The next task I selected from the bank was titled “Spooky Season”. We were to find spooky sounds using Freesound and create a scary audio clip for this assignment. The assignment required choosing more than four sounds and adding them to an Audacity-like program. I started my scary audio with some eerie sounds, titled ghosts appear on the freesound tab. This reminds me of a horror movie, though not quite of a ghostly appearance. I next used the sound of something howling; I’m not sure if it’s the wind or an animal, but it makes me think of someone being outside by themselves late at night. Then, because who doesn’t find a spooky laugh creepy, I put a spooky laugh in there. The last two sounds I selected are related to monsters. I used the unsettling sound of a monster breathing heavily in the first one. My last audio was the sound of zombies because I used to get really scared of them when I watched The Walking Dead. Do you all think I had a successful spooky audio? I was rather pleased or should I say scared, with the outcome.
Completing three assignment bank audio tasks was the next task for this week. The first one I choose is available at Breaking News Assignment. The instructions for this assignment were rather straightforward: create a breaking news story. I had to write something to say and use text-to-speech AI to read it. Since we had to include AI or Dr. Oblivion in at least two of our assignment bank assignments, I chose to use the character from my course for this assignment.
As seen in the video below, Julius is apparently considering stepping down at his highly coveted role as an Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs to pursue his true love, Basketball. As told in the reports, several NBA teams have reached out to Julius about him signing an NBA contract with their teams. As of now it seems like the Philadelphia Sixers are the frontrunners to land Julius, as he is a huge admirer of Joel Embiid and his basketball skills. Reportedly teams saw Youtube and Twitter highlights of Julius playing and realized he had all the same skills back in his college playing days at UVA, but seemed to be in better shape and more skilled than before. Julius had been quietly working on his basketball skills every moment he had free, along with running before work to keep in tip top shape. While he forewent going to the NBA when he was 22, he seemingly has regretted that decision and will now take his talents to the NBA.
Making this video was lots of fun, especially because I had seen AI generated voiceover videos before, but was never able to create one myself. I always find enjoyment in creating a storyline for my course character, because he is whatever I want him to be. His story is exciting to me and I hope to continue with it throughout the rest of the semester.Â
This week’s assignments also included announcing the ds106 radio station and making a radio bumper that lasted between ten and thirty seconds. In between songs, this bumper would play to remind listeners that they are connected to ds106 radio! It was my first time using Audacity, but it was a fairly easy program to use to create my audio. I used Jad Abumrad’s phrases, “creativity” and “imagination,” when I was designing the bumper. Even though some of what I stated may sound cheesy, the main goal is to draw in listeners, so that’s what matters most. Since I assume that most of the listeners to the ds106 radio station are creative thinkers with an optimistic view on life, I chose pretty generic uplifting music for the background of my bumper. All in all, I had fun creating this bumper and I hope to have it played on ds106 radio. If you would want to listen to the radio bumper, here is the link.
The final assignment that I chose to do for this weeks three audio assignments was to create a spooky sound clip consisting of at least 4 different sounds. As a result, I came up with a final product that you can listen to below which consists of 5 different sounds. The sounds are a scream, a woman laughing eerily, a person walking through the woods, a regular ghastly sound, and finally the roar of various monsters. The monster noises come in closer to the end because that is where the sound lightens up a little bit and there is only one other sound clip being played. The clip starts with a man screaming and then the woman starting to laugh like crazy so that it sounds like the woman is after the man. Then the ghastly forest sounds come into the picture and that is being played in the background as well as the woman continues laughing. Finally, the clip of a person walking through a spooky forest with ominous sounds is being played in the background as well. I enjoyed making this sound as it allowed me to toy with different sounds and see which sounds paired together well and which ones did not pair that well. Also, the monster noises were a last minute addition because I felt the end of the sound clip was a bit bare and by adding some more rustling and growling, it would make the sound scarier and it did. I was happy with the final product that I came up with and like stated before, enjoyed creating this piece. I think in the future I would try and experiment with actually regulating the sound clips, meaning like adding reverb or amplifying certain parts to make it more dramatic, but for now, I chose to keep it a little more simple and just do what was within my limits.
Mic checks 1…2…1…2… is this thing on? This was a really fun assignment where I created a radio bumper for ds106. For this, I briefly listened to the radio station and instantly decided on a lofi inspired background audio to match the “vibe” of the radio channel. While I wanted to focus on matching the vibe of the radio station, I wanted to make my radio bumper unique. Something that was uniquely inspired by my experiences. I started off by recording the audio bit of my voice which took three tries and thenI headed over to free audio.com and instantly searched for key words like lofi, radio bumper, Mellow beats, outro, intro, and other things of that nature.
I found some hip hop type intro sounds to stack on top of each other and even took a snippet of someone else’s podcast intro and added that to the beginning of the audio. I then trimmed my voice recording and added the reverb sound effect to give it a radio feel. Then I adjusted the intro sounds accordingly and added some lofi beats to the background. I then added the outro bit which is like a power down sound and began to edit out unwanted sounds and arranging the snippets into ways that went together cohesively. After I was done I realized that something was missing. I found a bit on free audio which said “Well on this show did you expect anything else?” which I felt was a great touch to add right after my voice. Then it was radio ready so I uploaded it… also I can’t figure out how to allow downloads, so if you want to use it I’ll send you the file, just ask!
Listen to my sound effect storytelling assignment below! For this, I tried to create the effect of having anxiety on a train ride and how overstimulating it can be for people with severe anxiety. Please enjoy and give me some tips down below!
Behind the creation:
I was really intimidated by this project and using a new audio editing service, but I still wanted the outcome to be something I could be proud of. I didn’t want something that sounded like it was put together in three or less seconds and then tossed to the side, and instead something that would put you in a dream-like state as we discussed earlier this week in the videos we watched. I first started by compiling a list of sounds that I would normally hear on a bus or on a train like bags rustling, the train moving, low chatter. Then I added some other sounds that would give you the since of being frightened or tense like the creepy voice, and the beating heart. I was actually hanging out with someone towards the end of my editing which admittedly was time consuming, and they said that even they got tense listening to it and compared my audio to some of the horror movie sounds. A problem that I ran into was the fact that the audios, even though they were placed properly to be cohesive, were way too long for this assignment with a cap of 90 seconds. So, I had to meticulously go through each audio and adjust it to fit right and cut out unnecessary bits. I am really proud of the product and all in all this took me about a hour and a half to complete!
Special note: I should have done the radio bumper first! This would have made this whole process easier and the bumper is less complicated! I guess you live and you learn!
The second assignment I chose to do for the three audio assignments this week was to create a relaxing and soothing sound that one could fall asleep to, if they wanted. So, I went ahead and started browsing through some of the sounds available on freesound.org and tried to locate some calming sounds that I could put together to create one big audio clip. I wanted to include various sounds such as chimes, waterfalls, rainfall, animals, nature, etc. Luckily, I was able to get almost all of the sounds that I wanted to incorporate, into the final audio clip. As you will hear in the sound bite, I started off by taking all of the four sounds and having them play at the same time, overlapping one another. For the chimes, I decided that it was too overpowering for the rest of the sounds that were being used so I decided to just let those play every 10 seconds and then the time when they were not playing would be filled up by the remaining sounds that were being played. I chose to use the sounds of wind chimes, soft rainfall, a slow waterfall, as well as the chimes and chirps from birds in a rural countryside. I think all of these sounds blend in really well and allow the listener to try and pick apart the different sounds and try to decipher what is what. Also, none of the sounds are too overwhelming so the listener is not overstimulated by the same sound. Also, in the sound clip that contains the rural countryside there is a train horn that is being sounded way off in the distance which I personally really liked. I thought the addition of the train horn in the distance really added to the relaxing nature of the sound clip because the horn would sometimes be played when all of the other sound bites were coming down from their climax, so it would not be dead silence, rather a subtle horn that one could hear off in the distance and still be stimulated by the various sounds as they begin to climax once again. Also, the train horn was nowhere near too loud for this clip either and you could even hear the nature that was captured in tis clip over the train horn and really enjoyed the birds chirping while the horn was being sounded. I would say that my favorite sound clip used to create this entire piece would have to be the sound clip that had the train horn, soft wind rustling, and the birds chirping in the background because on its own, that could be a relaxing clip I could listen to all day. Take a listen to my final product, which you can listen to below.
One of the tasks for this week was to complete 3 audio assignments from the assignment bank apart from the sound effect story and the radio bumper. So, for my first assignment I decided to create a breaking new video with some text-to-speech video generation techniques with the addition of using a AI generated image to fit the theme of the class as well. The assignment also stated that we should include our course characters into the assignments as we go so I decided, why not give Xander a return the general public with a breaking news update. It has been a while since we got to check in with Xander and I am happy to report that he has been up to some big things recently. I could tell you but I could also just show you, take a quick look at this breaking news story that covered what Xander has been up to over the last couple of months.
As I am sure you all saw, Xander became the first human in the world to have an AI agent working simultaneously with his brain causing his brain power to almost double. This news is being released after Xander has been with the agent in his brain for about 5 weeks so he is well past his rehabilitation point and is onto full-blown performance testing now. As of recent, there have been no issues with his chip and he feels the same, however, he does say that every know and then he just gets a big rush of knowledge and that it is hard to explain. However, he constantly reinforces the fact that there have been zero negative side effects or consequences of this chip so far and stresses that to everyone who looks at him as a egotistical mastermind.
I really enjoyed creating this breaking news update because I have never done something like this before. It has always been with image generation but never with video generation and it cool to figure out how everything worked and what you could and could not do with a tool like this. The background image was an AI generated image, which actually took me a while to generate because the chatbot was not properly following my prompts and kept giving me random outputs that did not match my prompt but other than that, that part was pretty easy. I then found an professional looking avatar and added him into it so that he could act as my news anchor. Once I did that, I just needed to give it a short script to read as my text-to-speech requirement was being fulfilled while also finishing up the main chunk of the assignment.
P.S. Stay tuned, I think Xander has something big up his sleeve with another character in this class *wink wink*.
On Tuesday the 30th of January I was the victim of an evil brick. I tripped walking to my car after class just before 7:30pm walking to my car. It hurt me. I Want to bring awareness to the issue of good bricks turning to a life of crime and violence. I chose to make a billboard Public Service Announcement to help spread the word.
Bricks are everywhere! As humans expand their habitat, we also expand the habitat of bricks. With age comes the increased risk of bricks becoming evil. Young bricks have an increased risk when installed incorrectly. We as humans can do better and be better.
I made this using Adobe illustrator, Adobe Firefly, Microsoft paint program (whatever comes with windows) and picture I found on the internet of Arrington Hall.
The brick path image needs to be cut down, but I have reached my limit on the use of my right hand. When I fell, I caught most of my weight on my right hand and left knee. I scraped my head on the bricks when I fell. I fell on the path in front of Arrington Hall on the path to the parking lot. I learned you can yell expletives, and no one will care on campus. I also learn I do not scream as I fall just yell in anger. My heavy backpack only served to destabilize me and smash my head to the ground. I luckily did not get a concussion. I think I fell because I was getting sick and did not get sick because of my fall. I am on antibiotics and under doctor’s orders to rest. I could not type at all Wednesday or Thursday due to the swelling in my hands.
This is my head close to 24 hours after the accident(above).
One the assignments that we got to do this week was to create a sound effect story. This means that we had to create a short (less than 90 seconds) sound clip that tells a story. I have my sound effect story uploaded to my SoundCloud and you can find it below. At times, I noticed that sometimes the sounds were a little difficult to make out. That is one thing that really interested me, because while telling a story is so easy with words, it becomes a lot more difficult when the only thing you can use is sounds because those sounds need to be so precise in order to try and convey the message you are trying to explain. The basic idea of my sound effect story was about a man who was driving down a slick, icy road and his car had spun out and he had crashed into a ditch. The clip starts off with wind howling to try and portray the idea that the person was moving fast and then a car crash sound comes in. Once that happens, the man walks on snow, which can be heard through the crunching snow sound clip, and then finds a cabin. He opens the door, which can once again be heard and then he starts a fire with the crackling in the background. He then begins to make himself a cup of tea which you can hear him pour it and then proceeds to take a shower because he is all dirty and cold from the walk to the cabin, which can also be heard at the end of the sound clip. That is as far as my story goes for right now and I liked the ending because it leaves a mysterious atmosphere around because you do not really know what happened to the man or if he got help. I enjoyed doing this assignment and it was cool to see how the different sounds could come together to make one final product that told a story.
