Pre-production
Thomas:
I’m Thomas Reid, an audio producer.
I have the honor of being paired with Jill Sherman to share her story using audio.
I’m a proponent of access so this will actually include a described transcript incorporating descriptions of the sound design along with Jill’s narration.
I encourage everyone to not only consider how to provide additional access, but also to see how you can incorporate access into your process.
When producing audio based stories, the transcript is actually an integral part of the production process. So in my opinnion, there’s no real reason to exclude it from the final distribution.
When creating audio stories, that process can be broken down into three phases:
One! Pre Production
Two! Production
Three! Post Production
Pre Production
This is where you figure out what you need. Answer some basic question;
(Words in parenthesis are in a filtered voice)
(Who)are your subjects?
(How) will you get them interested and on board and record them?
(What) is your story about?
(Where) are you sharing this audio? Your own podcast, perhaps you will pitch the story to another podcast or radio show.
In this particular case, shout out to Portraits & Portals for the invitation to participate in this process. They took care of the pre-production and are distributing the final work.
Next I’ll get into the production process. Specifically, my production process. Your process may look a little different from mine. As a Blind audio producer, I do it my way!
— Sound of an Air horn
Screen Reader Voice:
Next time Thomas and I, his screen reader, will go through the process.
Production
Two! (Filtered Voice) echoes…
Thomas:
Production.
For me, most of the fun and intrigue happens during production.
I categorize audio production as recording, editing and mixing.
First up, (Recording!)
“Are we on the air?” Sample
Thomas:
There are certain factors that you have to consider around recording.
Are you able to meet with the person or people face to face?
This involves time and money. Access.
If you can meet in person and you have ; portable equipment,, the ability to travel to them, then perhaps that’s a good option.
Before you go to them, make sure they don’t live next to a noisy highway or train station.
— Sounds of a large highway and train
Thomas:
(Yelling) Unless of course that background noise makes sense for the story.
For this project recording occurred over Zoom. In addition to the recording feature of Zoom, I like to record the conversation through my own equipment. I like the quality of my recording a little better, but it also serves as a backup in the event something goes wrong. There are several other options available for remote recording of both audio and video.
Once the recording is done, I transcribe the audio in order to have a written transcript. I use an automated service. It works pretty well, but it will always require human editing to correct words and spelling. The automatic option helps save time but it’s definitely not perfect.
(Editing)
First, you might want to remove all the “um’s” and other filler words we use in conversation.
You want to only include that which serves the story. If the conversation veered off to a discussion on an unrelated movie, well it doesn’t serve the story so that should be edited out.
It’s much easier to work with a transcript to find everything you want to edit. It’s also possible to re-organize the conversation in a way that makes sense for your telling of the story.
IF there are 3 steps in a process for example,
Screen Reader:
Instructions for brushing your teeth include
Brush your teeth
rinse your mouth
put toothpaste on your brush
but step 1 was talked about last, well that could easily be rearranged on a transcript.
Screen Reader:
[Selected] put toothpaste on your brush
[Copy selection to clipboard]
rinse your mouth
Brush your teeth
Instructions for brushing your teeth include
[End]
[Enter]
[Pasted from clipboard]
Instructions for brushing your teeth include
put toothpaste on your brush
Brush your teeth
rinse your mouth
During this process of editing the transcript, I’m often making notes of ideas for sound design. These are the extra sounds I want to include in the story. This could be music, sounds of wind, rain, animals… whatever makes sense to serve the story. This may be providing a bit of dramatization to help illustrate the story. It could be to sort of highlight a point.
Often these are ideas, but the final decision occurs in the mix phase.
Once all your edits have been finalized in the transcript, then you’re ready to move to editing the actual audio.
Sometimes, you may change what you originally intended to include based on the audio. For example, when editing on paper, physical or digital, the words may help the story but then when listening back to the audio, the words may not have the impact you wanted because the way they were said. Perhaps they weren’t said with the tone that you imagined.
Maybe there is a background noise underneath the words that make it
Jill Sherman:
There was like medical work required
— loud tone under “required”
And the smoke was so…
— loud tone under “so”
Thomas:
…less desirable for you to include in the final piece.
Next time, I’ll take you through my favorite process…
(the mix!)
Post Production
— Three! (Filtered Voice) echoes…
Thomas:
Now, I get to talk about my very favorite part of the audio production process.
This isn’t to say it’s the most important. In order to have a great edit, you need a great recording. You need a well prepared interviewee, which means you have to ask compelling questions. It all works together. And it all gets packaged for presentation…
— Sample: “In the Mix”
Thomas:
I work in a program called Reaper. It’s a digital audio workstation built to edit, mix and master audio.
Using multiple tracks, I can do all sorts of things to present the audio as I imagine.
For example, here’s the soloed dialog track of Jill sharing her story as I edited.
Jill:
I am Nitiniwé.
I come from the Natinixwe (Natinook-wa), which is the Hoopa Valley, located in the remote mountains of northern California.
Thomas:
For the sake of time, I’ll push this along a bit.
— Sound of a cassette tape fast forwarding.
Jill:
Well let me tell you how my people came to be. According to our beliefs…
Thomas:
Jill was kind enough to share some audio that represents her culture.
Her son singing a traditional song
— Audio plays
The sound of traditional dresses made of shells…
— Audio of the shell dresses being shaken.
Thomas:
When gathering these sounds, I had no idea how I would incorporate them into the piece or if I would use them at all. I don’t really believe in having too much audio.
You never know what the audio may inspire.
In this project file, I’m using over 15 tracks to bring in a variety of sounds throughout the story.
Here’s how I incorporated all three of those plus a bit more.
— Sounds of indigenous drumming leads to a man singing a traditional Hoopa song.
The sound of rattling shells accompanies the drumming. The shells are actually traditional Hoopa dresses.
Jill:
I am Nitiniwé.
I come from the Natinixwe (Natinook-wa), which is the Hoopa Valley, located in the remote mountains of northern California.
— A calm wind blows in followed by the natural sounds of the Hoopa Valley including sounds of frogs and crickets…
Jill:
Well, let me tell you how my people came to be according to our beliefs.
Thomas:
The mix is a blend of both science and art. There are specific things you want to incorporate, especially around volume levels and the quality of audio, but so much of it is artistic. Each producer will mix based on their own interpretation of the story. From choices made in sound design or the use of music and effects.
I can return to a production a year or two later and question my initial choices. It’s all based on my current way of thinking, access to sounds and technology. Chances are when you listen to the piece you may agree with some of my choices, but you’ll question others. That means you’re listening intentionally, something I truly support.
Check out the final piece. I hope you enjoy and maybe even find some inspiration to create your own production.
Thanks for listening!
Again, I’m Thomas Reid
And so, there’s no confusion what so ever, that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample: “D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick
Thomas:
Like my last name!
Home
Sounds of indigenous drumming leads to a man singing a traditional Hoopa song.
The sound of rattling shells accompanies the drumming. The shells are actually traditional Hoopa dresses.
Jill:
I am Nitiniw�.
I come from the Natinixwe (Natinook-wa), which is the Hoopa Valley, located in the remote mountains of northern California.
— A calm wind blows in followed by the natural sounds of the Hoopa Valley including sounds of frogs and crickets…
Jill:
Well, let me tell you how my people came to be according to our beliefs.
The animals were created first, and they were the ones that creator Yimantuwingyaimight , the one who’s above us, created them with the intention that they would prepare this earth for us and teach us the things that we needed to know, prepare the way for humans.
That was at a time when the animals could talk and could engage with each other and learn to do all sorts of different things to prepare the world.
Frog was the first one to announce to everyone, the humans are coming. He felt it. He felt it in the coolness of spring, in the wet grass where he was sitting, he felt it, and he started singing…
— Repeated frog calls.
Jill:
“The humans are coming.” (Voice emphasized with reverb)
Deer was excited. Bear was excited. The Eagles were excited. All of the animals were excited that humans would finally be coming. They’re the ones who helped humans discover who they were and how they would live.
— A calm breeze blows through. Leads to the sounds of dawn, birds chirping.
Jill:
The next morning, as they woke up, they could see that the mist was fingering down through the tops of the mountains, down through the trees. The sun was shining on it. They knew that the humans would be once the mist touched the ground, the humans were formed. Humans came out of the mist.
Fish promised that, along with other animals, that he would be willing to give up his life so that humans could thrive and survive. The acorn tree promised to always provide us with a bounty of acorns so that we could survive.
— Sounds of birds chirping.
Jill:
“The humans are coming.” (Voice in reverb)
— Horses galloping.
Jill:
We were very fortunate that white contact happened much later than, let’s say, Southern California. Contact for us began like about 1840 so it was much, much later that the soldiers came here to our reservation. Now we’re on a reservation which has legally defined boundaries as set aside from the United States government, which doesn’t encompass all of our ancestral territories, but we have to live within those boundaries.
We’re a 12 by 12 square. We have over 120 some 1000 acres. We are talking about 2500 to 3000 people who live in the valley. There’s one highway that goes in and out of the reservation. We’re the largest reservation in California. This is where I grew up. This is where I learned to hunt, fish, gather, do all of my traditional activities.
— Birds chirping, a slow flowing river leads to a stronger, faster river flow.
Jill:
We are a tribe who has the Trinity River, which is one of the last wild and scenic rivers that runs through the reservation. At its head, it was dammed the Lewiston dam. It’s waters controlled by the Bureau reclamation. So both the Hoopa tribe and the Yurok tribe, which is a neighboring tribe that’s technically downriver, but North of our reservation, rely on Trinity River fish in 2002 there was a huge fish kill as a result of low water, high temperatures.
— The river comes to a slower flow.
Jill:
“Dead bodies washing up on shores.” (Voice with reverb)
— Radio tuning to multiple stations until stopping on a news story about the Klamath River.
News Correspondent:
A report by the US Fish and Wildlife Service found that the kill resulted from water diversions to Klamath Basin by farmers and ranchers during a drought year. The report found that the atypical low flow in the river, along with high fish return numbers and high-water temperatures, allowed for a gill rot disease to kill at least 33,000 salmon in September, 2002 before they could reproduce. The die off was downstream of the Trinity inflow, and the salmon of the Trinity were impacted to a greater degree than the Klamath as the Trinity run was at its peak. The report does mention that the official die off estimate of 34,056 is probably. Quite low, and could be only half of the actual loss.
In September 1908 prior to irrigation, the flow of the Klamath River measured 800 cubic feet per second, compared to 475 cubic feet per second in 2002. These lower water flows were decided on against the suggestions of higher water flows biologists had said would be needed to keep the fish safe from a die off.
— The radio news music comes to an end.
Jill:
Not every family fishes, only the families from the villages fish, and when the families fish, they share the fish.
— Sounds of the Klamath – flowing river.
I grew up at a time when you could catch 2030 fish in a week. Today, we are lucky to get three to four fish in a week. This was a direct result of federal actions. Our traditional values that we have, the values of generosity, the values of sharing, caring, were becoming impacted by the lack of fish that are ceremonies. Everyone is fed, whether it’s 100 people or 500 people, we have to have enough food to feed them during our ceremonies. It impacted our culture. It impacted our traditions. It impacted our values. It was the most devastating event in our tribal history, and that just impacts who we are as a tribe that relies on fishing.
— The rivers sounds fade into a river from an underwater perspective and fades into a dump truck driving and manipulating gears.
The people went and protested at the state capitol and dumped a dump truck load of fish on the Capitol steps as a monument to protest that our Lifeway was being truly impacted in a way that we were unprepared to respond to.
— The dump truck drives off. Sounds of a foreboding drone as wind.
Jill:
Then you move forward to the additional impacts that we’ve been experiencing through climate change.
— The ominous drone and wind.
Jill:
I’ve always been very proud of the fact that I know where the paternal line of my family has been for 1000s of years. And when you have that kind of connection to the land and the space, it’s hard to leave.
— A fire morphs into a larger wild fire with branches popping.
The megrim fire was probably one of the most devastating fires that we had experienced to date. The megrim fire was before the fish kill. We’ve had one massive fire after another. It burned portions of our reservation, but didn’t destroy homes, because the reservation is a valley surrounded by mountains, mountains that are 3000 feet above sea level, so it creates an inversion layer in the way the smoke impacts. The smoke was so heavy that you were lucky if you could see your hand in front of your face. The smoke was so bad at that time that if you’re allergic to poison oak, just standing outside, you would get poison oak from the smoke itself. Most of the community was evacuated, but many of the elders did not want to leave their homes. Their homes weren’t in any fire danger. The problem was that the air quality was just extremely poor.
— Sound of burning wild fire continues and fades out.
Jill:
My mom had dementia. My dad was 47 when he had a massive heart attack and stroke that left the whole right side of his body paralyzed with aphasia, so he was unable to speak. He’s also a diabetic, and he had an ulcer on his foot.
His house is, of course, equipped for his disability, his bathroom, his shower, everything that he’s comfortable with he didn’t want to leave. And then when you have a parent who is suffering with the beginning stages of dementia, they’re uncomfortable with leaving, so family stayed and took care of them. And then in 2022 we had something called the Yeti fire. Again, the air quality was very bad. The Yeti fire was another one that wasn’t on the reservation, but all the smoke came to the reservation. By this time, my mom had passed away, and my dad wanted to stay at home. They were trying to evacuate people. But of course, he wants to stay at home. That’s where he’s comfortable. His walking is much more impacted by this time, he’s used to walking 10 feet, walking 10 feet, sitting down, walking 10 feet, sitting down.
We knew that the smoke was really bad in the house because it went all the way down mid level inside the house that you could see the smoke.
— Music begins, a dark, melancholy synth.
During this time. I’m still recovering. I was hit by a drunk driver. I was. Was in a wheelchair for many years and had a walker for many years. Now, you’re in a situation where you have two people who are disabled trying to care for each other. When you have people who are disabled, that’s just what happens. But my dad’s breathing became so difficult for him, he thought he was having a heart attack, so he indicated that he needed to go to the emergency room. We took him to the emergency room, and he, of course, was not having a heart attack. He was just impacted by the smoke. And so they said, Do you have a HEPA filter? Like yeah, we have six each room in our house, the kitchen, the living room, the dining area, the bedrooms, the bathroom, all of them had a HEPA filter in the there.
Well, we ended up getting a seventh HEPA filter to specifically just sit alongside of him. We came home, back to the house that we were actually supposed to evacuate from, but couldn’t evacuate from, because when you have somebody who’s disabled, they’re just more comfortable in familiar surroundings. There are so many factors out there that create issues for a disabled person to feel comfortable, even if it’s required evacuation for health reasons, not necessarily that the house was going to burn down, but that the air quality was so bad. If your disabled hotels only have a certain amount of disabled rooms, you’re not guaranteed that you’ll get the disabled room. If you’re in a walker and somebody’s in a wheelchair, you would rather the person in the wheelchair have that room.
— Sounds of indigenous drumming leads to a man singing a traditional Hoopa song.
The sound of rattling shells accompanies the drumming. The shells are actually traditional Hoopa dresses.
Jill:
They want to be in their home where they feel comfortable using the bathroom, where they know where their shower is. My mom would get mad at him, but my dad’s like, this is where I’m going to be. I’m going to be buried here.
We don’t just pick up and move because we know where we’ve been for over 10,000 years.
“Home is home.” (Voice in reverb)
— The drumming and traditional singing fades out.
Portraits & Portals 