Author Archives: Rebecca’s Radiant Realm

Radio Show Ideas

I had a tough time coming up with ideas for a radio show. I feel like I dont know my character well enough yet and I wasn’t sure how to include her into the project but after reading some other ideas I have a couple of fun thoughts

I really like the idea of a “true crime” podcast but with the “clue” tropes and comedy. Thank you Liv it up with Liv for suggesting this!

I also enjoy this podcast called Scared to Death and its two people just telling each other scary stories they see on reddit and other peoples paranormal experiences and try to scare each other. This, I think, would be really cool to do as well.

I think that having a thriller aspect to the radio show will be interesting and I think that the true crime or the scary stories would allow for more exploration in the tech noir theme.

Lunch with Evelyn

This assignment is the All the Relaxation assignment. Truth be told I had an idea for what I wanted to create with my character. I just needed to find an assignment that fit what I wanted to create!

For this much needed relaxing break from work you join Evelyn for lunch. So you sit in a park with a beautiful view and start to take our your lunch to enjoy. Its been a busy day at the office and you both just need some quiet time. Evelyn brings out her lunch and Stephen Kings You Like it Darker book as you both enjoy the sounds of the park and sit in peace. Even if it is only for an hour.

I once again used Audacity and Freesound for this assignment. I knew that I wanted to incorporate my character by doing a day in the life of the sounds around her. So I created just a simple lunch with her. I started with park sounds. I wanted to convey the steps of eating lunch at work. Taking your sandwich out of its ziploc bag, so thats exactly what I did. I found a ziploc bag opening and a soft crunch of food being eaten. I then wanted Lynn to be reading a book since that is something she enjoys doing when she needs a peace of mind so I had a sound of a bag being opened and closed for her to get her book and then flipping through pages to find where she left off. She finds her page with a final flip and starts to read. I then repeat the ziploc bag, the soft crunch, and another page flip and the rest of the park sounds.

I personally feel like these park sounds and the comfort of reading in the company of others is very relaxing. Especially the page turning!

Relax on the Beach

This is the Create a Place assignment. This is a Day on the Beach

In this place you are sitting on the beach listening to the seagulls and waves. There is a slight breeze in the air but you don’t mind. The air smells like salt. The sand is warm on your feet as you stand on the beach looking at the horizon. Eventually you take a calm breath and put on your earbuds and listen to you favorite orchestral track until you fall asleep.

I created this using Audacity and freesound.org. I started with the underlying sound of the beach and added the seagulls next. I wanted to take this assignment one level up rather than just describing a place so I added a relaxed inhale and exhale and found a beautiful orchestral sound to add the end of the story. I had a lot of fun making this and I feel relaxed after hearing it for a while. Im also a lot for comfortable with Audacity.

Another day at the office…

For the Sound Effect Short story I had a hard time picking out what story i wanted to tell. So I browsed around on Freesound to see if inspiration struck. And it in fact did! I chose to do a story about two men in an office job, one of them is asleep and is snoring very loud, and the other is extremely annoyed by this (He does this everyday!)

I started with background effects of office noises from BBC Sound Effects, then I looked for a man sighing on Freesound(this was the first part of my inspiration the rest came later, and the rest of my sounds are from Freesound). Next I found another man snoring and I copied and pasted this sound effect three times in the full story. The next step of annoyance is the attempt to wake the person up but discreetly, so I used a man clearing his throat. Once again the man snores so the next step is to get up and wake him up! To do this I used a metal bed frame creak, to implicate the man getting out of his office chair, some footsteps walking over to the man snoring and a blaring alarm clock! Finally the man wakes up with a gasp and the other man laughs and walks away, mission accomplished.

My first Radio Bumper

Creating my first radio bumper was daunting at the beginning. Im still not sure how to use audacity and to completely honest I forgot that this was a tool I could use for this assignment. So I used iMovie and Voice Memo to create my radio bumper.

I knew I wanted to add a voice over of introducing the radio show and having a little bop with it. So I created the voice over in the voice memos and it only took two tries! Then I went to iMovie and created the background music. I started out with the “bright” theme music and I thought it would be cool to have a bit of a tease into the not-quite-right feeling you have with the tech noir theme of the course. So I split the theme music and cut it in random places added some points of silence like the sound is cutting out. I really wanted the music to go out with a distorted shut-down type of effect to the music but I wasn’t able to find the right tools for that so I went with a record scratch and a telephone disconnect sound effect.

Here is the final product!

Rebecca’s Radiant Realm 2025-02-04 18:59:44

Listening to the audio drama Moon Graffiti was something I really enjoyed. Im not sure how I have gone this far without realizing how much I love audio dramas and podcast productions.

In audio storytelling the connection of visual immersion is almost non-existent. I say almost because the use of background music, sounds of people doing things, and the voice acting its almost like I can see what is happening and I can see in my mind in the most clear picture of the scene that is being told.

Although design is purely visual I feel there is an aspect of balance similar to design that goes into audio storytelling. You don’t want the noise in the background to be overwhelming (unless that is the goal) and you want the right balance of emotion to sounds to make an effective mood for the story. In Moon Graffiti there is a scene at 12:03 where one of the men start to die and fall unconscious. The noises in the background got louder and more disoriented until the the other guy snapped him out of the (panic?) episode. This is something that not only do I hear a lot but it is used in movies and TV shows but the fact that I cannot see what is happening does not change how I feel when this situation occurs, and this is because of the sound design!

There are some noises in the backgrounds that you do consciously notice but still creative a scene that you still are picturing the situation and its almost like you are living with the characters. For example, in Season 1 Episode 2 of Limetown the reporter is walking with the person she is interviewing and there is sounds in the background of footsteps walking through grass. Though its a little detail, it added so much to the story and the experience I had listening to it.

Sound design in audio storytelling is so important and something so minuscule that listeners don’t realize its there. But if it wasn’t there, you’d miss it.

Limetown – Who allowed me to listen to this?

Tuning in the ds106 radio for the first time, I was lost at first. I wasn’t sure what I was listening to, nor the type of conversion we were supposed to have on discord. So I brought out a coloring book and listened while coloring.

Mid first episode of Limetown things became interesting. I noticed a lot of comments that the professor was making was on the sound design of the show so I started to listen for those. I thought that the actors voices sounded very clear so I thought it was an AI generated show but after doing a quick google I learned that this podcast is a production of Two-Up which is the same people who created the podcast musical 36 Questions starring Jonathan Groff and Jessie Shelton, and this news made me even more excited that Limetown is a production with actors and a fully thought out creative team and storyline.

I listened to this podcast with a good friend who is not in this class and we were having the time of our lives listening to this. My friend doesn’t necessarily like horror and thriller genre things and I really only read them but this podcast was so tense that by the end of the second episode we were screaming and tensing our bodys. The production was so well done from the acting to the sound effects and background music. So much of the sound design went into the ambiance of the podcast and set the scene in so many ways. The sound also allowed for the listeners to fully picture what is happening and it was like watching a movie without a screen.

Something else that I pointed out was how well done the script is. The premiss is that we are listening to a reporter, so she is recording things while they happen to her, recounting every detials she encounters which makes sense in the world of the podcast as well as benefiting the listener in picturing the scene. This is something that is prevalent in 36 Questions as well and its something I really like about Two-Up productions.

Overall, this experience had taught me a lot more about storytelling and how powerful audio storytelling is. I have a new appreciation for foley artists in addition to my already existing admiration.