Category Archives: Spring 2015

Spring2015-intro2media-arts

Audacity Fun

https://soundcloud.com/shayne-sadler/audacity-bounce

Audacity break-down

My goal for the audacity project was to create something fun, with a solid audio piece. Being a student of radio early on I thought it would be fun to do my own voice, alongside a well-known broadcaster.

I went with an NBA game setting where Cleveland takes on the Houston Rockets. Dick Vitale, a well known NCAA announcer will be my “partner” in crime. Although he is well know outside of the NBA, I thought it would be fun to pretend like I was a casual announcer inviting a friend. So that’s exactly what we did, spoke back and forth with live and fun energy.

I have to say, sometimes audio can feel so real and I had a very fun time emulating someone else’s voice. A unique one such as Mr. Vitale really made for a challenging recording as well. Capturing the hoarseness of his voice was tough without distorting completely.

Mixing with pro tools I feel I made a strong clean piece. Some Phhss, and Hsss could have been cleaned up but I did what I could in the time given.

Uploading to sound cloud was a breeze, as well as the blog. Hopefully it will present well in class and everyone will get a laugh or two.

P4 Audio/ Baseball Introductions by Drew Eggers

Ever since I was a little kid I marveled at the voices on the radio that told me what was happening in a sporting event. I always thought it was a special bond with the announcer and the listener. It is the announcers job to describe an event to you without any images to see. I see that as a skill that is easier said then done.

I wanted to see with this audio assignment if I could create a feel like you were actually listening to a real game that was being broad casted I invented a baseball team called the ” Portland Pioneers” which I also use for a fantasy baseball team I manage. I thought it would be fun to use the fictional franchise I created and also use my friends names on the team. For the opposing team I used real players though.

I voiced all of the introductions myself and found the intro music and crowd noise on free music outlets. Another inspiration for me wanting to make this was my dad had a tape made of him back in the 80’s by a professional who made fictional cassettes of people playing sports. For instance he would call a full game that never happened and enter in your name so you were the one playing in the fictional game. I thought that was a cool idea and always been inspired by hearing that.

I also chose baseball because it is seen as the most challenging sport to do because of all the down time. With the constant pausing, you have to always come up with something related to the game to say. Coming up with fun facts during the game is what makes a guy like Vin Scully so great at what he does.

By Drew Eggers

Word Count:300

P4-Audio Indigo Rimbaud

For this project I decided to experiment with the cut-up technique discovered by artist Brion Gysin and writer William S Burroughs in the 1950’s. Cut-ups consist of cutting a page of text into four, trimming the margins, and moving the parts up and down against each other to get a new combination of words, images, and meanings. I took a poem by Rimbaud, cut it up and rearranged the parts into something I felt would be interesting to read and use as the voice track. I added some homemade recordings of my ten year old daughter messing around with a typewriter, balloon, zipper and toy whistle for the background tracks. I also added two synthesizer tracks going through a delay. The great thing about this piece for me was the process of making it and how it evolved. Originally, I did the reading of the new poem but ending up canning it. Then, I had my daughter’s mom read it which turned out fine. My daughter also wanted to give it a try, so I created a new track but what happened was her voice ended up merging with her mom’s track basically taking it over. I am new to Audacity but I believe there might be a ghost in the program. The result of this unintentional accident turned the piece into a cut-up sound collage creating something that I would not have been able to do if I had planned it out. The piece kind of took on a life of its own so I decided to leave it the way it is, even with the phone ringing.

Audio Project – Returning Home

Returning Home Cover.JPG

For our audio project I wanted to narrate a small piece of one of my stories. I wanted to use something familiar as I was getting used to using Audacity for recording and editing.

It took me some trial and error to find just the right piece for this project. I had three or four ideas in mind, but settled on my original idea of a piece from my story, Returning Home. I chose this piece because the scene is heavily influenced by the deep, resonant sound of a bell ringing through a city on a busy market-day. I wanted to find and edit a bell that would sound just as I envisioned it when I wrote the piece.

I had a blast [imagine an exciting explosion sound effect here] with this project! Once I got used to some of the nuances of Audacity, it was really easy to navigate and get my tracks edited.

I chose to use freesound.org as my sound library for this project. While it took some time to find just the right clips for some sounds, I was able to edit them with Audacity to make them as close to what I wanted as possible. The following clips (noted in order of appearance) were used (all under an Attribution License except as noted):

FootstepsGravel.wav by mikaelfernstrom | viking musicians.wav by Kyster | clock-tower.wav by xserra | Sneeze by Dshogan (License: Attribution, Noncommercial)

The sound of the coins is my own that I recorded while working on the project.

One of the more difficult aspects of this project was getting the sounds right. I really like the village ambience sound I’ve used because I like the chatter and the musicians in the background. I’m also happy with the footsteps on gravel. I had to play around with the speed on that but am happy with how it turned out. And I love the little girl’s sneeze. I took a recording of a man’s sneeze, changed the pitch, and Viola!

Overall, this was a really informative and exciting project for me. I’m looking forward to working more with audio production in the coming months.

Sp15-P3 Blog Search: Blazers Edge by Drew Eggers

For this assignment I thought the most fitting choice for a blog to showcase would be the first blog I ever remember reading, blazersedge.com. Back when it was created it was just an independent blog started by a couple of Portland Trail Blazer fans. It lead to a long running blog that is linked up with the prominent sports blogging site sbnation.com. Ben Golliver who was one of the original writers for the blog ended up getting hired by sports illustrated which is every sports writers dream.

My dad is a sports writer, and I remember when this blog first came out he discounted the credibility of blogs. As time has gone on he has been forced to accept blogs based off of the success of them. Especially with blazersedge.com. It is the official blog linked with the team now. I think that they have made a lot of progress since the blog has started.

I do think at times in the past the writing has been a little rushed, but for what it is I think they have done a good job at getting material out quickly for the fans to respond to. A huge part of blogs is the ability for the reader to make comments and observations quickly about the reading . With sports timing is very important, and the quicker you can get your audience the info the better. The tricky part is still giving them legitimate info and not trying to rush things.

Blazersedge I feel is a great example of something that did not happen over the night. They did not have any credibility when they started and they created it with just by giving people a platform to talk about the Blazers on. I am a huge sports fan myself and hope someday to start my own podcast, so they way they are pioneers for blogging in Portland sports has inspired me.

By Drew Eggers

Word Count: 320

blazersedge.com

http://www.blazersedge.com

Professional Blog

THE BOOM BOX

http://theboombox.com/

The BoomBox.com is a blog site keeping you up to date with current Hip-Hop and R&B news. From the latest video’s to the hottest fashion, the information keeps uploading. You’ll never fall behind on the hottest artist and what there’re up to. If you are wanting to know whats new for your favorite hip-hop song, look no further. It can be a strong resource when trying to find new inspiration for songs. With a simple white background and a few places to click, this site is simple to navigate and well made. With links that bring you to credible sources, I feel confident when coming to this site for accurate news. Whether you want to know about your favorite artists next video shoot, or what they are wearing you can find it on the boombox.com If you need a little fun for the day be sure to click on the list tab. Here you can find fun lists of things for example, top ten things to do while listening to your favorite artist. If you consider yourself a fan of Hip-Hop or R&B, be sure to keep the theboombox.com in your mind when looking for blogs. You can be sure when using this site that the information will be fun and informative.

Sp15-P3 Blog Search

Craig Jones Wildlife Photography

http://www.craigjoneswildlifephotography.co.uk/blog/

After searching the wonderful world-wide web for a professional blog that seemed to fit my interests. I end up finding “Craig Jones Wildlife Photography” blog that had amazing photos of wildlife ranging from small birds up to a talented whale doing a back flip out of the water.

From what I can tell the site looks professionally done, instead of a WordPress like website. I don’t know if there are other websites that can make it look professional as Craig’s blog does.

The quality from Craig’s blog is excellent because, he talk about his time going into the jungle to search for wildlife in their natural environment. Some of the wonderful pictures he took of wildlife were that of the Bengal Tiger. He went to “Ranthambhore National Park” and got some amazing shots of Monkeys, Birds, Deer, and other wildlife.

Craig went to the zoo on his trip and shot pictures of wildlife in a unhappy unnatural environment, some of the shots were of birds that had their feathers falling out due to stress. Others were of the caged tigers, which looked in pain and uncomfortable. As he was taking the picture from “behind the scenes” he had to hold himself back because he felt bad for the mistreatment of the animals and he got those pain and misery in the tigers eyes via the pictures.

As I read and saw more pictures from Craig’s blog, I hope that when I start to get in the same area Craig was in I won’t have to experience the same pain as he did.

P3 Blog Search

After some searching and a little frustration, I finally came across a site that caught my eye and seemed promising called The [DIY] Musician. Since my area of interest is audio and I would like to someday make soundtracks for independent films this site seemed like a great place to get some information. Here is the link: http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2012/05/how-to-get-your-music-placed-in-film-and-tv/

Basically, the site is a do-it-yourself guide on how to submit your music so it can get placed into film, tv, or video. The layout is nicely designed and the site is easy to navigate. There are tabs for musician blogs, podcasts, and music discovery podcasts; you can also sign up with CD Baby to help get your music exposed on a global level. I think the site is produced well. It has resources on how to contact music supervisors, find out what projects are in production, and musician advice, among an abundance of other information.

The video on the the homepage with Joe Solo is a little cheesy but it has some valuable information. For example, Joe S gives tips on the importance of targeting projects that need the music you create by doing research and pitching only material that is suited to the story or genre of the film. Also, he talks about the importance of finding out who the music supervisor for a film is and tells you how to do it. Another tip I found to be valuable in the video is to always make sure you send in a quality master of your music, never a demo.

The great thing about doing this project was finding a site that I didn’t know existed. I know I’m only scratching the surface of the site but I will be doing more digging and hopefully submit some music too.

Let’s Talk Art!

Initially I had a hard time finding a blog site that I found credible, useful, and most importantly, not riddled with advertisement fodder. After quite a bit of hopping around, I finally found a site that was extremely visually appealing, well organized, easy to navigate, and chock full of great information. My chosen site represents the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is located at http://www.walkerart.org/.

The Walker Art Center is an Institution of Education and exhibits all different forms of art ranging from music, dance, theater, film, paintings, sculptures, photography, and others. My specific area of interest and focus for my search was blogs about film and directing. I found the related information I sought more specifically at http://blogs.walkerart.org/filmvideo/.

What a beautiful website! The homepage launched a really awesome video when I landed on it and all of the different buttons that link you to blogs and articles have animations and pictures. I tried my best to detach from my love of shiny things and approach this website with some scrutiny but it was very difficult. There is just so much cool stuff to read and learn about. The Walker Center constantly has events going on as the calendar on the website shows. The film blog has some great posts on it, all with attached images and video. Some posts were very brief blips about a new independent film being shown, and others were extensive college level conversations discussing a films deeper meanings and complex natures (whatever I just said). All of the blog authors are noted and most of their names are direct links to Bio’s on each of them. The websites entire blog section is very expansive and well organized (as shown in the image above). Some blogs have direct titles that are self explanatory of the content, while others have titles that are not immediately recognizable without giving some thought or clicking and exploring. I believe the website itself to be an excellent resource and source of inspiration as well, however some exceptional resources worth noting are it’s library database link, thousands of high quality images, and plethora of historical art information.

Blog Search 2015

This Week’s Topic: Blog Search 2015. Another great assignment for my Intro to Media Arts class. This week we’ve been asked to find a professional blog and comment on it. Seems like a pretty straightforward task, right? Not so fast. There are a large number of not-so-great blogs out there. Thankfully, I found one of the elusive good ones for my area of focus.

One area of media that I’m very interested in is voice-over. I’d really like to narrate audiobooks and provide voice-over narration for documentary films. The blog I found most interesting and most useful for this goal is Vox Daily, found at: http://blogs.voices.com/voxdaily.

There are a few things I like about this blog.

1. I like the way the blog is set-up. It’s a combination of industry professional interviews, industry news, and thoughts on the industry (for example, is honey good for your throat before performing?). With the opportunity for readers to post comments to the individual blog entries, you get a very nice cross-section of comments from those who have been in the industry for some time and those, like me, who are just starting out.

2. Vox Daily has a Resources tab that I found very useful. There are a number of sections available and the two I found most helpful are Podcasts (to which I’ll be subscribing via iTune) and Tools (which includes libraries for free music and sound effects).

3. How easy the site is to navigate in. There is no undue hunting around to find the information I’m looking for because they’ve set-up a Browse This Blog by Topic section, so I could quickly get to blog entries about Audiobooks and Narration.

I’m glad I found this site. I know I’ll be coming back often and will learn something new that will continue to spark my interest in this field.

MUL101 Introduction to Media Arts

FALL 2023