Video Game Music Industry Expert Interview Honoraria

Video Game Music Industry Expert Interview Honoraria

Grant:
Instructional Development Fund (IDF)
Academic Year:
2013 - 2014 (June 1, 2013 through May 31, 2014)
Funding Requested:
$400.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
mattthom
Overview of the Project:
I write to request 400 dollars to conduct four virtual (Skype) interviews with various top-level industry professionals throughout the semester as part of classroom activities. Through work on my game music blog, videogamemusicnerd.blogspot.com, I've made connections with guest speakers: Karen Collins (Associate Professor, University of Waterloo) who is the leading game audio scholar in the western world; Brian Schmidt (founding member of the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG)) who is a composer, audio programmer, game audio consultant, and creator of GameSoundCon; and George Sanger, author of The Fat Guide to Game Audio, game audio think-tank guru, and well respected composer, and Damian Kastbauer, audio implementor and co-creator of gameaudiopodcast. Each conversation will be timed to coincide with and reinforce classroom discussions of similar topics. For instance, the interview with Damian Kastbauer will take place during the section of the class when we're discussing audio implementation and the conversation with George Sanger will be concurrent with beginning our Composition Quest! In these interactive conversations, I'll act as moderator and give the students the chance to speak directly to professional experts, fleshing out class readings and discussions. As a way to extend the function of these interviews, I plan to record these video conversations for re-use and would also like to make these recorded interviews available via the UM-library for access by the community.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

To give my video game music students an opportunity to speak directly with game audio industry experts. This conversation provided a realism and industry perspective across a variety of game audio professions.

Project Achievements:

In final course reflections, the students mentioned these Skype conversations as the most enjoyable/educational activity in the course. The conversations also put me in contact with major players in the game audio industry, very important networking, but even more so, it led me to discover a game audio conference where my subsequently awarded CRLT Lecturers' Professional Development Fund will fund my attendance to receive training in game audio software. At the risk of being too long, I'd like to share a few student quotes with you about the impact of these Skype conversations:"What I really enjoyed were the Skype sessions! If anything, hearing them talk about their passions has really inspired me to really think about my passion for my field. However they fell into doing music game composition, I really enjoyed seeing how they stuck to it because they loved it so much. I think these sessions were an essential part of the class, because the students could see first hand how applicable the class is.""Coolest part of the class was definitely the Skype calls, but that speaks for itself. I hope there are more classes like this in the future, they make me really love learning.""It was AWESOME that we had guest speakers to talk to us about their different roles in video game music. Each one of them had different roles that were all very important. It was also just nice to see celebrities of behind the curtains!" 

Continuation:
The recordings of the conversations were actually less successful than I hoped. Because of software and hardware issues, the recordings have quite a bit of reverb that wasn't present live. It's a shame for me to have learned after the fact that there are very new classrooms around UM set up for Skype conversations that would've been able to record these flawlessly. I even tried various techniques (for instance, recording the conversation with multiple software simultaneously) to resolve the problem, but never found a solution that gave a solid audio track. Despite that, I may issue them to the library as they are, or see if I can improve the audio quality with clever editing. Perhaps the best solution: I could hire someone to transcribe these and submit them to the library in print, but this would require more funding. In the future, I may see if the contacts I made would be willing to speak to my class without compensation. Also, there are UM affiliated game audio folks who might be willing to speak.
Dissemination:
I just returned this weekend from the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music where I spoke about teaching this class. I described the importance/ impact of these Skype conversations for the students. Hopefully, I'll be able to submit some kind of file to the library as well-- I'll probably have to investigate that in the summer when I have more time. I'll also continue to make my colleagues aware that this funding is available for their classes.
Advice to your Colleagues:
Practice Skype recording equipment/ software in the actual classroom ahead of its first use. Conversations with practitioners working in the field is a critical component of education and is extremely inspirational to students.
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