Our station produces 13.5 hours of television every weekday! It’s a crazy amount of news for a local station to produce, but our amazing team does it. It takes a big staff and a lot of resources to accomplish that feat.
Every year around the holidays, our bosses graciously cancel some of our newscasts so that many of us can spend time with our families. With those newscasts gone for a couple of days, we still need to fill the time, so we create pre-recorded specials that cover various topics: investigators stories, cold cases, charity work, features, etc.
I’m in charge of producing the FOX 12 Weather Special. It’s a look back at the biggest weather stories of the year for the Pacific Northwest. I write, produce and host the special with our station’s chief meteorologist. We cover anything from floods to tornadoes to big wind storms to snow.
For this project, I wanted to create an audio piece to put out to our weather podcast audience that would promote this year’s special. I did an interview with Mark Nelsen, who is hosting with me. Also, with permission from the station, I used clips from various news stories of interviews my colleagues and I did during the year, reporter live shots, and anchor reads. I used relatively quick cuts and interspersed them throughout to give it a Radio Lab feel.
This year we had some very interesting weather stories in the area. After a lackluster start to the 2018-2019 winter, February brought several rounds of snow to the Portland metro. Snow here is a big deal, because the city doesn’t have enough equipment to be everywhere at once. Schools close, people take the day off of work, and there are always accidents and cars that end up in the ditch. The big joke is that a half inch of snow can lock the city down… it’s so true! I always wanted to include a snow story about an Amtrak train that got stuck in the Cascade foothills for over a day and a half with about 180 people on board. Three tornadoes also touched down in the Portland area this year, which is rare to have happen in such populated areas.
I recorded the audio of my track and the interview using a TASCAM DR-40 with an external microphone. For the news clips, I imported .mov files to Audition. In the end, I had seven tracks with my various audio sources. After I edited the piece, I mixed it down and normalized the audio, then used a multiband compressor to give it more of a rich, filled out sound.
I’ve always enjoyed editing audio and video and I’m looking forward to feedback from my peers about how to make this promotional piece better.
Brian MacMillan's Blog 
Brian – you have such a great voice! It’s so pleasant to listen to – which makes sense as a reporter. You gave me some good ideas for how to improve my own voice recordings. It definitely sounds professional and like your station could use it in a commercial setting. While you might get excited about snowstorms like what we had in February, I work for an airline so I dread them. Even though February’s storm crippled our operation (and made my life a lot more difficult), your voice and recording made me smile.
One element that I think could improve your recording is some outro music. It just felt like it needed some more finality. Does your station have a jingle? Or possibly just a few notes?
I also don’t know if this would improve it, but maybe try a different transition other than the crisp cuts between soundbites? Some of the transitions could possibly benefit from fades that would make them less abrupt. However, overly stylized transitions could detract from the “newsy” feeling of the piece. Might just be something to try.
Thanks again for sharing!
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Very well produced! It’s clear that you know what you’re doing, and as a result the story has a strong structure that’s easy to follow. I know just what to expect when I begin listening to this. The pacing and subject matter keep me hooked from beginning to end.
I did, however, notice a couple abrupt cuts: one at 0:45 and another at 1:11. These are not major issues, but it sounds a little like the speaker is being cut off and feels like a missed detail. I think revisiting those cuts to let the speaker finish his word will help the transitions feel smoother.
Also, the chainsaw at 2:07 feels out of place to me, and it was quite jarring when I first listened to it, probably in part because I was listening with headphones. I understand the connection to a story about hurricanes — chainsaws are useful cleaning up all that mess — but I don’t think it’s necessary here. The rest of the clips don’t have audio transitions like that. If you do choose to leave it in, I would suggest lowering the volume a little so it’s not so jarring.
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Wow! Brian this was so fun to listen to. You’re clearly an excellent speaker and the pace and intonation in your voice is really a pleasure to listen to. The clips from the stories are transitioned in really well with a sense that none were out of place and the transitions were crisp. I really was hooked listening to your commentary and the news clips that were added. It was a fun podcast to listen to.
I noticed that Tricia mentioned above that you could consider making the clips transitions less abrupt. However, I would beg to differ. I felt it was fitting for your outlet, theme and media type. Like we learned in the Illustrator unit, I believe sometimes you have to go with what feels right to you.
A suggestion I would like to mention is the chainsaw noise at 2.07. Mike mentioned it as well and it was a detail I felt was out of place. It’s a hard noise to distinguish – is it a chainsaw? Is it a weed whacker? Perhaps there is a different transitional noise that would be less shocking in sound to emphasize the following clip like rain or wind perhaps.
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Thanks for all of your helpful advice on how to make this piece better!
I think you all are right that I could do a better job in some spots with my transitions. Easing into and out of some of the news clips instead of a hard cut may give it a better feel. There are also some areas where the cuts on my interview subject were a little harsh and I need to soften those out.
I will use some different nat sound than the chainsaw since everyone agreed on that sounding out of place. I have some wind or rain nats that would work a little better. The chainsaw did sound very abrupt.
I’m also going to play with some intro and outro music to see if that bookends the piece more nicely. I have some fun music that I use for the podcast I produce and I will see if that fits with this.
I’m pretty happy with how it turned out so far and am looking forward to putting the finishing touches on it. Classmates, thanks for all of your help!
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