Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
For my latest project in Professional Multimedia Creation (Washington State University COM 561), I needed to create a short audio story and edit it with Adobe Audition.
With the recent demolition of Candlestick Park in San Francisco fresh in my mind, I decided to make my audio story about another site where baseball was played in the city. I went to the site where Seals Stadium once existed, which was the first home of the San Francisco Giants.
The defending World Champion Giants are wildly popular and people wearing “SF” hats and the black and orange can be spotted all over the city. But how many walking around the Potrero Center on Bryant Street, walking in and out of the stores, knew they were standing on the very spot where Willie Mays called home.
And I was also curious to where homeplate once existed and if there was any marker to commemorate it.
I had a small recorder with me where I gathered footage of me setting up the journey, first at the remains of Candlestick and then to the Potrero Center. I spoke with a few Giant fans along the way, getting permission to record them each time.
Sometimes the background noise was a bit harsh, but that is the price to pay when recorded interviews on the street.
Whenever I changed location, I also would sit and record ambient sound to use when I was editing.
I had nearly an hour of recordings which I uploaded to Adobe Audition. The hardest part was finding the individual sound bites of what the people I spoke to said. A few of them were pretty funny and quirky but also long winded and took up too much time. It became an act of fishing and trimming the clips to find short declarative statements.
I cut out an entire stop on the journey and also trimmed back the exposition. As it stands now, it is about 30 seconds too long, but I figured for a rough draft, going from 58 minutes to 3 and a half minutes was not a bad job of trimming back.
I blended some of the sounds by putting some talking on one track and another line on another while other times rearranging the order of the sentences to make it flow more smoothly.
One last mix down and my rough draft was complete and ready for posting.
Sully Baseball 
FYI… a longer version of this was put on my podcast.
Paul,
Good job, I love the story line! Very thoughtful, from your intro to the interviews on the streets. You clearly and effectively communicated the topic. You were very clear and I could feel the emotion in your voice- good job. The story was easy to follow and the flow was really good – I felt like like I wanted you to continue and hear more which is important in narratives. I must say that I appreciate the time and effort you put into this, that was really brave of you to walk up to strangers with your recorder conducting interviews.
I would like to recommend a few pointers – I felt like you left me hanging, like I mentioned earlier I was wanted to hear more but the end was quite abrupt. The music at the end felt like it ended on a high, maybe you could consider toning it down or fading it out.
Also with multiple interviews and a variation of backgrounds which I also realized on mine, consider toning down the volume to a consistent high or low.
I really enjoyed listening to your narrative. Good job!
Great job! I love how you really painted a visual for the listener with your words. With the mixture of your nats and your descriptive narrative, it really puts the listener right there with you. I loved your delivery and how you went and found where home plate would have been. Great piece! My only feedback would be that, while I LOVE nats, they did get a little loud during a couple of those interviews and it was hard to hear the voices a bit. I also think your piece could benefit from some sort of tag about your journey. The ending does feel a bit abrupt. Overall, really well done! I am not a Giants baseball fan but even I was getting into the story.
Hi Paul,
Nice job, interesting bit of history! You clearly enjoyed making this. It was nice to get so many different voices contributing to the story. The ambient sounds contributed to a great feeling of place.
The only time I felt the background noise was overwhelming was in the diner with the longtime fan. The combination of “Staying Alive” in the background while discussing the legacy of this demolished stadium was funny, but it was very difficult to hear what he was saying, and I didn’t feel it contributed much to the story. Removing that segment would get you closer to the 30 second mark.
I appreciate the amount of investigation you did, from finding the plague to locating home base. It made a very nice story arc. There is room, though, for a stronger conclusion. I can make assumptions about why maintaining the memory of the stadium is important to you, but you don’t state that in the interview. What do you think is lost when we as a culture forget about stadiums past? I think that would be a really strong point to add on, and one you could record fairly easily in your own words.
Belated Happy Fourth!
Bridget
Paul,
Great job on this project.
I like that you did the recordings on site! I felt like I was there while you described the scenes – I also think it was a good idea to leave in the background noise.
I think it was great how excited you got when the one fan really did know the significance of the shopping center, haha.
At 2:18 the background music is a little loud and a bit overpowering, plus his mention of use of drugs and alcohol is a little off topic – perhaps omit that part of the interview? I don’t think it’s necessary for the rest of the story (though entertaining).
Lastly, I think your conclusion / wrap up could be a little more obvious, I did not expect the story to end so abruptly, so maybe consider adding a ‘In conclusion’ or final thought that stands out a bit more.
It was very entertaining, sounds like you had a good time doing this project.
Cheers,
Kelly