Live Tweeting
One of our assignments for this week was to listen to just the audio from one of the episodes of The Wire and live tweet it. I listened to Season 2 Epsiode 3. I had not watched the episode prior to this assignment so there were some parts I had no clue what was going on like when they were speaking other languages. You also gain an appreciation for the audio because there can be so much you miss when focusing so much on the visuals. Here’s some of my tweets from the session.
Video Discussion
I participated in my first video discussion and got to meet Jim, Paul, and some of my classmates. It was nice getting the “face-to-face” time and sharing our thoughts and ideas on The Wire. Being that it was audio week we all chose a clip from Season 2 Episode 3 to share and talk about what we thought of it. I chose the scene where Tilghman and his buddies were taking bets on the fight between the dog and the rat. I chose the same episode that I did the live tweeting assignment on so I got to share my experiences with that during our video chat. Audio is a powerful tool that doesn’t get the credit it deserves!
Daily Creates
Can you guess what I’m feeling? I’m not the best drawer, but I think it’s an easy one!
Dogs are truly a girls best friend. They may seems big and scary, but these two are just lovable, playful, silly pups. Pepsi is on the right. She’s 8 and she is the boss of Luke,5 , on the left. She’s the more cuddly one and if she wants a toy, it’s hers. Luke is my big dummy. He has so much energy. He knows Pepsi is in charge. These two do everything together: play, poop, bark, etc. In the warmer months they pretty much always stay outside so they get pretty stinky. In the winter, like it was in the picture, they come in and relax with me. They’re my guardians, my dogs and my friends.
Audio Assignments
Sounds Effects Story
Since it was my first time using Audacity, I kept this clip short and sweet. The assignment was to tell a story using only sound effects. This tells the story of the morning of elementary school kids. They’re always so chatty in the morning. As the school bells rings, the kids run up the school stairs into the front doors. Their sneakers squeak down the hallways as they continue to talk to one another. The kids go to their lockers and then go to their designated classrooms and another school day begins.
To make this clip I downloaded audacity and made a freesound account. Freesound was pretty easy to use. I just downloaded the clips and dragged them into Audacity. Since I’m not a huge fan of sitting through tutorials, I played around with the clips to try to understand Audacity a bit better. I used 8 different audio clips to create this story.I tried to publish this assignment to twitter and soundcloud through known, but it wouldn’t upload the file 
Here are the clips I used:
Here is what my project looked like in Audacity
DS106 Bumper
This assignment was to create a DS106 Radio Bumper. I had a lot of fun doing this. I used sounds from http://www.freesound.org/ which was the dial up and music box.I then recorded my own voice and played with some of the effects in Audacity. To get the HBO bumper I used YouTube to MP3 converter and downloading the audio into Audacity. Hope you enjoy my finished product!
Greatest Hits
Because uploading to SoundCloud was an infringement of copy rights, I had to upload it right to my blog. The assignment was to pick a band and create a mash-up of what we believe to be their greatest hits. For mine I chose the Arctic Monkeys. They’ve been one of my favorite bands for years now and I swear they just keep getting better and better. I used some new and old songs for this mix.
The 5 songs I chose in the order that they are playing are:
1) Do You Wanna Know
2) R U Mine?
3) Why’d You Always Call Me When You’re High?
4) Florescent Adolescent
5) I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor
I used YouTube to MP3 converter to download the songs and then uploaded them into Audacity. I trimmed them down and merged them. I also added a fade effect in between songs. I’m starting to actually understand Audacity! Here’s a picture of what it looks like in Audacity.
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Jennifer Ralston Interview
What a privilege to get to meet the sound editor for the Wire! She really shares how audio is under appreciated and how it can be a powerful storytelling technique when you give it the attention. It’s pretty impressive that she’s done other shows and movies like The Big Lebowski.
I thought it was really interesting how she explained when she wants something to sound quiet, turning the sound down is not how you want to achieve that, but rather focusing on the sounds that you couldn’t hear unless it was really quiet. I never really thought of that before when watching TV.
In The Wire, there are also very few music ques which makes them really stand out because Jennifer seldom plays songs in the series. Reading into this, the creator David Simon is opposed to manipulating the audience into feeling emotions because of these music cues.
Jennifer, in her interview really shows us how when you listen to the audio The Wire there’s all these little details you would miss when you’re so focused on the videos. For example, when she talks about a baby crying and dogs barking in the middle of the night, you get the sense that the setting takes place in a scene with a bad neighborhood.
Great interview and insight to what creating audio is really like!
Commenting
http://internet.labrumfield.com/help-me-im-poor/#comment-1228
http://ds106.meredithfierro.com/blog/assignments/mashup-to-imagine-dragons/#comment-17
http://blogs.jessicareingold.com/ds106/assignments/ds106radiobumper/#comment-67
http://www.dniepokoj.com/assignments/my-morning-in-sounds/#comment-225
Radio Show Ideas
I think it would be really neat if we all created a bumper together or strung together bits of one we had now. OR just play each of our bumpers periodically throughout the show since a lot of people have done and they’re pretty impressive from what I’ve seen!
We could also make character specific audio clips or bumpers for each of our favorite characters using their voice and other sounds. Or play a song that reminds us of a specific character.
I feel like it’s also possible to make some kinda of radio game like trivia.
I’ll have to keep putting some thought into this!
Happy Blogging friends <3
