Final Week/Final Thoughts/The End

Hey all y'all's all -- so this is it! Happy end of term, and I hope you're all surviving.

Final musings/mutterings on the podcast experience: overall, I had a TON of fun with this project. I liked that we could choose our topics -- mine was one that I was already interested in, so the course was really just an excuse (and a kick in the pants) to dig deeper. And the process of recording was fun; I'm an editor at heart, so playing around with the various bits and bytes of sound, piecing together music & sound effects, that was a really fun process for me.

Overall, I'm satisfied with my podcast. I'm completely unashamed to admit how much I love the intro -- I was modelling after CBC Spark's intro, and, considering I wasn't using uber-professional software (GarageBand isn't the best platform for podcasting), I think I did alright. Listening to it in retrospect, I think I could have been fussier with some of the audio levels and balancing track volumes, but it's not the worst. If I could go back and change anything, it would be to actually invest in a good microphone -- though I initially planned on getting one, I just didn't end up having the time or the funds for it, so I used the mic on my computer. The sound quality is actually pretty good, I think, but I noticed some crackling and buzzing that was consistent regardless of how I tried to adjust the levels.

One bit of advice for future students in the course? Keep yourself on track! With the course structured the way it is, I think you could easily fool yourself into thinking you have a lot more time than you do. In reality, you need all the time allotted to each step along the way, if you want to produce something polished and comprehensive. Especially important is taking time in the beginning to REALLY narrow your focus -- 15 minutes isn't a lot of time to talk, and so you really do need to have a focused thesis.

I also think it's important to take the time to play around with your audio editing software in advance. I've used GarageBand extensively in the past, so I took it for granted that I would remember everything -- not so! I ended up spending a lot of time last-minute looking up tutorials and answers to some basic questions, just because I was using an updated version of the program and wasn't used to where the controls are. Not a huge setback, since I still knew my way around the software, but it could have saved me a bit of time.

Cheers, everybody!