By Joey Lovato
This week was great! This is what I want to do when I grow up (assuming I’ll ever grow up).
There were definitely heaps and hurdles for me to get over, and it didn't come without its fair share of stressful moments or near breakdowns, but that's the fun of all of this. I like being kept on my toes and having a diversity of content to produce. I really enjoyed the fact that I was never doing the same thing for a super long time.
One of this week's hardest things to deal with was just the sheer amount of audio that I had after the interview. We had over two hours of audio to pull from, and most of it was dense science.
The second hardest thing to deal with this week was sacrificing good audio clips. At first, my piece was about 7 minutes, cutting it down to 4 was hard for me as I just really liked everything in the piece.
I learned a lot this week. I would say the most important thing was learning the importance of asking pointed questions that really dig out emotion from your subject. My mentor, Regina Revazova, showed me how to do this. I also learned so many little audio tricks from her from cutting at a consonant to putting in pauses to make transitions smoother.
Working with an editor to refine a piece was also something that was very new for me, but was much appreciated. Both Regina and program Managing Editor Traci Tong were great and showed me the importance of telling a succinct story while still being impactful.
I definitely have a new respect for audio now, and hope to pursue it in the future. I loved audio before I started NPR boot camp, and I love it even more after. I think there were lots of little things that I didn't know I would have to deal with, and I also learned how to work with others in a much more constructive and effective manner.