Throughout the year, we have been working on our story telling skills and how important they are. We were introduced to Story Corps to help us have a better understanding on story telling and and important it is to listen. Story Corps interview people and make them into podcasts to publish on their website. So our exhibition was going to involve us making podcasts. However, not just any podcasts, they were going to be interviews.

The task for the exhibition was to work with a grade 12. At first I was pretty nervous about this because I didn’t know the grade 12s that well. The grade 12s got to pick who they wanted to work with. My partner was Luciano. I was ok with this since I knew him already. The grade 12s role in this project was to be the producer. We being the grade 10s, were the ones recording and editing.

Grade 12 interview #1

The goal was to have three podcasts at the end of the whole project, so almost like our own mini series. The very first podcast was to interview our grade 12 buddy. The story could be about anything. The first step to creating a podcast is to create a list of questions to ask them. Luciano had a story that he could tell, so we thought of questions that can relate to his story.

Here are all the questions we came up with:

Once we got them approved, it was time to record. We wanted to make the podcast sound as natural as possible, therefore we didn’t write a script, we just had our list of questions. Recording the interview was a challenge, since everyone needed to record, we needed to find a quiet room with no other groups. Luciano and I recorded outside since it was the quietest place.

For editing we were told to use the app Ferrite. I had never used Ferrite before, therefore I had to figure out how to use it. To learn how to use the app, I watched a few YouTube videos and I finally got the hang of it! For some reason I had an issue with downloading my Garage Band song into the podcast. It took some time but I finally figured it out. Now that I knew how to use the app, the project became a lot easier. The parts I edited out was any long pauses, and a few of my questions so it was mainly Luciano telling the story.

Here is the finished podcast:

You could say this first podcast was our practice since we were going to be making two more.

Family Podcast #2

For our second podcast, we were going to be interviewing a family member. Just like the first podcast, it could be any story. We were told to be told a story we didn’t already know. I decided to interview my mum, because she could tell a story that had been shared throughout my family. In the past I have always wanted to know the story so this was a good time for her to explain what happened. Basically the story is about how I got my American side of the family. Since I didn’t really know the story I had to be engaged so I could ask questions.

Family podcast:

While we were working on these podcasts, we learned more about how to make a good interview. Something that is key when interviewing is listening. To practice this skill, in partners we listened to a few podcasts from Story Corps and recorded on pages the following,

For this activity we needed to be engaged so we could answer the questions. From this activity I realized how important it is to listen to the interviewee. You definitely don’t want to be in the situation when you can’t think of a question because you weren’t listening!

Exhibition night!!

Finally the night everyone had been waiting for, exhibition night. This was going to be my first exhibition ever, so I was a bit nervous and didn’t really know what to expect. Now that we had interviewed our grade 12 and a family member, we were now going to be interviewing a stranger that was visiting the exhibition. The goal was to interview three people at the exhibition, and by the end we could chose one to create a podcast. While we were interviewing people, the grade 12s role was to find people for us to interview.

When I say stranger they were parents of the students, not completely random people. This was quite a long process leading up to the night. Since we were interviewing a stranger, we needed to ask a powerful question to get a story from them. Once they had a story we could then ask follow up questions. I think the starter question was the most challenging part. The question couldn’t be specific since we didn’t know anything about them. It had to be a question you could ask anyone. In class we had a few lessons on how to ask a broad question. We then had to brainstorm a list of our questions.

The topic I was most interested in was travel. I wanted to hear about other people’s adventures.

Our interviews would be take place in class rooms. We had a limited number of class rooms we could use, therefore we were put in small groups of three. I had Mimi and Kate in my group. If you were being interviewed, would you rather be in a boring class room sitting at a desk, or in a more relaxed environment? Well our task was to transform a class room into a non stress, relaxed environment. This was going to be a challenge and a lot of our creativity skills would be involved. Every class room was different and some better than others, therefore each group picked a room out a hat. Luckily we got French room that isn’t too big. Of course each class room has chairs and tables and somehow we needed to move them out of the way. To make the space as welcoming as possible we needed to bring our own furniture in. As a group we decided to go with the boho
 vibe. We also brought in some cookies and tea for beverages to give the interviewees.

Setting up!

To set up there was my group and our grade 12 buddies helped us. We were told to take a picture before we started moving everything so at the end of the night we could bit everything back together, like we were never there. I took us maybe an hour and and half to finish setting up. We started right after school until 4:30.

Overall I was really happy with the end result of the room. It was very inviting and definitely would make the interviewee feel comfortable. We got many compliments from the interviewees 🙂

Recording!

Our group made a timetable so each person had time to record. We each had around 15mins to record each interview. When the doors opened for the visitors to come in, the grade 12s were busy looking for people. The first person I interviewed was called Tylo. I sort of knew him because he is friends with my brother. He told me about when he hiked the West Coast Trail. The interview went pretty well and it was a good practice. Luciano had asked his parents to be interviewed. I didn’t know his parents at al so it worked well. Also both of his parents had done a lot of traveling so I asked about their trips they had been on.

From listening to all my three podcasts, I decided to use the interview I had with Giovanna. The audio was a lot better than the others and I thought it was the most powerful.

First draft:

We got our grade 12 to listen to our podcast and they gave us some critique. I am happy of how the final podcast ended up.

From do this project I felt like I learned a lot from it. Not just the aspect of telling making a good interview, but working with others. This whole project, we were working with a grade 12. For the last interview (the exhibition, I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone. I was pretty nervous to interview a stranger, just because I was worried I would be stuck with thinking of questions, and just the fact you are interviewing a stanger. However, I did learn a lot about how to create good questions and how to run an interview. I also learned how to use Ferrite. Now that I know how to use it, I will use it for other projects.