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Reminders and Upcoming Dates

Scripts for your radio stories will be due on Monday, Oct. 25. On that day, everyone will sign up for an individual editing session with me. You can sign up for a time slot here.

The final, edited radio project will be due on Monday, Nov. 1.

Practice Radio Assignment

There are several steps to producing a radio news story, so we’re going to do a short practice assignment to give you a feel for how it all comes together.

1. RECORD your interviews and other sound.
2. WRITE the script. (You can’t do this until you’ve completed the reporting, because you need to write around the scenes and sound bites you’ve gathered.)
3. TRACK. Once you have finalized your script with the help of your editor (in this case, me) you can move forward with recording, or tracking your narration.
4. MIX. Now that you have all the sound elements you need (sounds bites/acts, narration/track, and natural sound/ambi) you can go ahead and edit the radio story in Audacity and export the finished WAV audio file.
5. PUBLISH. You’ll upload the WAV file to Soundcloud and post a link to the class blog along with a good title and your final script.

Ahead of Monday’s Zoom class, you’ll need to have completed the first three steps (of the practice assignment, not your actual radio story)  and downloaded Audacity to your home computer.

 

Recording Exercise

Partner up with someone in the class and interview them for 3-5 minutes about a hobby or interest of theirs. This part we will do before we leave today. The other parts you can complete at home if there isn’t enough time.

Script Writing Exercise

Write a very brief practice script with only 2-3 sound bites taken from the classmate interview you did. Post your practice script to the class blog by class time on Monday.

Here’s my example script based on a very short interview I did with another professor back in the spring. Note some of the different elements of script writing:

• Visual/descriptive, paints a picture to add context to the natural sounds
• Sets up sound bites by introducing the person by their full name and often by paraphrasing or hinting at what they’re about to say.
• No long, rambling, complicated sentences.
• Ends with a final line of narration that looks to the future in some way.

HOST INTRO: With CUNY schools transitioning to online learning this week amid the coronavirus outbreak, professors across New York City are getting creative. Emily Johnson spoke to one CUNY adjunct about what it’s like trying to teach during a pandemic.

AMBI: Nat sounds of tea kettle boiling (FADE DOWN AS TRACK BEGINS)

TRACK: I’m here with Anna Ficek in her Brooklyn apartment, watching her make tea while she works from home. She’s a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and when she’s not working on her dissertation she teaches art history at Baruch College and Borough of Manhattan Community College, or BMCC.

ACT: ANNA: When I found out that everything was getting shut down and especially CUNY I felt extremely sad. Because CUNY is such a big part of my life, such a great community that it was hard to feel that kind of dissipating.

TRACK: She says teaching from home has been a real challenge because of the way she runs her classes.

ACT: ANNA: It’s been very difficult to adapt to teaching remotely just because I really value the discussion I have with my students.

TRACK: Still, she’s trying to see this as an opportunity.

ACT: ANNA: What I’m hoping to get out of this is more time to really focus on what’s important both in terms of teaching and my own dissertation and my own research and trying to figure out creative problem solving ways to deal with these new issues that are going to come around like libraries being closed and inaccessibility to archives and how myself as an academic and as a researcher can get around that. So challenges, but also good challenges!

TRACK: CUNY schools will continue with distance learning for at least the remainder of the spring semester. For Baruch College, I’m Emily Johnson.

 

Recording Narration

Finally, record the narration you wrote in your practice script. You don’t need to submit this to me by Monday; you will use it in a sound editing/mixing exercise that day.

You’ll need to record your narration in a quiet place with sound-absorbing surfaces. Some people use their closet as a makeshift studio; others just throw a blanket over their head. If your room is carpeted, has curtains and lots of plush surfaces, the sound quality should be decent.

It’s best not to drink or eat dairy products right before recording narration; it makes your voice sound thick.

Try not to speak from high up in your throat. Speak from lower in your belly.

Good posture is important.

Some people in the radio world warm up their voices by singing, stretching, and/or doing tongue twisters.

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So, to recap:

By the end of class time, you should have finished interviewing a classmate for 3-5 minutes.

And here’s what you need to have done by class time on Monday:

1. Write a short practice script based on your practice interview and post it to the blog.
2. Record the narration you wrote in your practice script.
3. Download Audacity.

 

https://medium.com/@wasifafridi2/the-effects-of-coronaviruses-on-the-mosques-and-muslim-community-e7e8f6e8c26d

For my radio wrap, I plan on speaking with a two-sport athlete here at Baruch who is also heavily involved in a few extracurricular activities. Recently, at 19 years old, she had to get hip surgery, which was discouraging and upsetting at first. She’s a quadruplet, so playing sports made her come into her own identity. This was a massive change and challenge for Julia. Being without softball due to the pandemic, then due to surgery recovery and not being able to work out right away, it took time, but she is making her come back. She just joined cross country and feels it is helping her better prepare for next softball season.

My assignment will focus on her comeback after a major surgery during a pandemic and how despite her struggles she remained motivated to the best of her abilities.

Best,

Cristine Trimarco

For my pitch I plan to speak to an organization that opposes gentrification in the Bronx because there was a recent purchase in the South Bronx that was hailed as “the most ambitious gentrification project in the Bronx” and I hear that that was a contentious topic. I might also go to a Tag Up Bronx event, which is for young rappers, singers, and audio engineers. If neither of these work out I might also interview a cannabis company (or two) that started during the pandemic.

For my radio pitch, I’d really love to focus on elementary and middle public schools in the Bronx and how life has been changed since returning to school. I’d focus specifically on social workers and their take on the vaccine mandate as well as having younger students throughout the school again. I think this would make a really good story because I’m planning on recording the classroom bells ring as well as the kids during recess/lunch.

For my radio story pitch, I would like to visit a museum and interview people visiting. A lot of non-essential businesses such as museums have been open for a while now, with many people seeking a return to “normal” patronizing them. Museums are a part of New York culture, so I imagine there will be many people who will be happy to elaborate on why they’ve returned. I think a museum is an excellent place for a radio story because of consistency. The volume in museums tends to be controlled, allowing for consistent interviews and ambient noise.

For my radio pitch idea, I would like to go to a local public school in my neighborhood and interview teachers and other faculty about the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and on students. I also want to discuss how education is heavily underfunded in New York and how new COVID relief funding has been able to improve the teaching and learning experience or if the schools have yet to feel the “relief” of increased funding. 

 

I will probably also be interviewing the director of the after-school program and possibly counselors or group leaders to get a more complete idea of what it is like returning to in-person school. 

 

I think this will make for a radio interview because schools have a lot of interesting background noise. I would want to play a light audio of children giggling and chatting in the background of the interview to give it a more authentic feel. 

 

I am also considering attending a rally outside of Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s home and interviewing the protesters. Protests make for a good radio interview because the background noise of people chanting or talking is interesting. I hope to catch audio of the different chants used during the demonstration and insert them between interviewees. 

For my radio pitch I would like to interview a student/faculty of what’s like coming back to work/school after being stuck at their home for a year and how it change them that they had be very careful when they are in the street, and how do they felt when they realize nothing will be the same before COVID hits.

For my project, I would like to interview a teacher/child care worker and get an idea of how it is to be back in classrooms and working after the quarantine that had closed down schools and made schooling virtual. Also, I would like to get the teacher’s perspective on how it was to go from interacting with their students in person to doing it online. And even thoughts on how it is to work with parents in ensuring a better school year for students.

I’d like to do a story about one of the ‘hidden’ gardens around the city. I would plan to interview some of the volunteers that run the garden and get some of the natural sounds there like waterfalls, birds, etc.