The inspiration for my group’s podcast was George Orwell’s 1984. Early on, we decided we wanted our podcast to function as a news broadcast from the fictional government. Because we were a group of four, we decided we’d each pick one of the four ministries present in the novel and write a section of the script incorporating a ministry official that we would then perform in the recording. I wrote the Ministry of Peace section and the advertisements.
To add something to the 1984 world, we decided to bring it into the current year. In my section I attempted to incorporate that idea with references to the current conflict between Iran and the United States. Rather than reporting on real current events, I focused on pistachio production. This brought in an element of humor, but is also something I find interesting. Iran, Turkey, and the United States produce a majority of the pistachios found globally. There is a theory that the United States, specifically California, is producing pistachios to destabilize the Iranian economy. Because of the current military conflict with Iran, I created a report for my character in which the war between Oceania and Eurasia is only concerned about pistachios. This theory paired with my character’s report is where the broadcast’s drama comes in. My character, Casey Cheatham, does an initial report about the conflict. Then, we get an advertisement for Doubleplusgood Pistachios, which is a riff on Wonderful Pistachios. After this ad break, Casey is back, but less confident, suggesting that a war over nut production is silly. When recording this segment, I intentionally stumbled over my words and left awkward pauses to show the uncertainty the reporter is feeling. Then the outburst proceeds, where Casey defies the Party by saying that the war shouldn’t be happening, and California shouldn’t be producing pistachios.
In addition to the Doubleplusgood Pistachio advertisement, I created an ad for LA chocolate, which came from Dubai chocolate. This was another attempt to bring it to a relevant year because of the popularity of Dubai chocolate. I changed the city from Dubai to LA because Wonderful Pistachio headquarters is in Los Angeles, but I wanted the name to consist of the same syllables to reflect the relation.
Because I wrote and performed the entirety of the advertisements, and one of them interrupts my other role, I had to think a lot about inflections and tones to attempt to convince the audience that there are multiple voices present. I found it was easier for me to get into character if I could either stand or hold the mic. In the podcast studio in the Miller Learning Center, I would position the microphone so that I could stand and have a larger range of motion to get into character. I also had a microphone at home which I could either have attached to an arm or I could unscrew and hold. I think holding it worked best for me because it gave me something to do with my hands, so I no longer felt awkward. This mic was also how I created most of the static that is present in the podcast, which was used to simulate the feeling of something going awry within the Ministry of Peace Section.
Having a microphone at home was really beneficial for my recording process because it gave me the privilege to have the ability to record and re-record until I was happy with my performance. It also proved beneficial for the editing process, which I did for the entirety of the broadcast except for the two minutes hate segment, which was done by one of my group members. I found it incredibly helpful to be able to re-record and change the tone of my voice while thinking extensively about how my voice sounded while I was performing multiple characters. And, when I was continuously failing to change my voice drastically enough, I taught myself how to change the pitch of the audio clip within the audio editing software, Audacity. This was the most time consuming part of editing for me. The process of changing pitch was difficult because I had to figure out what frequency I could change my voice to without making it incoherent or unrealistic. It took a lot of trial and error, but in the end, I am happy with where it landed.
While Audacity was a new software for me, I had experience editing audio and visual media through a broadcast journalism class I took in high school in which we used iMovie. For the most part, the technique was very similar. I didn’t cut off the dead air sections from the end or beginning of the clips and placed them overlapping in different tracks to blend the audio better. I also attempted to leave a gap just large enough between the audio to simulate the pauses present in news segments when an anchor introduces a field reporter, but not so long that the listener is confused about why the next person hasn’t spoken yet.
I was originally concerned with sharing the editing, but Audacity made it easy to export the audio file to be sent to someone else. So, when my group partner finished his work on the two minutes hate segment and sent it my way, I was able to upload it into the rest of the project.
Each time I changed something about the project in the editing process, I would upload it into a shared Google drive folder with my group members. They would listen to it and provide any feedback. In the end, I think we created a project of which we are all proud.