Another Great Audio Example

The FAA released great audio tapes of the pilot of US Air Flight 1549 communicating with air traffic control. Conveniently, FAA put out both the tape and transcript. You could put together something really nice today with a full screen still over the audio. The right half the screen could have the transcript of the traffic and the left half still photos of the incident. I think still photos might work better than video because it allows you to focus on the incredible audio.

I wish I could be that calm when a show is crashing...

http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/accident_incident/1549/

Say What?

We talked about fonting audio that's hard to hear. Let's talk about audio you can hear just fine. For example, did you hear that tape of Christian Bale losing his mind on a movie set? You could hear what he was saying, but it would be even better if you have the visual reinforcement of words on the screen. We're TV. What else are you going to put up with that audio? Video of him? Distracting. It's hard to watch and process video while you're also trying to listen to what he is saying. Better to put a still pic in a graphic and font the audio.

The incident brings up an important point. If you're talent, be nice. Badgering your crew will guarantee a big bite in the derriere. Even if you're not talent, if you are ever around a mic, consider it hot and act accordingly. Have headsets in the booth? A lot of stations record the director's audio for discreps. It's not unheard of for people to check those tapes. So before you go mouthing off about what an oaf your news director is, or how your anchor is such a prima donna, just keep it in mind.

TechTip from Correspondent David MacDougall

David MacDougall, one of our correspondents in our Baghdad Bureau was kind enough to send along a great tech tip for audio interviews:

I wanted to share a resource with you that might be useful to some producers/reporters/newsrooms out there if you think it's worth passing on. When I worked in local news (not that long ago) we'd often try do get phoners on a particular story. Problem was... it was very inconvenient to set up. You had to phone the person from your desk... rush into the sound-proof booth... get someone to transfer your call in there... and then get someone to roll on the interview from one of the editing booths next door. Sure, in big markets I bet they have cool toys to make this easy. But this was market 123, with linear editing equipment, and not a lot of resources. I'm guessing not much has changed for hundreds of producers all over the country in small markets.

I came across an online tutorial which explains with exceptional clarity how to use Skype, from your desk, to record interviews. The tutorial also tells you how to optimize your computer to get the absolute best quality (broadcast quality) sound out of Skype. It's very simple and very effective. The tutorial is at: http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/


((A group of Swarthmore student journalists used this to great advantage:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/26/051226ta_talk_mcgrath


((For info on taping guidelines, check out:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ ))

To see some of David's blogs from Baghdad, check out:
http://onthescene.blogs.foxnews.com/author/baghdadbureau/ ))