finalproject – Assignment Bank

How to: Draco’s Return

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I made this photo edit, inspired by the design assignment prompt, Are We There Yet?. I took two separate photos, the character Draco and what is supposed to be his home back in the Wizarding World. Because in the story, he left, I wanted to make an edit of him returning home.

How I made this edit:

I found the two images on Google Images.

I went over to the Adobe Photoshop Mix app and started a new project by clicking the + button on the top right corner and Image – On my iPhone.

I added the house photo first, then added Draco as the second layer, on top. I pressed the + button in the middle right side of the screen, Add a Layer – Image.

To get rid of the background of the picture of Draco, I used the Cut Out Basic Eraser tool.

After the editing, I saved the photo to my Camera Roll. Done!

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How To: Night Out in Sound Effects

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Another digital media that I put together is an audio clip with sound effects, which I used to tell a scene of my story. I loosely followed the guidelines from the Sound Effect Story audio assignment prompt. I used around 9 or 10 sound effects and audio clips. This sound effect story is supposed to represent a scene where my two main characters go out of town and took a train ride to a restaurant for dinner.

How I made this audio clip:

To find the different sound effects, I went to freesound.org to download.
Once I gathered all of the sound effects, I went to the sound program, Audacity to import them in order.
To listen and edit one audio at a time, I muted the audio that I am not currently working on.
When the audio is muted, it will be gray, and the audio that is on will be blue.
For some of the audio like the restaurant ambiance, or the walking sound effects, I would either make it slowly fade out or fade in. To do this, I went to Effect – Fade Out/Fade In.

I also cut out parts that I did not want by highlighting the audio and deleting. Then I used Cut and Paste to move the audio to play after one another, so it does not overlap.
After I made all the edits I wanted and fixed minor details, I played the whole audio over once or twice.
When I am finished, I clicked File – Export – Export Audio.

To change the .wav audio file, I right clicked on the audio and clicked Encode Selected Audio Files. I left the Encoder as High-Quality, which changed the audio from .wav to a .m4a file. Then I uploaded it on SoundCloud, Ta- Da!

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– long awaiting –

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It’s barely morning when she wakes up. The sounds of the outdoor world penetrating through her windows softly. She finds comfort within the confines of her house, away from the rustle and bustle of the city she sees from her window. Her daily routine she finds safety in all of it’s perfection:

She prefers to wake up in the afternoon surrounded by the technology she dedicates her life to. She will lay there for what feels like hours before a nagging voice in her head tells her to get up and showered. She takes a peak outside and graciously greets the day before making a cup of milk tea and a breakfast of only a Nutella covered bagel. She takes what’s left of her tea back to her cave.

She turns on her PS4; the dominant system in her opinion. Some days she feels like divulging in 10…or maybe 12 hours of Final Fantasy X, other days it’s Dynasty Warriors. A quick look at the window and she realizes it’s dark and she’s forgotten to stuff her face. A microwaved Hot Pocket, cup of sweet tea, and some quality time with the humble folks of Tumblr is honestly a great ending to any evening…but what if there’s more to life? She looks outside once more and her mind begins to soar. Anxiety grows. Is it really that awful to go outside and partake in mild interactions? Maybe…not? She then decides. Tomorrow.

– long awaiting –

The morning comes. She lays in bed though not as long as she would prefer. She dresses, rather quickly with what she figures is anticipation. Or was it anxiety? She’s not sure at this point. Shoes on and keys in hand, she walks out of her comfort zone into an unknowing world. She plays off the fear well; humming to keep herself sane. At some point she stops and looks up. She’s found herself at a rather sarcastic yet adorable café with the most obvious name: Cafe de Introverti.

She walks in and holy crap, it’s busy. She disregards the chatter and heads straight to the register as she mentally prepares her order in her head and repeats it over and over and over…until the cashier greets her warmly. She orders the same drink she makes at home, a London Fog Latte along with her favorite pastry, a simple donut. With the painful yet pleasant exchange, she pays silently and immediately heads towards a nearby table to await her goods. There’s an aesthetically pleasing magazine conveniently placed on the table of her choice and she flips through looking for an article that catches her eye. She stops for a moment. This isn’t home. This is everything she feared and more. She’s done it. An anxious breath and and a pair of headphones later, she maneuvers her phone to create a playlist for this experience which she calls “Long Awaited.”

Tutorial List

long awaiting (sound effects story) | cafe de introverti (promotional flyer) | cafe de introverti – long awaiting – (mixtape)

Taylor

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Final Project and Final Week

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This class I think has been pretty interesting and it was a lot of work but it was enjoyable work. I’m glad to see it come to an end but going to miss the cool things I got to learn at the same time. For my final project, I decided to do a love story based on multiple assignments in the assignment bank but also coming up with my own ideas to make the project better. For starters, I chose to do the assignment “Love at First Shot.” Now with this assignment is a visual assignment, and I built my love story off of. The assignment is to find a picture online of a couple and come up with a story for it. I instead chose to choose multiple “lovey” pictures and build a whole love life off of it in a story of Mike and Maria. The second assignment I used was “Have a Phone Conversation with Yourself.” Now for this, I tried to get my audio out of the way but I actually ended up doing audio for the whole thing so that plan didn’t work. I used audacity to edit the voices and change the pitches to sound like a man vs woman. At some parts in the movie, the audacity kept acting up or maybe it was something on my computer that I couldn’t figure out but it would get super high pitched in some places and I pretty much had to record things multiple times to try to make it as least terrible as possible. The third assignment I used out of the assignment bank was the “Welcome to Paradise” writing assignment. For this assignment, instead of writing it down in a blog post, I spoke out my dream vacation as if it was the honeymoon that Mike and Maria were going on. I spoke of who and what I would want to take to the beautiful location and what my location would look like.

For the rest of my final project, I used different aspects of the course to compile everything together to make my movie of Mike and Maria. I used iMovie on my Mac to put it all together. I learned how to add sound effects and transitions. I even added a movie into my movie to add the video portion of the assignments in there. As mentioned in the week 13 assignments, I found this cool way to add a map into my movie so I did that too. Overall, I think my final project turned out way better than I expected (minus the audio problems every now and then) and I’m pretty satisfied with it. I think I learned more in trying to create this final than I realized I learned all semester because I was finally putting everything together.

Final Project

As for my summary of the week, I think it went pretty well. I am satisfied with my work and my time management of the project. I think everything went smoothly (besides the audio part of course) and now it is time for my to create my daily creates, tutorials, and assignments.

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Final Project: The Blue Girl

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On a windy Wednesday evening, in another galaxy, on a planet called Triste, a little girl was born. She was the length of a human forearm, very plump, had green eyes and a huge smile. She was a healthy, happy girl named Olive. But there was something about her that drew the attention of media from all around Triste, something that made her parents gasp in horror the moment they saw her. She was born blue.

News article covering the story:

BREAKING: Blue Baby Born at Triste National Hospital

(3.5 stars)

Word of her existence was carried by the wind, it swept in and out of homes and terrified the entirety of Triste, which is about 1/50 the size of Earth, to compare. Her parents were the most concerned, what went wrong? All the hopes they had for their expected daughter were suddenly questioned, they wanted a normal little girl, instead they didn’t think they’d ever see her get married because “who would want to marry a girl with blue skin?” After thinking about it, they decided they would keep her, but raise her with skin the color of theirs: pale white. Every morning they would paint over it, they would tell her that everyone has blue skin but covers theirs up, too. They’ll explain that hundreds of years ago, a genetic mutation happened where everyone with blue skin took over Triste, and to reverse this, people believe that if you don’t let anyone else see the blue, and most importantly never talk about it, evolution will work its wonders and the normal shades of human, black skin, brown skin, tan skin, pale skin, etc. will return.

Her parents sued the news stations that covered this story and were given full ownership to any footage or articles about their daughter, so everyone will forget about it or think it was a hoax. “No one will know she has blue skin except for us,” her father said the night they took her home, “it’s for her own good. She won’t get teased or bullied, she’ll live her whole life thinking she’s normal.”

And she did. When she was two, her younger sister Claire was born, and Olive assumed she had blue skin, too, so she asked if she could ever help paint Claire’s face. Her parents explained that it was something only a Mom and Dad can do, so Olive stopped questioning.

When Olive turned six, she wanted to take swimming lessons, which made her parents incredibly anxious. They told her that swimming was dangerous, and she was never allowed to do it. They covered up the walls of the house with posters like this:

(3 stars)

While Olive complained at first, the posters scared her into silence, and she stopped asking to go swimming with her friends. Her parents knew they got away easy with that one, but there was a world of adolescence to come and they feared their strict strategies wouldn’t last much longer. And they were right.

When Olive was 12, she got off the bus with a group of friends to hang out every day after school. They were the first real friends Olive had ever had, and she felt that she trusted them enough that they could all talk about their blue in secret, since Olive’s curiosity about it only grew day by day. One day, one of the girls planned a sleepover, which was Olive’s first slumber party invitation. Knowing that Claire had been allowed to sleepover at her friends house (and she was only 10!) her parents would have to oblige. She prepared a speech, went to ask them, and they responded with a firm “no.” This is when she realized something was strange, and felt a need to fix it immediately.

She ran to her friends house despite her parents commands, and said she’d be allowed to sleepover. She was determined to still have fun, and wanted to use this opportunity to get even closer with them by talking about their skin and why it’s so shameful that they need to hide it. Everything changed the moment she began to talk to her friends about her skin, and they recoiled in fear. Olive was confused, she thought everyone had the same skin as her? In a sudden crisis, her heart was pounding, she was getting laughed at, her thoughts and environment sounded like this:

(3 stars)

She ran home, and asked her parents if it was true, that she was the only one with blue skin. They responded with a sad yes, to which she screamed and felt humiliated and unaccepted. She’d lived her whole life according to their rules! Thinking that things were unsafe, and that they were trying to protect her, when all they were protecting was their own reputation. She was taught to feel ashamed of her body and to hide her skin rather than accept it and feel comfortable in it. Her whole life was based around hiding her skin, which she found so time-consuming, but she thought everyone put in the same amount of effort, when in reality she’d been fooled.

One of the friends from the sleepover contacted Olive, said she never laughed at her and wanted to know and understand what was going on. Olive’s friend, Sharon, came over and they spent a long time figuring it out. They eventually found the few news articles that had been hidden in Olive’s attic and tried to make sense of things. “People thought you were from another planet? But they didn’t even try to figure out why your skin was blue? What if you were sick?” Sharon questioned. Olive thought the same things, people immediately feared her because she was different, they didn’t try to understand me at all.

Rumors had spread around school about Olive’s blue skin, thanks to the girls at the slumber party. Olive neither confirmed nor denied their accuracy, but her and Sharon decided to use it as a chance to show them the truth in a fashionable way. They dropped a few hints here and there. One of their sneaky plans was conducted by playing this reversed version of the song “True Colors” at the school dance the day after the slumber party incident,

(2.5 stars)

A few picked up on it, but no one made the connection of the message it was sending. After a few days of the girls bullying her, Olive had decided it was enough. She told her parents she was going to stop painting her skin. “What if there are other people out there like me? Or not fully blue, but they have something they’ve been taught to hide?” Olive exclaimed, “If I hide something so extreme like this, how is anyone ever going to think they’re okay the way they are? It’s not my fault I have blue skin, but I’ve learned now that it’s what separates me from the rest. I have something. That should be made special, not locked away.”

Her parents admired her courage, and though it was hard and scary to accept, they did. They talked with her for a long time and realized they were wrong. Had they raised her blue, she could have been a role model around the planet. Everyone would know her as the courageous blue girl who never tried to hide. “All you can do now is let me decide for myself,” Olive said.

After the encouraging talk with her parents, and some help from Sharon, Olive showed up to school in her normal clothes, and her normal skin. No one knew what to do at first, but then the bullying started. It amazed Olive how quickly people were to make fun of her than to try and understand why she was different. Olive and Sharon printed out posters of a relevant Shel Silverstein poem, and put them up all around the school:

(3 stars)

The poem worked on a few people who gained some insight into Olive’s reason for speaking out, but others weren’t so easily convinced. Very quickly, a group formed together who had unanimously agreed that Olive was an alien, and needed to be sent back to her planet. After school that day, they waited outside to tell Olive what they thought, but Olive was inside talking with the principle on how to make the school a safer place for people with any sort of difference from the “norm”. They decided the first place they needed to start was with all the people who felt like there was something wrong with them that they needed to hide. “If we allow people to see there’s nothing wrong, they’re just different, then people other people will see that too and will be more accepting.” The principle said, and Olive agreed. Olive’s mission that evening was to make a social networking page of sorts dedicated to having confidence and feeling good about yourself. They would use this at their first meeting the following week with other academic leaders in the school. Olive chose to make a Pinterest board, since that would get most attention.

(4 stars)

Eventually, weekly meetings took place where people got together to discuss why differences should be embraced, rather than covered up. “Don’t listen to what people say about your body, they don’t get to live in it, you do: listen to what you say to your body, and make sure it’s nice,” was Olive’s motto, and repeated it weekly. The society of Triste took a lot longer to accept the blue girl into the culture, but thankfully Olive had a safe space in home and in school to be herself. “There will always be people trying to make you feel inadequate,” Olive explained forty years later, at the school she once attended but is currently speaking as the principle of, “but the most important thing is that you surround yourself with people who don’t. If you can’t find someone, you’ve got me, but most importantly, you have yourself. Don’t hide your blue.”

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Part #5: Finale and Weekly Summary 15

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*I forgot that I had to do all of this in one single blog post and by the time I finished my third part of my project, it was too late. So I’m going to combine my finale (Part 5) and my weekly summary into this post, as well as the previous four parts I did in order.*

The story starts out with Popeye and him promoting his favorite thing ever, spinach. Spinach gives him the power and strength to overwhelm his enemies and makes him unstoppable. He actually runs a worldwide spinach company that provides for every nation on Earth.

Popeye’s fame and power would not last forever though. Spinach supplies would slowly decrease and Popeye would not notice it until it was too late. By the time Popeye got around and trying to address the issue, farmers around the world have had enough with consumers pushing them to their outmost limits, especially Popeye. The farmers stated that the constant demand and persistence and their reasonings of not being able to produce enough was their reason in protesting. Violence is a very possible outcome if demands are not met. Arguably, it could be said that Popeye was accounted for the majority percentage of consumption of overall spinach in the world. Global news outlets have already begun reporting this situation, such as CNN.

Even with all of this going on, Popeye refused to resort to any form of action in an attempt to clear his name or to fix the many problems that are occurring. Granted, he’s not the world police, but at least he could have made some form of effort to help ease a lot of the tensions going on around him. As a result of this, all of the world’s leaders (or those present at the recent United Nations’ conference), agreed to file a lawsuit against Popeye himself. The Supreme Court of the United Nations deemed Popeye’s lack of actions during a critical period astonishing and unacceptable.

They awaited several months for a response from Popeye until many leaders agreed that enough was enough. They all issued bounties and wanted posters throughout their respective countries, hoping to capture Popeye and end his greedy lifestyle. The lack of a response fueled this decision and enraged many.

Regarding Popeye’s future after these terrible moments, it was rumored he was hiding in his secret hideout somewhere in jungles Brazil, along with the rest of the spinach that was left. Turns out, he had built a underground complex so that only him and some of his most trusted advisors only knew the true location and had access too. He had arrived and has lived there right being filed an injunction against, probably deeming that he doesn’t care about what other people think. Once his spinach supply was all gone, he went crazy and into a deep depression and betrayed all his close advisors by poisoning them.

As for final weekly summary of this semester, there was a lot going on this year. It had its ups and downs, this class, and honestly, I learned a great deal of material and techniques each week. This class has made me much more confident in using lots of different software and applications to help me create various digital assignments. I was familiar with some of the techniques and technology that I needed to use for this class, but I did not know I would become this comfortable with them by semester’s end.

This particular week was actually pretty fun, and it has been while where a week was enjoyable to say the least. The only tough part about this week’s project was coming up with ideas, but other than that, everything else was pretty simple and fun. I basically had to choose any type of character I thought was significant enough for this particular assignment, and I ended up choosing Popeye the Sailor and his beginning and demise through his favorite food, spinach.

My final thoughts regarding this class are that I really enjoyed the majority of the semester but at times I was just so annoyed and frustrated with some assignments because of my unfamiliarity and toughness of specific assignments. However, I managed to pull myself through these obstacles, and even though I didn’t get grades I wanted, I was happy with myself that I was able to create something other than nothing, and I learned a lot about certain applications such as iMovie, using Pixlr, etc. This class at times made me stressed because I was already taking four math classes on top of the workload for this class and being a math major while taking this was sometimes overwhelming to say the least. Other than that however, I enjoyed this class and I am grateful I learned all these techniques that I can possibly use in my near future.

I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to post my blog links or not, since I originally did separate posts for each part of my story. However, I thought it would be safe to just link my posts because they also explain how I created and did my media pieces and I felt like it would be best if I shared my techniques and strategies I used. Since I’m so used to explaining how I did my assignments throughout this semester, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to share the posts I created explaining said explanations on my work.

Part One – Promotion Poster

Part Two – Edited website using X-Ray Goggles

Part Three – My creation of an injunction letter

Part Four – Wanted Poster

I also tagged the appropriate assignments I used in those parts, but I’ll go ahead and tag them here as well.

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Spongebob’s Worst Nightmare Becomes Reality!

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Recently at The Krusty Krab, Mr. Krabs has been hinting at a promotion that is coming up that is between Spongebob and Squidward. Then one day after work, Mr. Krabs called Spongebob and Squidward into his office and told him that he will be making his decision on who gets the promotion to Assistant Manager tomorrow. Squidward as always looked half interested, where Spongebob’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. That night all Spongebob did was think about the promotion and he couldn’t even sleep that night.

That morning Spongebob woke up, and it was the most exciting moment of his life. He went through he morning routine, but with a lot more excitement this morning. He knew that he could potentially be Assistant Manager of The Krusty Krab.

Little did Spongebob know that rumors have been spreading across the sea of an amazing sponge that makes the best burger patties in all of the ocean. Everyone was hearing about Spongebob’s ability to make an amazing Krabby Patty. One sea creature in particular heard about this, her name was Ursula. She the most dangerous villain under the sea. She was curious about Spongebob and wanted to meet him and see what all these rumors were about.

Ursula decided to create a plan to kidnap Spongebob. She sent her two eels Flotsam and Jetsam out to go find this sponge and bring him back to her. That morning Spongebob was happily walking to the Krusty Krab, excited thinking that he was about to receive the promotion. While on his way, he was spotted by the two eels. Flotsam and Jetsam swam up behind Spongebob and electrocuted him enough to keep him unconscious then, they put him in a bag and brought him back to Ursula.

When Spongebob awakened he was confused but excited to meet Ursula, but he did not have any idea of who she was. When Ursula asked him to make her one of his famous Krabby Patties, he was thrilled too. Spongebob completely forgot he was missing work, he was just happy to make someone a Krabby Patty. After she tasted it, the rumors were verified, it was the best meal she has ever had. Instead of letting him go back to bikini bottom, she decided that she was going to keep him against his will as her personal chef. Spongebob did not like that but he did not have a choice, he was held captive by Ursula, and for the next few days he was making Krabby Patties for Ursula all day long. Little did he know that while that was going on, The Krusty Krab was in trouble. Since Spongebob was not there, no one was able to make Krabby Patties. Customers got restless that they couldn’t have the best item on the menu, so they destroyed the Krusty Krab and burnt it to the ground.

After a couple days, Spongebob was able to find his way out. Ursula and her two eels had a huge Krabby Patty feast, they were so tired from all of the eating done that they all took naps forgetting that Spongebob was in the kitchen. He took advantage of the situation and escaped from Ursula’s cave. After escaping, Spongebob was lost and did not know how to get back to Bikini Bottom. Luckily, he ran into some monster friends of his from when he went to retrieve the crown from King Neptune. Patrick was with the monsters as well, Patrick got worried that he had not seen Spongebob in a while and went searching for him. Patrick met up with the monsters to see if they had seen him recently. Spongebob told his friends what happen and they gladly protected him and escorted him back to Bikini Bottom along with Patrick.

After returning home, Spongebob rushed over to The Krusty Krab, He saw what had happen to it, and was devastated. Mr. Krabs was depressed and went into hiding, while Squidward took at job at the local theater. Spongebob was also worried because he did not have a job to help pay the bills on his Pineapple house. Spongebob was desperate to keep his house, and in his desperation he took a job with Plankton at the Chum Bucket. Plankton took the Krabby Patty and change the name and sent out flyers to all of Bikini Bottom. The Chum Bucket became the most popular restaurant in all of Bikini Bottom, and was a success. Even with its success Spongebob was living his worst nightmare, working for the Chum Bucket.

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DS106 Final Project: New Professor Wanted

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As we have seen today during our investigation of Professor Jackson, things have gone downhill for him at the University of Mary Washington. Due to the amount of pressure and stress that Professor J. has been under, he has been forced to resign by the Dean of university. The professor has been receiving complaints from both his students and colleagues about his poor attitude, and will now be stepping down.

Now that professor Jackson is gone, the university needs to fill his position. What better place to find a professor of philosophy than on Craig’s List? My inspiration for this assignment comes from a web assignment from several weeks back, Storytelling Within the Web. I already created an assignment for this web assignment back in week 9, so I was comfortable with the assignment already. To keep things fresh though, I edited a Craig’s List page instead of an Amazon page like I did previously.

I began this assignment by finding a pre-existing Craig’s List add under the Jobs section. I selected an advertisement at random

With this ad as my template, I opened up the X-Ray Goggles app and began editing. I used an actual seeking-professor advertisement (not from Craig’s List!) that I found at random as a guide for the beginning of my advertisement.

I included several references to films that Samuel L. Jackson was part of. I also included a miniature wanted ad at the bottom of the Craig’s List post, implying that maybe what Professor Jackson did to lose his job was not so harmless. After I made all of my edits, I published the completed web page.

Click here to see edited web page. I also included a screenshot below.

This web assignment was worth:

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DS106 Final Project: Professor Jackson’s Planner

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As we saw in A Conversation With Professor Jackson, the professor is not fond of questions from his students. As the semester draws to a close, the professor is under a considerable amount of stress from his numerous obligations. Any organized person has a planner filled with their tasks that need completing, and Samuel L. Jackson is no different.

I based this assignment off of the Make Your Own List assignment. The creator of the original assignment created a collage, but I opted to create an actual list to fit the name of the assignment.

To begin creating my list, I searched Google for a notepad template that I could use for my list. After finding a notepad I liked, I imported it into GIMP

The image was too small originally in GIMP, so I doubled the size with the scale layer tool. After the notepad was a decent size, I imported it over to Paint. The reason that I decided to finish up the notepad in Paint over GIMP is that text boxes are easier to use in Paint than in GIMP.

With the notepad now in Paint, I began typing up Samuel’s To-Do list. I aligned each of tasks on the notepad lines, one for each blank space.

After I finished typing up the list, I re-sized the Paint work space and uploaded the final image to Flickr.

Each of Professor Jackson’s tasks references one of his many movie roles. The movies referenced in order of their appearance on the list are:

1. Snakes on a Plane

2. Star Wars (Episodes I-III)

3. Pulp Fiction

4. The Avengers

5. Jurassic Park

6. Django Unchained

This design assignment was worth:

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DS106 Final Project: A Conversation With Professor Jackson

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Continuing with our investigation of Professor Jackson, we get to listen in on a conversation between the professor and one of his students. I could not find an assignment on the DS106 assignment bank that matched what I created, so I decided to make my own. The assignment that I created is called Soundboard Conversation. The assignment is exactly what it sounds like: students are tasked with creating a conversation between themselves and an actor/TV character using a soundboard. I recommended using Soundboard.com to download sound clips. The link to the website is also on the assignment page. I used Soundboard.com for all of my sounds. All of the sound clips are taken from films that Samuel L. Jackson acted in.

To begin, I wrote up a script for what the professor and I were going to discuss. I had to be careful when writing my own phrases so my lines could be answered by the available soundbites. After I prepared the script, I opened up Audacity, where I began to record my lines.

I recorded all of my clips first before downloading and importing Jackson’s clips from Soundboard. Here is the page that I downloaded the clips from.

After I downloaded the clips that I needed (I chose six), I imported them into Audacity. I organized the clips in the correct order so that the conversation was together.

With the conversation complete, I exported and uploaded it to SoundCloud:

My audio assignment is worth: