Category Archives: Assignment Bank

She’s a Full On Monet! – That’s Not It

The prompt for this assignment was to mix two movie scenes together, to change the meaning of the conversation. The original Clueless scene had Tai and Cher talking about Amber dancing with Tai’s crush. To make Tai feel better, Cher starts trashing Amber’s appearance. To change the scene, I made the subject of the conversation Regina George. While the meaning of the original conversation didn’t change, it was fun to put Regina George and Cher Horowitz, two iconic characters, together. I picked this assignment because I thought it was cool that just a little bit of editing can transform a whole scene.

Making the video involved downloading the scene of Cher and Tai at the party as well as the scene of Aaron and Regina at their Halloween party. I ran into a slight bit of trouble when downloading the scenes because the only version of the Clueless scene that didn’t have a huge watermark was without background music. I remedied this by downloading a song from the YouTube audio library and mixing it into the video and adjusting the volume. After that, the video was very easy to make. All I had to do was cut out the scenes with Amber and use the Mean Girls scene. Lastly I exported the video and uploaded it to YouTube. This was definetly one of the easier assignments, the only thing I really struggled with was coming up with an idea. I couldn’t find any scenes where there was an opportunity to change the context of the conversation. Once I thought of this idea I was very excited and got to work. Overall, I’m proud of this edit, I hope you guys like it.

We are not far…

I wanted to start this streak of assignments with a design assignment because as of right now the creative design part of my brain is a bit easier to connect to and it is something I have the right tools for at the moment. The destination poser caught my eye and I thought it would be a great way to incorporate our course’s theme to.

This is the Destination Poster. This poster is about how our society is changing to revolve around our technology, specifically the technology that we hold in our hands. The way that people use their phones in their daily life and how it consumes them is something that I see everyday and to a certain point indulge in. While I try to stay present in life it is tough with the society we live where everything is so digital and it hard to navigate through life without technology. Watching the development of technology, how we use it, and its rapid development I don’t see how “technology taking over the world” isn’t that far away. If we aren’t already there that is.

I started the process of creating this poster by simply googling “tech noir city” and looking at the images that come up and gaining ideas through that. I noticed a lot of bright colors, and lots and lots of robots. According to wikipedia Tech Noir represents “technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality” and seeing the collection of robots reminded me about the phones we carry in our pockets and how the overuse of them can make humans robots, which threatens our society from being the community it once was to being a technology driven world.

The editing program I used was Procreate for Apple. I googled images of people in a city looking at their phones and imported that onto my canvas. I then google images of robots in a city and imported that onto my canvas but mirrored. I made use of the empty space in the first image (the top image) and imported my text. I didn’t want to specify a place because at this point its basically the whole world so I opted to just make a commentary on where we are now, technology wise, compared to the dystopia we see in the movies that are shown to be bad.

Love is Embarrassing – Compilation Video

*****Spoiler alerts for The Good Place!*****

Edits are very popular these days, and I LOVE a good edit. I have seen some really amazing ones for Barbie, WandaVision, and Community. I really wanted to take a crack at it, since I’ve had some experience using Adobe Premiere Pro, which meant I wouldn’t be starting from square one. For this edit, I took one of my favorite shows The Good Place and put it with one of my favorite songs “Love is Embarrasing” by Olivia Rodrigo.

Eleanor Shellstrop has a significant arc over the course of The Good Place’s run. She starts as this loner who is very selfish, self asorbed character and ends the show surrounded by her chosen family whom she loves and would do anything for. These characteristics have been inside Eleanor all along but the people who were around her put down those traits, so she has to learn how to be okay with taking care of others and being a good person. This especially comes through when she stars to catch feelings for Chidi. At first Eleanor thinks he’s a nerd and doesn’t want anything to do with him. Eventually, however, she realizes she has feelings for Chidi even though she doesn’t want to. This song is the perfect choice to capture how Eleanor feels about Chidi because she is almost repulsed by how she feels towards Chidi, given that she has never felt like that towards a person before. She finds love to be embarrasing.

This video was relatively easy to make. First, I looked for and downloaded an Eleanor and Chidi scene pack which compiles clips of the two. Then I added the scenes into Adobe Premiere Pro and sorted through which clips I wanted to use. Once I had my clips picked out, I added Olivia Rodrigo’s Love is Embarrassing. After that I rearranged the clips, trimmed them to keep each clip short. I also tried to sync the clip transitions to the beat of the song. I feel like this makes edits more satisfying to watch. Finally, the last thing I did was export the video and uploaded it to YouTube.

Here is the final project!

The Better Radio Bumper

This is now my I think third radio bumper I have made so it was pretty easy to make using clip champ and natural readers.

This week I redid the bumper to use for the radio show because the bumper(connect with page to week 9 bumper) I had already created was not my best work. I throw that one out and I used this one.

I started this bumper with making some lines to use in natural reader:

“You are now listening to DS 106 Radio. Whether you are on the go or just sitting down, hopefully you are enjoying the talks and even the commercials, Some of the commercials in this radio are a great way to help business grow Including Aggressive Technologies, the main company right now to expand their Artificial Intelligence usage. We all know how AI is becoming a huge thing in the world today, which is what The Digital Agencies Podcast will mention. Now back to the main show.”

(Emma online natural) 

After I recorded the lines then I headed over to FreeSound and I found this incredible sound:

Of course, I head over to Clip Champ to put them all together. Which gave me this amazing audio and I believe it turned out great! However, I am unsure what exactly happened, but the music was supposed to play through the entire bumper but that was not the case. I had sent it to my group to use for the radio show and no one said anything about it missing music…maybe they just thought it was supposed to be like that.

When I was listening to the radio show and my bumper came on I knew that I had messed it up somehow. I asked my group if I should fix it and they said no it was okay. Deep down though, I wanted to fix it so badly. I did not want the person who put together all the sounds to redo the radio show because I sent them a bad audio, so I did not bother asking them again.

All in all, I really enjoyed making this and if I had not messed up, this would have been my best one yet…in my opinion!

Flying Cars Commercial

The first thing I started with was a script I wanted my commercial to say. I knew that I wanted to add Artificial Intelligence along with Aggressive Technologies. Down below is the script I used for this commercial:

NOW!  Introducing an affordable flying car! Josh is giving away flying cars to the first 3 people to call 1-800-fly-cars. With their new Artificial Intelligence navigation and voices to make you never feel like you are the only passenger in the car.  With only having to pay 200 a month to Aggressive technologies, this car is the breakthrough of public transportation for the sky!

*talks fast*: 200 a month for 5 years, no warranty, tires for the road are not included and you will have to pay your own insurance. Colors are limited edition year to year.

Call or go online to buy yours now!

After I got my wording down for this assignment, I used FreeSound to find this audio:

I then moved back to my script, and I put it in Natural Readers and recorded it on my phone. I then emailed myself the audio of the script. Once that step was completed, it was time to push the two audios together using ClipChamp. I was able to successfully create my commercial for the ds106 Radio Show.

This assignment was very easy because I have done this before, but it was more of a PSA and it had images that were connected. Which made the commercial way easier in my opinion!

Bumpin Along

I first started with the Radio Bump by looking at some good songs I could use to give the feeling that the song was on the radio. However, this proved to be more difficult because all the sounds that are on Freesound are weird sounds and not someone actually singing a song. So, I ended up settling for the audio below:

She had a lovely voice and it was very calming and then came the easy part in my opinion because I have websites I stick with when I create audios.  The first thing I did was open up a Word and I started typing a little script on what I would like the host to talk about:

(guy online(natural)) Host: Good evening, thank you for joining us today while we listen to Ds106 Radio. We have a special guest to talk to us about AI technology. Josh take it away.

(Christopher online natural)) Josh: Thank you for inviting me to the beloved DS106 Radio! We can change every single pitch on DS106 Radio if we want to but of course will not change the lovely song that is playing.

After I created the wording I put it into Natural Readers. Then I chose the voices I wanted and recorded it on my phone. Once I got the audio from my phone to the computer, I put all the audio into Clipchamp. I chopped up the clips, formed them together and made sure the music was not overpowering what the host of the radio was saying.

All in all this assignment took me about 2 hours to complete. Which is not that bad from start to finish however that does not include me typing all of this.

Terms and Conditions Apply – Radio Commercial

Today, I worked on a Radio Commerical for Ravioli Radio! I don’t think we will end up using it, but it was fun to make regardless!

The Assignment in the Assignment Bank that I followed as this one, which stated,

“When you are driving in the car and a radio commercial comes on you might start to tune the radio out. But, if you were the person selling what the commercial was offering would you want people tuning it out or listening intently? Well, I would want people paying attention to my commercial! So, for this audio assignment pick a product or business you would like to promote and sell! Use a audio recording software such as soundcloud to record your commercial. Add in background music, edits, and provide full information of the business/product/services you are advertising. Try to create a radio commercial that grabs and maintains the audiences’ attention. On the side, write why you chose the object or business you are promoting and the process you used to create your commercial.“

Part of Dr. Ravioli‘s whole story is that he rides a moped, he gives away mopeds at his Radio show, and they are just apart of his identity. We already have a Moped Commerical that we will be using, but this is just another if we need to throw one in for more time or anything! So, everyone gets a free moped (terms and conditions do apply)

I used FreeSound to find a commercial-sounding audio that was a little upbeat and motivational. Get you inspired, make sure you want that free moped and you will go get that free moped. So, I used this audio for that tone and mood.

I ended up using ChatGPT and my brain to come up with a fun, inspiring script to follow, and then used the ElevenLabs voice Jessie for the voice. I like this voice, I think it’s pretty funny. Originally, I was gonna voice it myself, but this one is just so funny, and it actually added character to some of the words instead of just reading them boringly.

I put this all together in Audacity, but I really feel like some of the voice audio’s could have been closer together, but I didn’t feel like it fit with that part of the song, so I don’t know. Regardless, it was fun to put together! Really easy stuff, mostly just twiddling with the spacing, making one audio quieter and the other louder, and then adding a fade out at the end.

But yeah! This was fun! You get a free moped! (not from Dr. Ravioli… so no guarnatee that it works… this is real sketchy).

weird product ad meets 80s radio show

Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.

80’s Product Radio Commercial

For this assignment, I decided to venture into the realm of nonsense to come up with the most bizarre ad I could think of. Meet the Jetpack Jammies.

After painstakingly putting that vague vision into words, I used Voicemaker to create the narrator’s voice. I then used Audacity to create the old-timey radio effect on the voice and to speed up the disclaimer.

I got my music and the jetpack sound here. I used the same radio effect on both. Finally, I used Lexica to make the weird image you see now.

good morning aggressors!

For my first audio assignment this week, I choose to do the Good Morning Message for The Village. I of course had a lot of fun making more ominous brainwashing content for this company and I hope other people do too!

It is always such a wonderful thing to hear a bright cheery voice delivering the Good Morning Message in The Village. Why don’t you bring some joy to the day and to your fellow Residents by creating and recording a wonderful message of community and cheer. Share your audio via Soundcloud and tag it appropriately. 

Good Morning Message for The Village

Making this assignment was pretty simple since we’ve had time to get used to the various tools available.

First I used this text-to-speech tool to generate that cheery voice I knew this message needed. I then found that classic morning I needed music here. After getting both of those I did some quick editing using DaVinci Resolve’s Fairlight. And I know that that tool is generally used for far more complicated projects but I had been using it so much recently that it was where my cursor led me.

Finally, at the end of this assignment when I was about to upload it to SoundCloud, I felt that it was missing a photo for that final touch. So I generated one on Lexica and then edited the text on Photopea.

Assignment Bank: 80’s Product Radio Commercial – Definitely Not the 80’s but Close Enough?

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/80s-product-radio-commercial/

“Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.“

I made a commercial fitting for my character, Hwei. He is attempting to sell AI powered prosthetic body augments with the promise of alleviating pain and enhancing performance. I think something like this is how Hwei would first introduce his inventions to the market, but not necessarily for monetary gain. This type of advertisement, if successful, would slowly introduce his inventions to society, and eventually making all of society accustom to getting this procedure done.

Most of the lines I chose were not sales tactics that you’d normally see in advertisements other than the intro that poses a question and then a solution. That is what makes Hwei’s commercial unique; no upselling, no monetary value mentioned. This also definitely isn’t from the 80’s but I took Professor Bond’s offer of bending assignments to meet our show, so I just did a regular commercial for this.