Category: ds106

Week 7 Summary

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This week’s focus was on the radio project.  I have to say this was a great experience as far as group projects go.  We were able to successfully coordinate and meet up in person four times during the week, and everyone contributed.  Most of the work came in the form of figuring out logistics and editing the sheer amount of audio recordings that we had generated.  But overall, this was a very positive experience.

In addition, the daily creates this week were a bit more image oriented.  The first one required some quick editing to mashup two images/historical events.

And the second involved going outside to perform some photography.

Radio Show Progress Week 2

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The radio show project went well and seemed to be relatively painless.  Our group met in person for the first time Monday morning.  During that meeting we finalized our show format and divided work assignments.  Essentially we decided to fully flesh out four events that recently went viral, and each of us would become experts on one of these topics.  Then during the show, we would present our information to the group, leading to a full discussion of each story. We agreed to meet Tuesday afternoon in the HCC to try recording our show.

We successfully reserved the recording studio for Tuesday, and, while we ultimately did not use any of the fancy equipment, we took advantage of the quiet space.  During this meeting we discussed the details of the project (for instance deciding that we would have one main host in charge of transitioning us from topic to topic).  After these final decisions were made, we launched into recording our show on Audacity.  The process was relatively smooth, and we successfully saved our initial footage.

We then met up Wednesday morning to go through our footage together to edit out extraneous bits, obvious pieces of outside noise, and areas where we broke off of the show to plan ahead for the next section.  I kept the file and attempted to upload the audacity project to google drive to allow for easier group editing, but this resulted in coded gibberish.  So instead, I did another run through of editing (tightening up distracting pauses, etc.) and placed some of our initial bumpers into the piece.  We then decided to meet up Friday morning for final editing.  During this meeting we inserted our commercial segment, played around with volume levels, and posted the result to soundcloud.  The final product is below!

Week 6 Summary

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This week really focused on getting us prepared for the radio show project.  Our group quickly put together a google doc for planning.  I used some of my weekly assignments to contribute to developing the project.  One of the assignments I completed was a fun little commercial for a fictitious Gods Away Spray to assist Xena when she has to deal with the meddling of Greek deities.  It’s lighthearted and funny, and I was quite proud of the end result.  I also completed a promo poster for our radio show through GIMP.  This took some playing around with, but I believe the outcome successfully communicates our theme in a clear and concise, yet engaging manner.  The full assessment of our progress can be seen in this post.

Other audio projects, while perhaps not directly assisting with the radio project, did help with improving my familiarity with Audacity.  I was able to experiment with tone while mimicking the style of Don LaFontaine.  I also had the opportunity to reclaim spam.  Finally, I continued my recurring theme of using Xena at every possible opportunity by creating a fictitious voicemail for the character.  Overall, this week really focused on audio, and more specifically with preparing us for this radio show project.  And I believe our group is ready to tackle the challenge!

In addition, the daily creates were somewhat more involved this week.  One involved making a gif:

Another involved poetry:

And the last one involved creating clones through messing with panoramas.  This one was especially fun as I was literally running around the room getting into position.  3 clones is pretty successful!

Radio Show Progress

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We’ve made some strong initial strides in planning our radio show.  We have a good group of 4 and have created a google drive document for planning.  Here we can brainstorm show ideas and provide our commercials, bumpers, promos, and contact info.    In my opinion, our most promising topic is this clown trend.  It’s taken the internet by storm, but appears to be blown out of proportion.  I think a lot of good discussion could be generated around this story, especially since the Fredericksburg area has had a recent scare.  In addition we’ve collectively completed 4 bumpers and 2 commercials (at the time this post was written), including ones that have a very creepy tone to compliment both the clown coverage and the October time-frame.  I personally contributed two major ideas (the clown segment and coverage of what many consider a major gaffe on O’Reilly) in addition to a minor one (the prevalence of a particular gif, which we may or may not add to the show as it’s a bit more visual in nature).  I also added one bumper, one commercial, and one promo.

In addition we began an email chain to grind out what days we’re available to meet.  Tentatively it looks like we can meet up Monday and Wednesday mornings.   Hopefully we’ll begin by meeting up Monday in the HCC to finalize planning and potentially begin recording.  At this time, I believe our overall format will be a few major stories broken up by some lighter, quicker ones, using our bumpers and commercials as transitions.

Radio Show Design Project

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I wanted to create a poster that introduces the basic premise of our radio show in an interesting and engaging way.  To accomplish this, I began by looking for a picture of a crowd.  My hope is that this would convey the fact that we are examining popular phenomena that spread from person to person.  I added this image to GIMP and referred back to this article for a refresher on how to outline text.  The style of the outlined text is similar in style to a meme (another phenomenon that often spreads in waves across the internet).  I had to play around a bit with the outlining technique, as the amount of individuals  in the image made it somewhat difficult to make the text stand out (I essentially had to increase the amount of black pixels for the outline to establish the right amount of contrast).  The final product is simplistic but hopefully effective (characteristics often seen in articles/other items that go viral).

viral-versimilitude

Gods Away Spray

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Naturally I chose another television crossover assignment that could be doubled as an advertisement for the radio show.  I liked the idea of evaluating the difficulties in a protagonist’s life and seeing how those needs could be met.  My mind immediately went to Xena, a hero who often struggles against meddlesome Greek gods.  I decided to create what is essentially a repellent against these deities.  I then wrote out my script in the most cliche As-Seen-On-TV style possible (lots of set-up questions, describing/playing up the solution, etc.).  I recorded this piece in audacity, and added the Xena theme song as background music.  The result is below.

I have to say, I think the best part of the whole commercial is “simply spritz, spray, and watch the Greek god fade away!”  I don’t think I could have come up with a better line than that.

In a World… Without Highlighters

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I’ve heard a great deal of Don LaFontaine’s work in older movie trailers, so I was curious as to how using that voice and style could make anything seem dramatic.  Looking around for inspiration, one of the first items I saw was a highlighter, which thus became my subject.  I decided to emphasize the contrast between the brightness of the highlighter and the drabness of studying in order to make the highlighter the protagonist of this fictional tale.  I recorded the piece dramatically in Audacity, and then played around with the pitch to deepen my voice.  This took a bit of work, as initially I sounded like a terrible beast, and then over-corrected so my voice resembled a chipmunk’s.  I eventually found a happy medium, and the result is below.

UMW Spam

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I was initially attracted to this assignment due to the sheer amount of spam my UMW email account has become inundated with.  I liked the idea of reclaiming these annoying adds/tricks, so I found a poorly phrased piece of spam relegated to the junk section of my email.  In recording my reading of the email on Audacity, I was somewhat inspired by phonetic punctuation in that I tried to read the piece somewhat literally.  As such, I read the words in all caps with a great deal of emphasis, capitalized words with some emphasis, and words without spaces between them very quickly.  I essentially was trying to underscore the ridiculousness of the spam itself.  In this way the piece has a bit of a rhythm to it, with some sections that sound somewhat normal and some sections that seem quite odd.  This was a fun way to take control of these emails in a manner that allows me to poke fun at them.

Xena’s Voicemail

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I know, I know… Xena again.  But I’m loving these ideas that integrate television characters with new creativity and media, and thus I tried my hand at this assignment.  I began by brainstorming the sort of messages that might be left for Xena (who is a rather stoic character).  I decided that the most likely voicemail would be a request for help or intelligence information.  I opted to report the movements of one of Xena’s chief adversary’s, Caesar (whose betrayal ultimately led to her initial slip to darkness).  I recorded my piece in audacity, making the tone somewhat jovial and familiar for comedy purposes.  I then searched for a voicemail intro on freesound.org to add to the beginning of the recording.  The result was a fairly authentic sounding and amusing piece.  I have a feeling that Xena would be annoyed with modern phones…

Week 5 Summary

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This week was a fun foray into the intricacies and intent behind design.  We began by reflecting on various resources and examples that emphasized the importance of meaning, emotion, and memory when beginning the design process.  We then moved on to exploring design for ourselves.  Since I don’t have a great deal of experience with visual design, I chose to do many smaller assignments to ease myself into the skills and mindset needed.  I examined my own identity through designing my hypothetical biography.  I then explored the various images and associations that one makes in conjunction with different words.  Later I was able to examine the centrality of certain film plot points and play with the dialogue of a screenshot to drastically change the implications for the movie in question.  I also tinkered with medieval tapestry design, applying this older style to a more modern series’ narrative.  And finally, I took a book title out of context to turn a classic story into a horror story.  These were a fun set of exercises that helped cement the connection between design and meaning.

Other design exercises included reexamining Show Your Work in the context of design.  This allowed us to review the importance of documenting our creative process (an important aspect of this class) while also allowing us to see how design can be used to aid one’s argument.  We also searched for various design concepts in everyday advertisements and objects during the designblitz.  This was a particularly fun assignment that allowed us to connect these ideas to our everyday lives.

Finally, the daily creates were very photo-centric this week, allowing us to further examine the importance of visuals and design.