This week has been very stressful already and it’s only Tuesday! My sister is getting married and her bachelorette party is this weekend, so I am trying to get everything done before the weekend so I can just relax and not have to worry about homework, but we will see how that goes.

Last night was dedicated purely to listening to all of the radio shows that the groups produced. I was really curious about what all of the different groups would end up with and I was really surprised with how awesome they actually were. I think the one that I was most excited about was the one that I get to review, “the Serial Dater”.

The Fab Five

I am a Taylor Swift fan, I’ve been to her concert with my sister and I have all of her CDs although I don’t listen to them 24/7. Getting to listen to a groups view of Taylor Swift and her former boyfriends would be very funny.

The way that the work was split between the different group members was each person interviewed someone, and it worked really well. The difference between some audios were a bit apparent and I felt as though some people were quieter than others especially in comparison to different interviews. However I thought that the quality overall was really great.

Sounds effects didn’t really stick out in my mind however this was really more about the interview rather than telling the story. I think a sound effect that would be really effective would be the phone ringing showing that they were calling into the radio show or something that that effect. Growing up when listening to the radio I always seemed to hear the dialing when a phone call was being made. A detail like that, although not necessary, can really go a long way.

This radio show seemed like it was a real radio show between the commercials, bumpers, interviews and the music as well. I wish that the songs were a bit shorter though so that way I could hear more of the awesome interviews that were being made! However, the songs were relevant and I really liked the ones that included  Taylor Swift in the show.

The story was told effectively and left a bunch of suspense. I think the thing that made the story more exciting was having a twitter account for the radio show. Because it was encouraging students to interact with the Twitter and to really say what they thought.

My favorite part about the whole radio show was the interview with T-pain. I am a huge T-Pain fan. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I’m In Luv Wit a Stripper is one of my all time favorite songs, it always puts me in a good mood. I also thought it was a good twist to have since he never dated Taylor Swift, which gave a bit more humor to the show already.

So my review is a 5 out of 5 stars. I think that everything was very well done and the editing behind the interviews is very tough and everyone did a really great job on asking questions to allow those answers as well as editing everything else. The hard work that happened behind this project really paid off. Congrats on a great job ladies!

The Dot.Commers

So now it’s onto analyzing our own radio show. I’ve always been someone who is very critical of my own work. There have been times where I had a project completely done and I will be pulling an all-nighter adding in so many little details. I once had a 14 page project turn into a 36 page project from 11pm to 9am. I mean I did get a 99, but still (the one point off bothered me).

I listened to our radio show about 100 times on Saturday. I constantly was playing it back trying to add different things and listening through it to make sure I had the order correct. Everything was really crazy. So when it came time for it to air live on Sunday I was extremely nervous. It’s tough when editing things to get a fresh perspective, so I was excited to hear it again, yet nervous at the same time. Seriously, my heart was beating like crazy (I’m weird I know).

While listening to the show I found myself really proud of everything that we had accomplished and I really liked the way it was put together, but I would certainly have changed a few more things. For starters I had the idea to put in the Law and Order at the last minute, and I really liked it. I wish that I could have played a little bit more with that theme to really bring the dramatic effect to the show. I think that we used sound effects really well throughout the show and I tried to make it seem like you were part of the action between the doors closing, people walking, and dogs barking. Something that I decided to add was the “ba da dummm” drum/cymbal at the end of a punch line. Once I heard it I thought it was perfect, but I was a bit scared that it was a bit overkill. I probably should have put it in different places, for example the third meeting never had it. But that is just me being overly critical I believe.

As for the audio quality. Overall, I believe that it was really good. I think that having everyone recording in the same room really helped. However, Kristen and Tiffany were a bit quieter than the rest due to their location in the room. I tried to compensate for it in Audacity by using the amplify effect, however it did not always seem to work.

I thought for a while about putting music into the radio show, however it did not seem appropriate due to the theme of our show. Having music playing the background I believe would be distracting since that is something that would not happen in a real life group project. However I thought that it was a good use when used for Law and Order as well as the Taylor Swift mention. I believe that the songs were fitting in the group project so that was enough. However, if I had to add music anywhere else it would be in the narration parts.

Overall, I was very pleased with how the radio show turned out, and I was even more pleased with the responses that I got via Twitter. It’s really rewarding to see something that you worked so hard on to have a lot of success. I would give the radio show a 4 out of 5 since I think I should have mentioned something about how the group project went instead of just what the members did after the project was done. Adding something like that would have tied the whole story line together and would have really sealed the deal.

Thanks for reading!

Princess Karissa