I dread those meetings with my editor. She is rather harsh. Just the way she looks down on me.

I have a new manuscript for her to review.

I just cannot predict how she will react.

This was our last meeting.

This is my go at a new ds106 Sound Effects Story:

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.

As a change up, I opted to use sounds from a few Twilight Zone episodes I had downloaded for some other assignment work:

• A World of His Own
• Time Enough at Last
• The Inaders

All of which were available (or a portion thereof) on the YouTube. I started by skimming each episode in video, and taking notes of what segments there were between the dialogue that I could extract as sound (if I were smarter, I might have noted the time in the clip the segment started), so my notes were:

A world of his own

  door close
  elephant/woman screaming
  rummaging papers in safe

time enough at last
  typewriters and chatter
  paper snatched
  bomb
  wind blowing climbing through debris
  horn honking
  running, wind blowing

The Invaders
  spaceship
  space man buzzing/woman screaming
  smashing ship
  


And I just mixed and matched til I found a theme, a fair bit of sounds of paper being ruffled or snatched, and then the loud noises. I somehow got the idea of a very angry editor, and what old Hank Bemis Budding Author might have felt tip toeing in with a new draft, and knowing the ripping he would get.
So I then had an outline for my story:

Use these segments

  door close
  typewriters and chatter (background)  
  rummaging papers in safe
  paper snatched
  elephant/woman screaming
  smashing ship
  wind blowing climbing through debris


I imported each clip into Audacity (free tip, you can import .mp4s and you get just the sound track) into one file, and then used that as a source to find the clips, and copy/paste to my working file. I snipped out some spoken segments, did a bit of level boosting, and snatched out some bits (door closing) to move elsewhere. Here is a snap of my  work space:

(click for for size view)

I use trims a lot, and the time shift tool to move clips laterally in time. It’s also recommended to pay attention to the starts and ends of short clips, using the fade-in / fade-out to smooth out any abrupt cuts, and as well to use layering of sounds to mix them together.
The woman’s screams (Victoria in “A World of His Own”) are a bit erotic, and maybe in a different story, the editor might be enjoying Hank’s script.
But it’s a long walk home from those meetings. you might feel like yelling “Where is Everybody?”
		

Audio assignment #70

I downloaded the sound effects to create this from freesound.org/ I got the idea to this from a movie I just happened to over hear while I was surfing through channels on tv. Though I didn’t really see what was going on in the movie I heard some sounds like these which let my imagination run wild as to what was going on in the movie.

This week we had to create a 5 sound audio story using nothing but sound effects. I had to go through quite a few tutorials for these.
I recorded the sounds myself on my phone and then uploaded them to my laptop which meant a roundabout route through my pc using my partners camera. That nearly drove me nuts. I had to take the sd card from my phone and put it in her camera adaptor, then put it in my camera and upload it to the laptop. I used a file converter to change them from amr to mp3 and then I imported them to audacity. Then I played around with them until I got a story. I didn’t want to do too much with it because I was eager to get on to the bumper. Then I exported it as an mp3 and uploaded it to soundcloud so I could put in in the blog.

The next assignment was to create a 30 second bumper for a podacst or radio show. Bumpers are those pieces in between music or talking which advertises the show to the listener. Again, I had to go through the whole rigmarole with the phone. I really should get a mic for the laptop. I found some background music on Incompetech and some sounds on freesounds.org. One thing I did notice was that there was a huge difference between what I could hear on my headphones and what I could hear on the speakers. Also, I learned how to clean up the audio, but that was after I had it edited, so it was to late.