CMM225

The original idea that I had for the indoor soundscape project was to venture around the school’s campus and find a specific part that I thought would have story potential. This idea fell through when I decided to stay home to record the audio. For this episode I simply documented my thought process while I was stuck at home, bored, unmotivated, and not wanting to do anything. Most of the time when I am that kind of mental state, my brain immediately goes to, “what could I be doing right now that would improve something?” So, I chose to share some of what that is like in this episode.

After finalizing the project and listening to it in its entirety, I was very happy with it. I was especially thankful that I recorded all of the specific sounds that I did to supplement the narration like the vaccuum, faucet, toilet flushing, etcetera. I hope you enjoy!

For this podcast project I have chosen to interview my dad, James Quest. Out of the available family members that I could contact to conduct this interview my dad is probably the one with the most to say about all kinds of things.

I would like to talk to him about his professional work life and the parts of his career that he enjoyed and parts that he regrets. My dad and I have always gone back and forth about this, but it has almost all been out of context and, to be honest, I have not always actively listened to what lessons he has tried to teach me. So, to me, this is a great opportunity to actually listen to what my dad has been trying to tell me all these years.

Another added bonus of interviewing my dad is that he has started his own podcasting channel where he talks about project management with his colleague Braden. So, in terms of editing the interview down, it should be pretty straightforward. Ultimately, I chose to interview my dad because he has experience in podcasting and because he knows a lot of things that can be taught to others, which often makes for an interesting podcast. This is his website: https://projectpundits.com/

Even though I have yet to conduct the interview, I have a sense of how a story will emerge from it. I plan to use the questions that I have drafted below to follow his career path from the start to where he is at now, citing important lessons along the way. This will definitely help me out, especially considering that
I am a second semester graduating senior in college who is entering the professional world soon. I also hope that other listeners in the class will be able to derive some lessons from the episode that I produce.

Here are the questions that I have come up with:

1. Could you tell me about your schooling and how that impacted or influenced the work that you began after college?
2. If you could go back, would you have finished college? Why or why not?
3. What was your early career like? From the time you left college until your mid-late twenties?
4. What were some of the things you did that you were proud of around that age?
5. What were some of the things you did that you were not proud of? Things that you regret or wish you did differently?
6. Is there a single standout story or lesson from your career that you think would be beneficial to share to someone entering the professional world that you were (are) in?
7. How has your professional career been different than you had imagined it when you were my age?
8. What have you found to be most important when applying for a job? What is most important at a job? What is the best way to maintain a relationship after leaving a job or workplace?
9. Has the entrepreneurial side of business always been the most appealing to you?
10. Where are you at now in your career?
11. Are you optimistic or hopeful about the future of your professional career?

Interview is completed as of now.

The beginning of this project was most difficult, the “deciding on what to do” stage. The first thing that I did was brainstorm, but when that proved to be hopeless, I found myself opening the voicemail section of the phone call app on my phone. Luckily, I have a pretty active and full voicemail most of the time, so there were a number of candidates to choose from. I landed on one of my landscaping clients from home in Massachusetts because he spoke clearly and honestly. His message gave me the idea in the beginning of this podcast, the introduction where I state that he is a good client for two big reasons. I turned his voicemail into a short lesson that I hope some will pick up on when listening.

I hope you enjoy this podcast (the fourth I have completed for this class) and be sure to check out my other work. Special thank you to Mark for being an awesome person to do business with!

This is an audio postcard about Hills Beach road for no specific audience. With that being said, I did try and sell the street a bit throughout the podcast, naming the benefits and the potential that the street has to offer. I made sure to note the personal impacts that the street has had on me throughout my time at the University of New England, which is, of course, on Hills Beach road.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, and make sure to return to the drop down menu “CMM225” for more podcast episodes!

After reading Marinna Guzy’s essay on soundscapes, and after listening to the audio in the article, my perspective shifted in how I interpret sound and the environment in which it exists. This is more or less what a soundscape is, the environment in which a collection of sounds exist and ideally harmonize. I began to think about this as a painting of sorts. Paintings, like soundscapes, each have traits that define the confined strokes, or in the case of soundscapes, sounds. All of these different components that make a whole painting or a whole soundscape clash with each other or harmonize with each other, there is rarely an in between in my eyes. So, soundscapes, like paintings, books, television shows, and movies are the culmination of different sensory inputs from the environment you are in. Your eyes can tell a visual story and feelings can be had within that. Your ears can also tell a story, but a story of sounds, which can evoke different feelings.

In high school I played basketball all four years (five if you include eighth grade). Every single year, every practice, every game, every meeting in the background I heard the basketball hoops clicking and clanking around, whether or not they were being raised or lowered is irrelevant. They always did this. Thinking of a soundmark example did not take me long because I still remember the distinct click and rattling. Sure, there were other sounds like squeaky sneakers, basketballs bouncing, and people shooting, but this was a constant, uninterruptible sound that is a perfect example of a soundmark.

Ultimately, Marinna opened my eyes and ears to thinking about the whole environment of sound at once, as a soundscape. For me this includes background noise like humming or any machinery that might be working.

For this first podcast assignment we were asked to interview one of our classmates. I was able to interview my new classmate, Kayleigh Duncan about her interests, why she is in Topics in Digital Storytelling, and a couple of other things. I used a guided set of questions provided by Professor Cripps to conduct my interview with Kayleigh. The inquiries were surface-level in their depth, but thankfully Kayleigh and I were able to expand on each other’s questions and responses with more questions and additional information to supplement the baseline questions.

Thank you to Kayleigh for allowing me to interview her, and thank you to freesound.org for the free audio that helped my project run more smoothly!

Feel free to listen to the episode below!

To me, this prompt was very open-ended, especially after listening to the example on the assignment page. The task was to pick a location and to venture through it to show someone or something around. I saw this as an opportunity to introduce my cats to a beach that they would never get to see. They probably will not get to experience any beach other than their litter box, actually. A less risky and more straight-froward idea did come to my mind where I would have chosen my mom as the audience, but I thought it would be more funny to talk to my pets.

I chose a simple location on purpose. I felt that if I chose something more significant and complex that I would try and cram too much information into the alotted time for this podcast, which would make it less interesting in my opinion. That being said, I may take a more serious route come the next playground assignment, just to see what the differences are in the two approaches. All in all, this was a very relaxing and quick project to put together. Looking forward to the next!

Any given medium of communication is unique. When I watch a television show I am internalizing the audio and video components at the same time, with a podcast just the audio (generally speaking). When I read a book I am only using my eyes, but when I watch the movie made from the book I am using my eyes and ears. I believe that these simple distinctions are massively important in understanding how people receive and digest information.

For instance, books are imaginary landscapes that grow and evolve as you turn the pages. You can rely on your own knowledge and imagination to carry you through the story that the book is telling, but you only see the picture of the story that you have created in your mind. Television on the other hand creates that picture for you and tells the visual story that you would have created yourself otherwise. It’s less mental work to watch television compared to reading a book. We imagine things differently when we have the opportunity to create part of the story ourselves.

Podcasts are a little different. To me, they are often conversations about a particular topic and almost always about that topic exclusively andt hey are not always story based. With the lack of video of most podcasts, you only get the audible conversation piece. This allows for someone to focus more closely on the actual information being communicated without becoming distracted by any sort of visual. That’s my opinion at least. Ultimately, I believe that the more the medium does for you, the less work you have to do and the less fulfilling the experience is as a human.

The message in the medium of podcasting is simple. It is to connect people who know about things to people who want to know about those things. The message is clear and straightforward, unlike other types of media and mass media.