This week started off a bit slow but the ball started to get rolling around Wednesday when my group truly began communicating. Up until that point, we had been off brainstorming a bit on our own in hopes of coming together to create something great. Come Wednesday, the group got in contact and began talking about what we’d like to do. We settled on a story called Coroner’s Tale, a suspenseful thriller/mystery audio story placed on a sci-fi spaceship. I won’t reveal too much about the story, as I’d like the story to be a new, surprising experience for listeners. If you’d like to read more about what details we are comfortable sharing, check out the blog post below.

Design and Audio Assignments

One reason I was so excited to get things moving in terms of group communication and story drafting was because I was extremely eager to get to work on the design and audio assignments. I was able to venture all across the “seriousness scale” in terms of how I approached creating things, which was a lot of fun and a bit of a challenge. Sometimes it can be easy to get set in one mindset and take off, but shifting between playful and very serious can be difficult. Luckily, I believe the outcomes are extremely interesting and fun to look at/listen to.

I began my personal creative process by creating a design for Coroner’s Tale. I wanted something that was gritty, dark, creepy, and simultaneously recognizable and unrecognizable. After searching for a while for images under the “alien” tag on Unsplash, I was finally able to stumble upon a picture of a creature that looks quite humanoid but is also off-putting and mysterious. To work with the piece, I found a font that could potentially be used for old, black and white horror films, working extremely well with the backing image. The diluted yellow color serves as a way to make the text stand out while not distracting from the unsettling background of the poster. Ultimately, this is probably the most proud I’ve ever been of a design I’ve ever made. It brought me sheer joy looking at it knowing that I made it.

For the audio assignments, I created the end bumper for Coroner’s Tale as well as a commercial to place wherever deemed fit throughout the broadcast. I wanted to keep a quite serious tone for the end bumper, speaking with a whispery, somber tone and adding in reverb to help achieve the idea of my voice being that of an ethereal being in space. Using freesound.org, I was able to very easily find the humming of a spaceship, a futuristic terminal beep, and light background beeps to fill up the space in the bumper. This helped achieve the setting of a sci-fi spaceship. I also made sure to leave a bit of strictly ambiance to the end to make for some cushion between the commercial that will follow.

Speaking of commercial, I wanted to completely flip the script and go for something funny and goofy for an advertisement. Though it may seem like a random thought or a product I came up with on the spot when trying to wrack my brain for something to “sell,” I actually thought of the idea of NoseChap in 9th grade. Funnily enough, at the time, I genuinely thought that it could be a good idea, and to be truthful, I still think there’s potential for a product that helps with stench problems. Regardless, I decided to go with this idea as the product, which is already silly enough on it’s own, amplifying the silliness by creating a dialogue between a very colorful character and a God-like being. I did some generic voice acting work here, making myself more nasally and switching up my vocabulary to achieve the voice of Gary, while deepening my voice and drawing out my words to achieve “Mr. God.” Writing the script was very fun, though it was more of a general outline than an actual fully fleshed out script, instead doing mostly improv for the lines that made it through. I also used freesound.org once again to find city sounds to put in the background, a trash bin closing for the beginning, and a car crash for when Gary runs across the street. Though the commercial turned out to be on the longer side, I believe that the narrative within keeps the audience engaged enough for it really work.

If you’d like to check out any of these creations, make sure to click through to the blogposts above.

Daily Creates

As this week is the week leading up to spring break, I’m sure it’s understandable that it was quite stressful and jam-packed. On Thursday, I woke up, sat down at my desk, and got to work on my assignments, and other than the occasional food and bathroom break, was working on schoolwork until 1:30 in the morning. With that being said, though, I still tried to put my heart and soul into everything I made. The daily creates this week were a good opportunity to slow down and catch my breath, though. Being a little overwhelmed by things, I had to backtrack a little to complete one a couple days after it was posted, but I still had fun doing it nonetheless.

I started by creating a book spine poem on Wednesday, picking out a few books from my mom’s personal collection. I found that there were quite a few books relating to weather, or ones that could be twisted in that direction, so that’s what I decided to go with. As an added bonus, we have Luna modelling for the camera in the background.

For this daily create, from Tuesday but done on Thursday, we were tasked with watching a video of many objects in a space changing. We had to try to find as many objects that had changed as we could, ultimately revealing that most objects within the room did shift or change in some way by the end of the video. I felt that I picked up on quite a few things, but watching it over once again proved that there was plenty that I missed. This activity really gets you thinking about your perception of the spaces around you, finding that you may not notice plenty of things even if you’re actively searching.

For the final daily create of the week, it was our job to create a caption for these cuddling trilobites. I approached this with what was actively on my mind, “Wow. It’s been a long week. I cuddle up and get warm in bed and rest.” I figured with a little creative wording, I could paint a completely new image based off what was provided, giving a bit of character and life to these little fossilized creatures.

Closing

This week was full of creative, engaging, exciting, and stressful moments. Altogether, this flurry of a week has resulted in some incredible progress both personally and in terms of the group radio show project. Myself, Bird, Daniel, and Naomi are all extremely excited to continue work on the show and really look forward to sharing it with the class. I’m also very eager to see what everyone else comes up with for the radio show! I’m expecting some really great things as the work I’m seeing from this class is quite impressive.

That just about wraps this week up. I guess on this great expedition through ds106, this week has just become another galaxy explored.