Workshops
Learn how to create compelling audio stories for podcasts and other applications.
Dates:
Sep 25, 2023 - Sep 29, 2023
Levels:
Beginner,
Intermediate,
Workshop Fee: $1295
Workshop Duration: 1-week (Monday-Friday)
Workshop Location: On-campus
Class Size: 12
This week is for the beginning audio storyteller who wants to learn how audio stories for radio, museums, and podcasts are collected, constructed, and published.
In this workshop, we’ll explore the technological and methodological basics of capturing compelling stories. We’ll delve into ambient and scene sound — how to identify it and capture it, and how to structure a story, using interviews and ambient tape. Emphasis will be placed on gathering field audio and learning how to edit it into finished pieces.
By examining some successful pieces, we’ll discuss why they work, how they were achieved, and how audio fits into multimedia stories. You will be asked to find a story during your time at the workshop, and in the second half of your week, you will record your story and edit it. The course will include the technical aspects of recording audio on professional equipment as well as audio editing and mixing on the industry’s standard software – Hindenburg and ProTools.
Participants will gain insight into:
- recording equipment and best practices using different types of microphones (including lav, shotgun and boom) with hand-held Zoom recorders.
- editing software: the basics of assembling an audio story with interviews, natural sound and music
- how to create a narrative, vox pop piece.
- best practices for conducting interviews (from evoking strong content to tips for gathering clean sound).
In addition to the hands-on work of gathering and editing sound stories, listening to existing story, radio and podcast excerpts will extend learning so that students will better understand the wide range of possible applications across mediums.
No previous knowledge of digital editing is necessary.
Image credit: Aidan Bliss, Header image credit: Laurie Boucherbeech.
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Instructor: Suzi Pond
Suzi Pond is an awarding-winning digital journalist, producer and storyteller and the founder of Redbird Media Group, a Maine-based storytelling company dedicated to effecting positive social and environmental change. Suzi's audio work has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered" and recently at the Portland Museum of Art in the form of an audio guide for their 2021 Walker Evans exhibit. Redbird Media Group also edits and produces a number of podcasts. She cut her journalism chops at Boston magazine as Online Editor and later at the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram as multimedia producer. In 2011, she served as Chief Storyteller for the United Way of Greater Portland. A Skidmore graduate, Suzi also studied audio storytelling at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives in Freeport, Maine with her family.