A proposal in the interest of garnering greater general credibility for the online Bigfoot community

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Richard Smothers, a US citizen living in Southern Alberta and a lifelong Bigfoot connoiseur.

Things like egregious spelling and grammatical errors in blogs and lousy audio in vids and podcasts serve only to make an already easily-marginalized field more easily-marginalizable, as well they should. As anyone knows, it doesn't matter what you have to say, if you wind up saying it in a fashion that makes you look uneducated, lazy, sloppy or cavalier, the message will likely be ignored or rejected. In a field in which there is a huge struggle for credibility, these are points which should be of far greater concern than they currently appear to be. Following are some simple pointers that, if followed, may not convince an unbeliever, but will at least keep from perpetuating the notion that online Bigfooters are unprofessional cretins.

1) Spelling and Grammar. This is the easiest fix. Whether you think you're good with English or not, have someone proofread your work before publishing. Spell-check can help, but it cannot analyze grammar, so if you type "form" instead of "from", it's gonna stay that way. Grammar and syntax seem to be a bit difficult for a few blogsters and researchers out there, and that's something you're just going to have to have someone smarter than you proofread. Remember, if you’re the least bit uncertain about your spelling or grammar, call a buddy. A smart one, preferably.

2) Audio volume on vids. This is an easy one, too, you just have to learn the minimum skills when it comes to mixing audio in whatever video editing program you use and, most importantly, LISTEN TO YOUR VID IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE YOU POST. How many times have we all (on a daily basis, for many) watched a vid where the various segments are of such wildly different volumes relative to one another that you can go from having to crank it all the way up to hear what some guy’s saying, to having your ears, speakers and neighbors blown out by the insanely loud volume of the next edited segment. This, people, is retarded as well as lazy. Try not to be in such a rush to get the damned thing up that you don’t even bother listening to what you just edited. Watch where the VUs spike for your various segments’ audio tracks and adjust accordingly, doing your best to create a median volume for the entire piece (this is called normalization). Yes, some of the clips you’re editing very possibly have some really bad audio, and that’s understandable, but at least try to match the volumes, if nothing else; you may even have to edit the gain more than once for a single segment.

3) Audio in blogcasts. This is going to be the most difficult, obviously, since there are often multiple people joining in conversation using Skype, so there’s only so much you can control. However, stuff like bumper music and other recorded segments’ volumes and gain levels are easily checked beforehand. My suggestion is do a test-recording first and play it back; you should be able to keep those settings for as long as you‘re using the same sources for your bumpers. Seriously, I was trying to listen to this webcast last night and the differences in audio volumes were insane. It started with a recorded segment, followed by the live audio, which was so low relative to the intro I had to crank it way up, but then, when they went to break and played the bumper music, the volume leapt so dramatically, I seriously had to check with my neighbor to see if it had bothered her. Of course, after the break, I had to get up and crank the volume for the live part back up again. This isn’t just annoying, it’s potentially harmful to audio equipment and, if one is wearing earbuds or ‘phones, potentially damaging to one’s hearing.

So, in closing, I think we can all agree that, regardless of what we’re trying to say or do, it’s going to be taken rather a bit more seriously if it’s properly spelled and relatively painless to listen to. Just take a little extra time and realize that, once it’s up there, potentially millions of people could see and hear it, so let’s do our field a favour and try to look professional.

BTW, I am available for text proofreading at no charge.