This assignment was to create a ds106 radio bumper. When I got this assignment, I really did not know how show I create it. But after I listen to ds106 radio on Wednesday, it gave me some idea. I tried to make the beginning of the bumper more deep sound, which catch the listeners’ ears. However, I want ending to me more softer so it can have smoothly transition between bumper and the radio. I put my voice in the middle of it saying, ‘you’re listening to ds106 radio. Stay tone.’ It was really fun assignment and one of my best work! I really like what I’ve done. I hope you like it too.

Here’s my bumper.

DS 106 Radio Bumper

Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.

Story Behind the Story

When I first started this assignment I really didn’t know where I wanted to go with it. There are so many aspects of noir and digital storytelling that I had trouble narrowing it down. I know that it is a DS 106 radio bumper, but I really wanted to incorporate what we have learned about noir and it’s drama.

I have always heard the term femme fatale, but I never really went in depth about what it meant or how it could be portrayed, so I decided that was the aspect I wanted to incorporate. Now that I am more familiar with the term, I realize it is an iconic figure throughout history, not just in noir films or stories. She is a figure that yields so much power and isn’t always in the dominant position. At least with the couple of films and stories we have read so far, she seems to be the driving force behind deadly motivations, yet never the conductor. It is manipulative in a way that seems unintentional but at the same time diabolical. That is what noir is in my mind, and I wanted my radio bumper to be more of a warning.

Because I had an idea and no way of knowing how to portray it, I, with a little shame, admit to simply typing in “femme fatale” in youtube to get a sense of what kind of atmosphere I would need to create. I came across the song Femme fatale by the Velveteen Rabbit and immediately went to work. It was perfect. I really messed around with the pitch, tempo and echo effects.

This is one warning I would listen to.

Work Itself

Narrate the Process

Honestly, I just spend an obscene amount of time playing around with the effects in audacity. Once I had found my sounds: femme fatale, ticking clock, gun shot (because what would noir be without murder), and heavily editing voice.

I found these sounds on youtube and once again converted them into MP3 by using a simple program online.

It may have been the most frustrating process ever for a 29 second clip.

Bare with me y’all. I can’t help but sniffle through it. I’m incredibly sick! But I’m really happy how this turned out! Cute right? I love Frank and Fergie!

My idea for this radio bumper came from combining several sounds and elements. I noticed while listening to ds106radio that most of the bumpers caught my attention by using loud sounds in the beginning. So for this reason I started with music and gun shots. I also wanted to bumper to be like a mini story, so I added the door slam and the person running noises after the gun shots. Who is the person running? Are they running away from the gun shots or did they shot the gun? Maybe they were just an insentience bystander watching. All is up to the imagination. Once I got that part out of the way I added my ds106 plug, and closed it out with the same music as I started with.

This was interesting because it was fun to try to find a quote that I could use.  The one I used was from “Cesar A. Cruz”

Here is my radio bumper with a little noir like music to introduce DS106 radio.

Here is the radio bumper assignment that is 2 1/2 points.
I have a very soft voice and can usually make it sound creepy when I want to so I wanted to do that for the ds106 radio bumper. I started saying “ds106 radio” but I felt that I needed to add more to what I was saying. I then said “this is ds106 radio”. Both were okay but I wasn’t really liking either of them. I decided on the final result because I thought it sounded the best and was the most noir style bumper. The music I found was from freesound.org and can be found here. I wanted to use piano music because I feel that is has the best noir style and fit with my voice well. I also think that it sounds the coolest.
I had a couple problems getting the audio to export because it kept telling me that it would export as two different files. I ended up looking up different tutorials on YouTube and was able to solve my problems.
So, here’s my radio bumper.

Making a radio bumper is actually a lot more fun than I expected it to be! This assignment really pushed my creativity (like most assignments do in this class). I created my bumper using audacity, as well as sounds found on a freesound website. It took me a while to get everything to work the way I wanted, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

I started out with this music for the background. It sounded somewhat mysterious, which is what I wanted. I then put this on top of the background, and cut some of it out so it wasn’t too over powering. I also found some white noise directly on audacity which I used at one point.

Next I took a sentence from the theme of Courage the Cowardly Dog. I used it 3x, and slowed it down a little bit each of the times, for dramatic effect. If you have never seen this show, it is beyond creepy in all sorts of ways. Lastly, I recorded my voice saying “for DS106 radio, made it deeper (since I have a highish pitched voice and that didn’t work to well for the feel that I wanted for the bumper), and then put it at the end of the bumper. All and all, it turned out well. I am still getting used to audacity, and I am trying to go more in depth as I continue to do different projects.

Here is the final result!

Create a ds106 Radio Bumper 

So I chose to make a noir themed ds106 radio bumper, focusing on the suspenseful sounds of noir. Also I made my voice a lot deeper, because, in general, I don’t think women’s voices sound very suspenseful. I wanted to make it spooky sounding, which I think I was able to do, using the thunderstorm and the door slam. I didn’t have too much trouble completing this assignment, but I did struggle with coming up with an idea to spark my creativity. I was happy that I could incorporate some of the sounds that I used in my sound effect story here as well. I guess in the end I just threw a bunch of sounds into the mix and wanted to see what I could do with them and that is how I got this bumper.