Process - recording the podcast

Over the next class, I got two microphones from the school in order to record my interviews. Since the class was noisy, I borrowed Elise’s computer and we set it up in the corridor. The problem was that the school’s microphones refused to work, as we didn’t know how to set them up. We ended up using the built-in computer on the laptop - obviously this diminished the sound quality. I had asked some of the people who got really good sound quality on their fictional podcasts how they had done the recording, and they had used their computers or even their phone, so I thought it would be fine.

The recording of the podcasts actually went well. The sound was not as bad as I expected, and I think my interviewees felt freer talking outside the classroom. However, their mutual presence was still a bit distracting, and sometimes I had to push them to develop their answers to the questions. Here is what I asked each interviewee:

• Have you ever been stereotyped? If so, as what?
• What did you experience because of these stereotypes?
• Do you think the stereotype does apply to you?
• Do you stereotype other teenagers? Do these impressions usually turn out to be right or wrong?

I was happy with the unscripted interviews because all three of my classmates gave very different, interesting answers. They were also quite honest in admitting they did stereotype other teenagers, and actually thought that often stereotypes turned out to be partly true. The only problem with the interviews was that recording them took much longer than planned. I didn’t have time to record my own parts or Sonya’s part, as I had planned.

I finished recording at home, but I think my own built-in microphone is of a lesser quality than Elise’s. My voice was a little hard to hear every now and then. I asked my sister to record the part I had planned for Sonya, and I hope her young voice is not too noticeable in the podcast.
Once I had all of the parts, I assembled my podcast into a small movie using pictures I had found on the internet for stereotypes. Some of the images were very striking. I particularly liked a series of photographs that went “I die my hair crazy colors so I must be an attention seeker,” “I’m Asian so I must like math,” “I am a person so I must be stereotyped. Overall, though, I felt as though the images added something very amateur, not serious, to my stereotype, and made listening to it less interesting.

"Recording sign on black background." Kompressor Studios. 2007. 26 Jan 2010