Audiovisual and graphics:
inner links

Graphic design & typography

Graphics portfolio pages

Articles on audio recording

Portable audio recording equipment Audio-recording conferences & lectures Audio-recording interviews

Graphics work sampler – a portfolio of past work!

This part of the site is a representative sampler of the kind of illustration, diagramming, graphic design and other visual communication work I have done over the last 40 years.


AutoBioCast project

This is a project in which I have been recording podcast segments about various life experiences; so far, five have been recorded and they are mostly about my involvement with the graphic arts and print production. In my re-organisation of the Conradiator web site in mid 2016, I decided to move these into the new Histories section of the site, and specifically onto the Autobiocasts page.


My audiovisual repertoire

Conrad on mic

Recording a voiceover track

 
I work with digital audio and video recording, editing, production & distribution.

My experiences in making audiovisual presentations go back to the late seventies, when I made a slide-tape show for my then employer, Third World First. That was ‘delivered’ as a carousel of 35mm slides and a compact cassette audio tape.

Formats

  • Audio recording of meetings, conferences: I frequently record events e.g. for BCS groups, ISKO-UK and NetIKX, delivering cleanly-edited, MP3 compressed files that are posted on the Web.
  • Video recording of events: using 3-chip mini-DV cameras hooked up to professional microphones. More recently I have been recording direct to disk by linking the camcorder to a Mac.
  • Video documentary production either as part of a team or as a ‘one man band’, including research and script writing, camerawork, still graphics and ‘rostrum effects’, narration voice-over, video editing and conversion to various delivery formats such as MPEG-4 H.264, Video DVD &c.
  • ‘Digital slide-tape’ — slide images synchronised to audio, for delivery either as Slideshare slidecasts, or H.264 digital movies.
  • Oral history interviews and discussions: this is an aspect that I am particularly keen to develop, for example to capture life experience from the pioneers of computing, informatics, information design and related fields. These could either be designed and delivered as audio-only experiences, or made up into ‘slide-tape’ format.

Toolkits

  • Digital audio recorders: I’ve used various formats and was a pioneering user of MiniDisc professional recorders. My current device is a Marantz PMD661 solid-state recorder of which I’m very fond.
  • Microphones: Two Røde NT-type large diaphragm studio condenser mics, a Beyer Dynamic MCE58 interview/ENG mic, a Sennheiser short-shotgun directional mic, and a matched pair of small BeyerDynamic condenser mics for interviews. Shockmounts and various microphone stands, and a Rycote softie and grip for outdoors use of the Sennheiser.
  • Alesis MultiMix8-USB-FX mixer desk, portable small mixer for use with four microphones, doubles as a USB interface for recording directly to computer hard disk.
  • Sony HDR-FX1E 3-chip miniDV and HDV camcorder, fitted with a Beachtek audio adapter for use with the professional mics.
  • Sony VX-1000 3-chip miniDV camcorder, an ‘oldie but goodie’ for plain 4:3 PAL work, can also take the Beachtek converter
  • Panasonic small 3-chip miniDV camcorder as back-up and second unit camera.
  • Stills digital photography based around a Nikon D200 and various lenses, plus Canon G12, plus studio flash heads and flash meter.
  • Tripods and lighting stands by Manfrotto!
  • Editing gear based around Apple Macintosh plus Sony DSR-20 miniDV/DVCAM video deck, and the Final Cut Pro suite of software, supplemented by scanner, Photoshop &c.