Mattie Carlson and I dated in high school, during which she opened up about her interest in the furry community. Witnessing her working through the difficulties of enjoying something while socially it was widely stigmatized was a unique experience. Carlson and I are extremely comfortable talking about hard topics, which made this interview a breeze.
As she has moved far away, editing this recording was a wonderful experience, hearing her voice for the first time since the interview. My experience recording interviews through audio has stirred my passion for radio and podcasts. I am excited to use audio in my future career, hopefully creating more content like this. I enjoy audio’s ability as a platform for story telling to express emotion. It’s important to convey tone in narratives, which is significantly more difficult through text.
The only difficulty I faced was keeping my original audio down to 5 minutes, which I ultimately could not achieve. Despite working towards it, in the end I’m happy with the information I got in my original interview. This allowed me to get more creative with my editing and narrative.
I really enjoyed the editing process of this interview due to the amount of content I could work with. It was a unique experience due to the amount of time spent listening to this interview. I enjoyed going through the audio countless times as well as working with audacity for the first time. The platform was easy to use and better than other audio platforms I’ve used in the past.
The portrait taking process was exciting because I was able to go to the mountains with Carlson near her new home. I was also able to go the animal shelter with her, something I thought fit well with the story. I wanted to capture images of her in places one might find her. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to visit long enough to photograph a furry gathering. In the end however, I’m happy that I was able to portray in the portraits that there is a lot more to her than just one of her interests. I enjoyed getting to show a bit more of her personality through images, which fit well with her narrative.
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