Mission 1

Creativity Mission

Process:

For this first mission, I was stuck on what to choose for so long, but I decided to pick the assignment of doing something with audio, the "Digital Audio". To begin this assignment, we needed a group of three to four people as this whole module is based partially on group work. To begin I read the mission on www.introdm.cdmonline.ie and re-read it over and over to understand it clearly, as it became more vibrant to me I began to realise I was going to do a podcast. One of the reasons why I was so attracted to this mission was because in the previous year I had done a PLC in Dunboyne College in Creative Digital Media and came out with full award and a QQI level 5. In that course we did multiple modules but one which related to this one was “Radio”, so as part of our radio assignment was to make a podcast with three to four people as well. So hence why I picked the audio assignment as I had already done one before.

I then decided to pair up with two other peers from my group whop also wanted to do the Creative Audio, Matthew and Sophie. We then started to brainstorm on how we could develop our project.

So to start off we began to jot down notes on how we would make our podcast, as it was our very first one to do by ourselves and we had no equipment , we then decided to do a DIY and use our voice recorder on our phones, that was the easy part of the task the hardest one was coming up with what to actually talk about. So from having discussion after discussion on what to talk about, we were thinking Conspiracy Theories and education which we had lots to talk about but we felt as though there was too much to talk about with the time limit given so that would have been difficult, we then settled on the topic/question of “Do you think we were given a path in life and that everything is already set out for you, what happens, happens for a reason”

Another thing which we had to think about was also our presentation slideshow, who was going to talk about/do what? We each decided on 3 topics that we would discuss and then each one of us picked one and wrote about it, with the use of visuals and facts/statements. I then decided I would organize the PowerPoint and do it if both Matthew and Sophie would send me their work. Finally, we confirmed on different dates that suited all of us where we could meet up and work on doing our podcast.

Product:

So, to start off, we decided to make the presentation to get it out of the way, our presentation was precisely about audio in the media in general, how its evolving and updating comparing to previous years, and how we use normal everyday sounds like traffic, clapping, car horns , rain etc. as sound effects for other audio such as videos, tv or for meditation uses. So we met up, and showed each other what we had been working on, we re-read over what we wrote and decided how we could make it better by wording it differently or using other visual images that might look better because some of the photos were blurry. We met up a couple of times during the three week space in order to make sure the presentation was fully ready and then we began our podcast.

We picked a day which suited all three of us, which was a day after college, to do our podcast. After going from building to building on campus, we finally found a small room which was free for u to work in.

Even though I said previously I had done a podcast in my PLC I was still nervous, we all were. Once we sat down and took out our phone’s we decided who would record and who would say what. I then thought to myself, we should be discussing who says what because a podcast is a conversation in which it should all just flow, so that’s what we did we threw the idea away with giving roles and just went with the flow.

We ended up re-taking the recording a couple of times just because the nerves got the better of us and we all either mumbled, laughed or talked to fast to understand so we had to re-take.

We then decided which audio was the best with conversation flowing and the sound. Once we picked our audio, we I said I would edit it on a programme called audacity as I had used it previously when making own podcast in the previous year, because there was hardly any mistakes in the audio all we had to do was cut a few clips out where we laughed or coughed to make the audio sound that little bit better.

Reflection:

Now to finally reflect on my assignment, I can say the mark we got, “satisfactory”, was deserved, as it was only our first time doing an assignment for this module. I think we did very well understanding what we had to do and what we did. Although we could have done a lot better if we had equipment and materials for the podcast but its only our first year and were not expected to do have that. So if I was to change anything with actually doing the podcast itself , I probably would of asked family members or peers or even lecturers in the college if they knew anywhere where we could of gone and done it professionally.

Another thing to reflect on was presentation, personally for me I do get nervous in front of people, which did happen during the PowerPoint, I knew I had to bite the bullet and just speak but it was nerve wrecking as these were all new faces to me in my group. I’ll admit when I was speaking, I did read it very fast and mumbled and maybe stuttered as the nerves got the better of me but ill know for next time to just relax and take a breather.

I do believe that I can do better if we really pushed myself and we could of used the facilities around us, the only thing about that is, nobody had pointed out to us where we could do anything like this professionally around the college/on campus.

Anyways as a reflection/evaluation of the whole mission itself I  think that we had achieved what we were asked to do, we put in lots of hours in order to gain the most satisfaction, I understand now that the actual project for the mission like the audio is more important than the actual PowerPoint and that it is just the guideline but the video/audio is the goal of the whole assignment and I’ll know for next time to spend more time on it. I’ve learned that there is always room for improvement, and by pushing myself to work harder and be more creative I’ll only improve.