Breakfast with Amber

April 2023: Full Circle

Like I said before, editing Must Do Daphne was a lot of hard work, and that's probably why there were days I just didn't want to work on it, but I was able to get the job done before the end of April. Part of that work was dubbing the script. Instead of only doing the parts where it's difficult to hear my voice, I decided to record the entire script so that my voice sounded crisp and clear the whole way through. I'd end up throwing some of the voice clips out when I couldn't get them to sync with the movement of my lips, which is why you still hear background noise, and speaking of background noise, I used Adobe Audition to filter the noise out of the voice recordings as well as the intro, transitions, and outro that I recorded after the trip. I also got most of the music for the project from a website called Free Music Archive. I was directed to both of these sources during my podcasting class.

And the due date for the podcasting final was approaching fast, and I still had no idea what to do. The theme for this semester's final was "Learning from the Lived," where we would interview two people "of advanced age" about their life experiences and then edit them together into a podcast. I had no idea who to interview. Sure, I had four grandparents, but none of them lived nearby. That left me with no one.

Professor Lopez assigned the project at the end of March, and I was still stuck. Luckily, Professor Lopez told us that if we didn't have anybody, we could just talk to him. His idea of finding interviewees for people who were stuck was to reach out to some of his buddies in the communications department to see who's up for being interviewed. He'd also let those of us who were stuck only interview one person instead of two. I was in my room getting ready to leave for dinner that evening when I got an e-mail from Professor Lopez saying, "I talked to Dr. Liu. She says she's willing to interview you. How about you schedule a time with her?"

Of course it was Dr. Liu, the professor I had been seeing all throughout college (if by "all throughout college," you mean I had her for two classes, one of which was at the start of my freshman year). I think Professor Lopez knew somehow that I used to have Dr. Liu for two classes. Maybe Dr. Liu just told him. It's not like I hated her, but when I sent her an e-mail that I couldn't make it to class because I was literally throwing up, she responded with, "Feel better." That was the whole e-mail. I was expecting at least a little bit more sympathy.

We had brainstormed our interview questions together in class, so I already knew what to ask. I also added a few backup questions in case I didn't hit the time minimum with the first seven questions. Don't worry, though. We'd go far past our minimum.

Dr. Liu and I finally chose to meet up on April 13 at 1 pm. We'd conduct our interview in Studio B in the communications center. It consisted of a TV set that was used for the music performances on Studio 21, and to the side were two radio booths. I showed up a little early so that I'd have all the equipment set up when she got here. The only experience I had with this equipment was when I used it to record a voice-over project before spring break, but this was the first time I'd be conducting an interview in here. That meant I had two microphones to deal with.

Dr. Liu arrived on time while I was still getting everything turned on. You know how I said there were two booths? There was also one microphone per booth, so we had to sit in separate booths and talk to each other with microphones while wearing headphones. I was in the room with all the computers so I could have Audition open and keep tabs on the recording as it was being recorded while Dr. Liu's room had a table and some chairs for interviewees.

I hit record and got the interview started. I think I restarted the interview a couple times because I messed up asking the first question, but once we were past that, we were in business. The first question was "Tell me a little about yourself." Since we were supposed to record an intro telling the listener about the subject, I decided to skip that one and move on to question 2: "What was significant about the place you grew up in?"