Fleeing War: The Unseen Truth

Final

Jakob Sperry and Jack Mullen

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.

Fleeing War: The Unseen Truth

Adam Steinberg and 2 OthersJakob Sperry
Jack Mullen

Process

Jakob Sperry and Jack Mullen

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.