For this assignment, we were given the task of creating an enhanced podcast, either solo or as a small group. Initially, I was in a group with a classmate of mine (Nanny). We chose the topic of ‘Violence In Video Games’ and our aim was to use available evidence to judge whether blaming violent video games for violent crime committed by people.
We had a nice amount of time to carry this task out, so we spread the workload over a few weeks to make sure we did a good job, plus, we also had quite a few other assignments to work on during this period.
All was going well, until the last week. My group partner stopped turning up (for reasons still unknown) and it came to the last 3 days of the assignment and we were still only 60% done. This was quite annoying as I had been told by him that he would turn up a few times and the deadline was looming closer and closer.
I was advised by my tutor (Nicky) to consider doing the project on my own. I was slightly opposed to this idea at first as I had spent a lot of time and effort on the podcast with my partner. But, in the end, I had to give in and face the fact that I was going to have to write off my group podcast as a loss and start making my own.
I had 3 days to get it made, edited and handed in. A day of that I was working at my weekend job, which further pushed me. I recorded the podcast in an hour (quite rushed due to the circumstances) with the help of another classmate (Alex Donnachie). I received a call from my group mate shortly after this, but it was too late as the uni week was over and I had already had to resort to working alone by this point.
I then assembled and edited the podcast on the final due day. I found images online to fill in some gaps in my podcast. I also had a few polls I wanted to show during my show. I had considered using Camtasia Studio to screen-capture my desktop, but I didn’t like the control and feel of the capture, it felt too awkward and a simple cropped screenshot was going to be easy to manage and use in the final product. I made the canvas for all my images the same size to make it easier to control them, as repositioning (etc) within Windows Movie Maker would be harder due to the lack of support for such things within the program.
I had troubles looking for good, free podcast hosting, but found a good site used by a couple of my classmates. Once this was done I submitted my link.
It was a relief to have it finished finally, but I could have done without the forced rush brought on by my partner being AWOL. Grr...
My Podcast feed can be found here.
