Design inspiration

I spend quite a bit of time listening to travel podcasts, usually during my commute. Some of my favorite are Women Who Travel, This Week in Travel, and Our Americana. There are a lot of really great travel audio storytellers, which inspired this project. I also read a lot of travel blogs and follow many global nomads on social media who focus on responsible travel. My favorite is Uncornered Market. Lastly, I also do my best during all my travels to be as responsible as possible. Being both an environmental advocate and a world traveler can sometimes seem like a contradiction, but there are many ways that travelers can work to have as little of a negative impact on the planet, it’s wildlife, and it’s people as possible if they travel with mindfulness.

Links to sites used for research

I used the Creative Commons Audio site that was suggested in our readings this week,  freesound.org to find all of the audio besides my voice, which includes the elephant, the tiger, the rain, the train, and the airplane pilot.

Details about design significance

The project was designed to give a few very easy steps to follow for someone who wants to take action to be a more responsible traveler but doesn’t know where to start. With only 2 minutes, the topics that sound be covered needed to be limited. I highlighted one area that I feel very passionately about, animals, that I felt needed to be said, as well as two more practical areas, packing and physically traveling. For a longer project I would have included information about responsible shopping, and supporting local economies as well.

Technical process

I did my best to find a quiet space to eliminate unwanted noise. I turned off the heater, closed the windows, and put my phone on silent. I also used the “record silence” suggestion before starting with my voice recording.

For the editing, I used a similar process to the “counting” Audition Tutorial assignment. I created the narration (voice-over), and inserted the soundbites from freesound.org into place. The timeline hierarchy was long because there were many different soundbites, despite most of them being quite short.

Incorporating Feedback

It was suggested that I fade the noises in and out so they transition better between my words. I was able to go in and add this to all the Creative Commons sound bites by using the razor tool and the gray squares to fade. It was also suggested that I start my story with music as an attention grabber. I didn’t feel that music was the way I wanted to go since I didn’t have music elsewhere, but I understood the point that the feedback made about the beginning needing some sort of attention grabber. Rather I adding a song I added the sound of a gong, which is a sound that symbolizes the start of something and is also often heard in travel related audio stories as a travel symbol. Another suggestion was to shorten the pauses between the my travel tips, and I did try to get rid of a few places with space or “umms” between the tips with the razor tool. Lastly, I slightly moved the placement of the elephant noise, as I felt that it would be better a little later in the story.