Author Archives: Rylie’s Riveting Region

Calling Myself a Clip Champ This Week

This week was all about the video essay, which I felt went rather smoothly! I utilized OBS, ClipChamp, and Audacity to create my final product, which was uploaded to YouTube and embedded in my blog.

Besides that, I worked on only two daily creates. I really liked a lot of the prompts this week, but had a hard time engaging with them. I find myself enjoying TDCs that involve actually making something like an image or an audio file, but several of the TDCs this week seemed to involve just writing. Perhaps my issue is that I’m “not being creative enough” and just taking the prompts at face value, but who can say.

Honestly, I think the most difficult part of this week was the snow days. I wasn’t motivated to work on this class when I “wasn’t in school,” even though that’s pretty much the whole point of taking an online class. I think I ended up stressing myself out about the video essay timeline and having enough time to work on it, which I shouldn’t have been stressed about. The only other time I’ve made a video essay it took me at least a week and a half and involved much more extensive editing, and that likely contributed to this stress.

Holding a “Black Mirror” to the World

I decided to watch the episode of Black Mirror that was linked on our weekly ds106 page for the video essay assignment, and I enjoyed both the episode and the process! I thought the premise of the episode was really interesting, particularly the integration of social media within the plot.

To make the video essay, I first wrote my script and decided which scenes I wanted to use. I then utlized OBS to record my screen while playing Netflix in order to capture the episode. I did record the episode audio, too, but didn’t end up using it. I recorded myself in Audacity, and brought everything together using ClipChamp. I cut up the clips I had recorded earlier and pieced them together. I added some background music from FreeSounds and lowered the volume of it so that it would play under the audio of me speaking. I discovered that ClipChamp has an auto-caption feature, so I used that to quickly add closed-captions to my video. The captions required minimal editing, so I exported and saved the video.

I had some trouble getting the video onto my blog, initially. The file was too large to upload directly to WordPress, so I instead published the video to YouTube with an unlisted link and included that instead.

Overall, I think making a video essay was enjoyable but not something that I would do on my own time. I watch a lot of video essays already, and I think I have a standard for them that I don’t feel like I necessarily met. While I’m sure I could get there eventually, it doesn’t feel like a skill I’m presently going to work on.

TDC 2/9 – 2/14

February 9, 2025 – Musical Discoveries

February 13, 2025 – Mystery Bananas

“Who else loves bananas? Monkeys. I think it’s only reasonable to assume that there is a rogue band of primates living in the shrubbery of Beeston that one heroic citizen is trying to catch! Perhaps the monkeys are just smart enough to know that if they go for the bananas, they’ll certainly be sent back to whatever zoo they escaped from.”

Check 1, 2… Check 1, 2…

If last week was “photos, photos, photos,” this week was “audio, audio, audio.” And that’s not me complaining! I’ve been using Audacity since middle school and the software really hasn’t changed much, so jumping right in with the audio story assignment stretched a creative muscle that had atrophied. I expressed some frustration with getting the ideas in my head into the search bar at Freesound, but it just took time.

I said it multiple times in the blog posts for both assignments, but I was so happy this week included some podcasts. I am a self-identified podcast girlie, so this was right up my alley. I wish I had something more articulate or academic to say, but Moon Graffiti was just really interesting and well put together. I had to do a make-up listening of ds106 radio, so I listened to the first two episodes of Limetown on my own time (and will be listening to the rest of the series at some point soon!). Again, nothing too intelligent to be said besides “podcast good.” I’m not sure if my brain just wasn’t on when it came to writing those review/reflections or if I’m just unfamiliar with engaging with podcasts in that way. It could be both!

While I don’t think my bumper would ever be picked up by iHeart Radio, I think it will work perfectly on ds106’s station! I had initially considered using ds106 itself as the backing track, but I think the static-y background I developed ultimately works better.

Finally, I couldn’t forget my dearest friend Bethany! I worked with her this week to develop a playlist of some of her favorite songs, so we can all get to know her better that way.

“This Feels like a Movie”

I had a grand ole time getting this playlist together. I think it not only fits with who I envision my course character, Bethany, to be, but it also brings out some interesting parts of her character.

  1. Marlene on the Wall: This song reminds of her of her deceased partner, and the bond that she’ll have with him no matter what actually happened.
  2. You Send Me: Their song- it just feels so warm.
  3. Christine: She sometimes feels like Christine, disintegrating, someone with multiple faces.
  4. A Means to an End: Besides just liking Joy Devision, Bethany likes the particular brand of melancholy that this song is.
  5. I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You: In her line of work, it stands to be a good reminder that she doesn’t want to be like those around her. This song is an after-work palate cleanser.
  6. Good News: One of the more modern songs on her playlist, it serves to knock her out of her funks and remind her that there is a world outside of everything in her head.
  7. Over and Over: She likes to turn up this song while she’s cleaning. She just enjoys singing along and pretending she’s on stage.
  8. Don’t Renegade on Our Love: The title is perhaps too indicative- she loves this song but hates that it makes her feel like she betrayed everyone around her.
  9. Fallingwater: This song is either a “cry alone at night” song or a “scream in the car on the way to work” song.
  10. Sabotage: Her guilty pleasure is Beastie Boys!

Imagine I’m There Live

I was unfortunately in rehearsals every evening this week, so I was unable to join in to the live airing of Limetown on ds106 Radio. I heard from my roommate what was played on Monday night, and I took the time to listen to the first two episodes on my own time- I really enjoyed it! I listen to a lot of podcasts, both fiction and non-fiction, so this was a fun middle-ground for me. While I know this was the intention, I was so surprised by how much Limetown felt like an investigative journalism podcast. The narrator has the perfect voice for it, and it makes it even more offputting for me.

I wish I was able to participate in the Discord discussion as this episode was airing on the radio, as I think this is an experience that is meant to be shared. I was certainly creeped out, and I would have loved to talk/freak out about the guy banging his head on the doorway with others!

They Did WHAT on the Moon?

I thought that Moon Graffiti was really interesting, and again, I love audio dramas! What I thought was really neat about this episode was the combonation of historical events like Nixon’s speech paired with the hypothetical conversations between Armstrong and Aldrin. I think this grounded the episode and created a really eerie sense of place. It reminded me of the idea of the Uncanny Valley, like maybe I was actually listening to a non-fiction podcast that was recounting the tragic moon landing.

Something that I appreciated was not only the sound design within the dialogue, like the sound of mechanized breathing and the static of a 1960s TV, but the background ambiance. I had to pause the episode at one point, and I was shocked by how quiet everything around me actually was. I wasn’t processing the whiny, almost siren-like noise that was occuring beneath the whole episode. I’d be curious to listen to more of The Truth Podcast’s episodes to see if this was a common theme or if this was something that was meant to be emitted by the moon.

I’m Someone, and You’re Listening to Something…

Now presenting, my ds106 radio bumper! I used an AI text-to-speech generator to get the “you’re listening to ds106 radio” audio clip, and then used the tools within audacity to cut that up and make it more interesting. I had some difficulties finding an online program that would let me download the audio clip for free. I’m sure there were ways around this (free trials, screen recording), but since I didn’t need that much precision from the TTS tool, I opted to just keep looking for one that would let me download it with no hassle. Following that, I sourced a variety of weird, eerie music and sounds from Freesound and continued to chop these up and distort them. I was a big fan of the “distort” tool and changing the pitch.

Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out! I used to listen to the radio all the time as a kid (and still do now), so I tried to emulate what I heard there. However, I think ds106 is a little bit more retro/techno/weird than Elliot in the Morning, which led to the decisions to make the bumper a little unsettling.

If a Man is Stabbed Alone in the Woods, Does He Make a Sound?

I utilized Audacity and FreeSound in order to construct my project, and opted to tackle it bit by bit. I started with my ambiance/background music, and then just added on the story. It goes as follows: a man approaches an area in the woods, builds and lights a fire, and begins to look through his backpack. As he does this, branches crack behind him as someone else reaches him. The stranger stabs the man, he falls, and he is stabbed again. The stranger retreats back into the woods.

The most challenging part of this project was just trying to find the right sounds effects for what I wanted to convey, as I often had an idea of what I wanted it to sound like but had to dig for the “perfect” sound. Overall, I enjoyed this, and the learning curve wasn’t too severe!

ds106 as Music

For one of the audio assignments this week, I created a song in Chrome Music Labs. I played around with a couple of diffrent ideas, but ended up creating a song that was mapped as the text “ds106.” I’m not sure it sounds the best- all the straight lines make it kind of garbled and agressive, but I had a lot of fun with the program! It is quite user friendly and intuitive to use.