Yes, it is that time of year. March Madness is here! I am a sports girl, always have been always will be. But my love for sports really is at the college level. I’m not sure what it is, but most of these kids are playing because they love the sport, and not for the endorsement deals. Plus, you never know what will happen when it comes to college sports, especially March Madness basketball.

So I’m sitting on my couch, writing blog posts like a pro and watching ESPN Bracketology and reflecting on the audio aspects of what I did. And it was tons and tons of editing. Seriously, Audacity is pretty much my new best friend. It was pure madness that was happening.

When creating any audio file, there is tons of planning that needs to happen. You have to think about things like the order of events, sound effects, background noise, length of talking, and the message that you want to portray. There are so many different things that need to be considered, just like when making a bracket, or even selecting what team is going to win.

When selecting teams I start with what team I want to win the whole tournament (still undecided at the moment about that right now, please let me know what you think). The equivalent of this is the message. What message to do you want to send? What story do you want to tell? I start big, then I go right to the small details. The first round games.

Anyway, enough with that metaphor, I’ll just stick to ds106 talk now, aka princess talk.

To start off the two week long challenge I focused on the assignments that were not related to the radio show first. These were the 5 stars worth of audio assignments as well as the Foley Soundtrack. And I loved all three of the products that I ended up with.

For starters, I wanted to do the three star assignment which called for making a musical tag. I decided to leave my Disney roots and do something on Sara Bareilles and tell the story of a break up. While I have not gone through a break up any time soon, I just really thought I was clever with what I came up with. Just a warning, there is cursing in it, but it is fitting I swear. Check it all out here!

I then had the opportunity to make a short clip of songs to tell a story. I decided to switch things up in this two star assignment and dedicate it to calculus, which is my one true love. It’s true, math has always been my prince. I really loved everything that came out of this and it showed me just how important planning was when it comes to order. I had an entirely different order of songs and realized that if I put the last song first (like I originally wanted to do) a whole different story would have been told.

Next, I worked on the sound effects portion of audio with the Foley assignment. While I must admit that throwing things around was very critical, it gave me a great appreciation for all the sound effects that happen in movies. Just simply creating sound for a thirty second clip took me about an hours worth of figuring different things out. Yet alone a whole entire movie! I couldn’t even begin to imagine. This really showed the planning portion behind audio yet again. The world is seen through our senses, not just our eyes. You can really see something, just by listening to it. And I think I really started to understand that after this assignment. You can see something that has no sound to it, and yet you are imagining the sounds to help your viewing experience.

Now onto the daily creates. I must admit, these were a nice break from the audio world that I had been living in, and I really focused on the writing but mainly photography assignments that there were. I brought up my love for math, teaching, rubber ducks, and talked about my spring break adventure through not only words but pictures as well. To see all of the work that I did, simply click here! Trust me, it will be a nice break from audio.

Now onto the burrito, the championship game, the whole enchilada (I’m really craving Mexican food right now). The radio show. The main focus of these past two weeks had to do with the group project radio show that we were working on. My group, the dot.commers, decided to do a radio drama (and sort of comedy) about working on a group project and the terrors and the science behind it all. Let’s face it, mastering a group project is an art. To read about the general premise of how we worked as a group and my reflections on it all, simply just click here! The radio show involved a lot of editing, and it also needed to be like a real show and have advertisement and bumpers, just like any other show! It really is awesome to me that I could produce something like a radio show, I certainly had no idea what I was getting myself into with this class! Well, I decided to make an advertisement for Advil and played off of the headaches that may form from group projects, and then I decided to create my radio bumper by being the character that I was in the radio show. Click those links to listen to them!!

Overall, I think this week gave me such a huge appreciation for all of the work behind audio. It’s easy to record something, but to produce something is an entirely different story. I found myself really enjoying the work that had to occur from creating different stories from telling audio, and I didn’t mind that it took a lot of time. I guess that is why we had two weeks (and spring break) to work on it. I was dreading audio when this class started, and now I think I really have a great understanding of all of the work that is behind it. In fact, I even found myself thinking about how I could use audio in my classroom. Who would have ever seen that one coming, right?

Please be sure to listen to ds106 radio at 11pm on Monday March 18th to hear the dot.commer’s “Science of a group project”

Thanks for reading!
Princess Karissa