The remarkable creatures of Australia have fascinated me for most of my life. I was delighted years ago when Dirck Halstead embraced the duck-billed platypus as the principle icon in his crusade for still photographers to diversify their skills and learn the ways of video. The lure of his Platypus Workshop is learning how to use new, more effective tools for story telling in preparation for becoming producers rather than mere photographers.
Personal websites, blogging and podcasting now make the possibility of self-publishing available to anyone. Newspaper photographers simply don't need the structure of a newspaper any more in order to publish their work. The opportunity to produce ones own stories in new ways, however, presents ethical challenges for the photojournalist grounded in familiar journalistic standards and editorial hierarchy. The one-man-band multimedia journalist becomes responsible for adapting old journalistic standards to new forms of telling stories.
What comes to mind is an argument between a parrot and a lyrebird.
The lyrebird is an Australian bird of near mythic musical powers. Among all the birds of the world, there is no more accomplished mimic than the lyrebird. Its song – unique to each lyrebird – is comprised of the many, varied sounds in its environment, which each lyrebird combines and recombines and weaves into a new sensibility. The lyrebird literally gives meaning to what it hears. Its song, in effect, tells the stories of its community.
We all know what a parrot is. The parrot is the reporter in us all. The parrot is the bird that keeps repeating in our ear: "Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy." Reporting is a discipline built upon accuracy. Story telling, on he other hand, is an art form, and the lyrebird is the artist in us. This is the bird that uses its own ear to pick and choose from what it hears in its perception of the story. This is the bird that makes sense of it all for the rest of us.
That’s what audio editing should accomplish. It should make as much sense to the ear as photo editing makes sense to the eye.
There is a fundamental conflict of interest between rote reporting and story telling. There is a dialectic tug of war between the duty to adhere to documentary accuracy and the impulse to interpret. Both birds are necessary in the production of multimedia journalism, but they are not the same, the parrot and the lyrebird. They have different roles. Sometimes that is the difference between accuracy and truth.
Showing posts with label ethics of audio editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics of audio editing. Show all posts
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Crossng the line . . . wherever that is
I’m comfortable with all but a few decisions I made editing the audio story for the slide show production of “Chalk," but in at least one or two instances I think I crossed a line between journalism and everything else.
Since completing the production, I’ve managed to find very few specific sets of guidelines on the Internet for the ethics of audio editing. Having read everything I can find now makes me wonder what I was thinking with some of these decisions. Evidently, I was thinking more about how to achieve effective story telling in an unfamiliar medium, rather than transferring familiar standards of responsible reporting. The issue isn’t a question of trade offs between the two, but of telling a story in any medium in the right way.
Case #1 – “Chalk is such an easy medium to embrace “
In “Truth in audio” posted on the website Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams offers the same cardinal rule for audio editing as for written journalism: Never change the meaning of what the person said.
In my interview with the chalk festival chairman I asked what the appeal about chalk was for young and old alike. She started talking about its use by children and went on to explain how the appeal of the chalk festival itself was its primary purpose in having fun. The original segment [click boldface type to listen] lasted 53 seconds, which I cut in half for the production segment. Part of what I cut out was the context of her wonderful, lyrical pronunciation of the word “chalk." However, by dropping out her specific reference to children, I generalized the meaning of her statement to apply chalk’s appeal to everyone, young and old.
Case #2 – Cutting to the bone or beyond?
On the website for The Canadian Journalism Project, Mary McGuire provides more specific applications for audio editing in her article “Ethical guidelines for editing audio.” In her view, it’s okay to cut out most forms of “verbal stalling,” reiterations, and subordinate clauses. It’s okay, according to her, to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter and clearer.
In the interview the chairman spent a full minute talking about the event’s growth. I cut the original segment – complete with stalls, reiterations and unfinished sentences – down to less than 15 seconds for the production segment. I left the selected parts in their original order and hopefully preserved their context and meaning, but just where do you draw the line before the cutting becomes excessive?
Case #3 – Shuffling for effect
Not only did I cut down the original segment of the chairman’s reply to my question about the next day’s weather, I shifted parts of her response around her laughter to give a more ironic edge to her reply in the production segment. I have genuine schism over whether this juggling was ethical, because it clearly improved the audio, even though nothing was added. Only the order of the components was changed, but did this change also shift the meaning of what she said, however subtle? If this were a photo, I’d know my ethical limits. You don’t shift pyramids in order to improve the composition of an image. With audio, I’m not so certain about the rules on rearrangements.
Case #4 – A little background music
On the website Pointeronline, Al Tompkins lays down one unequivocal rule in his article “Sliding Sound, Altered Images.” His first edict for audio editing is utterly simple: Do not add. He further cautions against the use of music in journalistic productions if the music was not ambient sound gathered at the same time and place of the story.
I recorded the guitarist playing at the chalk festival, knowing the music might make good a unifying background for the entire production. I added this music track as one more layer of audio for the production, and even had to loop it out to the production length of two and a half minutes, due to its original recording length of only one minute and six seconds. I don’t know what the rules are for the use of ambient sound as imposed background, much less the sort of manipulation involved to make it fit my production needs.
It seems to me that ethical grounding for audio editing is even more important to those of us learning the ropes of audio-driven slide show production than for those learning video production, because we have to start by producing an audio story before adding visuals. Without firm guidelines, the temptation to manipulate audio in the editing process will prove as seductive as the opportunity to “improve” images in Photoshop in our early days of going digital.
I was not surprised to discover that the only audio file I could find posted by the National Press Photographers Association on its website from the 2007 Summit multimedia immersion workshop is the panel discussion on the complex ethical issues emerging from newspaper photojournalism’s transition into multimedia journalism. Nor was the significance lost on me that the one-hour-and-13-minute audio recording was posted in its entirety – unedited.
Since completing the production, I’ve managed to find very few specific sets of guidelines on the Internet for the ethics of audio editing. Having read everything I can find now makes me wonder what I was thinking with some of these decisions. Evidently, I was thinking more about how to achieve effective story telling in an unfamiliar medium, rather than transferring familiar standards of responsible reporting. The issue isn’t a question of trade offs between the two, but of telling a story in any medium in the right way.
Case #1 – “Chalk is such an easy medium to embrace “
In “Truth in audio” posted on the website Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams offers the same cardinal rule for audio editing as for written journalism: Never change the meaning of what the person said.
In my interview with the chalk festival chairman I asked what the appeal about chalk was for young and old alike. She started talking about its use by children and went on to explain how the appeal of the chalk festival itself was its primary purpose in having fun. The original segment [click boldface type to listen] lasted 53 seconds, which I cut in half for the production segment. Part of what I cut out was the context of her wonderful, lyrical pronunciation of the word “chalk." However, by dropping out her specific reference to children, I generalized the meaning of her statement to apply chalk’s appeal to everyone, young and old.
Case #2 – Cutting to the bone or beyond?
On the website for The Canadian Journalism Project, Mary McGuire provides more specific applications for audio editing in her article “Ethical guidelines for editing audio.” In her view, it’s okay to cut out most forms of “verbal stalling,” reiterations, and subordinate clauses. It’s okay, according to her, to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter and clearer.
In the interview the chairman spent a full minute talking about the event’s growth. I cut the original segment – complete with stalls, reiterations and unfinished sentences – down to less than 15 seconds for the production segment. I left the selected parts in their original order and hopefully preserved their context and meaning, but just where do you draw the line before the cutting becomes excessive?
Case #3 – Shuffling for effect
Not only did I cut down the original segment of the chairman’s reply to my question about the next day’s weather, I shifted parts of her response around her laughter to give a more ironic edge to her reply in the production segment. I have genuine schism over whether this juggling was ethical, because it clearly improved the audio, even though nothing was added. Only the order of the components was changed, but did this change also shift the meaning of what she said, however subtle? If this were a photo, I’d know my ethical limits. You don’t shift pyramids in order to improve the composition of an image. With audio, I’m not so certain about the rules on rearrangements.
Case #4 – A little background music
On the website Pointeronline, Al Tompkins lays down one unequivocal rule in his article “Sliding Sound, Altered Images.” His first edict for audio editing is utterly simple: Do not add. He further cautions against the use of music in journalistic productions if the music was not ambient sound gathered at the same time and place of the story.
I recorded the guitarist playing at the chalk festival, knowing the music might make good a unifying background for the entire production. I added this music track as one more layer of audio for the production, and even had to loop it out to the production length of two and a half minutes, due to its original recording length of only one minute and six seconds. I don’t know what the rules are for the use of ambient sound as imposed background, much less the sort of manipulation involved to make it fit my production needs.
It seems to me that ethical grounding for audio editing is even more important to those of us learning the ropes of audio-driven slide show production than for those learning video production, because we have to start by producing an audio story before adding visuals. Without firm guidelines, the temptation to manipulate audio in the editing process will prove as seductive as the opportunity to “improve” images in Photoshop in our early days of going digital.
I was not surprised to discover that the only audio file I could find posted by the National Press Photographers Association on its website from the 2007 Summit multimedia immersion workshop is the panel discussion on the complex ethical issues emerging from newspaper photojournalism’s transition into multimedia journalism. Nor was the significance lost on me that the one-hour-and-13-minute audio recording was posted in its entirety – unedited.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Audio editing
I’ve discovered that audio editing takes an enormous amount of time. Not just in terms of the learning curve involved in getting acquainted with new software, but in the sheer time and concentration required for listening and relistening.
In terms of choosing which audio editing software to use, I settled very quickly on Audacity 1.2.6. It was recommended at the NPPA Summit, and it was free. I also had a 2004 version of the iLife’s Garage Band – and that may come into play in the future – but the obvious place to begin learning about audio editing was Audacity.
Along with the software and a plug-in necessary for dealing with MP3 files, I downloaded the online manual and every tutorial I could find, then printed them off for a “text” book nearly an inch thick.
Since I already had digital recordings of various presentations from the multimedia seminar, this seemed like good material to help me learn the basics of audio editing. I wanted to convert the lectures into brief sets of audio notes that could be “reviewed” quickly to keep myself enthused and focused.
Almost immediately my aging G4 Mac announced that its “startup disk” was nearly full and I should do something about that. Audio editing, it seemed, required a lot of memory, not to mention adequate processor speed. How would my Mac react when I finally got ready to put audio together with visuals? How would my wife react if I announced that I’d have to invest in more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and perhaps even a new Mac?
Well into the night and my shortest lecture file, it became clear that I also needed to develop a systematic approach to an audio editing project.
First and foremost, I needed to SAVE my work frequently to avoid having a lot of work wiped out by a disastrous software crash. (Audacity is reported to be very stable, so I presumed the occasional crash was due to the inadequacies of my computer.)
As for an overall editing strategy, I divided the task into three parts: 1) a rapid rough cut to select the parts I liked, then 2) a trim down session to tighten the selections as much as possible, and finally, 3) the fine tuning edit to even out the audio quality and smooth transitions between cuts.
Without this basic strategy, I spent a couple of hours boiling down a 30-minute presentation by Seth Gitner on “How to get started in multimedia.” The audio track revealed two immediate problems with the tiny Olympus WS-300 recorder: generally uneven levels of recording throughout the talk, and little patches of dead silence between the audible parts. If the speaker paused, the level of recording seemed to drop out entirely, then over-adjust its volume level when the speaker resumed, occasionally also dipping the volume with the leveling adjustment. The little silent gaps were easy enough to remove with the Select and Cut procedure, but I had to "Normalize" each swing and dip in the volume level of the recorded audio in order to obtain a consistent level for playback.
At the end of the evening, though, I had less than three minutes of audio notes – a nice, tightly-edited summary of what I wanted to remember from Gitner's presentation – in his own voice.
The trade-off was an uneasy feeling that what I wound up with probably could not be termed “documentary audio journalism.” It sounded “of one piece,” but was not. Most of the natural pauses for breathing were removed, as were inevitable pauses for thought, and initial sentences broken mid-sentence to be rephrased.
I even shifted some parts of his talk out of sequence, perhaps even out of context, in order to make more sense to my own ear.
Clearly, software for audio editing offered as many opportunities for manipulative abuse as software for photo editing.
The basic rule for the use of photo-editing software has been based upon prior experience: Do nothing to an image that you would not normally have done in the darkroom.
I had no prior experience editing audio. Where were the lines that should not be crossed?
In terms of choosing which audio editing software to use, I settled very quickly on Audacity 1.2.6. It was recommended at the NPPA Summit, and it was free. I also had a 2004 version of the iLife’s Garage Band – and that may come into play in the future – but the obvious place to begin learning about audio editing was Audacity.
Along with the software and a plug-in necessary for dealing with MP3 files, I downloaded the online manual and every tutorial I could find, then printed them off for a “text” book nearly an inch thick.
Since I already had digital recordings of various presentations from the multimedia seminar, this seemed like good material to help me learn the basics of audio editing. I wanted to convert the lectures into brief sets of audio notes that could be “reviewed” quickly to keep myself enthused and focused.
Almost immediately my aging G4 Mac announced that its “startup disk” was nearly full and I should do something about that. Audio editing, it seemed, required a lot of memory, not to mention adequate processor speed. How would my Mac react when I finally got ready to put audio together with visuals? How would my wife react if I announced that I’d have to invest in more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and perhaps even a new Mac?
Well into the night and my shortest lecture file, it became clear that I also needed to develop a systematic approach to an audio editing project.
First and foremost, I needed to SAVE my work frequently to avoid having a lot of work wiped out by a disastrous software crash. (Audacity is reported to be very stable, so I presumed the occasional crash was due to the inadequacies of my computer.)
As for an overall editing strategy, I divided the task into three parts: 1) a rapid rough cut to select the parts I liked, then 2) a trim down session to tighten the selections as much as possible, and finally, 3) the fine tuning edit to even out the audio quality and smooth transitions between cuts.
Without this basic strategy, I spent a couple of hours boiling down a 30-minute presentation by Seth Gitner on “How to get started in multimedia.” The audio track revealed two immediate problems with the tiny Olympus WS-300 recorder: generally uneven levels of recording throughout the talk, and little patches of dead silence between the audible parts. If the speaker paused, the level of recording seemed to drop out entirely, then over-adjust its volume level when the speaker resumed, occasionally also dipping the volume with the leveling adjustment. The little silent gaps were easy enough to remove with the Select and Cut procedure, but I had to "Normalize" each swing and dip in the volume level of the recorded audio in order to obtain a consistent level for playback.
At the end of the evening, though, I had less than three minutes of audio notes – a nice, tightly-edited summary of what I wanted to remember from Gitner's presentation – in his own voice.
The trade-off was an uneasy feeling that what I wound up with probably could not be termed “documentary audio journalism.” It sounded “of one piece,” but was not. Most of the natural pauses for breathing were removed, as were inevitable pauses for thought, and initial sentences broken mid-sentence to be rephrased.
I even shifted some parts of his talk out of sequence, perhaps even out of context, in order to make more sense to my own ear.
Clearly, software for audio editing offered as many opportunities for manipulative abuse as software for photo editing.
The basic rule for the use of photo-editing software has been based upon prior experience: Do nothing to an image that you would not normally have done in the darkroom.
I had no prior experience editing audio. Where were the lines that should not be crossed?
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