Since starting work on this audio editing project, I've been getting one talkset done a night. Which was alarming me just a bit this afternoon, since I had eight more talksets to go, only four days, and I still have to add the music in to all of them. I've already cancelled plans for the weekend to make time, and I've been trying not to envision my nightmare scenario of trying frantically to finish editing right up until the show on Sunday.
Well, I knew that once I got into the swing of this editing thing, it would start to go faster. And I did even better than I had hoped. Tonight I got 6 talksets done. Woo! Just think how fast I'd be if I had a clue what I was doing. I'm getting pretty comfortable removing the "um"s, though I still have no idea how to strip out any tapping or popping that happens simultaneously with dialogue that I need to keep. Is that even possible? I guess it must be, for someone who knows how to do this.
Even though I went back and decided the first talkset was clumsily edited and needs to be done over (it was my first attempt after all), I'm still in great shape. I can finish up the editing tomorrow night and then spend the weekend figuring out how to add in the music. My friend J. told me that Garageband might be the easiest way to do it.
Today I listened to The Splendid Table podcasts and tried to hear how they edit it. I think that show is actually a better example for me to follow than This American Life because it's more conversational, less likely to be Serious Narration About Important Issues Of Our Time. I noticed that on The Splendid Table they remove all the "um"s and false starts from the narration, and almost all from the interview segments (like the Sterns from Road Food who always start the show. And who, may I add, manage to sound like totally spontaneous and perfectly articulate people who never repeat words or say "um"). But The Splendid Table's editors leave a lot of that verbal throat clearing intact in the phone-in segments. I suspect they leave those segments looser to make it sound live. Though I'm pretty certain none of the show is actually live. I think they record those phone calls in advance.
It made me wonder if I should leave any of the "um"s in my dad's interview. My clients who work in radio told me to take them all out, but these other shows leave them in sometimes. I decided to leave one in tonight: when I asked him to choose which Peggy Lee song he wanted to hear, he paused for a moment to decide. I left in the "um" because if I took it out, it might sound like we had decided in advance which song we were going to play, and I was only pretending to ask him (which wasn't the case).
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