As a child, I never really thought much of the crafts my grandmother would make. A frog out of a few rocks, a face out of dried leaves and acorns or an umbrella out of cigarette packages … It wasn’t until I saw an exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum showcasing crafts made in internment camps that I realized where she had learned to make these things and why she used the materials that she did and it definitely gave me a greater appreciation for that art and the subsequent art forms that she practiced once out of camp.
At my newspaper, it is not uncommon for a reporter to gather audio and give it to me to edit down, only for me to find that the audio is unusable. Unfortunately, because reporters are not yet editing their own raw audio, they do not hear the mistakes they make and then do not correct them.
This video is meant to address one of the most common of mistakes, placement of the audio recorder. When out on assignment with reporters, I have seen audio recorders set down on tables, held at the hip and placed under notepads, when where they really should be is a few inches from the interviewee’s mouth. The video below shows how audio sounds when the recorder is used properly, and what the audio sounds like when used improperly.
Adding transitions and audio/video fade in/outs in Final Cut Pro and Express. I recommend watching this in full screen and HD, as I do not zoom in at any point as I have done with the other screencasts.
