OH MY GOSH, these past 2 (3ish) weeks have been full of me recording my voice and editing it to make it bearable to listen to…haha…  Some of it was fun and enjoyable, while other assignments were a bit more difficult to do and listen to.  When I first read what all I had to do I was a little nervous.  Audio is not the easiest thing to do, but as I went on I figured things out and what was the best way for me to do them.  I am more confident in some audio skills, but I am sure I have a lot more to learn.  Audio is much more fun than I thought it would be.  I like it for more than not having to show my face.  I like it because it is fun and it is interesting to be able to change and edit so much with just clicks of the mouse and other sounds.

I was excited to make another bumper for DS106 radio.  My group, 5^th Dimension, had a Twilight Zone theme.  We did most of our organization through twitter, googlehangout, and meeting in person.  In the future we need to not procrastinate as much, because it was hard to get all 5 of us together.  We were able to all take part and get things done.  I came up with our group name, 5^th Dimension (because there are 5 of us).  From that was went with the Twilight Zone as a theme because it went along with Dimension.  Getting together as a group was difficult, but it was easy to talk with one another and agree on what we wanted for the show and from each other.  I wish I was able to meet when we met in person, but I was able to get on googlehangout and twitter.  The actual things we recorded were also done easily.  I chose things I had ideas for and would challenge me without be too hard.  I used skills I have learned from previous weeks as well as new ones I had to learn and look into along the way.  I am happy with what I came up with, but I think there is room for improvement if I were to do them again.  I think our radio show turned out very well.  Everyone seemed to have a unique take and showed their individuality and personality.  At the same time we all followed the theme and things flowed well.  The music, parts, and effects all went together nicely.  I hope people will enjoy listening to it and understand the Twilight theme.  I think people will find some parts funny and other humorus.  I  hope they are able to tell the time and effort we all put into the final product.

We included both bumpers and commercials.  My bumper is short, sweet, and to the point.

My commercial attempts to play on the word Twilight and Dimensions in order to draw people into wanting to hear the show.

There is so much more to audio than just recording my voice.  I had to download, upload, edit, cut, paste, and so much more to come up with my final product.

Outside the radio show I learned what a Foley is.  I knew people did this as a career, especially for cartoon movies.  Every sound needs to be created and I got to be the one to do it.  Foley is much much harder than you would think.  It involves thought for how the sound should be, how to make it, and making sure to get the timing right and lined up with the visional.  I practiced many times and was quite nervous when I went ahead and recorded it.  I think some of my sounds are a little off and if I were to do it again I would try to foley even more and get better and better.  Chaplin’s visional acting is so great it made my production work out well.

Here are the 3 in 1 (It’s like a special deal!)

I did 8 stars of audio assignments this week.  The first two were to go along with the Twilight theme of my groups radio show.

The first was Poetry Reading.  For this I found a poem by Fiona Davidson.  I tried to make the poem creepy and suspenseful.  I took the poem and when it ended I went on with a story.  I like the voice changes I used as well as the sound effects and background I edited into it.  Twlight

The second was Swap Shop. For this I stayed with the same theme.  Using different voices and editing I had two people call in the swap something for a Time Turner.  I was not as happy with how this assignment turned out compared to the previous.  I tried my best to make talk up on the spot, but I think in the future I will have other people answer or call in instead of being all of the characters.  Time Turner Anyone?

The next assignment I did was A Cappella with Yourself.  Okay, Okay, I cannot sing to save my life and I have never claimed to be good.  I honestly wanted to see if I would be able to figure out how to make 3 different recordings of my voice and sing with myself.  I WAS!  It’s so cool!  I sang part of one of my favorite Disney songs.  Part of That World.

Finally I did May I Take Your Order.  I love trying to do different accents.  One of my favorites and one I think I am fairly good at is an English accent.  I ordered food at McDonalds and did my best to use lingo from England as well.  I was able to do this in one talk without editing.  I am not sure if I could actual pass as being from England, but I will continue to play around with accents with my sister and friends and maybe one day I’ll actually try to make a picky order at a restaurant with that accent.  Fish and Chips?

Like every week so far and into the future I did a lot of daily creates, 7 to be exact.  My favorite one this week was spelling out create with different things to make the letters.  Mine has a variety of thing associated with coffee, one of my loves.

When I saw that there was a daily create if which I had to make a weird face, I was all over that.  I make weird faces every day of my life, now I had to do it for homework…BONUS!

Another big part of me is my love of the small things.  One of those is the sound of paper cutting.  Mostly from a paper cutter, but also machines at the bank such as the atm.  I shared my love and I hope someone else out there read it and agreed with me.

Along the same lines (small things being a big deal) I spoke of the importance of a twist tie from the ties point of view.  Thank goodness they exist or I would have to throw a lot of things away.

My picture in the car made into a movie poster was a little bit of a stretch.  I added actor’s names to try to make it more obvious that it was a movie.  I like the picture a lot more than I like the movie poster as a whole.

Another daily create that was difficult, but fun was coming up with 2 song lyrics.  One to start my day and one of how my day went.  Matchbox 20 describes how I was sick the day I did it.  I lost my voice and it was gone for a while.  Others needed to stay away from me so I didn’t get them sick as well.  My day ended up being pretty great in spite of being ill.  I was walking on sunshine.

A final daily create was making a bumper sticker for DS106.  I went with the idea of main common bumper stickers, such as marathons and vacations spots. I think my bumper sticker is very true.  I’ve enjoyed and hated parts and pieces of this class, but I sure have learned a lot along the way.