Project Description:  We want our podcast to bring to the forefront, domestic violence, a topic that is often overlooked, despite the fact that it happens to women every day, in all demographics, in every part of the world.

Bridget and I after a lot of brainstorming decided on the topic of domestic violence.  We then contacted my mother and things started to click into place for us, because earlier in the week we were worried since we didn’t have any people to interview and we had very little material to work with.  However, after contacting my mother we took a field trip for our podcast. Bridget and I took the train to Legal Services, where my mother works and she set up 3 interviews for the day.  She had managed to get us an in-person interview with a survivor and 2 in person interview with advocates. In between interviews we went to a lecture/luncheon and learned about “Domestic Violence as a Social Determinant of Health”, the lecture was about the science behind how domestic violence affects physical and mental health.  It was a great piece of background knowledge for us as we continued to finish our story. We first sat down with the survivor, because we had never done an interview where the subject may have felt some discomfort, it was hard. I was later told by my mother that what really helped make the survivor more comfortable was the fact that we sent in our questions ahead of time.  During the interview it was a tense, because I had to ask follow up questions.  I had to figure out how to word the questions so that they were effective but also took into the account the experiences and feeling of my interviewee.  

The next day we were tasked with going through all of the audio and cutting it down; it was quite the challenge considering we had over 50 minutes worth of audio to edit.  It was good to feel like we had a large portion of material to choose from.  The most helpful thing was being able to map out on the board what direction we wanted to take the podcast in.  Bridget and I edited all day, at the end of the day we were tired but fulfilled. Once we figured out the narrative we wanted to make, we decided to start the podcast with a recording of a 911 call, we thought this would really pull the listener(s) in.  We were really pleased with the overall effect it had.  We had great material but the transitions were hard, we struggled to find music that wasn’t over dramatized yet, still capture the seriousness that comes with the topic.  Our final product was something we are really proud of and it definitely communicates what we want.  We learned a lot of from the experience of editing and also spending a day at Legal Services interviewing, it was very intense experience that taught us a lot of difference skills.