So whew, this project was a lot of work! Thank goodness I started on it early or else I would have been super stressed trying to get it done. Anyways, here’s the rundown of my group’s radio show:

Concept and Organization

If you didn’t know, for our radio show, we decided to do a segment called “Serial Dater,” which is a talk show that interviews a celebrity or public figure and then his or her ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. Our group came up with the idea when we all met up a few days before we had to turn in a proposal of our radio show. We met in person on campus (which was interesting since I’ve never seen any of them outside of the internet!), and we brainstormed about what kind of show we wanted to do. Someone mentioned doing a talk show with celebrities, and then another person mentioned doing something on Taylor Swift. From there, we joked about how she dates a lot of people and writes songs about them, and BAM! The idea just hit us. We came up with a scenario to base our show off of (Taylor Swift came out with a new song about a boy and won’t tell us who it’s about). It’s talk show and investigative journalism mixed together.

Once we had our concept picked out, we decided it was easier to assign parts and do things individually. Each person had to interview one person and introduce a group member (you know, like when a talk show comes back from a commercial break and tells the audience who’s talking next). We knew we already had to do a bumper and a commercial, so we decided that Brooke, who was putting everything together, would just pick the two best of each to put into our show.

Easiest/Hardest Part of the Group Project

Well, I think the easiest part was the actual radio show parts. Our group did a good job of outlining who did what (via Google Doc) and when everything was due (about a week prior to the due date, so we could put everything together without rushing). So, yay us!

The hardest part, in my opinion, was actually physically meeting on campus. Although I do agree meeting in person is the best way for a group to plan things and brainstorm ideas, I don’t think it was the most convenient method since I live off-campus. Also, I think meeting in person made us side-track a little bit, because we would have a ton of side conversations (mostly about ds106 in general) or just get stuck on one little detail (since we knew we probably weren’t going to meet again in person and wanted to flesh everything out then).

My Contribution

So, like I mentioned early, everyone in our group had to do two things on top of having a radio bumper and a commercial. We needed to have an interview with a celebrity and also have a recording of ourselves introducing another group member. Here are all of the things I did for the radio show:

John Mayer Interview:

So, for the interview part, I was assigned John Mayer. I didn’t think it would be tough, but oh my lanta, it was tough. This is because John Mayer went on a two year hiatus because he had vocal surgery. And that’s not all. He decided that during this break, he wouldn’t do interviews. And he moved into a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Thanks, John. Anyways, I was able to find a ton of old interview clips to use. Here are the ones I used:

For the recording part, I actually outlined my portion first (like what questions to ask, and what clips to use as answers) before physically recording anything. Then, I recorded all of my questions in one take on the Soundcloud app (I would just wait about 3 seconds between each question to make editing easier) and then I would record the portions of the Youtube clips in one long take also using the Soundcloud app. I thought this would be easier than downloading the audio from the Youtube video. After I had all of the clips, I used Audacity to edit them together. Here’s a screenshot of my work:

Looks kinda funny, doesn’t it? I told you I had to split each clip a lot of times!

My Introduction to Brooke:

Okay, so this was super easy. I just used the Soundcloud app and recorded it in one take. Sorry I can’t make this seem more interesting.

Radio Show Bumper:

For the radio bumper, I recorded the audio using the Soundcloud app again. I added in music that I downloaded off this website. I used the Flosstradamus remix of Matt & Kim’s “Yeah Yeah” and edited everything using Audacity again. Here’s a screenshot of my work:

This was the first thing I worked on for this project, and I completely forgot how to use Audacity. So, as I was reteaching myself how to use it, I ended up splitting the music clip into two separate things because I was trying to make the volume be lower so you can hear me talking. I’m not sure if that’s the best way of doing it, but hey, it works!

Radio Show Commercial:

Okay, so for the commercial, I had a hard time figuring out what to do since it had to be relevant to the radio show. I decided to go with an app that warns you when your ex is nearby (since we were talking to Taylor’s ex-boyfriends haha).

For the recording part, I did my audio clip in one take using my Soundcloud app. Then, I downloaded another song off that website I used for my radio show bumper, except I used the Team Bayside High remix of Matt & Kim’s “Daylight,” and edited it together using Audacity. Here’s another screenshot for ya:

Looking back on everything I did, I don’t think I really challenged myself. The radio bumper and commercial were pretty easy to me. The only thing that kind of challenged me was the interview part. It was hard finding preexisting clips of someone to use, and then try to base questions off of what I found. And within those clips, I had to go and edit out the original interviewer’s talking (especially Ellen! She would talk at the same time as John, and it became so annoying trying to edit her out while keeping in what John said!) Also, it felt very tedious having to split one continuous clip several times. But whew, I’m just glad that it all came together nicely!

Reflection

In terms of our radio show, I think we did a good job making a cohesive segment. It helped immensely that we had a clear vision of our show, and we mapped out exactly what the purpose of our show was. After seeing our end product, I think our group did a great job of executing our plan. I feel everything fits in perfectly, and it sounds like a legitimate talk show! I hope other people will feel the same way I do about our show. If anything, I think others will find it funny and entertaining!