"Make a sick beat, using whatever you can find on freesounds.org, and whatever you can record around you! I donât care how long it is, just get groovy dood."
I bent this audio assignment a little bit to meet our needs for the podcast. I decided to go on freesound.org to find a suitable introduction song to our podcast. Actually, as we’re still in the process of splicing things together and deciding on which audio files would work for each scenario, I think that this may end up being a transition of some sort. There are a few other audio clips from the website that we have in mind but we won’t know for sure which ones to use until the rest of our show is structured.
I think this sound in particular has a very tech-y sound signature to it, and it’s almost stereotypically high tech with the synths and chords that go into it. We’ll see where this goes in our show, but I’m glad to have one piece of audio that would suit many aspects of our show.
Today, I worked on a radio bumper for our radio show!
This might be the first time I’ve ever heard Dr. Oblivion sound a little enthusiastic! (I put the same prompt in over and over until he didn’t sound dead inside)
I use the CC Search and looked up “futuristic,” originally for inspiration, but then I found this which linked me to a Freesound audio that I ended up liking enough to use! It’s the only music I used, and I only really fiddled with fading in and fading out at the start, start of Oblivion’s message, end of Oblivion’s message, and the end of the bumper.
The only other thing I did was talk to Dr. Oblivion and convince him to give me a radio bumper and end it with the familiar phrase “ds106 for life!” This took a while, because sometimes he told me he couldn’t do it, other times he would, and other times he’d just spit out something that wasn’t quite what I wanted. I ended up using two different responses he had, both where I had to tweak a little to get the sort of message or tone that I wanted.
I put everything together in Audacity. It was pretty simple, but I wish I could get rid of the slight background noise for Dr. Oblivion. I also wish I could just make him speak with a little emotion . . . but I know, he’s literally an AI, of course he’s not gonna be full of emotion.
Not sure what else to add for this, but it’s what I’ve made!
“Each year since 2017 Vanity Fair interviews Billie Eilish, and in many ways it is an introspective in which she is talking to her former self as the years go on. I hope when youâre reading this they are still doing them! But now itâs your turn. The first part is easy, make a list of questions you want to aks yourself, turn on the camera and hit record. A year from now, take the same questions and record yourself answering them again. Feel free to edit in responses from the previous year and even reactions to those previous answers. As the years go on perhaps youâll learn more about yourself and who you are becoming.”
Here is the link!
This was actually fairly simple. I took questions from the 2022 Billie Eilish Vanity Fair interview (oddly, the 2023 one is not out . . . so maybe they’re done?) for myself and asked myself the questions. Well, most of the questions. I skipped the ones revolving around fans or about being an artist because I have zero fans and I am not an artist nor am I famous.
Filming was easy, I just filmed it on my iPhone 15 Pro camera and edited it using iMovie. I don’t think I ran into any errors in this or any trouble, it was fairly easy after having practiced using video editors for the class!
This was actually more like a reflection for me, and it kind of forced my to uncover things about myself that I wasn’t aware of our hadn’t voiced. I hadn’t really understood that I put so much work on myself just to escape overthinking thoughts until I, well, thought about it, and this made me think about it.
Obviously, I can’t fast travel and show you 2025’s interview of me, but I’m excited to see where I’ll be then, and I hope 2025 me will feel like I’ve come a long way.
For one of my assignments that needed to include my course character, I decided to make this Fake Propaganda Video
Smash up any combination of videos, still images, and audio to create a fake propaganda video. It can be comedic or (non-offensively, of course) serious, its up to you. Possibilities include: advertising a product, creating a villain, or selling a revolution.
In one of the episodes of the last season os Seinfeld, one of the main characters is advised to repeat âserenity nowâ as a mantra to ease his high blood pressure. Rather than repeat the phrase in a calm and controlled manner in a way that might help, Frank Costanza yells âSERENITY NOW!â at the top of his lungs whenever he feels stressed, thus defeating the purpose of the mantra.
I decided to create a visual piece of video and audio that would correct Frankâs mistake, and attempt to actually create one of those âserenity videosâ that are often seen being played at dentistâs offices, or a spa. As an added twist, I loosely based this assignment on the â10 minute video challengeâ meme in which a repeated looping of audio or video is played non-stop for 10 minutes. While itâs usually done for comic effect, I stretched the video out, repeating three 50 second nature clips over the course of the 10 minutes.
Tell your characterâs story or a story from their life through video. This can be as simple as adding images and putting a voiceover, or recording a bit from your characterâs life. Use MovieMaker or iMovie to put together the video and throw in some sound effects if youâd like. It is up to you!
Today I did a little combination of two Video Assignments: this one revolving around making an animatic and this one revolving around making a video list of 5 things important to you. Combining them, I chose to make a little animatic about things that are most important to my Course Character, Sol!
Actually, I was planning on making an animatic of the original assignment (conversing with Dr. Oblivion), but I was annoying having to keep drawing over and over. Instead, I used the frames I got from that and put them into this!
Here is the video:
I used FireAlpaca, an art program I’ve been using since like 2015 and a really old Wacom art tablet from when I used to actually draw a lot. Since then, I lost interest in art (I watched all my artist peers get better at art and watched how I could not always improve and it made me mad so I just stopped (and I got old and busy)), but this was nice to rebirth the artsy side of me.
I used ElevenLabs for the AI voice for Sol (it’s the voice Serena), but I don’t think the voice is exactly what I would imagine them to sound like. Having a fluid form makes me think that their voice would just be different all the time.
I used OpenShot to edit this and finally figured out how to work it, and it is actually . . . so easy to use, it’s kind of crazy. Not sure what happened last week, but we got it! Putting all the pictures in and moving them around was not hard at all, very simple task and not even the hardest part. Very crazy to me that I’m saying that the easiest and quickest part was editing it!
This was an okay assignment, though. I spent too much time on it, but I rebirthed the old art-lover inside of me, so it was sort of nostalgic too.
“Record yourself getting ready! Whether it be how you get ready for your day, ready for bed, ready for an event, makeup look, etc. See if you can edit the video to speed through parts that may take a second (i.e. washing your face, brushing your teethâŚ) and create a voice over of the process. For inspiration, look up any ‘Get ready with me’ video on YouTube! Have fun with it, maybe even make a (tasteful) parody version.”
So I decided, of course I’m going to do makeup!
I actually did three different looks and filmed it yesterday . . . and then accidentally deleted it when it didn’t save right . . . and lost everything so I got really mad . . . so this is actually my second time doing this video assignment!
Anyways, here is my video!
The video is messy, I cut out the majority of it because I ended up covering up what I was doing with my hand, BUT! I did it! I kept everything sped up too because it can be miserably slow . . . makeup is a tedious process, let me tell you.
Also, editing this was nightmareish. I have no idea how makeup social media influencers decide what they want in the video and especially those who make TikToks or Instagrams that are just 1 minute . . . I skipped so many stuff!! How do they do it and include everything!! Even if you cut out the entire process of a step, it feels weird . . . huge kudos to them for that though (in another life I am a social media makeup influencer but in this life I am not).
If you want a list of all of my makeup that I used in this (whether included or not), here it is:
Elf Blemish Control Face Primer w/ salicylic acid
Colourpop Pretty Fresh pressed face powder (shade fair 1)
Morphe x Nyane Fierce Fairytale Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Gyoza)
Morphe x Abby Roberts Bittersweet Like Honey Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Solar, Spicy, Vivienne, LA Vibez; Blush Colors: Hot Sauce, Pink Champagne)
Juvia’s Place The Nubian Glow Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Gold shade mid bottom, has no name?!?!)
Elf Dewy Coconut Setting Mist
Isn’t that fun..
Anyways, I filmed this on my phone (iPhone 15 Pro) and edited it on iMovie because it took too long to try to send to my laptop to edit through OpenShot. I didn’t have any trouble with iMovie, though. It was a fairly easy application to use.
I’m not sure what else to say that I haven’t said here or in the video. I think it’d be interesting to see other Sol-inspired makeup (maybe I am just a lover of sun-related aesthetics and need to take a breather but this makes me so excited) so maybe I will continue to do more Sol makeup! Very obviously, this makeup would look very different on them, because I am about as pale as my hoodie in the video, but I’m actually working on drawing Sol a little bit (my other assignment that I’m doing is the animatic one . . . which is taking a while, but surprise for more Sol features soon!)
Thank you for reading and watching I hope you have a good day or night!
Today I watched the good classic 2001: A Space Odyssey to study Stanley Kubrick’s directing and cinematography. It was a long movie, and I had to separate it into two different watchings because I had to go to work in the middle of it.
This movie . . . wow, it was onto something. I really enjoyed it!! I also think it’s so interesting to see how this was one of the first AI characters in media, and I really thought about how AI has changed so much in film. It also had the trope that AI learns too much and becomes evil, so that was interesting how that idea was present even in the 60s.
For the Assignment, I did a video essay on one of the scenes in which HAL-9000, the AI in the film, was observing and listening (or reading) the two humans, Dave and Frank, discuss that maybe HAL was malfunctioning. It’s the turning point, and it’s a tense scene that has barely any movement.
Some notes about my video essay: I used OBS to record the movie and Microsoft Clipchamp to film the audio voiceover and edit. And it was hell. I couldn’t zoom in on the audio and I felt very far away and with limited control. At one point, I tried to drag the audio, and it completely disappeared . . . and I couldn’t get it back despite still hearing it . . . so please ignore the little error where my voice repeats itself! I literally could not see the audio.
Overall thoughts were, the movie was great, the filming and storytelling through tiny tiny things was so powerful. The voiceover was also like fighting a war, I filmed 3 different takes before deciding I just needed to make a script and hope for the best. Editing made me want to slam my head into a wall (also I tried OpenShot first, and couldn’t import my video at all so I gave up), despite having a little experience in editing. I definitely, definitely need more practice.
Not everyone listens to the news. Those who do know that it’s either covering really important and often depressing issues or reports that are just so bizarre you wouldnât believe they happened if not told alongside the photos and videos. Today, my mission was to make my own ridiculous breaking news report.
Create a breaking news story. This should be fake news. You should create a dialogue and have an AI read it using text to speech. There are several free programs. One possibility is Colossyan.com. Mix in a news jingle to make your story sound legit. You can find some jingles on freesound.org. Be sure to give credit if necessary.
Be creative, funny, or serious. The choice is yours. Just make it sound realistic.
To make this new report I first started by using the AI News Article Generator I found. I wanted this assignment to be almost entirely Ai made and that meant listening to whatever it decided to write for me. As a prompt, I used âcrazy man does something dumb but illegalâ to avoid being too specific and getting bad results. Luckily the first one I got was immediately so bizarre and entertaining though I would probably believe happened if I saw this report. You can listen to it here:
Next, I had to find a text-to-speech reader. Now I went through a lot of different sites and had issues with a lot of them. Either the entire tool was behind a paywall, you could only insert 200 characters this was 1820 characters so definitely a slow process, or the voices sounded too fake. But finally, I stumbled upon TTSMaker with free services and a large character limit I never hit. I did two voices for the report so listeners would know another person was the police officer speaking like an actual interview and then download the files. Then I had to find a jingle which I found a very normal one on Freesound and easily downloaded as well. I imported them to Audacity and quickly spliced the audio to make the masterpiece you see before you. Next, I wanted to make a quick news background, even though the assignment didnât call for one I had to because it felt like people needed to see such a ridiculous event. So I used Stable Diffusion Online and after a few tries I finally prompted âman dressed in a chicken suit running away from police officers in a grocery store.â Finally, I put the image into Break Your Own News which added the news header and ticker used on the actual news. I wrote the ticker this time since it was so small and not a part of the original assignment. It reads, âAre you living with Ai? Find out from real reporters here.â Hope this ridiculous piece makes someone laugh because I sure did.
I hope you have a good day or night!