THE lounge

DS106 RADIO!

I’ve got to say, when this assignment was thrown at us, I thought it was all a little unfair. Midterms, spring break, a new medium, and 30 minutes of content to produce.

Our first “deliverable” was to create 5 minutes of content, and we were given a week to do so. I must admit, I know that personally I was not so happy with what my group had to turn in, and was not looking forward to handing it in or listening to it in class.  Our idea sounded good enough, and we had fun recording it, but in the process of recording the material, we listened to it a bit too much.  So, come Thursday, and our group is the first to go, and I had no idea how it would go over.  Luckily, it went off really well. Jim Groom thought it was hilarious, and the whole class seemed to respond well to it.

Before the welcomed response from the class, we were wondering what to do with the rest of our time slot, and were unsure of whether or not we would be staying in character.  The response from the first 5 minutes sealed it, and thanks to some brain storming and the most random person in the world’s idea (Joseph Fehrman, of no relation to our class), we would be reading Dr. Seuss. The rest of the 25 minutes was much easier to churn out, now that we knew what we were doing.  I will say that I think our teams show could have turned out a bit more polished given more time, but I’m pretty happy with it, and we were able to turn it in on time for last weekend’s shows.

the marathon

Saturday and Sunday were quite the event.  I’m not sure that there are many classes at UMW willing to hold a one and a half day marathon of student-created content, and I’m not sure that there are many instructors that are also willing to listen to a majority of the whole thing. That’s dedication.

I managed to listen to bits and pieces of quite a few shows, and listened to two shows in their entirety, Tales of the Town and JTC Studios.

Tales of the Town, with Lex, Aaron, and Patrick, went over really well and class, and for good reason.  Patrick is quite the character, and putting a microphone in front of him is pure genius.  Their show moved through segments quite well, and ranged from ridiculous commentary about urinating thieves, to ridiculous commentary about cheesecake, and they managed to fit in a very thoughtful segment about donating blood. Great job guys.

When JTC Studios first 5 minutes was played in class, I really liked where they were going, and what they were trying to do.  Their show’s premise is that they are in the future (i forget when, but not so far off), and alien immigration is a huge controversy.  I loved how they took stories about Muslims in Europe and changed them to fit their alien story, and similarly how their American viewpoints resembled stereotypical viewpoints about Mexican immigration.  They even managed to fit in some political comedy, and all-in-all, I think they pulled off their theme very well.

So, Ds106 radio has been quite the success, I believe, and while listening to the segments both in class and online, I’ve been very surprised at the level of content that has been produced for this assignment.  Zombies, murder mysteries, actual shows about music, zombies, classic examples of radio banter, and aliens — what more could you ask for?