Today I made a story entirely with sound effects. As I’ve mentioned, I am brand new to audio editing. This was a huge challenge but I managed to finish it with the help of my friends. I used Freesound for most of the audio clips and music. My friends assisted with some of the more specific clips – notably the first bear noise, the gasp, the bear’s scream, the running sounds, and the cheer at the end.
This story is about a girl who’s peaceful morning is interrupted by a bear rummaging through her trash. She scares the bear and goes back to her breakfast. Enjoy!
Last week, I noted that I was worried about this week’s assignments, as I haven’t had much experience with Audacity or editing audio, and it seemed like a big workload. However, I enjoyed every assignment this week and learning more about audio storytelling and how sound can affect so much of any form of media, from movies to radio stories.
Setting up Audacity and SoundCloud wasn’t a big issue. I already had Audacity installed for some other school projects and I made a new SoundCloud for DS106 purposes. The hard part was getting into a mindset of expressing myself with just audio, rather than the usual visual tools that we’re so accustomed to.
The Moon Graffiti story was the first experience I had really honing in on the auditory storytelling elements. The moon landing was a great premise, and the entire story made me feel some sort of existential dread, so I wrote about it in my reflection post.
Next I created my DS106 radio bumper. This wasn’t anything special, I made a pretty generic bumper that framed DS106 in a positive light. However, the recording process actually took multiple tries because I kept tripping over my words and not getting specific enunciation I wanted. I was satisfied with the final product, but boy was it frustrating while I was recording.
The DS106 live listening session was a blast. I tuned into the Wednesday broadcast after work and I didn’t expect to get so into the stories and the audio elements that enhanced my experience. Talking in the Discord chat along with Professor Bond and other classmates gave me more perspective on how sound effects and timing of music can really elevate a story.
The Sound Effect Story was something I had to go back and edit. Initially I made a spooky story through my own will, but after looking at the assignment bank, I realized that the spooky story was another assignment entirely. So I used the spooky story as one of my 3 assignments for the week and created a car crash story for the specific Sound Effect Story assignment.
The three other audio assignments I did for the week are:
Spooky story (as I mentioned before) Dr. Oblivion leaving a voicemail Asking Dr. Oblivion about AI taking over jobs and recording a conversation with him
I had a hard time fitting my specific course character into my assignments, so I ended up relying on a lot of Dr. Oblivion content to get my stuff done for the week. I’m hoping to look up some tools that can be used to create a voice for my specific character soon.
Next are my daily creates for this week. I added text over a plane banner, made a poem about lemons without the use of the most common words associated with lemons, and took a secret hideout out of a video game and put some meaning behind it.
For my radio show ideas, I couldn’t think of anything specific since we don’t have our assigned team members yet, but I was visualizing a story that our team could make that incorporates all of the characters in one way or another, just like those in the DS106 radio broadcasts this week. I also talked about my experiences with podcasts and shows, particularly about how I’m an avid tennis podcast listener and the shift in mindset I’ll need for DS106.
That’s all for week 4! Crazy how time is flying by, we’re 1/4th of the way through the semester. Even through my copious amounts of procrastination and laziness, I really do enjoy this class and it’s one of the highlights of my week. I’m looking forward to what this next 2 weeks will bring; looks like we’re becoming filmmakers!
For radio show ideas I’m thinking of doing a story line of my character, Leo Storm, living my daily life. Another idea is my character and other characters created by other students come together as a joint force to take over the city of Fredericksburg. Going off the last idea another idea of mine is my character and other characters as superheroes fighting villains and completing various missions to save the city of Fredericksburg. Another idea is having Dr. Obivilion as a villain in a story line and my character and other characters as the protagonists. These are some ideas, feel free to comment your thoughts on these ideas.
This week was very fun. I had no idea that using audio software would be very intriguing. I had seen my friend using it, but it looked intimidating to start. I made a lot of audio files to test out what I could create.
My first time reflecting on audio made me appreciate how important it was to anything. Today, I watched a show on Netflix and realized how many sound effects there were that were essential. If they had not been there, the show would have felt cheap.
Radio Bumper
I made a radio bumper with the help of Dr. Oblivion. It was my first audio assignment and it took a little bit of time to get used to Audacity, but I finally got a grasp of how to use it. I added a rollercoaster sound to say how this radio is gonna be a ride to listen to.
I am very proud of this one. It took me a bit of time to make. It is an audio story of a swordsman who is riding in a forest. His horse gets hit with an arrow, causing him to fall to the ground. He gets up and waits for more arrows. When they are shot, he deflects every one with his sword until he reaches the archer and kills him.
I also wanted to share this beat I made in the Chrome Music Lab that I really enjoyed making. It’s a chill beat that could be in a 2D RPG. It could take place in a city by the beach. A random thought.
It might be interesting to have this radio show focus more on the role of AI in different professional spaces and determine its advantages and disadvantages. We could almost do case studies of how its been implemented and if it has hurt or improved the company culture in different industries. In this analysis, it would also be interesting to see if some industries are hurt more than others and why this could be.
As for my character, Isaiah Beacon, I think he would do everything in his power to bring the attention of the radio show back to himself. I also think that anytime another character brings up a negative point about AI in the workplace, he would try to belittle and suppress their comments as much as possible. Isaiah also already has his own media empire, so it would be kind of funny to frame it as him having different guests on his show. I think all of the case study examples that Isaiah would bring up would be overwhelmingly positive to the point of obvious delusion. For example, he’d probably perform some mental gymnastics to vilify unions or individuals protesting their jobs being taken away by AI.
I would like to start this weekly summary by saying, WOW! This week overall was a great and very insightful week for this class. We started this week by watching Abumrad’s two videos which were very informative on what this week has intel for us. My summaries for those are just a link away: Understanding Radio and Storytelling – The Wisdom Well (kelbellz.com)
Then we had to listen to an audio that in my opinion was based off of the moon landing. Which was my favorite part of this week because it intrigues me that people have been on the moon before. You can read more about my emotions by clicking on the button that reads, “Moon”
After we were done listening, our professor wanted us to create a radio bumper. Which turned out so much better than what I had imagined in my head it would sound like. Speaking of radio, ds106 actually has a radio station! Which I am upset because I was unable to attend to any of them because my job is very short staffed, so I ended up staying well pasted my scheduled time…but my professor helped me out so much by sending me some of the radio, so I was about to listen to parts of it.
Click on this above photo to read more about ds106!
The radio bumper was fun to create yes however, creating the sound effect assignment was super fun. Like I said before this week was so much fun! I love anything having to do with cats which is why my sound effect story is a cat eating. You can here the cat eating and drinking water if you here. This assignment was actually one of the assignment banks. But do not worry because I did three other ones this week you can view, the post if you are interested are located in the button that states, “Kalimba”.
When taking my character, Rikaro, into consideration, I think a discussion of AI would intrigue him as he would wonder how to take advantage of its dangerous potential. But that would be a thought in the back of his conscious. He would be more vocal about its benefit to those in need but mention how it can damage those in higher positions. The other hosts could be unaware of who he is, since he is a wanted person, but his occasional comments could cause them discomfort. Rikaro would be unaware of this, so it could be a comedic thing. I wonder if it would make more sense if he was speaking himself on the radio or if it is a text-to-speech, since he is in hiding. I’ll put more thought into Rikaro’s situation with the government.
If he is teamed up with a mad genius, they could get passionate about the potential of AI or the other mad genius could try to one-up Rikaro. Since Rikaro is a nervous and timid person, he would allow the other person to take over the show. The others could slowly realize who Rikaro is by the end of the radio show.
I don’t know if my ideas are correct or is what was asked of me. These are just some thoughts I had for the radio show.
For this assignment, I had to make a sick beat, and this is what I came up with. I used different clips of assorted instrumental sounds. Hope you enjoy.
I was unable to join the discussion due to the fact that I worked late pretty much every day this week. However, I did end up going back on discord to read what most people had to say. Professor Bond was able to send me the links, so I was still able to listen to some of the radio I missed.
In the radio, I do not know why but the voices that were carried throughout the radio reminds me of the voices of the Simpsons. Which was funny at first and then I really started to pay attention to the way the audio was set up. With the voices that mix with different sounds. In the radio with the dice, you can really see how they used both sounds at once. You can while you hear the dice in the background was two different sounds put into one second.
They all have an old sound of the radio. When you think about how people use to listen to the radio vs. now there is a big difference in the sound quality. Back in the day things had a kind of “old” sound to it and now everything is very crisp sounding. I never realize that listening through headphone could change how well you are able to hear different kinds of audios.
Listening through headphones I can hear all kinds of activity in the background
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The timing of the ds106 radio is really well done. Meaning that the people talking have no pauses where there should not be. Overall, very good audios that I inspire to create one day
