There was two parts to gathering the media needed for the presenting sections of this documentary...
Part one - Off Camera:
A huge proportion of my documentary will have me narrating over the top of footage I have filmed. Explaining what is going on in the footage and the overall facts of the investigation.
So I recorded these using the microphone I had purchased for this project. I recorded it as one big long audio piece that I could then edit into smaller sections for the different sections of the documentary.
The volume of the audio was nice and loud and my voice was very crisp and clear. Plus I had spoken all the words clearly and pronounced them well witch are all positive things and also this meant little editing was needed.
I edited out all the breaths leaving just noiseless spaces so that there were still gaps but not loud breathes that don't sound good. I also sped up the audio slightly so that it was more upbeat and fit the scheduled time slots. However I made sure that speeding the audio up didn't change or distort my voice. I also edited out any speaking mistakes I mad witch as I mentioned prior, there were very few of them witch made this process easy.
I did encounter one issue with editing this audio and that was the fuzzy background sound the entire thing seemed to have.
Where I recorded this at home and not a sound proof room, also the fact that the microphone was only a cheep one and therefore not the best quality meant that there was a fuzzy background noise throughout. This is a common thing that audio pieces can have however I was unsure how to get rid of it.
I had two options, to either let it be and have the audio not sound as professional as I had hoped or figure out how to get rid of it. I choose option to, to find a way to get rid of it.
It took time and study of online tutorials, however using the noise reduction tools on Adobe Audition I managed to remove the background sound and increase the volume of me speaking to make the audio quality overall sound better.
Part Two - On Camera:
The other type of presenting I decided to do was on camera presenting at different locations of the Hot Radio studio. I felt it was important to film at the Hot Studio as that was the key location for my whole documentary and therefore if I filmed my on camera presenting there it would make sense and link everything together nicely.
To do this filming I asked a fellow student, Rachele Piras to come with me to the studio and work the camera equipment. I set the camera up, choose the different spots I wanted to film at and Rachele helped me to do so hence why in the credit roll her name is mentioned.
Because this was not live reporting it meant that I had the opportunity to edit the footage after it was filmed meaning any mistakes could be edited out.
It took quite a few re-takes to film these as I messed up the lines a few times but in the end I managed to get everything I needed.
Once I was back home and began editing the presenting to camera footage I noticed that in each clip I was not looking at the camera the whole time despite memorising the words for this exact purpose.
It looked like I was either reading or looking at someone just to the side of the camera. I personally put this down to nerves as I do find tasks like this stressful however I am disappointed in this element as I feel it looks slightly unprofessional and defiantly would be something that real presenters in the industry do not do.
I wanted to go back and re-do the filming however with the deadline fast approaching and the new covid guidelines being brought in this was not an option therefore I had no choice but to use this footage.
Although it does bring the level of professionalism of the documentary down, it's something that I can look at improving in the future and defiantly learn from.
Overall the presenting aspects of my documentary were not 100% what I hoped for but still as good as they could be with all the other factors involved.