This task was the first experience I have had with audio recording and working with sound and I therefore definitely learnt a lot from it. I gained a basic understanding of the need for good quality audio levels in order to be able to properly edit them in post-production, as a couple of the audio recordings I got were too quiet and couldn’t be properly edited to fit with the others well. The other thing I personally struggled with was trying to monitor the sound levels whilst recording and trying to encourage the interviewee to continue speaking, however it was easier the more people I spoke to so I don’t believe this is a problem, just something that will become better with more practice.

We did not carry out a risk assessment for this task as it was on campus therefore there was not as much planning for this task, however the outcomes of this task definitely helped me when planning the other tasks because it highlighted problems I would likely face again if I did not change the way I did things. For example, I went out and recorded as many people as possible without taking into consideration the fact the artefact only had to be between 1 and 1 and a half minutes. Consequently, it took me a long time to go through the recordings and decide which ones I wanted to feature. As a result of this, when I filmed my video vox-pop and the interview task, I ensured I gathered enough material but not too much that it was difficult to decide what to include and was time consuming to go through: making these tasks much more time effecting and concise.

It also made me realise I needed to put a lot more effort into planning were interviewing other people was involved. For this task, I visited the places on campus where I believed most people would be, but so did everyone else in the class which made it very difficult to find people willing to participate multiple times. If I had done more research, I would have been able to determine what classes were ending and starting when and where and caught the influx of people at those times. I put this method into practise when filming for the video vox-pop and tried to place myself logically when filming, so for example near where a lot of food outlets were closer to lunchtime as people would be more likely getting food around those times than visiting the local attractions.

The software we used to edit the audio vox-pop was simplistic because it’s a very accessible piece of software. As it is so accessible, there was vast amounts of tutorials for basically everything on YouTube. I found this very helpful when I was struggling to manage the audio levels and ensure they were equal but then was able to find a video immediately that presented me how to do it quickly and simply.