“Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.”

80’S Product Radio Commercial

I know creative people usually hate the question ‘where does your inspiration come from?’ and usually have a slew of witty answers to snap back. But in this case, I can kind of explain where the inspiration for this came from.

Well, first It might come as no surprise to you that I am indeed stressed. I am very busy at the moment and so are a lot of the people around me. At least four people I have talked to today mentioned stress eating, and I will admit that the amount of desserts I had tonight is not a usual number for me. I am not on my fourth cookie right now, no not at all. So a stress-eating product, from there it was just a short jump to gum and an even shorter jump to the product being very ironic and clearly an extremely bad idea.

I don’t know if you have seen unedited footage of a bear, but that is kind of the way I wanted this to go. I wanted this commercial to be not quite right. Between that and too many late nights stuck on infomercial channels, I was good to go.

I wrote the script and recorded it,

then it was time for the music.

Like the assignment description says, go 80’s. With such a specific and wonderful direction, I went for it. I looked for 80’smusic on free sound and found my clip. It was only thirteen seconds. That fact becomes important later.

I wanted the commercial to get progressively weirder and more uncomfortable as it went on, and what better way to do that than through music? (Turns out there is a better way, and I did that too, but for now, let’s talk music) Instead of looping the music cleanly, which I could have done, I made it glitchy and rough. It might not be super noticeable, but the music is definitely not quite right and that’s the feeling I wanted to convey.

Then for my favorite/least favorite part: the chewing. I was thinking about what kind of sound effect I could add in— and this was just too perfect to ignore. I started the sound off slowly and made it get louder and louder until it is impossible to ignore and quite difficult to listen to. I actually haven’t listened to the finished product more than I had to because the chewing sounds are very very gross.

Oh, and if you are new here to a bird’s string of thought, I edit audio on iMove, and it looks like the photo above.

In conclusion, I am so so sorry,

For this assignment, 80’s Product Radio Commercial, I had to make a commercial for a product from the 80’s. To create it I got the background music from Mixkit and recorded my audio on the computer. I put them together using SoundTrap.

I choose this assignment because it seemed like it would be fun to make a commercial, especially about something old and act like it was something brand new. There was some background static from my computer microphone, but I thought it added to the radio vibe of the commercial.

I looked up things from the 80’s, and since we’re doing sound the Sony Walkman stood out to me. Admittedly, this ad and its subject made me think of Guardians of the Galaxy, since a Sony Walkman was featured in it. When I was looking it up, I found out the movie seems to have sparked a small resurgence of Sony Walkmans. I also found the video below on YouTube, which was funny due to the title they put in the beginning (I named my post before finding it).

Made a commercial for Infocom, an interactive fiction company from the 80s. Uploading and updating ASAP! http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/80s-product-radio-commercial/

I decided to again have this Audio Assignment perform dual duty and not only encourage me to play with audio editing software but to also prepare for our upcoming Radio Show.
For this commercial I picked one of my favorite 80’s product (CareBears) and really pushed myself to try new things after feeling particularly inspired by one of my teammates commercials. I found the sound of the girls giggling and the door opening and closing on freesound.org and then adjusted the pitch of my voice for the little girl’s voice. Hearing my voice on recording is still weird and cringy but it’s getting easier and this was really fun to work on! My dad hated the CareBears – I can’t wait to play this form him later!

For the next audio assignment that I did for this week, I decided to make an 80’s Product commercial. I really wanted this commercial to connect to our radio show and keep the audience engaged. I decided to do a commercial about scrunchies since I thought it was fitting for our radio show.

I first typed up this long script for the commercial and worked on it for a little bit. I work on it for a little bit until I landed on the final script and was very happy with it. I then decided to record it.

I am starting to become very comfortable with recording my voice and starting to get really excited for recording this radio show!

I had lots of fun making this assignment as I had no idea Air Jordans were first launched in the 80s (blows my mind as they’re still very popular today). With a little research, I created my own script and recorded it using a voice memo. I then converted it into a WAV format so I can edit it in Audacity. I used the same sound or sick beat that I used for my bumper as I felt it went well with both my assignments. I cut the free sound to match with my length of voice memo and finally uploaded it as a WAV file. Here is my script: 

Why run when you can fly? With the new Air Jordans, you will be doing just that. These new sneakers will have you the flyest not just on the courts, but in the streets too. Inspired and designed by the best in the world, Micheal Jordan, you too can reach his level of potential with these shoes. You will obtain the fury of a bull, as Jordan does on the courts. Don’t settle for less, be extraordinary. Just Do It. 

Click here for the original assignment!

For this assignment, I decided to change it up a little to fit with my radio show “Around The World: 80’s Style!” Instead of using 80’s music to make a commercial I decided to use traveling sounds to create a commercial for the show. Since members in my group is doing a different country, I thought it would be interesting to have different sounds of traveling. I think this commercial would be a perfect segway to another country.

I found sounds of traveling at https://freesound.org/browse/ and used Audacity to record the sounds I wanted. Some of the sounds in this commercial are planes, trains, cars, and boats.

Today I had my first run in with audacity. It went well. I used it to create an 80s commercial for my 1st audio assignment of the week. I searched through ccMixter for some music that had an 80s vibe and found a track I liked to use for the background music. Then I went to the dinning room for some peace and quiet to record the script from the original commercial onto my phone’s voice recorder. I emailed the file to myself and layered it over the music clip I had selected. That’s all. I uploaded it to SoundCloud and presto! I hope you all enjoy it.