As of Monday February 15th, I have found Producing Audio Narratives to be a very engaging experience. The course, true to its name, has shown itself to be centered around producing and the production process began immediately after the first class. The first two projects (Vox Pop and Sonic ID) occurred over the first and second week respectively and each centered around interviewing essentially random people. I expected there to be more dialogue centered around the process of creating prior to being sent out to do so but I found that nothing really prepares you more for the experience of interviewing than actually doing it. However, the handouts that Professor Quintanilla gave out proved to be exceptionally useful in that they contained information about particular forms, advice on the process, and resources to access online examples of the forms in question. The experience of interviewing itself has proven to be very engaging and very liberating especially considering how creative license grants you access to random people who otherwise might be hesitant to talk at length with a random person.
The process of critiquing material has also been been positive. Our projects are played for the class and students commend and/or critique aspects of projects. Comments tend to be constructive and whenever students may miss something or fail to comment on something, Professor Quintanilla will step in by the end so the creator will have a more fully rounded understanding of their product. Since the course started a few weeks ago I feel more confident in my ability to work with sound as a medium and much more confident in my cold interviewing abilities. I’m eager to see what the rest of the semester has in store.
–Cristian Uriostegui ‘17 (Media Studies)