I’ve been a big fan and supporter of the stand-up comedian, Kevin Hart, since 2003. I am the self proclaimed, first fan of Kev in the 541. True stuff. I remember going from dorm to dorm, at the University of Oregon, spreading Kevin’s name, referring everyone to his Youtube clips. Over the past 13 years, I have been listening to his stand-up hours. Not everyone gets the chance to see Kevin when he goes on tours, yet I’ve been fortunate enough to see him live twice.

When I heard that we could  create a digital story about any topic of our choosing, I knew that I was going to do some Kevin Hart skits.

My first task was to find a clip short enough to match the 1-2:30 mins criteria. The clip I chose was about the first time Kevin’s mother gave him permission to cuss out his teacher. The original clip was about 4:30 mins long, so I had to make some choices of what I would omit. I started my audio with the intro to his segment, the conclusion, and left everything in the middle out. My final audio clip is 2:50 mins.

During that first day of class, where we were assigned the project, I found the transcript of Kevin’s comedy hour. Then I collected the sound effects I wanted. I included some foley and some ambiance sounds. After I accomplished setting up my sound library, I had the huge feat of recording the lengthy dialogue. I checked out a “snowball microphone” from my instructor and recored the dialogue at home.

Seemingly, nobody enjoys hearing their own voice in playback mode, and I can now join that group. I had to overcome a lot of nerves to get the jokes how I needed them. I completed the entire 2:30 mins in one take after a couple trials, using Audacity.

In Audacity, I recorded my audio and imported my sound library. Syncing the sounds effects with the audio was tedious, but I was surprised when I completed the task in 1:30 hours.

My last objective was to create an image to relate with the audio. I chose the movie cover box of Kevin Hart’s comedy hour titled “Laugh At My Pain.” Then I had one of my art homies, @Freshness, take a head shot of me. After that, I merged the two images. The end result has Kevin’s body, mic stand, backdrop and I placed my face over his. Turned out pretty good.

I hope everyone enjoys my audio project. Had a lot of fun creating it and this project has inspired me to push my skills even further for future projects.

by: Jeffery King Osborns