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Planning the Show
We knew that we wanted to discuss the theme of corruption throughout all that we’ve seen of The Wire so far, but we weren’t sure how to turn that into a show. During our Google Hangout with Paul Bond, he suggested that we have a name for our show. A catchy title popped into my head–“Busting those Corrupting” and with group input, the final title became the “Bustin’ the Corruption Show”. With this in mind I made a few bumpers (which I’m glad Brittany and Stephanie liked!).
Next we planned what to include in our individual discussions of corruption in the Police Department, Barksdale Crew, and Sobotka family. Each of us planned our talking points, including what sound clips we would include in our segment to analyze or use for context. With advice from Stephanie, I extracted sound clips by downloading the Wire episode, opening and trimming the section desired in MPEG Streamclip, and exporting the file as an audio file which I then imported into Audacity. Using Word, I planned my speaking points in a sort of “outline” for my segment. This made recording much easier.
Recording and Maintaining Cohesiveness
As Stephanie and Brittany finished their segments before me, I listened to how they created theirs so I could model my recording the same way. I started with an introduction and a radio bumper, then proceeded with my speaking points along with the accompanying sound clips from the show. At first, I was really nervous and felt ridiculous talking into my computer, but recording my segment for the show was actually very fun and really easy! Although we have a small group of three which meant each of us had to cover about 7 minutes of audio for the show, I felt we each had enough to explain in our segments. We all reached 20-30 minutes in no time!
Listening to the Finished Product
To ensure that the entire show was edited together seamlessly, Stephanie and I sent our finished segments to Brittany to combine with her own part. After listening to the finished product, I was very impressed with our work! The bumpers sound great. The explanations are well thought-out and provide good context. I think listeners will find our show very interesting.
