Oriental Drugs is a pharmacy and store on Milwaukee’s Eastside and has been there for ages. It is one of the landmarks for my character Jerry.
I began by looking up old radio commercials, jingles, scripts, and advertising online. I spent way more time on listening and going off on tangents from links, one after another. Discipline in staying on track needs to improve.
I found some old scripts which were helpful in determining tempo, style, and other things. I also remembered writing for the ear and looked up those tips as well. I can’t say I follow them all – but it allowed me to remember not to be an English teacher tyrant and to write more for listening than report writing or policy and contract documents.
I broke down my script into “ear hear” lines and double spaced for adding in sounds etc. Once I placed all the possible sounds and transitions I went to the next time sucker and visited freesound.org for downloads that might work saving them all to one folder and making sure they had titles that would allow me to read and not have to listen to everyone trying to find what I needed when I needed it.
Once complete it was background music. This is the biggest time warp! So many songs and music and yet going the CC or free copyright path doesn’t always bring about the best choices. They are most certainly there – but finding them among all the other stuff – wow! – Who would think listening to 30 second clips could take hours! I narrowed it down to 3 songs.
In Audacity, I recorded my script and divided the ear hear lines into separate sections. I would have preferred someone else reading but really don’t have any willing subjects handy now. I learned how to finally split a track and to use the time shift tool. I also managed to use the envelope tool, and several effects. I am getting more proficient at keyboard commands that increases efficiency as well.
I had 14 tracks going in this project and found using labeling was helpful as well as shrinking the track sizes, and collapsing once something is in place. Even dawned on me to move tracks up and down when I was working on placements so that other tracks weren’t in between. DUH! It’s those simple things!
While I still hear some things I’d like to work on, I will wait for feedback. Plus I still have another commercial to do and can apply new-found knowledge there. Just trying to keep in mind this is learning and not project outcome for now.
The sounds I used were:
freesound.org Dogs 20130101_131356_vaermland_sledge_dogs_before_start_put_to_sledge.wav
sausages frying.wav
Smoke Detector Alarm
WetDoorOpen2.wav
231255__klankbeeld__pendulum-slow-two-o-clock.wav
1033__rhumphries__rbh-household-refridgerator.wav
Music from Jamendo.com
Shuffle U by Cambo
Nice! I like how the music picked up in the end as you stopped talking. But what made you name the place Oriental Drugs?
Thanks for noticing the pick up. 🙂
Oriental Drugs is actually a real place in Milwaukee – didn’t have to make it up. It has been around since I think the 1940’s or earlier.
This is a great commercial! At 2 AM you just can’t get food much anymore! Sounds like a cool place! This was some really good work and well organized!
I really liked the way you overlaid the music and sound effects! That’s really challenging to do for me.
Thanks July. It is not a simple thing for me either on getting so many layers going – but I am working on it. I am noticing that in Audacity the back sounds come in at different levels than when I am wearing headphones. The music comes thru better and the voice doesn’t overpower on my desktop with Audacity and headphones. My laptop sans headphones doesn’t sound the same…thinking another mix to do or just do better on my next commercial. Or just remember what I am creating the audio to presented on. I wonder how some of that might affect it playing on the radio? Any thoughts?