The Art of the Audio Essay
PWR 2 Fall Quarter 2007
Jonah G. Willihnganz
Stanford University

The Audio Essay
Compressed version (.mp3) due to Courseforum by 6pm of due date. 
Script and uncompressed version (.wav or .aiff) on a CD the day of workshop—this is what we will listen to in class.

Audience: Bay Area Radio Listeners

Now that you have completed your research, gathered your sound and written your script, it is time to produce your audio essay. At this point you will want to bear everything you have learned so far in the course about what makes these kinds of essays effective. The length of your audio essay should be between 12 and 15 minutes. It should not exceed 17 minutes.

We have been building to this assignment for the whole quarter so as you begin putting your audio together you might briefly review the strategies and choices that make successful audio essays.  We have been discussing these since our very first class, so you have a lot of material to consider. Look back through your notes, your rhetorical analysis presentation, the analyses and lists you drafted in class, and the strategy list we developed together (available here). You might also revisit the pieces by Ira Glass we have read. 

Other advice as you put together your audio:

• Pay careful attention, as we have said, to what works best for the form—what makes your piece compelling audio.
• Concentrate on arranging your material so that the reflection of the piece is earned by the story the essay tells, i.e., the research it provides.
• Take a look at the evaluation criteria that we have developed over the course of the term.  A synthesis of evaluation criteria is in the Course Materials.
  

Submitting your Audio Essay:

First, export your Garage Band project as a single mp3 audio file by choosing from the "Share" menu either "Send Song to iTunes" or "Export Song to Disk" (the latter choice is only in Garage Band version 4). If you are given choices about the format of the file, choose "mp3" and "high quality". Files that are exported as aif or aac will be too big to upload to our server. Once your file has exported, locate it on your computer and make sure it has a descriptive title (e.g. "GhostStories.mp3" not "AudioEssaydraft4.mp3").

Next, open a web browser and go to Materials section of our Coursework site, then choose your class section. You will then see 4 folders, one for each group. Use the "Add" pulldown folder next to your Group to choose "Upload Files". On the page that appears use the "Choose File" button to select the file on your computer. The upload may take a little while—you'll see a red "Processing" box appear until the file is done uploading. Once it is finished, download and play the file to be sure it works properly.

Remember to bring an uncompressed version (.wav, .aac, or .aiff) of your essay to class the day it will be workshopped, on either a CD or USB drive. This is what we may actually workshop, since the audio quality will be better. Remember also bring one copy of your script.