roles in our team. I’m really excited to see how our final product turns out and to continue to better our skills in audio production!
