Author Archives: Rylie’s Riveting Region

Warning: Tech Noir!

I spent my time this week really engaging with the themes of tech noir, as I analyzed the scenes from The Terminator. I decided to create a newspaper, which I made via Canva. I included both events, even though I had more to write about in regards to the shootout scene.

Following that, I decided to keep with the idea of tech taking over/the AI revolution when I approached the PSA assignment. I contined to experiment with Audacity and made an emergency radio announcement. I had a ton of fun with the audio assignments a couple weeks ago, and found myself wanting to work on stuff like that again!

And as always, Daily Creates! Not much to say about these this week.

Coming back to my goals, I took what I wrote last week to heart and got my work done early! I was quite proud of myself, and I’m glad I was able to actually implement my changes.

TDC 2/25 – 2/28

February 25, 2025 – Opposite POV

February 26, 2025 – A Story

There once was a frog, who lived at a pond. He was picked up one sunny day by a young lady in a beautiful outfit. The frog could not believe his eyes! The girl kissed the frog gently on the lips, looked at him sadly, and put him back down. The frog went back to his life at the pond, now knowing what love could feel like.

February 28, 2025 – Clouds

Wouldn’t Want to Hear This on the Radio!

For the PSA assignment, I decided to create an audio PSA in the style of the United States’ emergency broadcasts. I found an audio of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) that I liked on YouTube, and used a YouTube-to-mp3 tool to convert it into something I could manipulate. I had some difficulty at first finding a voice-to-text tool that I thought sounded human enough but also mechanical enough to mimic the actual EAS voice, but I settled on a site that uses Microsoft’s talk-to-text tools and allows you to download them from there. I used the “Tony” voice at 1 speed and -15 pitch. My script used similar language to an EAS broadcast, but I discussed an AI takeover rather than a weather event. I then found some soft radio hum on FreeSound, similar to what can be heard in the background of the EAS audio. I compiled everything in Audacity, and included some bumps in the radio hum audio to add to the eerie, unsafe feeling that I wanted this PSA to envoke.

Extra, Extra!

For this assignment, I decided to primarily focus on the shootout scene from The Terminator, while also including some references to the nightclub fight. I used a newspaper template on Canva in order to format everything, and then typed directly into the document. I changed several of the fonts to make it more newspaper-esque, as it seemed like the template was initially meant to be used as an announcement and not a legitimate newspaper. I included photos of TechNoir and the Terminator, as well. The picture of the Terminator took some time to find, as I wanted a photo that looked like it could have been sourced from a security camera or something similar. I included the actual LAPD phone number, as well as some other small details that I researched. I enjoyed making this, especially having to write as though I was a reporter! I think the fake quotes I included were a lot of fun, too.

In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…. Action!

After re-establishing my goals for this class, I almost immediately disregarded some of them by leaving a majority of my work until the end of the week. Oh well! That’s why they’re goals and not habits.

I spent most of this week in Microsoft ClipChamp. I know there are more powerful tools out there, and I would love to become familiar with Adobe Premire, but I wasn’t doing anything intense enough to warrant another free trial of Adobe. ClipChamp served me well, though! I particularly enjoyed continuing to build out my course character through thinking about her high school experience. I also toasted her new house, which was another assignment I did several weeks ago. I got to talk about my favorite thing in the world- plants! Thank you, Assignment Bank.

The Daily Creates for this week sort of slipped my mind, which is why the class has been subjected to my Scottish accent.

Bethany in School

I opted to further engage with my course character by unearthing a video that she made during high school. Based on the information in my introduction post, Bethany would have been in school around 2012.

After deciding the perfect early-2010s track to play, I downloaded it using a YouTube to mp3 converter. I used the same converter to download a couple of videos of 2012 high schoolers, which I included in the final video. All of the images came from Pinterest, which I sourced primarily from a search asking for “2012 high school.” Bethany was a pretty mainstream, normal girl, so all of these pictures and videos may seem average but are perfectly her!

Everything was compiled using Microsoft ClipChamp

To Bethany!

For this assignment, I decided to portray one of Bethany’s friends giving her a toast at her housewarming party. I fell curse to an echo-ey room, but it makes it feel like it really is an empty room! The assignment didn’t go into depth about how long the toast should be, so mine ended up being quite short. I recorded everything in ClipChamp and trimmed the beginning and end. I played around with adding crowd noises, but I felt like I couldn’t get it to properly layer with the audio from my video, so I left those out.

Become a Pinterest Plant Parent

For this video assignment, I decided to talk about the thing I can’t stop talking about: plants! All of the information included in this video is from my own experience becoming a plant parent this year. I included some pictures of my plants as a character witness.

To create this video, I used Microsoft ClipChamp and recorded everything directly in the software. Ideally, I would have been in a room that is not quite so echo-ey, but I didn’t have the ability to do that this week!

Have I Been Doing What I Set Out to Do?

I think the biggest thing that I neglected to mention when writing about my goals at the beginning of the semester was time management and being able to parse out work throughout the week. I think this caught up to me quite quickly, but it’s been tough for me to get in to a flow and find a good work schedule. Looking to the rest of the semester, I hope to set aside dedicated “ds106 time” where I’ll actually work through the week instead of doing everything on Thursday and Friday. I think some of this shows in my Weekly Summaries, which I alway feel end up rushed and not the best representation of my work.

Going along with this, I’m also going to work to better organize the work for the week, as I feel like I have a tendency to let some things slip between the cracks. For the last few weeks I’ve gone through and pre-made all the posts for each assignment and properly tagged them before actually starting on the work, which has been helpful.

Looking at my actual goals, I do think that I’ve learned how to tell stories in different ways. I’ve really never used photography or audio before, and we’ve worked with both of those. The tech noir theme has been difficult on occasion, as I feel like its hard to engage with without being stereotypical or basic. However, I’ve enjoyed the character building and creative writing involved and this again fits with my previous goal of wanting to engage with new storytelling methods.

So to summarize:

  1. Set specific work times and WORK.
  2. Organize the week and engage with material in different ways.
  3. Continue to be creative and try new things!