40% of homeless youth today are LGBTQ, most of which have become homeless due to familial rejection. We addressed this disproportionate statistic in response to the lack of awareness and knowledge about the experiences of homeless youth. For our radio piece, we addressed the issue of LGBTQ homeless youth by conducting interviews with two LGBTQ shelter directors, who helped us better understand the struggles these teens face and how the shelters plan for protecting and helping them. Our interviews with program directors of LGBT youth shelters gave us great insight into the structure of the shelters and how they proceed to help homeless youth once they arrive in the shelter, as well as the risks youth face while on the streets and how street-based outreach helps to tend to their physical and mental health problems.

We started by doing extensive research—reading articles in newspapers, peer-reviewed journals, listening to stories of homeless youth on YouTube, etc. From there, we condensed our information and made a list of shelters and organizations across the country to contact via email and phone. Two directors—Rick Westbrook of Lost-N-Found and Rebecca Reed of the Ali Forney Center—accepted our request for a FaceTime interview. After interviewing, we used Audacity, a sound-editor program, to distill the responses, arrange the clips of the interviews, and compile the script that we wrote while in the interview process. (The script was tweaked and re-recorded countless times in order to get the best possible sound.) We used audio from a video of a teenage boy, Daniel Pierce, being kicked out of his own home by his parents, to introduce the piece and illustrate the situation. We were directed to this video while interviewing Rick Westbrook, because Daniel ended up receiving nationwide support and currently serves on Lost-N-Found’s Board of Directors. We used the audio of his family screaming at him (with permission) as a powerful, confrontational exemplification of what some of these teens have to face while coming out to their parents. Because we couldn’t get an on-site interview at Lost-N-Found, we found replacement ambient audio of people moving around and working to play underneath Rick’s clips.

Overall, we fostered a sense of tenacity, due to difficulty connecting with organizations willing to speak with us about the issue. We received minimal responses, and ultimately we were not being able to interview actual homeless youth to interview due to confidentiality laws. We also faced technical challenges such as the sometimes-lacking audio quality and problems with editing due to the somewhat-overwhelming multitude of tracks. Despite this, the process of researching, interviewing, and storytelling illuminated much about the lives of homeless youth and the real, day-to-day hardships they face.

The past few weeks our task was to make a three-ish minute podcast within the theme "uprooted", with the choice to either take "uprooted" literally or metaphorically. We decided to do our project on the Syrian refugee crisis. We began by researching  the war and identifying organizations that help refugees.  One of our biggest challenges was locating refugees to interview because not many come relocate to Boston and many of the refugees that find asylum are concerned about privacy. 

In the beginning out team had trouble coordinating and working together. However, Adam helped us get back on track and thanks to Hasit (a.k.a. God), we were able to interview both a Syrian refugee and a Syrian reporter from the BBC.  With two successful interviews, we were now ready to begin editing. 

The process of downloading the audio and splitting the interviews took countless hours and was very frustrating. But, we were finally able to import our favorite parts which would become our final output.  Once the files were  imported and mixed, we were ready to record the voiceover. 

After writing the script, Jack sat in the elevator with a jacket over his head (to reduce background noise) to record the voiceover track. Success eventually came but only after multiple attempts with tracks ending when the elevator was called to another floor or when lines were misspoken. Luckily, lining up the tracks, our next task,  only took a few minutes. 

Next, it was time for the wild track. For those who don’t know, a wild track is the background sound effects (people, music, ambience, etc.) We had our sound files, we just needed to select the best.   The wild track sounds included: gunfire, alarms, yelling, a Syrian market place, and some traditional Syrian Music.  After making the last edits we could proudly look at – more or less “hear” – our project.

          For this studio, we were tasked with developing a story on the theme of being uprooted. We associated uprooting with being taken from one's house without fair warning. While a common association is refugees fleeing their homeland, we decided to cover a story on the California wild fires. We felt that homes being burned down and being destroyed is a perfect example of “uprooting”. Hence, we set out to tell a story about victims of the California wildfire. Our goal was to tell the perspective of victims with many different roles in the wild fires. We interviewed firemen who fought the fires and risked their lives for their community, we interviewed weathermen who gave perspective as to what initiated the fires and why they were so severe this year, and of course, we interviewed the victims themselves who lost their homes and belongings from this tragic event. Indeed, to us, the California Wildfires resonated with being uprooted.

        A major component of our project was the organization of the process. We spent the first days doing research on the topic. We drafted potential questions and decided who we wanted to interview. Then we reached out to multiple sources and asked for interviews. However, many people declined our “invitation”. By the beginning of the second week, we gathered 5 solid interviews from victims that could potentially be used in our podcast. On the remaining days, we combined and edited the audio clips to deliver the message. We spent the final days adding technical effects and seeking critique and reviewal.

          For this studio, we were tasked with developing a story on the theme of being uprooted. We associated uprooting with being taken from one's house without fair warning. While a common association with the word "uprooting" is refugees fleeing their homeland, we decided to tell the story on the California wild fires. We felt that homes being burned down and being destroyed are perfect examples of the true meaning of “uprooting”. Hence, we set out to tell a story about victims of the California wildfire. Our goal was to have numerous perspective of victims with many different roles in the wild fires. We interviewed firemen who fought the fires and risked their lives for their community, we interviewed weathermen who gave perspective as to what initiated the fires and why they were so severe this year, and of course, we interviewed the victims themselves who lost their homes and belongings from this tragic event. Indeed, to us, the California Wildfires resonated with being uprooted.

            Over the course of the studio, we made varying improvements and enhancements to our radio broadcast, but we never changed the theme or message of our project. Our changes were mostly minor and were mainly technical. In our first “iteration”, we delivered a simple skeletal structure that included the meat of the story. As we moved along and made “more iterations” we added sound fx, fixed technical issues, and added voiceovers to further connect the interviews. By the final “iteration” we had a thoughtfully thought out, concise, and to the point radio podcast that we believe represents our best work.

           A major component of our project was the organization of the process. We spent the first days doing research on the topic. We drafted potential questions and decided who we wanted to interview. Then we reached out to multiple sources and asked for interviews. However, many people declined our “invitation”. By the beginning of the second week, we gathered 5 solid interviews from victims that could potentially be used in our podcast. On the remaining days, we combined and edited the audio clips to deliver the message. We spent the final days adding technical effects and seeking critique and reviewal.

Our goal for this studio was to make a three minute radio clip. We decided to make our clip about immigration. We spent the first two days working on a one minute radio clip about the T. while doing this we realized that very few people like to do interviews. On wednesday we started working on the full three minute project. We started by trying to find immigration lawyers to talk to about immigration. Almost no one answered and the two that did answer declined. Felling shut down we went to the internet trying to find communities of immigrants to interview. Again we had no luck in finding immigrants to interview. The next day we continued to call organizations and lawyers. Finally a lawyer named Adrienne Vaughan responded. We were able to get a interview with her on Monday of the second week. We also tried to get a interview with another lawyer Jain Chiang. We were not able to get the interview with her because our times didn't work out. We were able to get a interview with an illegal immigrant named Sumit trough Jon. He gave us some very good audio about his life in America and Nepal. Throughout the last week we recorded seven different voice overs to get to a piece of 1 minute and 45 seconds.

We started the studio by doing a “one minute project” we decided to do it on spray painting and graffiti. This project gave us the chance to learn the basics of making a radio pice. Once we were done with that we started on the main project. The task was to make a three minute podcast with the theme uprooted. You could either take it literally or metaphorically. We decided to do our project on Syrian refugees. The project started with us doing research on the war and trying to find organizations that help refugees. Trying to find refugees to talk to was a challenge because not many come to Boston. in the beginning out team had trouble coordinating and working together. Once Adam helped us work out our issues we were back on track. We finally found a Syrian refugee and a Syrian reporter to talk to. Both interviews went smoothly, now it was time to edit. We spent countless frustrating hours downloading the audio and splitting the interviews. After all that we imported our favorite parts into the file that would soon become our final output. Once imported and mixed we needed to create a voiceover. We first needed to write the parts and once that was done, Jack sat in the elevator with a jacket over his head and recorded the track. After multiple tracks ending in the elevator being called or misspoken lines, we had our voice over tracks.

    In the duration of this project we learned a lot, from whats going on in Syria to how to use a audio editing program called Audacity. Originally we were going to do out radio pice on the Pakistani refugees but we quickly learned that there is bigger story was in Syria. Once we started researching the war in Syria learned a lot of new information that we used for out story. Our second interviewee Omar had an extremely impacting story, he was taken from his family with half an hour notice.  After editing our podcast our knowledge of the Syrian war was a lot greater the it was before. 

In this studio we were challenged to create a radio package following the central theme of uprooting. For our radio package we looked at many ideas related to uprooting, but decided to take to meaning of the word literally. Our radio package is about the drought on California and how it is causing the farmers to have to uproot their trees to conserve water. Because of the drought in California residents are having to reduce their water usage, but farmers need a lot of water to grow their crops. Since farmers are not able to get enough water to sustain all of their crops, they must uproot some of their trees in order to have enough water for the rest of their crops. Our final package has interviews that we conducted with people in California, voiceover that we did ourselves, as well as sounds and ads that were downloaded from the internet. These parts have all been put together in Adobe Audition to create a full three minute radio package.

During the process of creating our radio story we were faced with many challenges. At the beginning of the studio we had some basic interviews scheduled, but there was no way for us to record the other side of the conversation. Even once we were able to record the other side, we still had many technical difficulties that caused us to postpone our interview once again. Since everyone that we were interviewing was in California, we had to wait until the afternoon every day to contact companies to schedule interviews. This meant that we had nothing to do in the mornings, and so much to do in the afternoons that we were unable to finish what we needed to everyday. Because studios at NuVu are only two weeks long we had trouble getting interviews with farmers associations and other companies in such short notice. This resulted in us being unable to get any interviews with farmers associations, forcing us to get our interview footage from the internet.

In this studio we were challenged to create a radio package following the central theme of uprooting. For our radio package we looked at many ideas related to uprooting, but decided to take to meaning of the word literally. Our radio package is about the drought on California and how it is causing the farmers to have to uproot their trees to conserve water. Because of the drought in California residents are having to reduce their water usage, but farmers need a lot of water to grow their crops. Since farmers are not able to get enough water to sustain all of their crops, they must uproot some of their trees in order to have enough water for the rest of their crops. Our final package has interviews that we conducted with people in California, voiceover that we did ourselves, as well as sounds and ads that were downloaded from the internet. These parts have all been put together in Adobe Audition to create a full three minute radio package.

During the process of creating our radio story we were faced with many challenges. At the beginning of the studio we had some basic interviews scheduled, but there was no way for us to record the other side of the conversation. Even once we were able to record the other side, we still had many technical difficulties that caused us to postpone our interview once again. Since everyone that we were interviewing was in California, we had to wait until the afternoon every day to contact companies to schedule interviews. This meant that we had nothing to do in the mornings, and so much to do in the afternoons that we were unable to finish what we needed to everyday. Because studios at NuVu are only two weeks long we had trouble getting interviews with farmers associations and other companies in such short notice. This resulted in us being unable to get any interviews with farmers associations, forcing us to get our interview footage from the internet.

During the studio we worked on three main parts of the radio piece. We started off by getting interviews with people in California about their experiences of the drought. We then Interviewed Kari Hosmer in San Francisco, Taylor Goldenstein in Los Angeles, and downloaded ads from the California Farm Bureau Federation. Once we had all of our interviews we added voiceover to the piece. We wrote a script, recorded the tracks, and trimmed them to fit in between interview tracks. editing took up a lot of the time during the studio. Using Adobe Audition, we trimmed each track to fit into the piece perfectly, as well as picking and choosing parts of the interviews to use in the piece. We added sound effects to the piece after trimming to join the tracks to each other. once all of the tracks were put together we normalized the tracks in order for the sounds to all be at one volume. In the studio we learned about the effects of the California drought.

40% of homeless youth today are LGBTQ, most of which have become homeless due to familial rejection. Our goal was to address this disproportionate statistic in response to the lack of awareness and knowledge about the experiences of homeless youth. For our radio piece, we addressed the issue of LGBTQ homeless youth by conducting interviews with two LGBTQ shelter directors, who helped us better understand the struggles these teens face and how the shelters plan for protecting and helping them. Our interviews with program directors of LGBT youth shelters gave us great insight into the structure of the shelters and how they proceed to help homeless youth once they arrive in the shelter, as well as the risks youth face while on the streets and how street-based outreach helps to tend to their physical and mental health problems.