Category Archives: Assignment Bank

We will be right back

For my first audio assignment I did the Radio Show Intermission.

I see our radio show being more of a podcast situation. So I made my intermission similar to what I thought the intermission for Limetown Season 2 was like. Except for it going to commercial I make the intermission longer than just a few sounds.

I started with a sound of water dripping in a cave from Free Sound and duplicated the second drip as that was the one I liked better. I then went to a text to speech converter and had 5 different recordings of different voices saying each word of “Days of Crime and Roses will be back” and cut that together in Audacity. I then found a piano that sounded melancholy on Adobe Stock called “Who Takes Care of You” and once I heard more of the song and added it to Audacity I realized that I wanted to time the water dropplets to the beat of the music! So I did that and Im happy with how it came out.

Post This Flyer

For my design project for the radio show I decided I wanted to do a collage type of poster.

After brainstorming with my groupmates we decided with this newspaper, scrapbooking look. And I thought this was a great opportunity to use pinterest collaging. I started with a newspaper and added flowers to it on pinterest. I then moved into procreate and found sketches of a broken clock and a dagger. I edited them and added them into the collage. I then added the text of our radio show name and made sure it was legible against the text of the newspaper.

Work in Progress

The first week of working on the radio show has been successful. The audio assignments were my favorite unit so I’ve been having fun returning to it. I started the week on Monday with a zoom call with the rest of my group so we could delegate tasks and brainstorm ideas. Our idea for the show is a lifestyle podcast where people can call in and ask for advice. I suggested adding a comedic cyberpunk twist to the show to make it relate more to our course.

I was assigned to make an advertisement so I decided to make an ad for a product called SupremeSkillShare which is supposed to be a twist on the learning platform SkillShare. The product allows anyone to gain a skill by taking a vitamin. I was inspired by ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt Vonnegut which tells a story about a government who enforces equality by handicapping people with special abilities. This assignment was easy except for a self-inflicted challenge that I kept running into, you can read more about it in my blog post.

The next assignment I did was the Podcast Intro. At first, I struggled to figure out where to start on this assignment so to inspire myself, I looked at other podcast’s intros. The intro starts with someone calling into our show and then an instrumental of ‘Feminomenon’ by Chappell Roan, I also included lines from TechNoir female characters. All these elements are meant to reflect vibes of our show; the phone call is because people call into our show and ‘Feminomemon’ coupled with TechNoir female characters because our show is run by strong female characters. This assignment was more of a struggle because the ending I wanted sounded cut off as opposed to a natural ending. You can read more about my process here.

The last assignment I did was the design project, this was the easiest of the three. I combined elements of femininity and cyberpunk to curate a good bumper sticker that fit our show. Another thing I was thinking about when I was designing the sticker was “what do other bumper stickers look like?” This sticker is silly and is shows the personality of the driver, so I had to also picture what our listeners’ personalities would be. I wanted to make a bumper sticker because it acts as merch for fans and as an advertisement for the podcast. You can read more about the sticker in my blog post.

I really enjoyed working on these assignments. I loved crafting an image for the show and using it to inspire different assignments. The only thing I’m struggling with is how time consuming these assignments are. I can’t tell if I’m being a perfectionist or if these assignments just take a long time. Again, I’m having fun with the tasks so I don’t mind spending time on them but I don’t know if it’s sustainable. I’m looking forward to the show coming together so I can hear everyone’s work put together.

SupremeSkillShare

I was assigned to make a commercial for the group project. When I was deciding what to make, I knew I wanted to take a product that I hear a lot on podcasts and put a technoir twist on it. Other products I thought of were HelloFresh and Tinder. Ultimately I landed on SkillShare because I struggled to incorporate tech into the other options. To make the advertisement, a lot of planning went into the fictional product. I needed to determine the name, the function, and a tagline to make a script for the ad. Once I had finished writing the adread, I recorded the audio using my phone and edited it on Adobe Audition. I also uploaded some music to play in the beginning and end of the ad. One challenge I kept running into was I kept forgetting the name of our podcast. Our group met for Zoom to come up with ideas, and on the Zoom we established the name but I had forgotten it the next day. No problem! I checked our meeting notes and saw it was Fearless Femmes. However, the way it was spelled made me think it was pronounced “Fem-Mees.” I played it for feedback and was told it’s just “Fems.” Again, No problem! I had to go to class so I didn’t get to rerecord it until later, but by the time I did it again, I had mistaken our name for Fatal Femmes instead of Fearless Femmes, so I had to re-rerecord it. Other than that, it was an easy assignment and I like how it came out. The idea of a product that allows you to master any skill by taking a vitamin reminds me of ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt Vonnegut; a story about a government that enforces equality by giving handicaps to those with superior abilities. I loved Harrison Bergeron when I was in middle school so of course it inspired me for this project.

Don’t Drive Yourself Insane

For my design project, I wanted to make a bumper sticker because I appreciate its versatility. The sticker can function as merchandise for fans, they can put it on their car to show that they are a Femme and find like minded people, even if it’s just from a car honk. Another function of the sticker is that it can be used as advertising; if anyone wants to learn more about fearless femmes, they can follow the link on the sticker to learn more and a fan could be gained from this interaction. As a marketing major, I wanted to come up with a creative idea that would help promote the show without sacrificing the consumers wants. To make the sticker, I combined two templates from Canva. I liked the pink femininity of the right side, but the core of our show is TechNoir and I don’t want that to be lost in the girliness. I added the left side to contrast the pink which makes it feel just a touch more punk. To get the steering wheel to be pink and black, I used two pictures of the same steering wheel, one I kept black and the other I turned pink by turning the temperature, tint, saturation, and vibrance to one hundred. Additionally, I lowered and heightened other parts of the picture like brightness and shadows to get rid of any remaining black. Overall, I’m happy with how the sticker turned out, it looks like something I could see on my car and someone else’s. I also think it’s a great way to raise money by selling the sticker to dedicated listeners and bringing in new ones.

Fatal Fems Intro

I decided to make the intro for our podcast because I was inspired by the other powerful women in tech noir. I think TechNoir’s genre was most popular in the 1980s-1990s therefore I feel that although the women characters are strong, they are overlooked. To make the intro, I used free sounds from Freesounds and BBC’s audio library. I also used Feminomenon by Chappell Roan and lines from iconic female TechNoir characters such as Jessica Rabbit, from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, Rachael from Blade Runner, and Quorra from Tron: Legacy. I wanted to include sound effects where it sounded like a phone was being dialed, rung, and picked up, because we are a lifestyle podcast where listeners can call in and ask for advice. I also included the line from Feminomenon where Chappell says, “It’s a Fem” because our podcast is called Fatal Fems. Making the intro was relatively easy but it ended up taking me a long time to finish because it didn’t sound “right” to me. I used Adobe Audition to compile the sounds and I mixed and matched to figure out what sounds best where. The ending didn’t sound right to me at first, because it comes at a part in the song where the music is building up, so it sounded weird as an ending. I think what ended up helping the most for me, was that I tweaked the timing to slow it down. I’m not sure on why that ended up fixing it, but I did. Other things I did was deleting instrumentals and fading in/out of the music to transition clips.

Not Cracking Any Jokes

Crack an egg Make it rain

I was excited to start this assignment because I think studying propaganda is very interesting. I struggled to come up with an theme at first, I was overwhelmed with ideas, it felt like there were too many options. I eventually settled on the price of eggs, because it’s a point of frustration for me and a lot of Americans. On February 13th, apnews.com published an article “US egg prices hit a record high of $4.95 and are likely to keep climbing” These are crazy prices when eggs are a necessity for most people, and it seems like some politicians aren’t willing to do anything about it.

To make this poster, I used Canva. A big thing I wanted to incorporate into this piece were elements such as colors, shapes, and general themes you would normally see in American propaganda. A lot of American propaganda that I saw when I was looking for examples was very patriotic, but I think this is a low point for America’s economy, so I wanted to use the patriotism in an ironic way. The pan and dollars falling were already on Canva so I added them to the poster. To get the egg, I googled an image of an egg being cracked, uploaded it to Canva and erased all the parts so only the egg shell was left. I then put all the pieces together and I think it came out nicely. For the text, I wanted to have something short and catchy to act as a slogan of sorts.

I’m really happy with how this poster came out, I think the ironic patriotism perfectly compliments the distaste many Americans have for the high egg prices. To make you giggle, here is the tweet that inspired me to make my poster about egg prices.

Back in my day there was so much toilet paper and eggs, that we would throw them at the houses of our enemies

What’s Black and White and Read All Over?

For the Newspaper assignment I chose to do the TechNoir shooting scene, and I included some other easter eggs for Terminator fans.

For this project I chose to use the Bar shooting scene because it had a more diverse group of people to talk about, so I thought it would give me more interesting perspectives. When I started the assignment, I thought I wouldn’t have much to write about but as I was doing it, I had to keep resizing the newspaper because I was running out of space. There was so much more to talk about than I expected, I wanted to include a brief overview of the event, an eye witness report, a statement from the owner of the club, commentary, and more. There was simply not enough room. I used a Newspaper template on Canva to evenly space everything out, I also googled the pictures that I used for each story. The articles on the side are supposed to be Easter Eggs to the movie. For example, I put up a missing poster for Sarah Connor and I made the phone number as close to T-800 as I could so the joke is that he submitted the missing persons report. There’s more easter eggs in this newspaper, Terminator related and not, but I don’t want to give them all away. Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. It was a good way to get creative and it didn’t take too long to complete.