This column is intended to serve as a history of the Voicecast in the first semester of this school year.
The Paly Voice first discussed the idea of a Podcast in the 2004-2005 school year. The staff put it on the back burner until Oct. 2005, when we decided to pursue the Podcast seriously. Editor-in-chief Nathan Lui and I volunteered to create a demonstration Podcast to test the concept out and to see if we could make the new technology work for The Paly Voice. Editor-in-chief Elena Marinelli assisted us with the proof-of-concept, standing in as a guest speaker. We recorded this Podcast using an inexpensive computer microphone, Windows Sound Recorder, and Adobe Premier 1.5 to record and edit.
The demonstration Podcast had several flaws. One problem was that we continuously moved the microphone around to people when recording and placed it on soft surfaces. The result was a lot of unwanted background noise in the Podcast. Also, we made the mistake of having too many sudden transitions between unrelated subjects.
Our first production Podcast, renamed the VoiceCast, was recorded using the same tools as the demonstration Podcast. When recording the VoiceCast, we made sure to record in a quiet room and keep the microphone still. For this VoiceCast, we used a copy of the Campanile and discussed various articles in the newspaper, such as sports and a police crackdown on biking violations. The first Voicecast involved several days worth of recording and editing, before finally appearing on the website on Nov. 24. We took the beginning song from the video game “Chrono Trigger.”
One issue with the first VoiceCast was a segment dealing with a Campanile survey about the sexual behavior of students. Several Voice staff members made negative comments regarding the perceived validity and quality of the survey. These comments were intended as an honest critique, though the result appeared as more of a one-sided attack on the Campanile. As a result, we chose to edit the segment out of the Voicecast before publication.
Two other staff members, Adam Heeger and Alex Ochowicz, decided to produce a VoiceCast of their own, called the Grade “A” Show. In this VoiceCast, they used Adobe Audition to both record and edit the VoiceCast, including commentary on winter formal and holiday fashion. Some minor issues arose when we attempted to find a theme song for the VoiceCast, though eventually settled on “Boogie Board” by the Surfonics.
In early December, Nathan Lui and I decided to try a new approach to the VoiceCast. Instead of discussing a myriad of issues as in the previous VoiceCasts, we decided to focus on the single issue of California’s new drivers license restrictions on minors. However, a major problem soon became apparent. The speakers gave the same opinion repeatedly, if only because the student body in general believes that the license restrictions are pointless. This led to the VoiceCast running too long and quickly losing the listener in several long-winded student tirades. We did many recordings, but decided not to publish the VoiceCast until we found a suitable solution.
The last VoiceCast we published during first semester was a joint publication with Verde Magazine. Editor-in-chief Doreen Bloch and I produced the VoiceCast with the Verde editors, who gave a brief preview of the edition of Verde that was in production at the time. This VoiceCast was relatively straightforward in both recording and editing, with the entire show finished in a single day. This VoiceCast used “A Walk in the Park” by Nathan Lui, who used Apple GarageBand to compose the song.
The staff produced two other VoiceCasts, but in a collective administrative error neither one was enabled on the site this semester. As we enter second semester, VoiceCast production will most likely pick up again, hopefully of higher quality and more staff members as well.