This is the required sound effects story assignment, worth 3 1/2 points.

I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t think I realized just how far one can push a story with sound effects alone. The hardest part was determining a topic. I struggled for a while and didn’t know where to begin. I decided to listen to a random effect on freesound and build a narrative with that as my starting off point. The sound I landed on was a car driving away. I decided to create a subtle, melancholy story where a man watches someone important drive off while he’s left to himself. He sighs, listens to the chimes outside as the car slowly drifts off. Then he goes inside, sits down in his rocker with a big exhale and turns on the television. It’s simple and perhaps not as ambitious as it could have been, but there’s a remarkable amount of content going on here, even as simple as it is.

The one required audio assignment this week was “Sound Effects Story”, and it had to be completed in relation to our characters. The prompt states: Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds hat you find online. The story can … Continue reading Click, Clack, Crash… the Many Sounds of “Jewel”

This is my short story created by sound effects about my character Margaret Pinuat, I hope you enjoy:

In this story created by sound effects I used 10 different sounds. I used:

• Foot steps in the woods
• Front door opening
• Whisking batter
• Oven opening and closing
• Man eating
• Man choking
• Phone dialing
• Police sirens
• Woman crying
• Rain

These different sounds go along with my character because these are the sounds used when she kills her husband. It starts with her going to the woods to grab some poisonous berries. Then she comes home and starts making the batter for her cake. Throws it in the oven and then when it comes out she serves it to her husband for dessert, he thinks it is just any old cake but comes to find out that it is poisoned, before he could do anything he starts choking. With her plan working perfectly, she calls the cops in distress making it seem like he is having a heart attack. The cops are close to the house and when they come in they find her crying over his dead body. Not to make the story any more gloomy of course it has been raining the whole day!

Hope you can picture that story with the sound effects used!

For my last audio assignment I did the “Sound Effects Story” assignment worth three and a half points. For this I used my character, Jack Spencer, as inspiration. I decided to give you a glimpse into a typical morning for Spence. In my sound story the listening will hear Spence’s soft snoring before his alarm goes off and he gets in the shower. He is then interrupted, as usual, by a call from the office. He promptly rushes to work through the unrelenting Chicago traffic. Just another average morning.

Here is a link to the original assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/sound-effects-story/

Okay, so the Sound Effects Story Assignment is officially my least favorite DS106 assignment thus far. Probably because I couldn’t come up with a good idea and had thus procrastinated up until now, but STILL; THIS WAS HARD! It was super complicated to layer the sounds one on top of the other and keep it under 90 seconds when there’s so much of a story to tell. I feel like I didn’t quite do Cat justice, but here’s the assignment nonetheless.

This little bit of soundbite captures a typical Friday morning for Cat. Later in the evening, she heads down to Giorgio’s to bare her soul to the city through the mask of her lyrics, but since I couldn’t go over 90 seconds, I couldn’t quite capture all I had dreamed up. Therefore, you just follow her through the monotonous routines of her morning; reluctantly waking up, showering, frying up a breakfast. As she meanders out into the kitchen to do so, she opens the over-the-sink window to let the sounds of the hustle and bustle in with the hopes that, along with the coffee it might wake her up. Finishing up, she heads out the door to face another day, locking the door of her apartment behind it while simultaneously locking up her heart and adopting her usual “I’m fine” facade. Note, however, that she never did close the window, perhaps with the eternal hope that the other half of it might flutter back in.

I definitely found the sound effects story assignment to be difficult and challenging – but of course in the best way, as ds106 assignments always seem to be.

First, I took some time to figure out the story I wanted to create. In order to find inspiration I simply clicked around freesound for a little bit. After exploring what it seemed to offer, I decided that I would include running – because in noir there’s always drama – and then the rest seemed to fall in place. Developing the story was interesting because I knew it had to be focused around sound, which really limits what you can do and requires a plot that is heavy on distinct sounds. Luckily, if you remember correctly about Damon, his income comes from a successful dog walking business. I knew this was the perfect opportunity to incorporate the dogs into a character assignment.

I was really impressed with what freesound had to offer. I did not expect to have results when i searched ‘car window,’ but there was actually a wide variety of sounds to sort through and choose from. One of the biggest time-consuming aspects of this project was definitely listening to the various sounds and trying to decide what would work best in my story.

Then came Audacity. I actually felt pretty confident working with Audacity at this point when it came to cutting and editing sounds together, since I got some experience earlier this week. For this assignment, I went a little further and focused on layering sounds, so rather than one sound simply leading into the next, I actually was able to put them on top of each other so it sounded like it actually would when it happens in real time.

The finished result, I think, tells a pretty interesting story. I was proud of being able to capture a couple different noir aspects into this sound effects story.

For the sound effects story, I created Johnny “Corner Pocket” McCormick walking into Corner Pockets Bar and going in the back room to play a game of pool. All of these sounds are from freesound.org. I tried to make the background noise in the bar simmer down once he entered the back room to make it seem like he was in an exclusive pool room. This was a fun but challenging assignment since you could not use any dialogue to tell the story.

 http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/sound-effects-story/

The Sound Effects Story which is worth 3.5 stars was rather difficult but fun.  Our task was to make a story about our noir character with using only sound effects. The story that I told was Caleb’s life at the end of a work day. All the sounds I used were found on my mixcraft software. To start off you will hear him typing on the computer. He is getting the last bit of work done before he could leave. The next thing is the town bells. He hates the traditions of his little town so be shuts the window when they start to chime. Then his phone rings but sense he will be off any minute now he turns it off and does not answer it. Due to the fact he does work at the police station there is police cars driving around outside and he then walks down the stairs. Of course he lights a cigarette and gets in the car to go home. When he reaches the house he goes in and makes himself some scotch, lights another cigarette and checks the computer. After he finished off the bottle he brushes his teeth and heads to bed. Not a very eventful night for sheriff Caleb but at least he made it to his own bed tonight.

For the “sound effects story” assignment (3.5 pts), the only things I could use were sound effects to tell a story about my character, Sasha Kellogg. I used Audacity to mesh the sounds together, which was a lot easier than I expected. I decided to recount Sasha’s morning routine, because a day-to-day routine tells a lot about a person. She wakes up to a buzzer alarm (something I will never do because it puts me in a bad mood), and immediately makes breakfast. While her breakfast is just a piece of toast, she thinks it is important to eat something in the morning before work. She heads out the door and drives herself to work (yes, she is an independent woman who drives herself). When she gets out of her car and walks into the office, her steps are quick; she doesn’t drag her feet because she is usually perky and ready for the day. Finally, she reaches her seat, puts paper into her typewriter, and starts her day as a secretary at a newspaper company.

While some of the sounds I used for this assignment were fairly simple and easy to find (on freesound.org), some were harder. There are actually 10 sound effects in this story: the alarm, toaster, door, footsteps, car starting, car parking, background typewriter noises, the squeaky chair, fitting paper into a typewriter, and Sasha’s typewriter. The noise for parking a car included opening and closing the car door, so I was going to use the same sound for the car door at either end of her drive to work. The problem was that there was a bird chirping in the middle of the door noise, while there were no birds at her house, so I had to find a different car door for the beginning. There are also two different typewriter noises: the ones in the background and Sasha’s typewriter. I had to makes sure the background noise didn’t cover up the sound of Sasha putting paper in her own typewriter and starting to type. Additionally, the sound of the footsteps sounded too monotone, so at one point I sped up the track to make it sound like Sasha was walking up stairs (as is usual for an office building).

This story is necessarily slightly incomplete. In someone’s morning routine, they dress, take showers, do their hair, put on makeup (for some people), etc. Part of the reason that changing clothes, doing hair, and putting on makeup were not included was because these are relatively quiet activities that are not conveyed effectively with sound effects. The reason I did not include the noise of a shower and hairdryer is because I had to stay under 90 seconds for the whole narrative and wanted to include walking into the office. Additionally, I wanted to focus on those aspects that were specific to Sasha (I hope most people take showers before work). Likewise, these sounds are not the actual length they would be in real life (it takes Sasha longer than three seconds to drive to work, and she does not walk out the door directly after making toast) because that would be impractical. What I did include were the most important aspects of Sasha’s morning routine that convey her personality.