The editing process

Now that I have gathered all the interviews I need to create my podcast I can now begin to create the final piece! I decided to use Adobe Audition to edit my final podcast as this is the programme I am most comfortable with using and I feel that I know my way around the software.

To begin with, I found it quite difficult to decide the order in which my interviewees would be heard as I wanted the piece to be engaging throughout and for the listener to never become bored. In the end I decided to focus mainly on Ruby as I feel that this gives a personal feel to the podcast, where the listener can be put into Ruby's shoes regarding her experiences and feelings. I wanted to try and create a story throughout the seven minutes, going through Ruby's life from when she fell ill with meningitis to her finishing her GCSE's and include the other interviewees in-between. This was quite difficult as I had a lot of content to filter through to find the best quotes to include, but eventually I managed to put together a storyline giving different views from the different interviewees throughout. I had a little trouble when editing the interview with Karen. When I listened back to the interview there was a constant buzz in the background and this made my overall piece sound quite amateur as the other interviews didn't have this. Although my supervisor did not pick up on this, I knew it was there and I knew I wouldn't be happy with the podcast until I had tried to minimise the 'buzz'. Luckily I was able to use Audition to cut out the background noise and I was finally happy with how my interviews sounded.

The opening was key!

The next stage was trying to come up with an opening. In my opinion, having a good opening to any piece of work is key! I didn't know whether to start with the sound bites of what you hear through a hearing aid/cochlear implant or whether to try something different. I played around with different openings and eventually came up with the idea to use every day sounds, such as birds chirping, sirens and dogs barking to create the engaging opening sequence. I do feel that now, looking back on my decision that this is the most effective way of opening my podcast.

Photo by BBC Radio 2

After writing and recording all my links and putting them together with the interviews, only one thing was missing- background music. I didn't want to go too overboard with the music as my target radio station BBC Radio 2 doesn't have a lot of music in their podcasts, unlike BBC Radio 1. With a lot of searching for the right kind of music that will fit I eventually found three pieces that were suitable. This was very time consuming as you can probably imagine, as there are so many different pieces of music out there and it's so difficult to choose! As I make the final finishing touches on my podcast, I am really pleased with how it has turned out!