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
