Here is my first audacity audio project, which I’m calling ‘armed robbery.’ It’s for the sound effects story assignment, in which we were to create a story using only sound effects. I decided to go along with my character, Cleo Barrow (a spin on Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde), on a bank robbery. To set the scene I start it off with idle chatter, then a gunshot! And people screaming and whining as the alarm bells are ringing. Then two pairs of feet running away as the bells fade away.

I didn’t catch on to audacity as easily as I thought I would, but I’m figuring it out, nonetheless. And navigating the freesounds site is proving difficult for me; maybe I’m being too picky in looking for sounds. It took up most of my time on this assignment. I had a hard time finding good screams; most were either horror-movie screams or sounded insincere. I’m still not too happy with the ones I found, but I couldn’t waste any more time looking for something I wasn’t going to find. Here’s a screenshot of my layering:

3 1/2 Stars

Walk through the morning with Veronica. From her alarm going off, getting dressed, walking down the street and into the lounge were she works.

I came up with this idea after listening to the example one for this project. I knew from the start I wanted the sounds of high heels as well as a band playing. After playing around a bit with Audacity and freesound.org I came up with this. For the most part it was easier then I thought. The hardest parts were finding the right types of sounds that I wanted and then having them over lap. There is a part were I had to loop the high heel sound while still trying to have her leaving the house (door noise) the street sounds and the entering the club (door noise again). All these sounds had to line up and be timed pretty good. Editing on Audacity helped with the fine tuning.

For this assignment, I had to pull together different sounds to create a story around my noir character. I found this assignment challenging but I nonetheless did it! To clarify the message I decided to write what was heard into a small story.

Layla couldn’t help but laugh. Seeing such a pathetic man cowering at her feet was enough to make her let out a chuckle. She nodded towards Nikolai beside the man and the Russian raised his gun. He leveled it at the side of his head and pulled the trigger, a loud sound echoing the room. Layla narrowed her eyes as he staggered, harsh breaths falling from his lips. Then, his eyes fluttered. He fell to the ground gracelessly, nearly touching Layla’s heels. Nikolai made an offhanded comment in his native tongue, causing her to look at him in confusion. The large man made a series of hand gestures as though he were telling a story in sign language. Finally, Layla nodded. She cast one final look at the body before turning on her heel and walking away.

These are a bunch of sound bites clipped together to make a very quick story assignment. Harvey decides to take a stroll through his vineyard to check the grapes and listen to the birds. When he gets back inside he opens a nice bottle of vino and takes a load off.

I know that it was recommended to use Audacity for the creation of this file but I actually thought that the interface on Garageband was more friendly. The area in where it let me down was timing. I was reading the beats as seconds and I went about another minute over budget. I had a really easy time manipulating the content of this audio file.

All in all, I used 14 separate sound bites and a couple of those were used multiple times. I wanted to give the sense that this person (Harvey Hait/my character) lives in a beautiful natural setting. He walks out his door and into a vineyard right away. The brief plucks (may seem like static at first) are Harvey’s grapes being pulled off the vine. He makes his way back inside when he goes straight for the wine rack then walks right back to the couch where he pours a glass. He proceeds to fix the cushion, sit down, roll a cigarette and light it.

I really enjoyed this assignment but only realized just now that I may have not incorporated noir aspects into the story. I look forward to developing this character in the way that I intended.

Please let me know what you think in the comments section below!

For this sound effects story, it was focused on Sebastian Crane’s drive to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he works. In my head, I wanted this to resemble a film in the way that time elapses between the cuts. So on this trip to work, the audience does not see every single thing Sebastian does on the way there; it would ideally have cuts that show the passing of time in a quick manner. I placed car sounds in the beginning to start the scene mid-drive. He hears a love song on the radio and quickly changes the station because he cannot stand love songs since they remind him of Margaret, his ex-lover. He then hears “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley and has it play louder since he really loves Elvis and this song. The choice of using “Hound Dog” can serve as his commentary about Margaret as well as it being an upbeat song that changes the mood for the audience. The song displays, at least to me, a confidence or tough attitude that Sebastian himself does have as one of his characteristics. In this set of shots with the diegetic song, it would then almost become non-diegetic as we would see Sebastian all of a sudden arrive in front of the Chronicle. He then turns off the engine, takes out the keys, shuts his car door, and walks around his car towards the building. We then cut to the interior where he is waiting for and elevator he then enters and travels up to the floor where he then exits (we can hear this in the footsteps that trail out of the elevator).

Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.

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

3 ½ Stars

This was a very challenging assignment getting acquainted with Audacity. I worked and worked and worked and couldn’t get much going on my own so I went to the trust old YouTube. Searched Audacity basics and got myself on my feet. I have created around a 20 second story for my character Gambino De Luca. Gambino we all know is a mobster and this 20 second story with no words fits him perfectly. It starts off on a winter day with birds chirping and snow falling and then turns to Gambino strutting through the snow. There are no words so we don’t quite know what Gambino is after but he is certainly up to something. As he is walking through the snow, cars are passing and then it gets interesting. A fight breaks out which involves Gambino but the listener is not quite sure why. Of course Gambino walks away scratch free and the 20 second sound effect story is ended with Gambino pouring himself a drink and taking a drag from a cigarette. Two things that everyone knows Gambino for. To be honest I found this very challenging and being my first audio assignment I completed, it is expected. I hope to get good with audacity and it will most definitely make the assignments to come much easier. I have posted the Sound effect story below. Enjoy!

Audio Assignment:

Sound Effects Story 3.5 ?

This assignment was the mandatory audio assignment of the week. To be honest I was very apprehensive about doing the assignments for this week. I’m not good at all when it comes to editing audio clips and everything like that. However, I found that using Audacity was extremely easy.

So this 90 second clip is a very short demonstration on what my character, Emma, has to do for her job. In this case there was a shooting and she’s there to take pictures of the crime scene.

For this assignment I downloaded Audacity and registered for Freesound. I found 5 different sound clips on Freesound that I thought would make a good short story. In this case it was a thunderstorm, a shootout, police sirens, a car door, high heels, and a camera flashing. I uploaded them all to Audacity and started to fiddle around with the program. After a while I figured out how to copy, paste, and mix all the sounds together just they way I wanted them. I downloaded the software that would let me save my file as a MP3 and then saved and uploaded it to soundcloud. From there I embedded it into this post.

This week one of our required assignments was to do the Sound Effects Story Audio Assignment for 3.5 stars. I had a lot of fun with this one. It was the first thing I did when I downloaded audacity. I know the digital knowledge center is a great resource and if I really do get stuck I plan on using it but so far I really feel like I’ve learned a lot by struggling through. It’s rewarding once I figure it out and I know I won’t forget it once I finally do. Audacity is definitely an adjustment but I’m happy with my first creation and I know they’re just going to get better throughout the week!

I am still working on developing Isabelle Franklin as a fully realized character. For this assignment, I tried to create a story that would be both easily recognizable but also show a certain level of routine that Isabelle adheres to. She’s stuck in her ways and not really trying to change that very much. She’s focused. Besides, that egg is so filling it’s no wonder she forgets to eat later in the day. I really liked the way the transition from waking up to moving to the kitchen occurs. You hear the footsteps descending down the stairs and then as if you’re teleported into another room you hear the door open. The silence between effects I think also emphasizes the fact that Isabelle is a bit of a lone wolf.  Her house is quiet but she’s content to be eating her egg for breakfast by herself.

The Sound Effect Story (worth 3.5 stars), is one that had to be connected with the character that we made a few weeks ago.  Mine is Lawrence Spitler and here is 90 seconds in his shoes…

If you couldn’t tell by the sound effects, this is a 90 second story of Lawrence after a “hit” (since he’s a hit man).  The first few seconds are in a crowded area and then suddenly he shoots (without being noticed, of course) which causes a woman to scream and a baby to cry.  He then walks to and gets in his car and drives away.  He begins fooling with the radio when multiple police cars and ambulances zoom by him.  He realizes he’s in the clear but speeds up and pulls off on an abandoned side road, takes a breath and empties his clip.  Although I couldn’t fit it in the 90 seconds, he then drives off to his house and has a good night’s sleep.

This was a fun assignment because I made my radio bumper first so I knew how to use Audacity.  This involved more thinking than I thought it would because I had to think about what story I wanted the 90 seconds to tell and then try to find the sound effect to match what I thought in my head.  I had fun thinking of what story I wanted to tell and I’m pretty satisfied with the end result.  The program is kinda hard to work with though in some aspects because if I imported an audio file then deleted it, the space where I had imported it didn’t go away so the next one I imported was really far down the page of all of my imports.  It’s not something I couldn’t deal with just something that I need to figure out how to improve as I continue editing audio files.