Approaching this task with sensitivity and empathy was the main focus for me when actually interviewing my talent. When I was first presented with the task I struggled to come up with a person who had interesting enough story to tell which expressed the required emotions and this was probably one of the hardest parts of the task for me personally. I had a good long think about whom would be the most suitable person for me to interview who would feel comfortable with me asking them personal questions and that’s why I chose the person that I did as he’s quite close to me but we’ve never really discussed this topic in such an intense and isolated environment.
I really wanted to make him feel as comfortable as possible as this would allow me to get the most out of our interview. For me it was all about interviewing with sensitivity and no judgment. I tried to remember back to the interview’s we were shown with Geoff Thomson who stressed the need to remain separate from your talent’s experiences no matter how traumatic or heartbreaking they may be because its their experience, not yours. I think this was a really important tool for me to consciously remind myself throughout the interview even though I did find myself become a bit choked up when my talent was describing his anguish and hurt that he has towards his mother. I found at the start of the interview he was a little hesitant to answer my questions in great detail but once he was relaxed and acknowledged that it was a non-judgmental, trusting environment he gave some really in-depth descriptions in the retelling of the events that occurred and that was something that made me gain such respect and pride in him.
When it came to editing this interview into a 1-2 minute audio report I was faced with the tough decision of cutting chunks of material, which I knew were valuable but didn’t fit the narrative that I wanted to tell. So I sat down and constructing a story-board-type plan which outlined the different events in the experience of my talent decided that in order for me to convey how emotional the story is for my talent that I would include mainly his retelling, along with sound effects such as slamming doors and solemn piano music underneath the interview.
Reflecting on my audio report I feel that with better planning and less rushing I could have thought of some more original sounds to add to the piece but time and imagination were constraints for me. I was a little flustered when it came to editing and then uploading my audio to Soundcloud as this is a platform that I’ve never used before and this was a little daunting for me. On the whole I feel that I’ve created a piece which is both sensitive and insightful and best conveys the emotions felt by my talent from their personal experience.
Aiyana Levin 