Teezee Reference
For this assignment, I was tasked simply to find an audio clip from a show or movie outside of the Twilight Zone. It was a no brainer which show I was going to find a clip from. The Office is my absolute favorite show. I watch it when I’m happy, sad, angry, bored – literally any mood you can think of honestly. I decided to pick a clip that would be easily recognizable. I chose the First Aid scene:
Star: 2 1/2 stars
Back when Friends was the best show on TV (and still playing) I was pretty young, and loved to watch the show with my parents. Of course my parents made me cover my eyes when the intimate scenes would happen. Ross was my 2nd favorite character besides Joey. This was one of my favorite scenes of the show all time, and my family and I still use the sandwich joke to this day.
Ross being a kid over his coworkers eating his thanksgiving day leftover sandwich
I was part of a radio broadcast both in high school and college so I have some experience as far as being a DJ but not as much when it comes to producing a taped and scripted radio show. I noted that in the specs it says we should create a piece that’s equal to 5 minutes times the amount of people we have – 40 minutes is a long broadcast! Anyhow, I like the idea of perhaps exploring the idea of time travel (perhaps because I just saw the Stephen Hawking movie in which he speculates about the nature of time). That’s just an idea. It seems to be that radio interviews are the easiest to produce (and similar to what I do every day) while radio dramas are the most difficult simply because of the nature of scripting, the number of different people involved, along with the sound effects and sound elements that go along with it. However, if its a well-scripted suspense or adventure story (like the Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone radio shows linked through the Internet archives), the number and importance of sound effects is less, though the need for a strong script and good characters is much greater. In Rob Watson’s article , he describes the radio drama as an exercise in imagination – a theater-of-the-mind. It challenges us to use a very limited and simple set of tools to create our stories – just voice and other sounds. I found it interesting that he would then challenge us to go beyond the simple tools that we’ve been given and try to re-imagine how to create a radio drama. I suppose one way that modern radio drama could take advantage of new technology would be to use the kinds of effects that were never possible before – flange or echo effects – or ones that manipulate the voice to create a new kind of character or to instill mood or drama. In Ira Glass’s article , he also talks about simplification, but in this case, I vbelieve he is simply trying to save us from ourselves. I’ve seen it a million times at MSNBC, where new writers try to write in a way that makes them sound intelligent or uses big words and all it does is complicate when often is a simple story. The toughest thing to do sometimes can be to find a simple, conversational way to say something. In Ira’s article, he uses this same idea to encourage producers to find the human element of a story – in other words, the most relatable part. In the same way, our writing should be something that all of our listeners can easily understand.
Three audio assignments
Create bumper
Create commercial
Create foley sounds – from 1:31-2:00
This wasn’t too hard – interesting to see how so many of the sound effects are made. I was more comfortable making them myself then finding stuff to make the sounds. My son enjoyed watching this. For mine to line up, you have to start the video at 1:28.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/chaplin-lion-04
Ten stars worth of assignments
Soundboard conversation – 4 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1544 (http://www.soundboard.com/register.aspx)
Can’t Get it out of my Head – 2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1526
Did the whistling thing – pretty easy to guess I think, but maybe that’s because it is, actually, stuck in my right now.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/song-stuck-in-my-head
Being a Music Producer – 3 1/2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1179 (975-MASHUP)
I had an interesting idea to mashup Rage Against the Machine and CCR but it hasn’t worked out – yet. Having trouble figuring out how to mute and adjust speeds while trading off tracks.
Teezee reference – 1 1/2 stars – AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1117
I found a good Twilight Zone reference in Futurama. I downloaded it from youtube using the website, YouTube to MP3, then imported the download to Audacity, trimmed off the pieces I didn’t need, then uploaded it back to my desktop and then to soundcloud. Added a picture this time too.
https://soundcloud.com/jersey-murph/futurama-scary-door-short
So even though I’m a pretty cool cat I have a secret nerdy side and I really like the watch cartoons. Recently I’ve been watching Bob’s Burgers on Netflix, but obviously any cartoon fan knows about Cartoon Network’s Futurama, an animated science fiction series.
Anyways, I found the audio assignment to post a TV clip that references “The Twilight Zone,” and I immediately thought of the Futurama episode “The Scary door” which is total nerd awesomeness because it’s a science fiction cartoon spoofing a science fiction show, anyways here’s a clip from the episode:
Difficulty: 2 Stars
Find an audio clip from a show or movie outside of the Twilight Zone. See example from the Everybody Loves Raymond episode, “Standard Deviation.”
I liked this Audio Assignment. I found a Family Guy episode that references the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last.” I thought this was a really good example and perfect for this assignment. I found the video on Youtube then converted the video just to sound and uploaded it onto Soundcloud. It is embedded below through Soundcloud.
I’m fairly confident that the origins of Don Draper started with Martin Sloan from the Twilight Zone’s “Walking Distance” (S1E5)
Martin Sloan from “Walking Distance” (S1E5 of The Twilight Zone)
Martin Sloan is an ad man in New York City. Don Draper is an ad man in New York City. Martin Sloan is cracking under the stress and confused about his past (or nostalgic for it at least). Don Draper is cracking under the stress and confused about his past.
And then there’s Martin Sloan’s allusion to putting it all to an end.
Yesterday I just got in the car and drove. I had to get out of New York City. One more board meeting, phone call, report, or problem, and I would’ve jumped right out the window.
Mad Men’s falling man from opening credits
The falling man from Mad Men’s opening credits is such an iconic image now. It’s the first thing that popped into my head when Martin Sloan mentioned jumping out the window. I’m sure that’s the case because of all of the ad man front loading Rod Serling does at the beginning of “Walking Distance.”
Whatever the case may be, I decided to over-analyze the connections I made. I also decided to count the connection as an audio assignment. Specifically assignment #1117 although it doesn’t even fit the description really.
But I’m an open participant, and I do what I want!
Here’s a description of the assignment, which was created by Bowties and Skulls. “The assignment is to find an audio clip that references the Twilight Zone.”
My interpretation of Audio Assignment #1117: Find an audio clip from the Twilight Zone that references a TV show that didn’t even exist when the Twilight Zone episode aired.”
BOOM!
Submitted for your approval:
I’m sitting here with my girlfriend as she recovers from her wisdom teeth extraction watching her favorite show, Everybody Loves Raymond, and we hear this…
She looks at me and I look at her, and she says, “Ohhhhhh!” and I get the idea to create a new audio assignment.
The assignment is to find an audio clip that references the Twilight Zone. In this case we have the episode “The Invaders.”
Find an audio clip from a show or movie outside of the Twilight Zone. See example from the Everybody Loves Raymond episode, “Standard Deviation.”
