In some places my audio tape sounds like someone gargling. In some places, a definite water whoosh accompanies the gargling, as if the sink is running. Some places, the voices are way high on helium, and other places they drag and sink below the range of human vocal cords, right down the drain.
I'm on deadline, but my interview tape needs surgery, and so will I (think heart attack here) unless someone can rescue it.
That was how I learned about the Multi-Media Center.
In the basement of David Rittenhouse Labs, through a warren of hallways, works the wizard who can take a terminal sound track and make it come alive -- sometimes.
Media Specialist Sam Johnson makes duplications of audio and video, mans the digital work station that manipulates audio and video through the desktop, and edits videotapes. He presides over a bag of tricks to help the Penn community. Although the facility primarily helps SAS faculty and graduate students, anyone in the University can use it for as little as the cost of a tape, or some other reasonable fee.
Johnson, whose looks like a cross between a librarian and a mad scientist, has a background in communications and theater.
"I used to make things blow up -- on cue," he said about his work as a theater technician.
One of his theater inventions was a shrinking machine. "It had several motors and gears that appeared to pump. It had Chinese lanterns on top that went up and down. It was a mad contraption. Because it was so finicky, they needed me to go to France to show someone how to adjust it. They were so worried it wouldn't work, I had to stay there in Cannes for the opening (of Gian Carlo Menotti's 'The Boy Who Grew Too Fast')."
He still invents contraptions, even for the Multi-Media Center.
"We needed a boom mike for a PennNet show called the Math Zone, hosted by Dr. Dennis DeTurck, " said Johnson. He put one together from the parts of a stand-up microphone.
But sometimes his inventiveness is not enough to cure all ills. After speeding it up, slowing it down, filtering this and that, and more, Johnson could make out most of my tape on his high-quality tape deck. But on my equipment, I still understood not a word. It's a good thing I took notes.
Return to Compass Features for October 1, 1996