Recording podcasts

Our latest assignment was to record our own podcast, which I described in an earlier post. Unfortunately, the sound quality in my practice wasn't exactly up to the task, but I guess that's why we were doing practice podcasts before the real thing. I listened to what the other people in my class had done, though, and I thought it was really interesting. Everyone had chosen different topics, that from what I know of my classmates seemed to relate to their real life a little bit. Here is what I thought while I was listening to the others' works:

1. Binderya and Enkhi (rich girl living in Mongolia)

• I thought the general idea of the podcast was very interesting. Not only this Mongolian girl but also most of the children in our school seem to live in a somewhat different world than other teenagers, and they were really good at describing that. At the same time, the girl sounds preppy but quite sad.
• Concerning the comments, the only improvement I could suggest would be to try to tie the script into the context more. While listening sometimes I wondered who this girl was telling all of her secrets to, which was not really clear - was this an interview? That didn't matter all that much, though, as this "lack of context" allowed them to tell the listener more about who the person talking was.
• The sound quality was really good. I could hear very clearly everything the two said, and there was no background noise. The two alternating speaking was a little unsettling, as this was supposed to be the same character who suddenly changed voices. I think, though, this was just because this was a practice podcast.

2. Enkhi -- interviews with people

• The questions were interesting and I liked how the two boys had different opinions on the same subject. They answered some of the questions with monosyllabic words every once in a while, though, and I think it might've been more interesting if she had pushed them to develop their answers.
• The sound quality was good - some words seemed to be lost, and sometimes she started talking loudly and then quietly, but it was understandable as a whole. I thought the whole interview side added something casual, and the occasional mistakes made it sound more real, and they were funny sometimes. There was some background noise that could've been edited out.

3. Jiri (moving to Mongolia)

• The introduction was a little long, but the whole speech sounded authentic and set the situation. When talking about the alcohol, sometimes he sounded too formal, but he brought up many interesting points and it was a nice take on the whole being a teenager thirty years ago/being a teenager now issue.
• The sound quality was good enough to understand most of what he said, but there was a lot of noise that made it a little hard to understand at times.

4. Urangoo (alcoholism)

• I thought the tone and the content were both very touching. You can really imagine the context and the character, and the story made sense in many ways. As with Enkhi and Binderya's podcast, you sometimes wonder who the character was talking to, but I don't think this should be changed as it makes the podcast that much more special.
• The sound quality was really good, you could hear clearly what was happening. Only towards the end was there a little problem, I think Urangoo brought the microphone closer to her mouth and as a result it suddenly got very loud.

5. Kyu (using the internet)

• That was an interesting topic that went again the traditional idea that spending time on the computer is bad, and there's no discussion on that. It sounded like a real teenager talking, and there were some good arguments that were talked about.
• The sound quality was good. Sometimes the tone of the narrator seemed to suddenly change, which I found strange. You can understand everything that is said, outside that, so I wonder how he recorded this.