evaluation

1. Evaluation
Ethan Colman

2. Production Process Evaluation

3. Research
• The research for my project helped me form more of an understanding of what
themes work best in young adult fiction and how to address them. It has led me to
themes such as characters dealing with fading passion and trouble finding
motivation with things you used to enjoy as well as themes about abuse, toxic
behaviour and difficult choices that don’t always make total logical sense and are
based on emotions and how that is an acceptable thing to do etc.
• My research also showed me that I don’t need to shy away from extreme topics like
racism, abuse, and prejudice/violence and so some of these themes are
• Research I performed on production was good to help me see what I would need to
do to come out with a good product. Especially learning about how to remove any
possible background audio. That was a helpful technique that I ended up using.
• My production research on art was detailed and incredibly valuable however I see
now that I should have done a more equal spread of research between writing,
audio and digital art since I focused a lot more on art thinking that it was the point,
I could improve most on in technique, but I did not end up leaving myself enough
time to make the art. This meant that I had made a substantial waste of time
focusing my research that much on that part.

4. Research
• My target audience research felt lacking. Some of it does not seem like it belongs in
that category, but I could not think of more to put there, it felt as though gender,
age and the emotional position that they want to discover more about themselves
or the world or something.
• The audience research also felt lacking. I again could find information about the
age of people that were, their gender and employment status but not much else
really seems to fit well in this category.
• Research on "brave" showed me that it is good to assume the outlook/perspective
of the character you are seeing things through the eyes of. Embrace their fantasy,
philosophy etc. This helps the audience relate to the character and plot which
increased engagement/interest.
• Research on "Dear Martin" explored the idea that serious and dark themes are not
only welcomely present in Young Adult Fiction but often a large reason that
audiences will check out a piece of media so making them a clear theme was
shown to be an upside.
• My research material was much too focused around art and should have been
substantially more focused on audio production and what is needed to make a
product that could live up, side by side with real audio books.

5. Planning
• The good part to my planning was that I had made a clear idea of when I should
have each part of my audio gathering, editing and art components done so that I
could easily tell whether I was on schedule or falling behind without having to
examine my project and figuring out what was missing, like if I had started the art
and recordings at the same time and I had parts of each done then it would have
been a lot more confusing than taking them one at a time week by week.
• My planning wasn’t very thorough, and it felt as though it faltered very quickly as
soon as I got stuck with one part. I reached out to a small number of people for
recordings but due partly to my own waste of time sending out the script to said
people and in part to the fact that they have other things going on especially
considering the end of the college year is upon most of them or work it as well took
a long time to get anything back from them.
• I was however able to make a narrated version by myself so that I had a completed
piece of work however the production quality of course would theoretically be
lower.
• My planning also allowed me the comfort that I could drop off the art side of it if I
didn’t have time for it and that I already had an iteration of the script created to
work off which would save me more time.

6. Planning
The planning was loose enough that I felt I
could still work with freedom easily within its
structure but also clearly outlined what should
be done within each week and at what stage it
should be e.g. the difference between
"continue recording and editing" "Getting
finalised audio in" and "any last minute
editing/recording" is very similar things but
tells me that on the first of these I should still
be working on this subject, by the second I
should have it done during this week and the
third tells me that there is acceptable time to
be doing any emergency work should that be
needed. However, if I would know I do not
have time to spill any of that work onto a
further week. This established simple
miniature deadlines for me to know what was
on pace or falling behind as mentioned before.

7. Time Management
• My time management was poor because I took too long to send out my script to potential
voice actors which meant once they found free time to do the recordings would be too late
for me to be able to critique and get another take sent to me.
• Time management had some leniency since I could remove an art side of the project and
had already written a version of my script in my spare time, so I started with some
advantages.
• My time was also poorly managed when I found myself unable to do anything during days
when I was waiting to receive my recordings. If I had taken that time to begin my own
recordings, going off into a suite and taking a handheld recorder with me, I could have saved
some of me at home time that might have been better spent working on editing, or planning
or other more productive things rather than the chunk of wasted time spent in college
because of my lack of foresight.
• I think with more time I would have been able to produce a better piece of work. With this
extra time, I would have liked to work further into the story or pick out pieces later that
contained more of the mature themes such as child abuse, dependency, alcoholism etc that
play more into the young adult fiction aspects of not shying away from serious topics. I think
with more time and getting further into the plot I would have also had more chances for
natural feeling diegetic audio that could have quite improved the atmosphere/feeling and
pace of the work.

8. Time Management
• The first three weeks of planning, research and pre-production were reasonably inefficient.
Work moved along at a reasonable pace although I did suffer with concentration throughout
these weeks, and I had some time off during these which also ended up setting me back a
bit meaning I had some PowerPoint work to do in the background through production weeks
whether at home or in college.
• The first week of production my time management was not so good. I spent too long editing
a piece of script that was pretty much already written.
• The second week of production was also poorly managed. Since I was waiting for people to
get back to me with my audio recordings, I did not think of anything I could spend my spare
time on and ended up not making much progress since my project depended on me getting
the audio recordings before I could move on with anything else. I should have spent this
time trying to create my art or finding another contingency that I could have worked on.
• The third week of production was much more efficient as I had now made my own narration
using my own voice at home through my study days and weekend and spent this week doing
more of these at home and bringing them in to edit giving me a nearly complete work
missing diegetic audio by the end of it.
• The fourth week of production I had accumulated some diegetic audio by Monday and
began editing that in. Monday evening, I got more and had that for Tuesday and by the end
of this week I essentially had a workable finished piece. This was behind schedule, but work
was being smoothly done during this week.

9. Technical Qualities
• The microphone used for recording is high quality meaning it picks up the ranges in tone
from the voice actors.
• The editing software I have used it good for what I am trying to do. I was able to cleanly
cut most points where I fumbled words and redid parts of paragraphs and by “stapling”
them together make a clean run through for the final product. There were a few times
that it didn’t feel like it perfectly melded together and sound a little choppy.
• Used software to try and remove things like small amounts of background noise and
occasional reverb from audio pieces. I did this through a piece of software I was told
about called Audacity, it has a function where if you select a piece of the audio file
where there is no speech/other audio it can isolate the soundwaves present and remove
them from the rest of the audio. The reverb function can use information about the size
of the room to calculate what the reverb would be like and then remove it.
• The audio quality (lack of background audio, crisp tonal range) is like that of other audio
books I have listened to. I would also compare the pace, professional sounding narrators
chosen and quality of the emotive vocal range.
• The volume of the diegetic audio was all individually edited to make sure that they were
not louder than the narration and to make sure that they would not only be
pleasant volumes to the audience but never become more the focal point that the
narration.

10. Aural Qualities
• Voice actor quality – Through reruns of voice lines I think that the actor I have used for
my narrator has successfully captured some of the emotion and personality traits of the
characters to make them seem a little bit more alive and realistic. I wish I had managed
to get voice lines from others for the characters, especially for differentiation of the
characters and adding that extra level of realism for the listener, however without said
voice lines does play into the design that it is like an autobiography being told by the
character later when they are an accomplished athlete.
• Audio quality – The microphones used for recording are of high-quality affording good
range in tones and crisp quality.
• Lack of background audio – Audio software was used to try and remove background
sounds captured due to recording spaces used that had uncontrollable amounts of
background sound.
• I would say that the overall quality of the audio sounds like that of genuine audio books.
There is no interference or background audio although the cleanliness of some lines
being edited is sloppy occasionally by under a second which can create a slightly
atmosphere breaking moment.
• The diegetic audio was also edited in volume to make sure that it did not make it hard
to listen to the narrator or take away from the experience.

11. Aural Qualities
• I think the diegetic audio sound of people talking in the background is very good
because it is long enough that it does not establish a noticeable pattern for the human
mind to accidentally pick up on and ruin the immersion when it is looped or used
multiple times in different locations.
• The diegetic audio for the heartbeat is okay. Could have done with a more customised
speed for different parts of the project. It worked well as a background faded sound
though that tied in well with the scripts mention of heart rate and even the sound of
the beating heart.
• The narrations voice over had a quality I quite enjoyed. I tried to leave good enough
pause or change in tone/emotion between voice lines and the main narration to
emphasise where the spoken lines were alongside the obvious use of things like "he
said".

12. Audience Appeal
• Plot containing young characters trying to figure out what they want to do, what to
do when their passion seemingly dies, how to self-motivate themselves, how to
trust people when they’ve been through trauma, how to deal with the day-to-day
harshness of life. Etc.
• The voice actors I am picking are based around audience appeal as well as similarity
to the envisioned character, thinking about things like how satisfying a voice is to
listen to overall and that can capture enough range of emotions.
• Diegetic audio was lowered in volume in post to make sure that it could be head
and add to the atmosphere but not take away from the reading or make it hard to
hear.
• I think the audience appeal suffered that I did not include other voices for at least
some of the characters to create more immersion for the listener.
• I also think that the appeal suffered from the fact that I had intended to include
some art to go along with the audio, even if it had been only a few shots and long
lingering. The audience also doesn't know that this is missing but I just think that if
this had been present it would have increased the audience engagement and
possibly even helped to negate some of the negatives from not having other voice
actors because they would not have been solely dependent on the audio building a
perfect atmosphere.

13. Peer
Feedback

14. Feedback 1
• What did you like about the product?
– Background audio being there but not too
dominating
• What improvements could have been made to
the product?
– More voices

15. Feedback 2
• What did you like about the product?
– The emotion that was trying to be conveyed
through the reading of the speech lines
• What improvements could have been made to
the product?
– More interesting segment of the story

16. Feedback 3
• What did you like about the product?
– Felt like the reading was at a slow enough pace to
follow well
• What improvements could have been made to
the product?
– Something to make it more interesting

17. Peer Feedback Summary
• What do you agree with from your peer
feedback?
– I think that it might have been a better idea to pick a part of the script that showcased the Young
Adult Fiction serious topics more
– I think the balance for the background audio was good although I do wish that I had managed to do
something with the diegetic audio to make it a little more exciting somehow or something
– I also agree that more voice actors would have been more interesting.
• What do you disagree with from your peer
feedback?
– I don't think there was that much emotion conveyed through the lines. I did try and made a decent
effort, but I just think it would have moulded the emotions better if I had, had more voice actors to
solidify a sense of different people with those emotions and I think that would have come across a
lot better

18. Peer Feedback Summary
• More voice actors would have increased interest.
• Something else could have been tried to keep it more interesting like some other
style of diegetic audio or maybe even none diegetic and put in some music on a
certain part or something
• Reading pace was good for at least some viewers
• A different segment of the story might have been better to do since I chose the
introduction which was just a choice of habitual thinking that it had to start from
a logical point in the plot rather than picking an interesting part
• Background audio was not overpowering
• Some emotion was conveyed through the lines and seemed to help the
enjoyment