Hey Everyone welcome this is something I put together for my Multimedia class! I just wanted to do something broad and easy an advertisement on the Oregon Coast. It was really a fun experience to dig into some audio editing, and adjusting sound effects. I think this was a good topic because not only are we stuck in self isolation I thought it would be a great touch to add some waves crashing along the shoreline to get a feel on how things still are out there In the real work. It’s hard to get through social distancing alone and hopeful this can give you a boost, our beaches remain safe and I know we all can’r wait to head for the shores. Take in the fresh air and let the ocean waves take you away.
Music: Dream Track By McKenna Crossley
Voices of true Oregonians: McKenna Crossley(Surfer Chick)
I did not originally intend to do an Aesop’s Fable for my audio project. I had grand plans to write/adapt a comedy piece about the conflicting information we all have been receiving about coronavirus. I wanted to turn my frustration with the news into humor. But then life intervened; a sudden (and welcome) influx of graphics work forced me to put school work on the back burner for a few days, which put me significantly behind. I had to “pivot,” as they’ve been saying lately, and decided to do a fable instead.
I chose “The North Wind and The Sun” because when I read it as a child I had an epiphany of consciousness. It literally created an ah-ha moment that I remember to this day. The image of the Sun being able to “invite” the traveler to take off his own cloak after the North Wind had failed to take it off by force was an introduction to a concept I had never grasped before, and changed my thinking forever. I know this sounds dramatic, but it’s true!
In my reading of the fable I deliberately did not include the moral that is usually included at the end. This is because of my Waldorf training — when Waldorf teachers read fables to second graders they don’t include the moral because the students are supposed to come to their own conclusions, not have conclusions fed to them.
I had a lot of fun figuring out Audition and adding the sound effects to my audio project. I used a combination of sound effects from the library Teresa provided and ones I created myself. I can totally see the appeal of being a sound designer!
This project caused me many issues, I must say. I’ve never done any audio editing like this, and trying to use what I did know while trying an entirely new platform was hard to reconcile. Audacity, in particular, did not seem very intuitive. Wherever I expected a certain tool to be, it was in the entirely opposite direction.
Having said that, it wasn’t all bad, either. I feel like I did learn a little about audio editing; this is actually the second version I had to do of this, and it went by a lot faster than the first. Having been able to experiment on the first one helped this one, you definitely wouldn’t want to hear the rough draft!
This one I wanted to make feel like it was set in a bar, with the first character telling the second one a retelling of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but from the thief’s perspective. I had my dad voice the thief so I wouldn’t have to listen to myself as much. I used sounds from Epidemic Sound for the background noise, and made the little doodle that constitutes the cover in under five minutes, so dont judge it too harshly, please.
Overall, I think I did okay. I wish I would have been bolder, and had given a few more audio effects, but with the trouble I was having I am just glad to have made anything at all.
I thought it would be a fun idea going on some kind of tour around my house and speaking like a tour guide. But then the idea evolved to actually being a tour guide in some kind of zoo since that would allow me to use more sound effects throughout. I feel like everyone during this quarantine has watched the netflix series Tiger King, so I decided to pull some inspiration from that. At the end of my tour guide I added the surprise where a kid falls out of the tour bus and falls into the bear cages.
I had several bumps along the road from not being able to get audacity to work properly, not being able to record and having to record on my iphone and having trouble converting the files to be compatible with the audacity software. So that became frustrating but once I was finally able to edit and get going I feel like it was a good project.
A story of a child who is going through a very delicate situation, that is the loss of her grandfather, the person that she has a really strong connection with. In the end, we have proof that her grandfather's story was somehow true.
My main goal in this project is to try to go a bit further with my editing. I was exploring the depth of field by applying some ambient effects and also a bit of reverb and echo effects on pos-production. I was also trying to transmit the emotions through the melancholic background in a way that gave the audience enough context to understand what is going on.
I was playing with the audio in a way to transmit a different perspective such as the audience and the character perspective, creating an effect that shifts the listener from the outside view into the child’s head, going through his thoughts.
I want to make my audience feel some kind of emotion and follow my story without a heavy narration. Mentioning about emotions, I used field record sounds from my personal sound library, that I had been collecting in my audio production class the last term, in that class, we have the opportunity to check out professionals’ gear for field records. Audio Production class (AUD120) is a very interesting class that approaches audio in a fun way with great projects that will enrich your portfolio according to your career path. The class has a super talented and creative instructor to make the experience more pleasing.
The software that I end up using is adobe premiere (creative cloud is free right now for students until June due to the pandemic. Check it out ;)). It gave me some flexibility to explore different effects available on it.
For this audio project, I wanted to do something that would be engaging and kind of silly. I kept finding myself thinking of the project as a film which wasn’t working out for the style I was going for. I ended up wanting to lean towards more of a podcast or reality tv show. But then it ended up being an emotional commercial that you would see for medication. The main Idea for the final result is: Rebecca’s 7 step roade to true happiness is getting featured on a late night/ news reality tv show and they play her commercial about a woman who was emotionally unstable. The commercial is definitely one that you would see advertising medication where it has that corny yet emotional documentary touch. This 7 step program really does change lives.
For the audio in effects and music, I had to resist not just throwing in sound effects for emotions of the characters. That is something I would have totally done if it were film. So I ended up leaning towards the emotions of the listener and using that as a way to make what Rebecca was talking about more upbeat and engaging. Even though what she was saying was kinda nonsense. Then also to have the funny contrast of the emotional story about the mom and then back to Rebecca being like “ Yeaaaah that was me dudes!”.
It was a very fun project, it reminded me of how much I actually enjoy editing.
I love fables, so recording a fable was the obvious choice for me. I wanted to convey a slower, more peaceful listening experience so I chose to create background music with a slower beat. I used a sampler to create the soundscape and then added in the fly buzzing as well as the transition during the Bull’s stinging reply. I also dropped the tuning down because it’s kind of a depressing fable. My voice sounded unpleasant, so I dropped and corrected the pitch so that it’s a bit smoother to hear. I think that it works very nicely for the Bull’s response. I’ve made music before and have experience with editing, so it was a pretty smooth process. The only rough spot was when I got stuck recording my voice over and over again, so I finally decided to go another route. Overall, I think that it turned out pretty suited for the story. After creating this, it seems like it would be fun to edit audio for a podcast or for storytellers. I hadn’t done much editing of spoken word and it was a pleasant change of pace.
This song was spawned from a Dungeons and Dragon’s campaign that I play in; my character is a Hobbit Bard (a singer/storyteller) who turns their adventures with their party into epic ballads! The joke of course was to use the tune of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher”. With this assignment my goal was to bring – through sound – an outsider into the story and introduce the listener to Coren through a little snippet.
Storytelling is a large part of my life and I use sound as a tool frequently. Whenever I run a tabletop game the first thing I do is build a playlist comprised of music, to keep things interesting, sound effects, to inform the players of what is happening around them, and any ambiance that the background might need. This audio project was constructed using, mostly, the same principles. I knew I wanted a campfire and footsteps/foley to bring in the environment. Then the music and vocals stacked on top.
Though I feel this project went fairly well, I am newer to using these types of audio programs, and detailed technology in general, so this has been a bit of a learning curve for me. Let’s just say that I had a tutorial open next to me the whole time. Enjoy!
Thought I’d do something fun for this project. So I wanted to make this goofy and fun fake advertisement for Dungeons and Dragons. What Inspired me to do this project is my D&D party. Ever since Covid-19 hit and we were all starting to go into quarantine, I started to get anxious. But one of my friends invited me to play a campaign with a bunch of his friends, and right from the beginning I had a blast. My D&D party has helped me through this pandemic and has giving me inspiration to embrace my creativity. So this Audio is dedicated to you guys!
Also for my audio project I wanted to express the fun and humor in D&D, the fun of goofing around with your group and messing around with your DM by making your character do ridiculous things in the game. And I hope that is a pretty clear message in the audio. It was was hard to find sound effects that satisfied me, so a few sounds in the audio are a mix between two or more sounds combined together, like the magic spell, sword fight, and the Manticore noise at the very end, which is a combination of a Lion roar and the crackling of fire to resemble it breathing fire at the player. Also want to thank my sister’s fiance for voicing a few lines for the stereotypical D&D nerd.
Overall I had a fun time doing this project and I hope I can make some of you smile with this audio. I can’t wait to see everyone else’s creations. I hope you all are having a good day, and I’ll see you around. -Gyllian Mullins
Although I had some difficulty to record my voice on Audacity somehow it does not record, I was able to record from my iPhone and imported the sound for editing on Audacity. I enjoy the process of looking for the sound effects and identifying the right feeling sounds matching the content. It is a journey to explore Tibetan culture for me as well.
The content that I reading in the Audio is from a child book, Pola’s Flower, one of my son’s books. I am so glad to do the project to convert something from the book into audio. I would be so proud to share it with my son later when he starts school next year.
Pola’s Flower is a true story based on a Tibetan girl and her family. Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet, ten of thousands of Tibetan Children have fled their homeland. Many of them without their parents. These youth risk imprisonment, injury, and death in a perilous journey across the Himalayas in search of cultural, religious, and educational freedom. My husband was one of them who tried to cross the Himalayas on his foot ended with being torched and jailed for months. My son is born in the United States, free land of religion, being apart from our motherland, but we will let him remember what Tibetan culture is and what Tibetan history is through reading him books and learning the language.
Tibet is one of the most beautiful places where I have been and Tibetans are some of the kindest people whom I have known in the world. they practice compassion into their daily life, even without bad thoughts towards their enemies who were taking their country. They have living proof that the goodness in their hearts is the most important thing, which we will pass on to our son.
I really like this book as it is a way to tell the culture and life in Tibet, as well as its history. This book is written by Diana Lynn Nadeau, who has had ten years of intensive training in Tibetan Buddhism. She is also a Certified Mediator. The illustrator of this book, Lobsang Gyatso, who is a very good friend of mine and my husband’s hometown mate. He is a local artist making very unique art pieces made of clay and he sales them at the Eugene Saturday Market.
Background music is from Tibetan Buddhism script of Maha Karuna Dharani.
