The following is from Shel Silverstein's 'Where the Sidewalk Ends,' and was completed through an assignment for my Digital Storytelling class at Syracuse University.
First, I chose to read from this book because I thought it would lend itself well to my assignment of a self-contained story in 60 seconds, and in reading through the entire book today, this one was perfect in length and lent itself very well to easy-to-find sound effects.
I recorded the audio using my computer's built-in microphone, which is frowned upon professionally. I attempted to use an external mic, but after hours of fiddling with it both on my laptop and a nearby desktop, I decided to see how awful the laptop's mic would sound. It turns out, it sounds great!
In the background are files from freesound.org, I knew I wanted some train sounds, but ended up book-ending some birds chirping for a nice outdoor feel. Of course (spoiler alert!) there's a big crash sound in there too.
I used Audacity for mixing. Initially, I tried Final Cut Pro but having not done this level of sound mixing, I decided to use the other program as there was a 30-minute tailor-made tutorial of how to do this project. Of course, there was a lot to learn, and I'm very happy that I have a little bit of a background in video editing, and Audacity was very similar to Final Cut in many ways. That being said, the longest part of this assignment was tweaking the audio.
I also ended up using buzzsprout.org to upload the audio as Blogger would not allow a straight-up audio upload. I didn't include a song, as anything I could think of was either irrelevant or distracting. I know the assignment required it, but instead I threw in three sound effects that are under my reading for the entirety of the piece.
Was this a boring post? Probably, unless you're my professor or a classmate, then you might find this interesting. Everybody should give that one-minute story a listen. Even if you don't like my voice, the Shyamalan twist at the 50-second mark is a doozy!
First, I chose to read from this book because I thought it would lend itself well to my assignment of a self-contained story in 60 seconds, and in reading through the entire book today, this one was perfect in length and lent itself very well to easy-to-find sound effects.
I recorded the audio using my computer's built-in microphone, which is frowned upon professionally. I attempted to use an external mic, but after hours of fiddling with it both on my laptop and a nearby desktop, I decided to see how awful the laptop's mic would sound. It turns out, it sounds great!
In the background are files from freesound.org, I knew I wanted some train sounds, but ended up book-ending some birds chirping for a nice outdoor feel. Of course (spoiler alert!) there's a big crash sound in there too.
I used Audacity for mixing. Initially, I tried Final Cut Pro but having not done this level of sound mixing, I decided to use the other program as there was a 30-minute tailor-made tutorial of how to do this project. Of course, there was a lot to learn, and I'm very happy that I have a little bit of a background in video editing, and Audacity was very similar to Final Cut in many ways. That being said, the longest part of this assignment was tweaking the audio.
I also ended up using buzzsprout.org to upload the audio as Blogger would not allow a straight-up audio upload. I didn't include a song, as anything I could think of was either irrelevant or distracting. I know the assignment required it, but instead I threw in three sound effects that are under my reading for the entirety of the piece.
Was this a boring post? Probably, unless you're my professor or a classmate, then you might find this interesting. Everybody should give that one-minute story a listen. Even if you don't like my voice, the Shyamalan twist at the 50-second mark is a doozy!
1 comment:
Great "telling" of Silverstein's twist on the familiar tale. You have such a good command of your voice and used it to build momentum. A little humor came through in your tone at the end. Your choice to only use SFX was a good one. Well-done for both the technical and telling components.
Post a Comment