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I am not normally a fan of group projects due to them usually going 1 of 2 ways: Someone doing all the work because everyone else is lazy or one person doing all the work and not telling the rest of the group because of their past experiences with aforementioned laziness. Luckily, this did not happen in our group.
I have had tasks similar to this before and I have found that the hardest part is having a concept that you can feasibly do and you are motivated to do it. Past experience has taught me not to procrastinate on an idea and to get working. We nailed a good idea pretty quickly into the process and had ideas flowing equally within the group; which is very rare in group tasks in my past experiences. This was refreshing and we set up a group meeting to discuss further at a later date.
At the meeting we discussed in detail about the initial idea of travelling to Skegness to record the cliche sounds of the beach and have a nostalgic theme for people who had been there when they were younger. We decided to split the soundscape up by using footsteps as a transitional piece and we booked out a Zoom Hn4 and recorded footsteps and ambience sounds to have an idea as to what our transitional pieces will sound like. First Daniel walked on gravel and we followed behind with the Zoom, then we did the same on concrete. I suggested that we record ambience and wind outside the student bar and then on the walkway over the railway. I recorded 1 minute of ambience at both and also footsteps on the walkway too. Daniel also got a great stereo recording of a train passing by from L to R. The test recordings were a good experience before the actual day of recording.
The time finally came for us to go to Skegness and we were slightly surprised we even made it there and didn’t choose a different idea. However, I am glad we stuck it out and did a more creative concept. The issue that we came across in Skegness was that we went just out of season, which meant that a lot of the promenade was shut and also was the funfair. This did not stop us though and we managed to get a lot of recorded material on the beach and arcades.
Due to other group work projects having closer deadlines we left the editing close to the end and were more concerned with finishing that, which for myself was frustrating but we were lucky that we had everything recorded several weeks prior and ready to go with a good plan for our final product. Due to everyone’s schedules and leaving the editing close to the end I was not able to attend the editing session on Tuesday, which is frustrating however I think Ross Daniel and Declan have done a very good job with the project and have been a pleasure to work with.
If I took anything away from this project to improve on I would plan to have more time to finish all my work quicker, that being said we still have time left.