WEEK 9: The Sound of...Podcasting

This week we wrapped up Learning Entries #2, blogs 6 through 9, and at the same time, cross the two thirds mark of the semester. I've learned a lot so far in this course about design, web presence, and web 2.0 as a whole. However, not until this week did we really discuss audio, an often overlooked yet equally important part of any presentation. Our assignment for this week was to create a podcast, or an audio recording. I created my podcast in Apple's Garageband, a program that allows users to create both podcasts and music. Being completely new to podcasts, mine was very simple. It was nothing more than a glorified sound recording from my Macbook Pro. Once I'd finished my recording and exported it as an MP3 it was time to embed it into my learning blog, which I did using a site called SoundCloud, which I'll discuss in greater detail at the bottom of this post.

Audio, as I mentioned earlier, is an often overlooked element of video, yet immensely important. Audiences are far more likely to forgive poor video if there is quality audio, than they are to forgive poor audio if there is quality video. The most important elements of a film, or any video production, are often revealed within the audio, via dialog or off-camera sounds. Learning to use audio software, such as Garageband or Soundtrack Pro, is vital to any video production as the audio will make or break your production.

SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a fantastic resource for uploading podcasts, music, or foley work for a production and sharing it with fellow cast, crew, or just classmates. The process of uploading my podcast to having a link I could share with anyone I wanted to, took less than 5 minutes, and I was even able to embed my podcast right into my blog.

EXTRA POST 3: Podcast

For this blog post we were required to create a podcast, or audio recording and attach it to our post. I chose to create a SoundCloud account and upload my podcast track to that site. The test podcast I created is embedded below. Enjoy!



Austin Gilmour - Podcast by gilmoursa

Podcasts are a useful way to stay up to date with current technology in the production field. Movies are constantly being produced and podcasts such as Kevin Smith's Smodcast are great resources for breaking production news.