1 Language Documentation in West Africa July Winneba, Ghana David Nathan & Sophie Salffner Endangered Languages Archive Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project SOAS, University of London Audio & video: lessons from our first beach visit

2 This session  Goals  to bring out what we learned from the documentation recording events of 20 July  … to enable us to make great recordings next time!

3  a quick reminder of audio workflow …

4 Audio workflow who/what/where /why/how do you want to record? contact people audio training equipment & budget assemble, test, practise Before you go

5 Audio workflow transport safely check environment, situations, permissions make test recordings local training & collaboration On site, before recording

6 Audio workflow record! monitor! collect metadata labelcheck quality monitor Sessions

7 Audio workflow labelcheck quality backupadd information (transcriptions, annotations, metadata etc) After sessions

8 Audio workflow send samples to archive add information (transcriptions, annotations, metadata etc)... package and send to archive Later

9 Documentation workflow documentation goals research, arrangements preparation etc something happened recordings + metadata we recorded media resources “data” social and physical context transfer, convert, share elicitation linguistic explanation linguistic analysis archiving community support

10 How can we do this?  Reflect on experiences – at beach, and before and after  Review recorded materials  Revisit equipment, skills, choices, methods  Check how all this fitted with goals

11 Documentation recording concepts  “data collection” ??? goalsoutcomes events methods equipment review

12 Group brainstorming  in your project groups, discuss and formulate:  at least 4 points of learning, or suggestions for improvement  make them concrete  groups will share these points after your discussion

13 Discussion and sharing

14 Some suggestions (general)  general - we didn't encourage or observe much activity - we could have planned better and also been more flexible e.g.  ask someone to walk along the beach and describes the various boats, crews etc  ask someone to take us on a tour around the boat  one of us asks to be taught how to do something  I noticed that there was a lot of banter on the boats and between the crews

15 Some suggestions (general)  the nature of our presence and interaction probably influenced how people responded (and didn't respond), we could have been more prepared, thoughtful, flexible, and adventurous  we noticed various activities etc that while maybe difficult to capture the event's language, it could be useful to video or photograph them and then use them to elicit accounts later (e.g. launching)  there were some problems because the beach fishing situation seems to be populated by men, and the consultants we used to help later were younger women

16 Some suggestions (general)  some interviewed people turned out to not be Effutu speakers so we could have been clearer about who we interacted with, and been prepared for what kind of material would be useful to collect from non-Effutu speakers  we didn't take much opportunity of using the authentic social settings to elicit real social and situated interactions

17 Some suggestions (general)  we didn't practice shooting/recording first (to check light, sound etc) before approaching consultants  we didn’t really check out the situation on/around boats  i.e. we should have used some of the time to research the situation, not go directly into recording consultants

18 Some suggestions (general)  some problems with equipment preparation, e.g. batteries not charged

19 Some suggestions (audio)  level and nature of background noise means that close mic-ing and dead cat necessary (also checking and monitoring)  if possible also check out best direction to record (away from sea) and possible damping  settings  know how to select them  know what settings to use (WAV, 16 bit, 44 MHz, stereo or mono as required)  set audio input level according to changing situation

20 Some suggestions (video)  microphone needs to be close to speaker (due to background noise sources) - it cannot be camera-inbuilt or mounted on camera  limited space between boats - little space for tripod, and hard to get framing wide enough for multiple speakers or capturing gesture  light difficult  would be better in morning or afternoon  use backlight compensation  might need to ask people to turn or move

21 Some suggestions (video)  settings (again)  know how to select them  know what settings to use (turn off AGC, use backlight compensation)  set audio input level according to changing situation

22 I guessed …  that you would not mention metadata so far  what metadata did you collect?  (without clear documentation goals, it might be hard to be explicit)  for a documentation of fishing narratives, procedures, and knowledge, what metadata might be collected? ..

23 Review of recordings  let’s look at (and listen to) some of your recordings  what factors will we take into account?

24 Some evaluation factors  moving image  informative? (cf goals! – but be flexible)  image clarity?  aesthetic quality?  audio  signal (= information)  noise (= negative information)  listenability  content

25 More evaluation factors  do visual and audio media co-ordinate (ie complement each other)?  what is the documentation value of this recording?  uniqueness?

26 Evaluate and discuss your recordings

27 Summary and conclusion  each group make a concrete list of “to do”, “to learn”, and “to get” for next time

28 End