Almost ten years ago I became certified in audio engineering and took the first job I could find. I was hired quickly and easily at a place in Bethesda, Maryland called Potomac Talking Books. The company recorded narrated books and magazines for the Library of Congress. I enjoyed written materials and loved anything to do with tape  and sound so the job was a great placement for me. My duties were to sit outside the recording booth (a metal pod that was just large enough to hold a voice actor and a book), monitor their narration and read along a copy of the material, listening for mistakes. When mistakes were made, I’d rewind the reel-to-reel recorder in front of me to the sentence before the mistake, and punch in (hit record at a precise moment). A light would go on when the recording began and the narrator would expertly begin reading with matched tone again. I became an expert at rewindstopplayrecording. It was automatic. Instinctual. I took great pride in this ability.

But I’m not good at reading and listening

After the recording was complete, the stack of (sometimes a dozen or more) reels were sent into the QC department where they were pored over by a team of glassed-nosed übernerds for pronunciation, background noise, poor punch-ins, and mistakes that were overlooked.

I overlooked a lot of mistakes.

As good as I was at instinctually working the tape machine I was really bad at this job. QC would make a list of the mistakes that had to be corrected in re-recording sessions and the actors would make the corrections at the beginning of their next scheduled session. The actors hated re-recordings because they didn’t get paid the same as the initial recordings ($50 per 88 minute side). The actors started hating me, their broken failsafe. A month later I left the job and started working behind a desk at an insurance company.

I told you that to tell you this

While working there I met an actor named Mark Ashby who was an absolute narration prodigy. He would do an 88 minute side in 90 minutes. In essence, he’d sit down in the studio and make more than anyone else in the place. He was fantastic and efficient. As a result he was asked to read a lot of different materials. Including material that was wholly inappropriate for his voice. Like Ebony magazine featuring an interview with rapper Raekwon.

I heard about this recording and, during my lunch break and without permission, went into the tape library, grabbed the tape, spooled it up and bussed it out to my Minidisc recorder. I stole government property between mouthfuls of Boston Market. I was never caught and I think the statute of limitations has expired so, without further ado, please enjoy one of the gems of my iTunes Library: Mark Ashby reads Raekwon.

The plan was to record the live show, edit a cut of one song and project it onto canvas screens set up on a stage. Chris asked for nothing from me but advice as to how best to pull that off. I suggested that instead of using the existing footage from the show that we invite the band to a studio and shoot them on green screen. Then instead of video recording a light projection (which would be difficult to do correctly) we do a post-production composite of the screens on a stage with the green screen footage.

Fixing it in post

Chris scheduled the shoot and booked the studio, I borrowed an HD camera and we shot the band, stage and screen. We also shot the screens in public places around Baltimore, supporting the idea that the band is Baltimore-based. The band was told that the video would be available in a few weeks.

A couple weeks into my post production, watching playbacks of my composite I found the concept didn’t support the song. The driving force of the music was completely juxtaposed by the stillness of the image of canvas screens sitting on the stage. This video was going to be painfully boring to watch for four minutes and ten seconds. I stopped working on the video for six months.

Stop! Animate!

This past July I borrowed my friend Ben’s Sony Handycam to work on a small personal project. While I had it in my possession I tried out some techniques that I was curious about. Namely how to do a faux stop animation of paper elements on a desk. In my tests I reached for some placeholder footage from the J Roddy folder.

I decided that this could actually be an interesting method of presenting the band while they performed their song. I presented the idea to Chris who basically told me that the band had apparently completely forgotten about our promise and to just do whatever I wanted.

Below is the completed project. I’m happy with it for the most part and wish that I could look at it objectively. Enjoy.

Tomorrow is my last day of an adventure that you would call “trying to teach an SAT class for the first time ever”. Boy, am I glad. I never fully appreciated the work and effort that goes into trying to teach a group of teenagers something that they really don’t want to know. May God bless all teachers many times over. Coming away from this experience, I realize why I never pursued education as a career on a grand scale. Teaching part-time on a consistent basis would burn me out more than my 50-60 hour/week day job ever will. I have definitely gotten the distinct sense that I need to reconsider any statement that I can teach.

Do not get me wrong now…

I liked the kids. They may not have liked me, but I definitely liked them. I may not have been all that helpful to them, but I certainly liked them. And I like teaching too. I just cannot teach a group of kids, even if I do like them. I have tutored for the past three years, but one-on-one tutoring is distinctly different from trying to teach seventeen kids who are developmentally more focused on their social lives than they are on the short girl with the big hair up front trying to plod her way through her lesson plan. And as for that short girl with the big hair, can I just mention how easily distracted she can get with multiple stimuli? I cannot finish a sentence much less teach a lesson when I am around more than one conversation. And we had plenty of those going on in various parts of the room.

In my defense

I am not saying I did not teach my students well. I do not know if I did. My ability to gauge their progress was limited by a number of things. Most of these things being homework, or the lack thereof. After the fourth or fifth class in which only two or three students did *some* of the homework, I realized I would have a difficult time being helpful. I mean, how does one get a student who is likely already overworked and involved in a number of activities outside of SAT tutoring to buy into doing a few hours of additional homework every week? Additionally, since my main focus has always been teaching my students how to prioritize their needs and taking responsibility for their own performance, it is hard to feel like I was actually teaching the principal lesson in my syllabus.

Did I happen to mention that I had to proctor a test after school hours in which the test materials were locked away in the guidance counselor’s office? Did I also happen to mention the fact that there was only one answer sheet for a total of 33 students? Even if I had taught my kids well, that experience in and of itself was enough for me to feel quite finished with the whole thing.

Time to grab for my center

My aunt once told me a story of when she had a run-in with a very poor teacher. My aunt’s demands flustered the teacher so much, she tried to have administrators kick my aunt out ofthe class. Ultimately in the ensuing confrontation, my aunt advised the flustered educator to “hold [her] center as the teacher”. I have felt as though I’ve been trying to grab onto that center of which she spoke, but I have yet to find it much less hold it as a teacher. Trying to teach a class has simply left me with the vague sensation of trying to swim to the surface when I’m oriented towards the seabed. Counseling? I can do that relatively well. Tutoring? I can do that too, because it comes back down to the individual’s needs and my ability to respond to them with my full attention. Teaching seventeen kids at once? You’re not likely to find me doing that again any time soon.