| Audio Storytelling

Learn how to create compelling audio stories for podcasts and other applications.

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.