I found this assignment very fun and interesting. My goal was to try and make it seem as if a radio host was announcing a ticket giveaway during a show. Since Halloween is coming up it only seemed perfect for this to be some kind of Halloween concert. For those of you wondering, there is actually no concert and no free tickets. I used a program called Logic Pro which is super similar to Garage Band but it is made for the more professional end of producing music and recording. I also used a program like Adobe Illustrator called GravitDesigner to design the artwork for the sound file on Soundcloud. Sadly, I didn’t use a mic but instead just the standard mic inside my MacBook Pro. So when I tried to record this I had to setup some blankets around me and just hoped no background noise would be recorded. After doing this assignment it really makes me want to record some kind of music video. Anyways I hope you enjoy my little being a radio host for fifteen seconds.

This is the fourth project for the Intro to Media Arts class at Lane Community College. Here I took an excerpt from Mr. Poe’s, The Masque of the Red Death. I chose this poem because I like how simply Edgar Allan is able to convey his fantasy story and still give us enough detail to feel a bit horrified.

This was my first time putting my voice online for others to listen to, and the first time in a long time that I’ve used audio editing software. This project taught me that a huge volume of work goes into the recording and mixing of the sound, voice, music and special effects that we hear almost every single day. It also taught me how important it is to make high quality sound if you want people to listen to what you make.

To record this project I used my phone’s voice recording software, and did many takes, to get some emotionality into the voice. I used Audacity to mix the audio but didn’t check before I did my voice recording if it would accept the audio format from the files I made on my phone; well it doesn’t! So, I played the audio from my phone into the computer’s microphone to get the audio onto a track in Audacity.

Mixing the background sound and music was also a challenging surprise. Fortunately, our teacher, Teresa, gave us access to royalty free music and ambient sounds to use for the project. I sliced up pieces of music to match the story, and used the deep drum and thump-like beats from a couple of songs to recreate the dreadfully musical tick-tock described by Poe in his poem.

To close, I think I successfully experimented with sound, but didn’t succeed in making anything very pleasing to the ear. I have a much bigger appreciation of sound designers now than before I started this project (which was obviously 0%…). There is so much to learn and so many variables that I’m looking forward to exploring during and after my time at Lane. Next time, I will give myself more time to find a good microphone, do more research to find other great sounds, and especially choose music around the same time I am recording my voice so that the sounds play off of each other better.

Thanks for reading.

-Daniel Martinez

I love audio production, this was a very fun assignment. I do complex vocal tracks mixing music and vocals all the time. Every project I work on becomes multiple tracks with layers of effects and overlaid sounds. I never do simple clean voice only projects where clean simple sound is the end product. With large complex projects you can alter and change small imperfections and hide them. This was more challenging in a way because with neat clean recording every aspect had to work together very organically to make the mix be clean and not confusing. It was hard for me to not add lots of sound effects and layers. I wanted to do something musical but that’s what I always do. Then I wanted to do a fable reading but that seemed to straight forward so then it hit me to do a funny storytelling read. My idea was to try to read it in the voice of an audio book without much hint that its meant to be a funny story. I was going for a dry read with a funny punchy ending that you didn’t see coming. I laid down 8 tracks of me reading the story in small pieces so I could focus on clean readings without worrying about errors. Next I found some nice audio and put a simple effect on it and adjusted the volume. Finally I hit play and laid down a single background and silly sound effects track. This was a fun and interesting project and I liked the simple voice reading. I hope you enjoy it and get a nice laugh. Have a great day!

I found this audio file in my inbox the other day and from what it sounds like, it’s an advert for a haunted house. I don’t know what The House Of The Black Mirror is, and don’t bother looking online, I couldn’t find anything substantial. The guy in the clip talks about going where the road meets the water, so I thought maybe it’d be somewhere along the Willamette. It’s all so weird. I forgot to mention that the email I found this in didn’t have a sender listed, so I’m thinking maybe I got hacked or maybe this is all just a big prank, anyways… I was listening to the audio and noticed something in the background that was kind of unsettling (besides the fact the whole thing is kind of unsettling), there were voices under the main vocal track. I can’t quite understand what they’re saying though. It’s not like any language I’ve ever heard before, but it’s familiar somehow. The whole deal is kind of creeping me out, so I decided to share it with you and get your thoughts on it. Any ideas on what it means by “where the road meets the water.”? Or what the voices in the background are saying? Has anyone ever heard of The House Of The Black Mirror? And does anyone know why I can still hear that weird ambient whistling from the advertisement even though I closed the Media player an hour or two ago?

The goal of this post was to get everyone involved in what’s called an Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. An ARG is an online storytelling method that is affected by input from the viewers. Popular ARG’s in the past include; Marble Hornets, a found-footage style horror, and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modernized adaption of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice a la vlog.

For this assignment I am trying to raise awareness to the cold and flu season that is about to hit. In the message I offer simple steps on how to not spread the flu to everyone regardless of where you are at. I believe safety measures should be taken so we don’t end up missing work or class due to a simple bug. I had some fun tinkering with new software as I like to learn different software to add to my bag of tricks I have acquired over the years. The most difficult part of the assignment was getting peace and quiet from roommates and neighbors. What a spendy day. It cost me 2 trips to Papas Pizza and a beer to attain the quietness I needed to complete this project. The fun part was arranging the audio and sound effects……. Hopefully I didn’t overdo it like I tend to do on fun projects. I hope the message I have tried to convey in this project has been useful. i have been hospitalized due to the flu and I don’t want to see anyone end up there when it can be prevented by simple means. Thankyou all hope you have a good weekend.

What do the numbers 1, 2, 7, and 14 have in common. According to Scott Myers, author of Go Into The Story, a blog on screenwriting, they are the key to expanding your understanding of the screenwriting craft. In one of his blog posts he say you should do the following; Read one screenplay per week, watch two movies perweek, write seven pages per week, and work fourteen hours per week prepping your story.

Known for his work on K-9 (Starring Jim Belushi and Jenifer Love Hewitt), Scot Myers has been screenwriting since 1987 and since then has produced over thirty projects in Hollywood. He is an award winning writer and co-founder of the Screenwriting Masterclass, and he has hosted the blog, Go Into the Story since 2008. His blog offers help and advice to aspiring writers and storytellers.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/

I chose this site because I’ve always been very interested in animation and I think this site is a great way to keep updated on what’s going on in the animation industry, I stumbled upon it a while back while looking for tutorials and found that it has a lot of great information. It’s frequently updated with posts about new shows, movies, and shorts, and even contains articles with insight from prominent animators. I think it’s a good resource as well because the site is pretty simple and straight forward to navigate, with the drop down menu providing links to resources such as job searches, links to different categories of interest, and includes a search bar for navigating to specific articles you may be looking for or themes you might be interested in. I think for the purpose the site is fairly well laid out, the news style lay out is familiar, with the prominent article of the day larger in the center, and smaller links to other/older articles laid out along the sidebars.

By: Andrea Del Rio

www.dezigningeye.com

The reason I choose Dezigning Eye Studios is because it could be a very useful resource for both graphic and multimedia designers alike. It features an array of how-to instructional videos covering a number of unique and innovative tricks and tips.
Dezigning Eye features videos that included new skills in a number of different programs, including photoshop, illustrator, indesign, and premiere pro. For example, A recent post on the blog has a walk through on how to create an animated, 3D Logo for a website. It covers each and every step, and even shows you how to write it into a site using CSS and Javascript. They seem to be very straight to the point, and the information on the site is organized and written well. The layout is simple, yet effective for the reader to navigate around the site with ease. There is a search bar along the right side of the site that allows you to specify the category of interest, along with the specifying the date of posts within the site archives. Overall it seems like a well educated, highly skilled designer (or team of designers) are the ones creating the useful information on this site. The site may be relatively simple in terms of looks, but the information on the site seems to be pretty advanced, judging by the techniques they are teaching and demonstrating in each and every blog post. My only negative thing I found about the site is that they seem to not post as often anymore!

www.dezigningeye.com

The reason I choose Dezigning Eye Studios is because it could be a very useful resource for both graphic and multimedia designers alike. It features an array of how-to instructional videos covering a number of unique and innovative tricks and tips.
Dezigning Eye features videos that included new skills in a number of different programs, including photoshop, illustrator, indesign, and premiere pro. For example, A recent post on the blog has a walk through on how to create an animated, 3D Logo for a website. It covers each and every step, and even shows you how to write it into a site using CSS and Javascript. They seem to be very straight to the point, and the information on the site is organized and written well. The layout is simple, yet effective for the reader to navigate around the site with ease. There is a search bar along the right side of the site that allows you to specify the category of interest, along with the specifying the date of posts within the site archives. Overall it seems like a well educated, highly skilled designer (or team of designers) are the ones creating the useful information on this site. The site may be relatively simple in terms of looks, but the information on the site seems to be pretty advanced, judging by the techniques they are teaching and demonstrating in each and every blog post. My only negative thing I found about the site is that they seem to not post as often anymore!