Here is the long-overdue summary of things to consider when producing a story — in audio or video.

1. Be where the action is (when you audio/video record)
2. Capture the energy through ambient sound/video recordings
3. Set goals and be prepared to adapt them as you go
4. Gather and label your material
5. Understand that editing is an iterative process
6. Look for candidate themes, characters, plots and stories
7. Let the story identify and tell itself (if you decide the specific story in advance, you may find you’re wrong)
8. Tell the story using different voices and other elements
9. Remember that you can tell as much of the story with what you cut out as you can with what you include
10. Avoid soundbites
11. Experiment with recording, editing and storytelling
12. Only use your own voice as much as it’s needed
13. Use music and ambient sound/video as a backdrop and for transitions
14. Listen/watch, edit, mix, repeat
15. Consult with a set of honest (even blunt) ears/eyes that aren’t attached to your own body
16. Keep your listener/viewer wanting more at each moment
17. Don’t crowd your listener/viewer
18. Be patient
19. Enjoy (even be proud of) the process and the results

I realized that the missing element was music.  When my feelers for original music came up empty, I went to the Jazz collection and found the perfect piece of music: Poor James from the CD Tractor Parts: Further Adventures in Strang by the Canadian band, Zubot and Dawson.  Sadly, the band is no more.  It was Ken Rockburn who introduced me to the band when he played their fantastic song, Tractor Parts, on All in a Day back in 1998.

Once I picked the music and started placing it, things started feeling right with the show.  I had wondered if I should include a second piece of music.  That can be too much, though, and I decided to limit myself to the one song.  I also decided that it would be used specifically to score the excerpts of the reading.  There has to be logic to the use of the music, it can’t be random.

The editing and refining continued, though most of the effort was in cleaning up edits, removing some bumping of the microphone and, in two cases, cleaning up mistakes made by the speakers.  Thankfully, the way each speaker corrected themselves facilitated a clean edit and you’d never know.  Purists would argue to leave the mistakes in.  However, in this particular show, it made more sense to clean up the mistakes.  They errors were minor enough and the responses to the mistakes more intrusive than the mistakes themselves.

OUTSIDE EARS

I did a thorough refinement of the first four minutes of the show and listened to it for both audio and story flow.  It still didn’t feel right.  When I played it for Andrea, she pointed out a few things that didn’t work for her.  In particular, my voice over, the readings and interviews had different energy and emotional levels.  The readings and the interviewee spoke in more bursty and extreme intonations and my voice over was mellow and reflective.

MOOD AND ENERGY FLOW

I re-recorded my narration to be more punchy and energetic and played back a rough mix.  That was much better.  The individual clips made more sense as a unit so I went back to smooth out the hand-offs between clips and mix the music.  I also boosted the level of the ambient sound during my introduction so that there was more energy in the opening.

REFINING THE MIX

The process of mixing the elements for a smooth flow seems to me like staining a quality piece of furniture; it takes several passes, patience and a lot of care.  I worked on that for a while and realized that many of the voices on the show seemed a bit sharp in the mix.  I’m not sure if that’s the mic or the qualities of the voices.  I used my equalizer to add some warmth and remove some of the clarity from recordings.  I should note that I hadn’t adjusted any of the frequencies prior to that.  EQ’ing is the last thing I do.  I only do it to make sure that each element has its own room to breath.  If you find that two pieces of mixed audio are fighting with each other spend less time with the volume faders and more time giving each piece of audio its own space in the audio spectrum.

FINAL PRODUCT

I finished the audio production work in the early evening and created a mix I was happy with.  All it took was patience, listening, feel and an iterative approach to finding the pieces that best told the story.  In the end, I went from seventy-eight minutes of recorded audio of the event to a nine-minutes and fifty-four seconds of reading excerpts and interview clips included in the show.  My entire voice-over of introduction and narration was one-minute and seventeen seconds.  The program is thirteen-minutes and sixteen seconds long and has been published under the name A Bear in War on the Just One More Book website.

 

 A Bear in War [13:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

I’m an audio guy and I often profess that audio podcasts are the best option for mass distribution and ease of consumption.  However, even I can’t ignore the popularity of video.  More to the point, no matter how hard we audio folk try to make it obvious that site visitors can press play on an audio player, many people just don’t get it.  Even if it is far more intrusive (that is, you are glued to your video screen to consume a video), video on the web is far more obvious to use.

So, we’ve tried an experiment.  We published the “A Bear in War” documentary as a normal audio podcast of Just One More Book and to help people understand that there’s multimedia content available on the site, I created a video/slideshow version of the documentary (using the same audio), uploaded it to Viddler and embedded it within the post for A Bear in War.  Given more time and energy, I would have done more to make the video more compelling for the average viewer by using transitions, pans and zooms — like Ken Burns.  I threw the video together very quickly.

Interest in the video is encouraging.  After about two hours, the unpromoted video was watched thirty-six times.

FINAL TALLY

Not including travel time and the blogging I’ve done to document my workflow, but including the research and recording times and the production of the video, it took me about sixteen hours to create the A Bear in War documentary.  It’s not unusual for a documentary to take a significant amount of time to produce which is why I don’t do many of them.  I do very little, if any, editing in most of my hobby production work which means that the average ten minute podcast probably takes about thirty minutes to record, produce and upload.

I’ll create a summary of my workflow post highlights later today.

I’d mentioned in an earlier post in this series that I don’t storyboard or plan my episodes.  That’s mostly true.  In some lucky cases the story line and the way to present it has been obvious to me (listen to Connecting with Val Willis: The magic of ‘My Horse, My Passion’).  Other times, a deadline helps motivate me to weave together an interesting story told by many voices (listen to Before Green Gables and 100 Years of Anne Shirley for which I recorded four hours of audio at a book launch and then produced a twenty-one minute documentary in my hotel room that night in another four hours).

THE THEME

As I listened more closely to the recordings I made and the way I had labelled them, it became clear to me that the main story is the blend of fantasy and reality that magics-to-life love, conflict and the passage of time.

Having made that decision, I was able to eliminate a lot of the audio as unrelated to the main theme, and then start moving pieces in place.

In order to keep things interesting, I took some liberties in the sequencing of the story and intermixed excerpts from the book reading with reflections on the real family and the process of creating the book.  I also managed to keep my voice out of the program as much as possible — a bonus.  It’s particularly effective in a documentary when the facilitator’s role can be implied or completely overlooked.  The characters and the witnesses should be the stars of the show.

Putting everything together is like solving a dynamic puzzle; any combination can work though some combinations work better than others.  And, to keep things particularly interesting, all of the pieces are interdependent; moving one piece can affect others or even the entire flow of the program.

So, I spent about four hours moving pieces about on my audio canvas.  Selecting which pieces to use wasn’t the problem.  Those feels obvious to me.

LIKE WRITING A SONG

As I think about this whole process — and, believe me, this is the first time I have really thought about what I do and how I do it — I realize that this is a lot like songwriting.  Some people write songs from titles, others write music from lyrics or melodies, and still others will back-fill lyrics from music.  In fact, some people can write in all three ways.

Sometimes, a project I’m working on will happen completely on its own just by me picking the right clip with which to kick off the show.  That’s right, sometimes the right 5-20 second opening clip will be like a creative spark and the rest will flow and fall into place.  The “A Bear in War” project began with a draft recording of a framing narrative then putting some of the storytelling elements in place.  As I shuffled and considered them, I realized that the backstory needed to be pushed through quickly to get right to the meat of the story.  So, I decided to open the show with an excerpt of the reading which, using a dialog between Teddy and Aileen, gives away the war setting of the book.

After the theme music, I use a short narrative to create a scene in the mind of the listener…

• when am I speaking
• why is this moment significant
• where are we
• what are we going to experience
• who is going to walk us through this journey

For reasons I can’t quite figure out, I’m not able to make an introduction of the program and myself as host work.  That’s still not a priority right now.  I have bigger questions on my mind like will music make a difference?  If so, what type?  I listened to some music during some errands earlier today and wasn’t able to find anything that feels right.  I’ve put a couple of feelers out to some musicians I know to see if they have time and interest in putting together two minutes of original music for me.  I want the music to convey a feeling of being connected across distance by a stuffed toy.  I want that on an emotional level, though.  I don’t want chimes and plinky crap.

BLOCKED OUT

Where the book takes a lot of time to set up the warmth of the family, I don’t have the time to do that.  What I mean by that is I don’t think I can hold the listener’s interest by getting into too much detail.  Besides, I want to introduce the book, not give it away in its entirety.  So, I move from my narration to another excerpt in the book and then I introduce the grand-daughter of the soldier — the woman that found Teddy.  From there I move to some short clips with the authors.  I let them explain that the book is about a family during wartime, not the war.

This is the first of all my book-related coverage in which I’ve used so many excerpts from the book.  I like them becomes they move the story along.  In fact, the five excerpts I use pretty much tell the main story.  But, that’s not my shining moment in this program.  I have taken it upon myself to demonstrate the importance of this book by including the voice of a child that shares what his favourite moment in the book is (a tender moment in which the soldier pins his medals of bravery to Teddy) and I include two questions (one deep and one light) asked by children during the Q&A along with the answers given by the authors.  Parents should know that there is no reason to shelter their children from the reality of life.

In its current form, the program is about twelve-and-a-half minutes long.

My next tasks are to review my narrative and make a decision on music.  After that I’ll start cleaning up the edits and mix.

A couple of quick points I thought I’d add to this…

The “A Bear in War” documentary program will be published at 1:00am, Monday, November 10, 2008.  That means the total time I have to work on the project from once I hit record is about 32 hours.  So far, my time investment so far has been as follows:

• Advanced Research: 90 minutes
• Recording: 180 minutes (accounts for the entire time I was at the museum)
• Step One (gather and label material): 10 minutes
• Step Two (listen to and edit audio, iteration one): 100 minutes
• Step Three (look for candidate themes and plots): 30 minutes
• Step Four (select keepers…, iteration two): 15 minutes
• Writing first draft of the opening narrative while lying in bed: 15 minutes
• Blogging my workflow: 40 minutes
• TOTAL INVESTMENT SO FAR: 8 hours

All of the recording equipment I needed for the event, along with some extra cables and batteries, a camera and a paper-based notebook fit in a single hardshell case which I was able to carry with me as I walked to and from the War Museum (roughly 40 minutes each way, not counted in my time above) to record the event.

I tend to be more than a bit invested in my production projects.  When I’m not specifically seated in front of my computer working on the audio, my mind is busy trying to figure out how the pieces fit together and how I can make this latest project different from all of my previous work.  A fresh approach each time helps to keep everyone interested; myself and the listener.

That explains why I found myself lying in bed at 5:20am busily figuring out (in my head) how to craft the narrative for the “A Bear in War” production.  I have lots of great audio and very little of it is “soundbitey”.  I’m glad for that since I don’t want to produce a news story.  However, it means that some of my guests’ longer answers may not hold a listener’s attention.  It’s my job to keep the listener engaged and, more specifically, keep them wanting that next piece of information.  For this project, I’m thinking of using the narrative is to summarize the longer parts of the story in a concise yet visually descriptive way.  The narrative will thread the different voices together.  My body woke me up at 5:20am so my brain could start figuring stuff out.  Thanks!

In the process, I’ve decided that some ambient recording I had collected and planned to throw away may have a purpose after all.  I’ll have to listen to it, again.  I think I ditched it because there was a nearby conversation that landed in the distant foreground of the recording - just enough to be distracting.

BACKFILLING SOME INFORMATION

At 5:45am, it occurred to me that I had left some details out of part 1.  In particular, the equipment that I used to record the book launch event.

For the first time, I used two digital audio recorders in tandem.

Earlier in the week, I arranged with the audio-guy through the event planner to be able to connect a digital recorder to the mixing board.  The agreement was to take a stereo feed from the RCA output of the mixing console using a cable I have that converts that to the input for my Edirol R1 (still my workhorse; still one of the best analog-to-digital audio converters in its class; no longer manufactured).  When I arrived, we discovered the console doesn’t have an RCA output.  It’s a good thing I brought some extra cables with me.  I ended up using one of my microphone cables to take a mono signal from the mixer.  Fortunately, I travel with two of these mic cables and I was able to use the other cable with my second digital recorder.  With the signal from the mixing board, I was able to get a high-quality recording of the presenters.

I used my Zoom H2 digital recorder in two different ways.  I used the internal microphones to record some ambient sound, in stereo, as people arrived and seated themselves.  Before the event started, I connected my R0de NTG-2 shotgun mic to my Zoom H2 and used it to record the event and interviews.  A shotgun mic is a long, narrow, directional microphone that has ‘telescopic properties’.  That is, it picks up an audio signal in a very narrow range in the direction in which it’s pointing.  During the event, I aimed it at the sound system speakers.  Here’s an often overlooked fact… if you’re far away from the person speaking at a large gathering and that person is amplified through a speaker system, aim your mic at the equipment-speaker, not the person-speaker.  You’ll get a better signal.

Once the event was over, I packed my H2 away and connected my shotgun mic to my R1 for the interviews.  The shotgun mic is fantastic for interviews in a large and busy room.  Because the mic is directional, it cuts out a lot of the background noise and really puts the voice its pointing at in the foreground.  And, because it’s a powerful microphone, I’m able to hold it at waist level and simply pivot my hand to point at the mouth of the person speaking.  There are several advantages to this approach.  First, it gets the microphone away from people’s faces and lines-of-sight helping them to quickly forget that they’re being recorded.  Second, it eliminates plosives; those bursting pops of air that hit microphones and can ruin a listener’s experience.

I’m particularly trusting of myself and my equipment when I record.  While other journalists were running around with headsets on their heads to monitor their recordings, I went ‘commando’ so that the people I’m speaking with relax and remember that we’re just two people having a conversation.  Many people get nervous when they’re being recorded, others feel compelled to be articulate (whether they can be or not).  I want to record real people so I try to create an environment that allows them to be real people.

CHECKPOINT

I haven’t figured out my approach with this program yet, though I did write a first draft of my opening narration.  I haven’t listened any of the audio since I went to bed last night.  Sometimes you need that space from the recordings. When you return you may find something you hadn’t noticed before.  In fact, it’s important to keep an open mind about your production.  It’s not uncommon to discover well into your work that you’ve told the wrong story and then have to rip it apart and start over, again.  Don’t worry.  You’re in good company.  I’ve heard that Dire Straits abandoned the first several weeks of work on Brothers in Arms and started over with a fresh approach.  It ended up being their most successful album.

I’ve noticed that workflow and media production methodology is rarely talked about at Podcast and new media conferences.  Also, a few people have asked me how I approach my own audio/video recording, editing and mixing to tell stories — sometimes with a narrative, sometimes without.

I’m actually working on a project right now.  So, the timing is right for me to document what I do.  Depending on feedback, I may consider this as a presentation at a future conference.

BACKGROUND

I attended and audio-recorded the launch of the children’s picture book A Bear in War at the Canadian War Museum this morning.  The book tells the incredible and true story of a stuffed bear that was mailed to a Canadian soldier by his daughter during World War I.  The soldier, Lt. Lawrence Browning Rogers, volunteered when he was thirty-six years-old (a “greybeard”) and was sent to Europe where he served as a medic in Belgium.  Lt. Rogers and his family corresponded regularly.  To help her father feel connected with home, Aileen sent her beloved “Teddy” to the front lines where it kept Lt. Rogers company for about a year-and-a-half, until he was killed in action on October 30, 1917 in the Battle of Passchendaele.  Teddy was shipped back home with Lt. Rogers’ other personal effects and military honours.  In 2002, Teddy was donated to the Canadian War Museum and is now an attraction of the World War I exhibit in the Gallery.

MATERIAL

I gathered about seventy-eight minutes of audio including the welcome speech by a museum curator, the book reading by the two authors, a brief Q&A session, some ambient sound of the event and six interviews.

THE GOAL

Tell a compelling story in roughly fifteen minutes.

STEP ONE: GATHER AND LABEL MATERIAL

I like to do things in an organized and logical manner.  The first thing I do is create a new project in my production software.  I use Cubase for all of my audio production work.  Once the project is created in its own folder on my hard drive, I import all of the source audio I have collected and I make sure that each imported file has a descriptive file name.

STEP TWO: LISTEN TO AUDIO AND EDIT (ITERATION ONE)

A lot of people map out, even storyboard, their media productions before they do anything with it.  I don’t.  In fact, to me, the story that I want to tell isn’t always obvious to me.  That is, even though I may have an idea of what I want the result to be, I find that my ideas evolve or even radically change once I start listening to the individual pieces and discover that they can be threaded together in an entirely different way to tell the same story.  Sometimes, the original story idea turns out to be terrible compared to what can be done.  So, I approach this in an open minded way and eliminate what I determine I don’t need rather than look for the stuff I want to keep.  Having said that, there are usually some clips that are quite obviously gems.

Okay… even the gems sometimes turn out to be duds.  But if you discover what you think is a gem, label it that way so you know.

All that to say I approach editing as an iterative process and, at this stage I do a simple straight-through listen.  I don’t dig in too deep or replay clips.

As I listen during the first pass, I make cuts in the audio to divide and identify specific pieces of audio.  In an interview, that would be a question.  In ambient noise, it may be a particular sound or event that has resulted in some cool audio.  For this audio program, I want to use some of the book reading so I’ve made some cuts where a particular compelling moment of the book is being read.

I use colour coding to help me identify and group related elements.  In some projects I colour code based on speaker.  In others, I’ll colour code based on theme.  In the “A Bear in War” project I’m colour coding based on known keepers.

STEP THREE: LOOK FOR THE CANDIDATE THEMES, PLOTS AND STORIES

I try not to limit myself to a single story line in my media work.  Life isn’t made up of single themes, plot elements and stories.  It’s a spaghetti of stories and ideas that weave around each other.  As long as I can travel with my listener/viewer along an arc,  I like to let a few of these stories play together.

In this step, I look at the different keepers and labels to see if anything jumps out and me and, more importantly, that there is enough connected audio that can tell the story in an engaging way.  Engaging means knowing what to include and what to keep out.  If you overdeliver the story, your audience won’t have a chance to use their own imagination.  If you underdeliver, they won’t have enough material to engage their imagination.  It’s a balance and I’m not sure that I’ve figured out how to hit the sweet spot, yet.

For “A Bear in War”, I know that Teddy is going to be one of my main characters.  That’s an obvious one which can be dangerous, too.  However, since there’s surprisingly little coverage of this in the mainstream media, particularly in the children’s book world, it’s a freebie.  It’s also universal.  Who couldn’t relate to the importance and value of a cuddly toy to a child and their parent?  Themes I’ve identified include the use of Teddy as the narrator in the book, crafting the voice of a teddy bear, connecting world conflict in 1917 with world conflict in 2008, the human factor in war time and engaging with children on an important topic (rather than pretending it doesn’t exist).

STEP FOUR: SELECT THE KEEPERS AND REMOVE ELEMENTS THAT DON’T SUPPORT THEM (ITERATION TWO)

It’s time to make some tough decisions.  The important thing to remember is that your audience doesn’t know what you cut out, only what you deliver.  So, pick the stuff you can tell well and get rid of any content that doesn’t help you deliver.

Sometimes you have to sleep on these decisions.

I think that’s what I’ll do.