Assignments

DS106 Open Assignments created during open course and theme sessions.

Gornie Invoice – delivering the finger physically?

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WebAssignment58

Bill Clark Invoice – pdf full view

Invoice Jerry's Gornie

I created an invoice for webassignment58 based on an event of my character in his freshman year of high school.

I was not aware of this interpretation of gornie until reading the book Eastside: fractured Tales of Milwaukee’s Eastside and finding my Dad’s name in it as this event. My mom was Italian. We all had a gold gornie necklace and told it was an Italian good luck charm. I still have mine on a charm necklace with some other charms and wear it on holidays. My mom wore one most of her life. This gives me a little more insight into why it was special for her and that she wore it with pride for 53 years of marriage before she passed away.

This is 3 stars – but with character development, seemed this is more of a 1.5-2 at this point. Most of the creation is in writing and connecting to a story line.

Jerry of Eastside for Sale on eBay

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As the #noir106 cohort works on character development as collaborations and listens to their audio #ds106radio episodes over the next two weeks, I am opting for some creations based on the open course week 8 for this week. I am of course changing it up and adding my own little slice of the UMW Noir Cohorts to my mix.

I started using my dad as my character. He really doesn’t interact with any of the Noir characters, but the time period I am focusing on now starts during that era. As others create Twitter personas for their characters and will develop stories and interactions I realized these assignments are the updated version of ds106 and Storytelling within the Web.

I began with this first assignment – WebAssignment713. This is a 5 Star assignment. Story telling within the web. I chose an eBay page for this first attempt. I searched for 1955 and came up with some great auction items. I chose to replace the first 9 items with some of my work and other photos of Jerry across his life – just some samples. You can see the screen shot below and go to a working html page by clicking this link: Jerry Eastside on eBay

Story in Web

The eBay story should help in identifying different parts of Jerry’s life and things that happened to him. Marriage, activities, love, etc.

I used X-Ray Goggles to reconstruct the eBay page. I even changed some of the text to #ds106. 🙂 At first I thought I had to change all the parts to go to a page that would just explain that this was all a story and not go to the original products. When I was finished, it produces a page, but the links do not go anywhere – so that step can be eliminated. That makes this more of a one layer kind of presentation which is a lot easier to think out than the multiple branches and side trips that could be created and make this a far deeper and complex assignment. (Update: upon another load and look – the links do work – so now the ones I changed go to a blank page of my site – oh well! – next time!)

I can see using this for different characters in search pages, IMD, and maybe even Facebook or LinkedIn so that you can tell the story but not have to create an account and set up etc. to support. It reminds me of prior to Photoshop and other remixes having a magazine cover with your own photo inserted.

Building a portfolio for a character could easily be accomplished using this method to tell a story.Threading a full trail “in” the web for a character will add dimensions and interaction for readers. This first attempt has sprouted many tangents and ideas of how to use the web as the story for telling. I want to also explore further into how to work with the CSS of a page to alter the content to my choosing.

ds106.ioAnimatedNewOldFriend_290NOTE: Listen in M-Th the weeks of March 8 and March 15, 2015 to #noir106 radio shows.
9pm EST at ds106radio and
Tweet along with other listeners and the creators using hashtags:-#ds106radio, #noir106, #ds106.

Waldorf and Statler Present – Eastside

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This is my intro bumper. Since at this time I will not do a radio show as an individual I chose to make an intro to my possible audio session and not a ds106radio bumper. One of my Dad’s favorite shows was the Muppet Show. He loved Waldorf and Statler and Animal.

Searching for clips of animal turned up a lot of screaming and grunts – he was a character of few words and lots of animated action! I still may try a short 15 second bumper with Animal.

Waldorf and Statler  – It took me a while, because I knew who they were – the grumpy old men hecklers, but not their names. Once I uncovered who they were there were piles of clips to go through. And sigh…again I got caught up in watching – but not as long this time!

I found a trailer for a muppet movie that was more a conversation between the two of them and not the one liner zingers. Zingers would work -but there would have been a lot of piecing together. I think John Johnston has some script to apply to clips that I will have to check out on how to use – especially before the remix units! I still had a lot of trimming, matching, juggling and piecing to do with the dialog to get it to say what I wanted it to say.

I found several versions of the theme music for the background and went with a cover of piano only since I wanted it to be background. The music in the end sounded to me like it was part of the original and it wasn’t. This is still several pieces rearranged and tweaked to be one.

I added the text to speech voice of Ryan for the title Eastside to take out references of muppets.

Other than that this one was a little more simple and straight forward without a lot of layers and additions. The original clip had layers of sounds and – hey  – why not use them.

I did keep the ending with a long trailer – that is for the purpose of being easier to add to a longer audio event and blend it in. So the last 3+seconds are really dead air, but since they are at the end a listener will not be affected.

Any other Muppet Show fans out there? I love bringing in things that meant something to my character!

Tools: Audacity, Mac YouTube Downloader

Guys vs Dolls – Commercial Standoff

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Audio commercials. How to choose a voice? Male or Female? Who is the target audience? Which fits best? I decided to do both versions and use both within the same audio event – cover all the bases!

Audacity is getting to be more familiar and WOW – there is so much you can do with it that I haven’t even touched yet!

First – shout out to Ronald L – a ds106 4Lifer, who posted in the Google+ Community some work he had done using text to speech voices. This provided a change-up from having to do my voice over or try to find a willing candidate to read and record for me.

From the beginning;

  1. Determine product
  2. Write Script for ear hear
  3. Pre think possible genre for music and possible sound effects
  4. Go to http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/ and create voice overs. – This step required some time to space the text out for some emphasis etc. I also had to try EVERY voice and different speeds.
  5. Download text to speech files as mp3 for importing into Audacity
  6. Search for music background – TIME WARP – I have to get better at choosing and narrowing the scope!
  7. Search and download sound effects – more than needed, but better to have and cut than not enough.
  8. Work with music segment first and make length of desired commercial
  9. Import voices – both into same to keep timing the same for both commercials
  10. Split voices into segments
  11. Change speed of voices on certain phrases to smooth out computer generated sounds and to stress statements. (this didn’t work for all -still a little rough on some statements that I can’t seem to smooth) My script had pilates instead of Zumba – but pilates would not generate into anything close to understanding. Rocks glasses turned into on the rocks for the same reason.
  12. Go back and use envelope on music to raise sounds between phrases, soften background in certain phrases. The music track ended up looking like a wicked roller coaster ride!
  13. Add sound effects
  14. Use amplify, envelope and fades to place and emphasize.
  15. Save original
  16. Save copy as male voice – delete female tracks
  17. Save copy as female voice – delete male tracks
  18. Export each out as mp3.

One hiccup was in the male voice. Every time I exported as an mp3 I got no voiceover. I ended up importing into a new audacity file and then exporting again – this time all tracks came thru. It seems because the voices were mono and in the original they somehow became joined, when I deleted the  female track it auto muted the male voice in export because it was the second track. Not sure if that makes sense – but 20 minutes of tense moments and trying different saves, save as, and exports, I finally came up with a complete mp3.

Still not sure how this all fits into an audio event – but I am building the pieces!

Love to hear any suggestions for improvements! thanks!

 

Oriental Drugs – OK – NOT THAT KIND!

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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

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