I have decided to add audio over my slideshow with a poem about supermarkets during a pandemic. I found the poem online after searching through relevant poems. I thought about different ideas for audio but felt a poem would work best in complimenting my work.
Wearing a mask, biding my time
to purchase my groceries, standing in line.
When items I sought were rarely there,
I chose something else, trying not to despair.
My basket half empty, but happy to leave.
when a dilemma occurs, for what do I see,
A queue that’s so long, waiting to pay.
My question now, should I go, should I stay?
The groceries are needed, so I stay in the line
hoping to be home by half past nine.
Slowly moving forward to each marked spot.
Happy to have the few items I got.
Upon reaching the checkout all nice and clean,
I bag my own groceries, and now I am keen
to get to my car and head for my home.
Feeling so odd, but not really alone.
There are people around, but we only smile.
The two-metre distance feels like a mile.
When reaching home, where groceries are washed,
and packages wiped with a sanitizing cloth,
are put in their places and I take a chair,
to ponder the “new normal” that doesn’t seem fair.
But keeping our distance in these worrisome days
Hopefully will return us to “old normal” ways.
In order to create the audio I used my younger sisters voice with an audio app from my phone. Due to not being bale to get hold of a professional audio recorder I had to make do with what I had. I used an app and made sure we went to a quiet room and recorded several attempts to get to the final one. I made sure I didn’t hold the phone too close to her so the sound wouldn’t be uneven and loud and it worked reasonably well. I wish I could have used a proper audio recorder but feel I have achieved the best outcome I could have with my resources.
My plan was to record audio using a young soft voice to bring a sensation of eeriness to the video and capture the audience’s attention, showing the sense of seperation and isolation that the world has become due to the pandemic.
I am pleased with the outcome of the audio and feels the poem works well with the images. I began by having the audio at 100% volume but later found it was too loud and distracting, so decided to change it to 37% which worked better and added to the eeriness that I wanted to portray.
I decided to add the audio after a few seconds of the first image, to allow the viewer to see the first image with out audio. I also did this with the last image and ended the audio half way through to keep this theme continuous and allow the viewer to have a thinking time before ending the slideshow.
Jodie Tovey PJD blog 