For the Radio Commercial assignment, we had to make a commercial we would put in a break in our radio show.  This is what I came up with:

I based it off a bunch of lawyer firm commercials I had seen.  The name Brooks and Brooks is based on the company Allen, Allen, Allen, and Allen in Fredricksburg.  The bangs at the beginning and end were directly based off some commercials I’d seen.  I feel they give a sense of urgency to the message, giving anyone in the situation of an accident immediate notice.  The music was meant to be melancholic, for giving hope in the face of adversity.  The monologue is meant to sound a bit shady, since lawyer firm commercials don’t usually ask for money directly.  I feel that fit the theme of our show of challenging the listener to think about what the words actually mean.

To make this project, I wrote a quick advert for the fictional company and recorded myself speaking it in Audacity.  Then I added the sound effects from freesound.org.  I had to adjust the volume on the tracks because my voice recording was much quieter than the other tracks.  I cut small portions of the tracks to add fluidity to the whole track.  The last thing I did was add a fade-out at the end of the music to make the transition to the bang a bit more seamless.

Here is the original assignment.

Commercials market services to potential customers. They are strategically placed between television shows and online videos. They are often short and catchy to influence the greatest number of people. 

I created a radio commercial of Zimmerman Services, a company that markets technological solutions to companies willing to compete in global markets. I kept the conversation in the commercial succinct, so to not overwhelm listeners with too many details. At the end of the commercial, a website was given for potential customers to visit to find out more about Zimmerman Services.

Here is the audio clip:

The backing track creates a slight sense of urgency/fear that might influence listeners to contact Zimmerman Services. Hearing ‘beep-boop’ sounds of robots continually makes the listener feel as though computers may be the only way to grow their business; and if they lack computer skills, they must contact an agency for assistance.

Process

To create this radio commercial, I used Audacity. I first wrote down a script that I would read into my microphone. I then recorded myself reading the script. I performed some editing of the recording; notably, I removed instances where you could hear me breathing, and I added a looping backing track.

To create the looping backing track, I used what is known as Cross-Fade. Cross Fade is when you have one audio clip fade out, overlaid with another audio clip that is fading in. This achieves the affect of a seamless transition between two audio clips. You can see in the above image how I used two tracks to implement cross fade, each one fading into and out of the other.

I hope this commercial is able to convince you to tune in to the Grumpy Desperados October radio show. We he have some wonderful things in store for you. Spooky stories, fashion suggestions, a history lesson and information about all of the wonderful events going on throughout town. The 9 Lives radio show is the best around and will give you biggest scares this Halloween.

As you can see, this is my commercial for the 9 Lives radio show. I hope it was able to spook you and scare you a bit. I didn’t add those ghosts wailing or that that cat screeching for nothing. I found creating this commercial a bit more difficult than some of the other audio assignments I’ve completed. I just found it hard to get the tone of the commercial to be perfect, so I added some scary sound effects to help with that.

After recording my voice in Audacity, I added all of the sound effects and used the Time Shift Tool to rearrange them in the order than satisfied me.

I then used the Selection Tool to highlight the track that had the shutter audio and copied and pasted it multiple times to get bit of audio that you heard when I was talking about costumes and fashion. I also used the same tool to highlight the last bit of audio and used the effect Fade Out to help the audio end correctly.

For this Ds106 commercial I created a gun store commercial that would be perfect for someone, like our radio show characters, that is stuck in a zombie apocalypse. The inspiration for this commercial came from a college humor video called Girl’s Costume Warehouse. The guy that does this commercial is overboard and I felt like it would be great to be a little over the top as a gun sales man. I also thought that a crossbow that shoots crossbows that shoots knives would be perfect for Daryl from the walking dead. This commercial would also be perfect for my groups radio show were all the radio hosts are trapped in the radio station by zombies.

This was a 3.5 star audio assignment for Ds 106 titled “DS106 Radio Commercial” I did it by having an idea for a gun store and then getting a country style song from Garage band loops and then I recorded myself over the loop. I mainly improvised the speech for this commercial but I did think about the crazy weapon being a crossbow that shoots crossbows that shoots knives because its extremely ridiculous and would be very funny.

Here is a radio commercial for our upcoming radio show.  I grabbed the ax noise from http://www.freesound.org/people/PapercutterJohn/sounds/319989/ and the photo from Photobucket.

I hatched this idea while I was talking to my new friend Melissa https://twitter.com/melissam88273 about our radio show.

I turned up the volume on the ax chopping to be a little louder than my voice.  I altered my voice a little to make it sound altered as if to hide an identity.  This is to fit my radio host from earlier.  This assignment is 3. stars and is at http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/ds106-radio-commercial/.

I decided to do DS106 commercial for an audio assignment which is worth 3.5 stars. One of the requirement for this commercial is that it has to be something that need to be related to the host characters or to a movie character. I created the Magical Sphere diary which is a ping ball size sphere that  will record your feelings or thought . The best part of this device is that is voice activated so no one else can get into your diary ever again.

I decided to but a music that will be interesting, so I did not use a violin or a soft music. So I decided to put a music of a game which will give my monotone and flat voice a little bit more of life.

So for this assignment, and staying in the same vein as our radio show, I decided to mix old and new in this commercial for the King Fly Killer, a fly swatter patented in the 1900s. Here’s a newspaper ad for it! My roommate pointed it out to me in a book titled From Hearth to Cookstove, and I figured it would be a perfect thing to do a commercial for! Who doesn’t need a good old-fashion fly swatter?

Process:

Similar to my radio bumper, I kept things fairly simple. I recorded my voice first after writing down a quick script, and reduced the noise on that. Then I found a good fly noise from Freesound.org and cut that audio up so that I could have longer buzzes.

I knew I wanted to have the fly getting smacked, so I took the opportunity to take the last buzz, change the pitch in increments to be descending, and then adjusted the pitch again so it was altogether higher and more fly-like.

Then I found the smacking nosie at Freesound.org, cut out all but one of the smacks, and adjusted the pitch and speed to my liking.

Finally, I got Fig Leaf Times Two from Incompetech.com, placed it underneath, did a fade out on the seconds after my speaking ends, and then cut the rest.

I also adjusted the volume levels on the tracks themselves to make sure that what needed to be heard (my voice foremost, and the fly buzzing) could be heard.