Original DS 106 Assignment: Fictional Radio Ad (4 1/2)

Avery is on her way home from another 12 hour shift at work. She’s tired of hearing the same music she has on shuffle, while she does love it, everything just feels monotonous. Instead of taking her regular route to work, she goes the long way, willingly sitting in traffic just to be out of the house a bit longer. She turns the radio to a random station that doesn’t have an insane amount of static.

Step 1: Make a script. The key to making this idea come to life is to have your main points written out. This is what radio hosts actually do/get, main points to mention and make sure the audience hears. While it is “scripted” some of the best radio hosts are also good at improvising. For this, I did my script on the sticky notes of my laptop, so while I was recording I was able to read off there.

Step 2: Record! I like to start off with recording the main audio that other tracks are going to be under so I can begin to set the tone for how I want the ad to hear. I like to record on Audacity because it is a free resource and there’s a lot of tutorials online on how to manipulate the software.

Step 3: Find audio to emphasize the message you are trying to get across. The theme for this is to be a radio ad, and as in the assignment description, there is usually music playing in the background lightly. I used freesound.org to get audio that I feel would fit. I decided to look for pop sounds/pop music which is usually playing on the radio stations that I listen to.
Step 4: Import audios into audacity. On Audacity go to File > Import > Audio. Slide and lower the audio when it is appropriate. I imported a pop music audio and slide it to the end. I added the “Fade In” effect to make the song start towards the end of the original audio. That’s mostly how I remember radio ad’s so that’s how I want it to sound.
Step 5: Repeat with all audios until you are satisfied. With this ad, I wanted to keep the audio as the focus since it would be a part of the overall story so it did have some background audio during the ad, but nothing that would take away from the message.

Step 6: Export! This will allow you to save it to your computer and upload to other medias to share. For embedding purposes, I am uploading it to Soundcloud so it’s easier to be accessed by other people.

Here is my first radio commercial, which I will also use for my group’s project. It’s for paint thinner. It took me way too long because I’m only just re-figuring out Audacity, which is software I used a little bit years ago. But now…… Not so confident.

I’m not using Soundcloud because I don’t like the lack of privacy, this stuff is only for Ds106, not for anybody else to view.

The movie Super 8 Revolves around a group of kids making a movie with the intent of submitting it into a film festival. The movie is supposed to be an action packed zombie movie. I decided to make an ad that the kids would have made. I decided to make it sound like a low quality ad, where the kids didn’t really know what to say going into, because that is kind of how they act in the movie.

4.5 Stars

I decided to use this assignment to help me in my group radio project. I decided that an add for the college would be cool to bring back as we discuss 80’s music and culture.

I tried to learn more information about Mary Washington College during the 80’s, but I couldn’t find a whole lot about what programs were there as well as the culture of the campus.

Overall, I like this ad, but I feel like it could have been better if I had all the information about MWC during the 80’s.

This assignment served a couple of purposes the week. I used it first as part of the 10 stars required this week in Audio Assignments and also as a possible commercial for my group’s radio show next week.

Creating the commercial was really easy. I recorded myself talking into the Voice Memo app on my iPhone and then uploaded the recording to my computer where I transferred it to Audacity. I also used the Voice Memo app to record some music to play as the intro and end of the commercial.

The commercial focuses on my group’s radio show theme: spies and reality or fiction and is designed as means to make people interested in tuning in to listening next week!

For my first audio assignment of the week I decided to create a commercial tailored to what’s really called Top Golf, but I changed the name to something less cool. I am actually disappointed with this assignment because any video I had, all had sound and I couldn’t figure out how to turn the sound from the video off so my voice over wasn’t being over powered. I tried this 4 times with 4 different videos. When I finished editing on the app “Go Play”, the preview had no background sound, but as soon as I exported it the sound in the back came on. So honestly that was really frustrating. But I left the fourth take how it was because I don’t think the background noise takes away from the message too much, so I’m okay with it. I used Go Play to slow my video down, voice memos to create my sound, and then I went back in the app and imported my sound. I could’ve done the sound directly on the app, but I like voice memos because you can trim it easier. Creating a better commercial won’t be as hard if I could just do it on Soundcloud and have my voice over and maybe even add some music, but for this assignment the video needed to go with it so I included it. Given the difficulties, I still tried to make this work and sometimes technology just doesn’t cooperate. My advice to anyone else who tries this is to use a video that has no sound on it or trying to find a way to silence the video before adding voiceovers. Here is my commercial below. This assignment was 4.5 stars.

For my second audio assignment this week I decided to keep the momentum going and chose to do an assignment that allowed for me to create content for my radio show, “Girl Power”. Fictional Radio Ad is a four and a half star assignment that asked individuals to create a fictional radio of their choosing for a company. I thought this assignment was perfect due to the fact within our radio shows we need numerous commercials. So I got to work.

I, like all other audio assignments, used audacity to create my commercial. I first began to think of different commercials I could make, I didn’t want to be redundant and I didn’t want to be boring, plus I had to keep in mind the theme of my show. That’s when the perfect commercial hit me. I decided to advertise the hat Perry the Platypus otherwise known as Agent P wears when on secret agent missions. However I added a twist. We all know Perry is a male so I decided to have him sell female versions of his hat to establish the idea of equality. I thought this was perfect idea to fit our theme and incorporate women even more into the secret agent theme. Essentially you could look at the hat as a gadget necessary for succeeding as an agent.

I created my ad through audacity and started with an intro song which happens to be Agent P’s theme song. I recorded the sound and then faded it out so I could come in and introduce the product and all that it has to offer. From there I then faded out my voice and faded in the theme song again to ultimately end the commercial. Once I finished creating my audio I saved it as an MP3 and uploaded it to Soundcloud with my cd cover. I was pretty satisfied with my commercial. I wanted to create something useful for our show “Girl Power” and was happy that I could tie in another secret agent, even if it wasn’t a girl. I think by using Perry we are sharing this idea of diversification in the secret agent theme. Having a male agent create a female product is awesome and should happen more.

Overall I was glad I was able to stick with our theme and combine worlds. I found the overall assignment challenging and relied on my creativity to get me through it. I know two of my group mates created commercials that promoted the upcoming Nancy Drew movie and a spy school. So upon hearing that I wanted to create a commercial that would work for our theme, that being females, but also be different from their’s ultimately bringing variety to our show. So I decided to advertise gadgets or spy equipment. I think I did a decent job and am happy our show “Girl Power” is getting kick started!

My first ever audio assignment, I created a business for Titleist to simply help and train young people. I used an old video on my phone and I used a sound editing app called GoPlay to put my voice over of my business and slow down the video so I could speak. I then uploaded this to YouTube. I chose Titleist because I love their company and I personally golf with all of their products. I found a video that could go with this passion and I put it all together. I hope it came out effectively! Check out my video here: (4.5 stars)

For the first assignment I started working on and the second one I posted about/ finished, I created an ad to use during our radio show. I used the Fictional Radio Ad (4.5 stars( instructions to create it. We divided up our group into people who were going to create an ad and people who were going to create a bumper. I chose to do an ad. I started thinking about what type of ad would relate to Ella, and then I remembered that she is in her last year of secondary school and would be looking at uni’s. I thought it was a great opportunity to create an ad for a fictional uni. I also was thinking that I would choose a university that has some witch-y aspects. I decided on a university for Psychic Sciences, that would have a lot of witches in attendance. At first, I was going to make the university in the UK, but then I decided that I could add a plot point to Ella’s story by putting the uni in the US.

I decided on the name because there is a college for Psychic Sciences in the UK called Arthur Findlay College. At first, I remembered it as King Arthur College, and wanted to make the female equivalent. At first I thought King Arthur’s queen was Queen Gwendolyn, so that is how the name came to be… I wanted the ad to mention the Psychic Sciences and only hint at there be extra magic there. I am currently working on creating a profile for the school to use in Ella’s story, and I am thinking that the school may not accept anyone who is not a known witch. For the actual story, I adjusted the name back to Queen Guinevere’s College.

To create the ad, I first recorded myself saying the different parts of the ads in iMovie, pausing where I wanted to add sound effects. Then, I looked on YouTube Audio Files for a song that would work well in the background. I ended up choosing English Country Garden. Then, I wanted a sound effect for after I say magical, so I went back to YouTube Audio Files to find a magical sound effect. This time I decided on Magic Chime and cut it for the part I wanted. I then cut the English Country Garden track and put the magic chimes in after I said the word magical. I then lengthened the amount of background noise at the end and slowly decreased the volume so that the ad would not stop abruptly. I also made sure there was intro music in the beginning. Once I liked the sound of the ad, I downloaded it from iMovie. I then uploaded it to SoundCloud. The assignment said to upload it to YouTube, but it made more sense for the project to use SoundCloud. I found the image of Google Images.

I scrolled through many audio assignments that had at least three stars until I found one that caught my eye: a fictional radio ad. I was immediately drawn to it because of the picture of Charlie Brown, and I loved the video! I decided to go with the theme of Magic School Bus, and the only thing left to do was to tie it in with a story I have read for the class.

I initially wanted to connect it with The Road since that was my favorite story from this class, but I found that Finis tied in easier. I attached the concept of the end of the world by a new sun into selling an apocabus that would save the buyer from any form of the apocalypse. I tied in a few quotes, such as “the last dawn human eyes will see,” and mentioned the avoidance of going down with Eastwood and Alice.

Once I decided on what I would do my advertisement on, I found this project fairly easy. I am getting used to the Audacity interface, and I just used a YouTube video for the video itself, which I combined with my audio on iMovie. I would do this assignment again, although I wish it was 5 stars instead of 4.5 so I would meet the five star requirement in one post!