Connecting and Communicating
PLP is all about connecting with the real world and communicating meaningful work, and this project was an excellent example of that. To our surprise, our teacher Ms. Maxwell informed us that we would be setting up and conducting interviews with the veterans on our own, which was a first for our class. Sure we had filmed three minute clips of tour guides on past field studies, but actually organizing our own professional interviews was completely new territory. We started off by being placed into groups (mine was with Luca J and Morgan). In our groups, we were assigned to a veteran (or in some cases people involved in the war in other ways), which included Svend Hansen, Abigail Folds, Bill Cameron, Helmut Lemke, and Jack Purdie. We were able to get their contacts though the program the Memory Project, which is a branch of Historica Canada aimed at connecting Canadian youth to their history.
Meeting Mr. Hansen
The first, and probably hardest step in contacting our veterans was giving them a phone call. I had only conducted a couple of professional calls before this one, so I was pretty nervous and didn’t want to do it. However, I thought back to my presenting my Pecha Kucha in December, and remembered that taking responsible risks is a beneficial thing, so I decided to do it despite my fear. This turned out to be a good decision because I got to introduce myself to Mr. Hansen before we met and explain our project. The hardest part actually turned out to be relaying the information from our notes to him, but doing so was great practice for future contacts. Eventually, we got a date arranged and drove off to Port Moody to visit him.
Once again, I was a little nervous to be meeting such an important man in person, but when we arrived at the coffee shop (called Gallagher’s) where he had reserved a table, we were greeted warmly and I realized there was nothing to be afraid of Mr. Hansen, along with his son, were eager to answer our questions, and had brought along a folder full of pictures, graphs, and messages from his time in the Navy. Most of these documents were either exact replicas or real papers from the war, which were stunning to see in person. An example of one of them is the photo of Svend and his crew before they boarded the HCMS Penatang below:
Coming in to this interview, I was preparing for a long and dull talk about logistics that I wouldn’t be very interested in. I was expecting to be focusing more on the audio recording than what he was saying, but ironically, the exact opposite ended up happening. I was so captivated by his stories, that I forgot to make notes on which points came in where. I think that in future interviews if I can come up with a balance between listening and note taking, I will be a lot more effective in both areas. You can watch the unedited version of the interview below:
When he was finished talking, I was actually kind of sad. This was because for one, his stories were amazing and I wanted to know more. Everything he talked about was directly related to Canada’s modern identity and I couldn’t help but wonder what else happened during that time. It was also sad because I realized that these incredible stories are invaluable, but most people will not get to hear them in person. I don’t think your average teenager has ever talked to a veteran, never mind one from World War II, so meeting with Mr. Hansen was truly an honour.
Me, Luca, and Mr. Hansen
How do we Remeber Their Stories?
There are probably thousands of stories like Mr. Hansen’s in Canada’s history that have gone unrecorded, and have now been forgotten with time. Luckily, this will not be the case with his as we have not only recorded it, but made it available to the entire world. The product of this unit, like I mentioned earlier, is a series of Podcasts made by our class which tell our veteran’s stories and answer our driving question. I was quite happy to learn this at the beginning of our unit because I was getting a little tired of making videos, and also because I thought it would be a lot easier since there were no images. However, making a podcast contains many hidden challenges that rival if not surpass the ones of video making. For each step of the podcast, I have outlined the process, challenges, and skills I acquired below:
Exploring Audio Storytelling
“The tongue can paint what the eyes can’t see”
This Chinese proverb may be ancient, but it’s true. The human voice has this incredible ability to inspire people in a way that nothing else can, whether it is moving, intimidating, or caring. It’s a powerful tool, and needs to be used a lot more carefully than imagery as there is less room for interpretation. To understand how utilize this tool in our podcasts, we watched episodes from highly successful podcasts on an app known as Breaker. We looked at their introductions, how they hooked you in, their use of music, and their tone. We also looked at the category of podcast they fell under, which are listed in the graphic.
My Favourite Podcasts
WWII related or not, here are some of the podcasts I discovered during this unit which I particularly liked:
Hardcore is the perfect word to describe this podcast. With some episodes spanning over 3 hours long, Dan Carlin’s intense storytelling style will keep you interested no matter your interest in history.
For all movie lovers out there, this is the podcast for you. With a great cohost dynamic and new reviews on the latest movies every week, you can find our the good, the bad, and the ugly about the modern cinematic universes.
Story Corps is an excellent podcast series which creates short and sweet episodes about individual’s relationships and lives. Their moving, but concise style is something I want to take inspiration from in my future podcasts.
This stage of the project was like the research stage from units such as my Seattle Video, but in my opinion more fun. We were tasked with listening to a variety of podcasts to see which styles we liked and why. For the most part, it was up to us which ones we listened to because we were supposed to find aspects that made the podcasts appealing to us personally. I really liked this as I felt as a class we had a lot more control over the design of our work. Some things in particular we were looking for were:
– Use of Music
– Use on sound effects
– The Intros
– The Tone and Voice
– The Timing and Structure
What I realized when listening to all of these other podcasts was that the most informative ones actually spoke more simply. Yes, having complicated factual information is important to prove a point, but you can make it a lot easier to understand if you describe it in a conversational way. This is something that I also realized applies to pretty much every area of storytelling (blogging included), and I’m already taking steps to improve upon speaking this way in my work.
Something else that I learned makes a good podcast is a strong use of music. This lead into the next phase of our project…
Making Music with GarageBand
GarageBand is one powerful app. With it, you have the capability to create (actually good) music (list of popular songs which use garage band), record high quality audio, and edit it in any way you’d like. I had used GarageBand during this project before to record and edit Svend’s audio, but after the interviews were done we were given another podcast task. This was to create a song which could become the intro to our podcast series, and was an open challenge to the whole class. We started off by learning how to create a basic song structure using the auto-strings and drummer functions in GarageBand, and then got to create our own sample songs. You can listen to mine below:
What I took away from this is that progression is everything in music; just like in storytelling it becomes boring if there isn’t buildup. Keeping this in mind, I got to work on the challenge with the goal of telling a story with my music. I spent a lot of time on it, and it this payed off as it was picked to be our podcast intro. You can hear the track in my podcast, or listen to the unedited version below:
It begins in the quiet east-coast of Canada, with the soft piano mimicking the rolling waves and the cries of the gulls. It’s slow, open, and clear as I wanted to portray the peace in Canada that was soon to be shattered by the war. Then the piano speeds up into a pickup bar and leads into a dramatic chord progression, which shows Canada’s call to action when war was declared. This isn’t the climax though; that comes when the drums thunder in to show when Canada began combat in Europe. However, you will also notice that the chord progression changes to a major G chord as the song progresses. This is to remember that during this time of peril, not all hope was lost because of the brave men and woman who risked their lives to protect our country. This tone of hope can be found throughout the song, and is to convey how remembering these events with respect is something we must do as Canadians.
I had a lot of fun creating the music, and soon after was ready to move onto…
Making the Podcast
We had the music, we had our audio, and now it was now time to put it all together into our first podcast drafts. One reason I had originally thought that making a podcast would be easier than making a video was because we wouldn’t need a script, but this turned out to be only half accurate. We did need to make a script, but some of it was already written by our veteran’s audio. This was important for me to remember as one of my main goals right now is to keep inside time constraints, and I couldn’t write a seven minute long script and then realize afterwards that I still had to add the interviews, intro, and conclusion. To prevent this issue, I took the time to record how long each of the interview clips were, along with the intro and conclusion, and it helped significantly. My first draft only ended up being 30 seconds over, which is probably the closest I’ve been to a time constraint in a long time. You can listen to it below:
Editing this podcast was the biggest problem as audio editing needs to be a lot more precise than video. If there is a single mic glitch it will be very obvious, and too long or short transitions can make or break a podcast. I had had some experience with editing audio before through GarageBand, but something new I learned was that there is a transition to actually fade in or out within the app. I only learned this though after I had done all of my first draft editing in iMovie, which made audio editing and exporting a lot harder. In the future, asking if a tool like this exists instead of just assuming I have to figure it out on your own would be quite helpful.
I also decided for this stage of the podcast to get the base audio done first, and then add music and sound effects later. This is building on my goal of criteria first, extra later, and was quite helpful as I was able to meet the first draft due date and get some excellent peer critique. Some of the feedback I got on my first podcast was:
– Talk less about the war at the beginning, and more about Svend’s role
– Make sure my recorded audio does not have background fuzz
– Let the audience know you were filming at a coffee shop so they understand why there was so much background noise
With this in mind, I got to work on my second draft (see the final product at the beginning of this post). This draft was all about fine tuning the audio and adding appropriate music and effects. It was difficult to find a balance between the music/effects and the original audio that sounded dramatic, but not cheesy. Once I did however, it added a lot to my podcast. I managed to also cut it down even more to seven minutes and scene seconds, which I’m proud of, and redo my fuzzy audio. Looking back, I shouldn’t have used sound effects without checking in with my teacher first, and asked Mr. Hansen to record in a quieter place, but I am still quite proud of my final draft.
What has been my Learning Experience?
Like always, this podcast has been a good learning experience in terms of school and success skills. I found that timing audio before recording it is a great way to meet a time constraint and acquired plenty of new editing skills. Something that I feel made this project different however, was that our learning extended a lot further than just academics. Kind of like our recent trip to Seattle and our Grade 9 trip to Ottawa, this unit dove into real stories and the lives of the real people who lived them. It gave our research and product depth because we understood that what we were making reflected on actual events. There was something else though, that made this project feel even more important than others. This is because it had a purpose.
If someone where to ask me right now what importance of Canada in WWII was, I would be able to go on for hours about the convoys, D-Day, and the air training program. There were so many vital contributions, large or small, made by Canada’s people, industries, and government, all of which played a part in the fortunate outcome of the war. Unfortunately, as a society we do not always acknowledge this. It took me over a month and a plethora of incredible experiences to gain the knowledge about Canada’s role in the war that I have today, which lead me to realize that most Canadians are probably not aware of it’s importance at all. The legacy of the war should be a huge part of our culture, but most of us have largely forgotten about it. Sure, we learn about it in school and read history books, but we are just not as connected to these stories as we should be.
This is why this podcast is such an important project. Not only is it allowing us to express our own views in this legacy, but allowing others to learn about it. It’s purpose, is not just to answer our driving question, but to be an answer to it.
So, what is the legacy of WWII in Canada? Well, it’s the events that shape our nation today, but more importantly, how we remeber them. Some ways we can do this are through Rememberance day, museums, the Memory Project, and in our case, our podcasts.
Sources:
A huge thanks to Mr Svend Hansen and the Memory Project for making our podcasts possible. Also, thank you to Logan U for designing our podcast logo.
https://www.thoughtco.com/world-war-ii-battles-2361453
https://www.britishpathe.com/blog/ww2-key-events/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dunkirk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Belgium_during_World_War_II
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/second-world-war-wwii
2019-02-18