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What a Burden Lifted

Posted by
| March 17, 2013

The past 3 weeks in ds106 have been crazy hectic. We got back into audio and had to complete 5 stars worth of audio assignments from the ds106 assignment bank, 6 daily creates, a bumper, commercial, foley challenge, and on top of all this, create our radio shows!

The past weeks were definitely taken just one step at a time.  I did my 5 stars worth of audio assignments first to get them all out of the way.  The first assignment I completed, [Spam]alot, was worth 1 star and began my audio journey.  I did a slightly tougher assignment worth 2 stars, Ring Ring! Who’s There?, in which I created a ringtone.  I really didn’t care too much for how the ringtone worked out because the transitions weren’t smooth enough for my liking.  I finished up my 5 stars worth of assignments by reading a joke in french.  LOLZ, worth 2 stars, was pretty fun to do, but I’d like to apologize for my horrific french accent in advance! I thought the joke was pretty cheesy, but I didn’t want to do a long and complicated joke in case it was lost in translation.

To start working on our radio show again, I created a short bumper for the Fifth Dimension’s show.  In Bump, Bump, Bump It Up!, I explain why I chose that certain music and my thoughts on the effect of a bumper.

A radio commercial was also needed for my group’s radio show, so I decided to grab people’s attention by selling a ringtone.  I wasn’t too focused on the ringtone itself, but the way I attracted listener’s to continue listening to our radio show.

My favourite assignment we had to complete this time around, was the Foley activity.  I had the most fun with this assignment and it was a great change and break from working on our radio shows.

On top of all these assignments, I also completed 6 daily creates over the 3 weeks.  I summarized them all in one post found here.  I didn’t think 6 was too many at all.  I was nervous that I wouldn’t like or want to do enough, but I found that over 3 weeks, there were plenty to choose from without fear.

The radio show was definitely more time consuming than I had anticipated, but I think it turned out great!  When my group first “got together”, we tried different forms of communication first to see what was going to work best.  It turned out that Twitter was definitely the easiest way to contact each other over Canvas and email, so we stuck with that.

Our theme, the Twilight Zone, and logo came very easily once our team name was decided: The Fifth Dimension.  Cole created a great logo that everyone loved, so we went with his idea.

The idea to do a soundscape for the show was thrown out and everyone agreed on it immediately.  It seemed pretty easy to do and we didn’t think anyone else would attempt it.

Usually, working in groups is ok for me because we see each other in class, however in ds106, you never see each other, so the hardest part was meeting.  We decided to meet via google hangout since we were all so busy, but even that didn’t turn out well.  It ended up being just Cole, Dylan, and I at first, then Casey was able to join us but her camera and sound wasn’t working.  Fairuz wasn’t even able to join us due to technical difficulties.

To make things easier, we made a google document to organize which assignments each of us wanted to do. The easiest thing about our group was everyone’s willingness to compromise and agree.  We never had any arguments or disputes.  Everyone was pretty chill and laid back.

When choosing which assignments I wanted to complete, I decided to do one that I was comfortable with and one that would challenge me a bit more.  More within my comfort zone was Poetry Reading, because all I had to do was find a poem within the Twilight Zone theme and read it aloud.  I googled for a poem and found Round Trip Ticket to the Twilight Zone by Jonathan Vos Post.  It took me several times to read it all the way through with no mistakes.

To push myself, I completed a Dialogue Mashup between two different Twilight’s.  I used clips from the episode Valley of the Shadow (found via YouTube) to mash up with two Twilight trailers: one from the first movie and the other from the latest movie (also found on YouTube).  I made it comedic instead of serious, because, let’s be honest, no one can take the Twilight movies seriously.

As a whole, I definitely believe our group and show hold up together well.  We were able to fill over 25 minutes of a show using our chosen bumpers and commercials, as well as everyone’s soundscapes.  Since I’m sure other group’s radio shows followed a plot or were a story, our show may seem very scattered and disconnected, but that was a risk when choosing a soundscape theme.  It was just a bunch of different audio assignments centered around our Twilight Zone theme.  I think it’ll make for a more interesting listen because of the variety.

I’m no longer afraid of audio.  I’ve come to terms with doing the assignments and I’m very familiar now with the programs that accompany it (such as Audacity).  I am a little bored with it though. There weren’t as many audio assignments to choose from in comparison to visual, but I still enjoyed them. Since we’ve been doing audio for a while now, I will say I’d like a change of scenery and I hope we’ll be doing something new in the coming weeks!

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