Audio Profile Featuring Sophia Mayers

My interview with Sophia Mayers was very casual and simple. I came with prepared questions for her and added a few follow up questions as the interview was conducted.I did feel a bit nervous during the interview due to the time restriction that was put on it making my thoughts a little jumbled, though. It was very familiar for me to interview someone with an audio recorder. I have worked as a writer for the University of Wyoming’s student media paper, the Branding Iron, and, therefore, have conducted many interviews with an audio recorder.

My audio editing experience with this assignment was a little stressful to start with but I eventually got the hand of things. I found it difficult to cut things smoothly so there was no abrupt transitions and I wish there was a smoother way to end the podcast than simply Sophia Mayers not talking anymore. However, other aspects of it came very easy. For instance I was able to easily determine what should and should not remain in the edited audio interview and what should.

Taking portrait photos is a fun activity for me to do due to my passion in photography. Due to their being a quarantine and me having a lack of lights and such to set up a professional portrait, Sophia Mayers and I used the outside to take her portrait picture. This brought the downsides of highlights on her face from the sun shining directly on her, but overall I enjoy taking portraits.

I was surprised in how much I would actually enjoy this assignment. I did not believe that audio work could be so satisfying. I have always enjoyed doing interviews with people to understand new things and simply get to know unique individuals, but I enjoyed listening back to that live interview and editing it for others to listen to. It was like writing an article of it but much more technically involved. Furthermore, once I got the hang of working with Audacity to edit my raw audio interview, I found it very calming to finalize the audio.

I wish that some of the transitions in the audio would have gone more smoothly and I wish I had a longer allowed time for my final audio to add in more information. Overall though I do not know of anything I would have done anything different other than practice a little more in the editing aspect.

I would like to use audio in the future now. I was not expecting to enjoy this media platform as much as I did, but now I can see myself interviewing unique individuals and posting audio recordings of the interviews as I did for this assignment. I would both write an article and post an audio recording, though, so viewers could choose which to observe depending on their circumstances or environments.