Vietnam Veteran Interview

Sound Project--Learning how to edit sound using my personal interview with a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Link to hear the file:
http://www.box.net/shared/static/q29crvf5wc.mp3

For my sound project, I interviewed a family friend, John Brickhouse, who had served as a crossbow sniper in Vietnam. The original interview lasted for 71 minutes, and at first I was unsure how to edit the raw material, as it was difficult to decide what to keep, to cut, or to rearrange.

I researched the Vietnam Archive Oral History Project run by Texas Tech University (http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/oralhistory/participation/). Their site includes guidelines on how to conduct the interview,along with an extensive questionnaire of 115 questions. Per their suggestion, I gave John a copy of the questionnaire in order to prepare him for the interview. I was especially concerned with making him comfortable, and circled which questions I was planning to ask; I encouraged him to let me know if any questions made him uncomfortable, and I did not waiver from the planned questions during the interview.

I also prepared by listening to interviews on the shows This American Life and StoryCorps, and based on the examples, I chose to edit my own voice as much as possible from the interview. The one time I am heard on the track is when I ask him if he has ever visited the Wall, and I included it because his answer would not make sense without the context of the question. My intended outcome was to edit the material to create a cohesive narrative, which focused on John’s words and not my questions. I had to be careful as I deleted segments of the interview that what I retained made sense. As it stood without editing, the interview had a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end, as the questions created by Texas Tech encouraged an exposition, clear development, and closure.

As a writer, I instinctively knew which parts to cut or keep based upon which themes emerged. I was aware of the interview as a composition, not only as it was happening, but during and after my arrangement. I chose not to rearrange questions and responses, even though I considered it a number of times, because the questions already followed a narrative pattern. Instead, I spent most of the editing time removing pauses, and as many “ums” and “ahs” as I could. I found that some of those utterances could not be removed without making obvious clipping sounds, even if I tried to “clean it up” with some smoothing tricks in Audacity.

I have several versions of the interview saved, including the raw original of over an hour, a 45-minute version, and a 13-minute version. I had originally planned to submit the 45-minute version as my project and to share the short version in class, but after cutting it, I prefer its impact in the shorter form and submit that as my final project. Cutting material took at least ten hours over a three-week period. By not working on it for extended periods of time, and instead approaching the material in short fragments of time, I was able to “hear it anew,” so to speak, the same way as when a writer sets down a late draft of a paper to let it rest a few days before the final edit. It is always easiest to reconsider edits afterwards.

The most dissatisfying aspect of the interview is the hiss on the track. I used Audacity’s noise removal option with some success, but removing any more hiss created an uneven wah-wah distortion. After visiting a number of forums online, I realized that I had to accept the hiss as it was, as a number of other Audacity users had encountered to same problem and concluded that little could be done (and that for a free program its strengths far outweighed its weaknesses).

I’m extremely satisfied with the final composition and am pleased to publish it to the class when we meet and on my blog. I considered which statements would most affect my classmates when we listened to it as a group, but I also considered that the long version of the interview could be published to the Texas Tech archive. Because I believe that oral histories are a vital part of the ongoing story of America, I plan to ask John’s permission for that publication after I share the interview with him in person. I am honored that he shared his personal—and often painful—history with me.