A Band In My Garage? – Blog Post #11

This past weekend I was challenged to take on my formidable opponent, who was in the way of my goals: a finished podcast and a good grade. My opponent, formally known as Garage Band, proved easier than I’d  thought to vanquish and dispose of. The simple interface of Garage Band and the Jedi-like training I received proved enough to emerge the victor.

The weapons I received included Auto-ducking, pre-recorded sound effects and music, voice affectations and the V-Room (provided by the University of Michigan). These tools in hand I spent hours instead of days in the editing studio. Thank you Apple. 

Seriously though, anyone can use Garage Band if they take a miniscule amount of time and learn how. In a couple of hours I had edited my podcast within near professional quality and the only reason I was sweating was the of the lack of ventilation. With ease I faded music in and out of my presentation and importing sound effects was merely a click and drag away.  The amount of training I got was little and most of it is easy to figure out yourself.

Then, with another effortless click, I was able to export my track to iTunes. How cool is that? Let me answer that for you. It’s flipping incredible.

Overall it was a good experience, I didn’t realize how easy it was to create great quality podcasts. In fact it makes me want to go and record some music. Some semi-pro tracks might just be within my reach. I might have to do it more often…

Facebook Messaging – The Greatest

Today I fell in love with Facebook’s messaging system. With ease you can attach pictures, videos, website links etc. Sucks for you email. Email is further falling behind due to it’s lack of ease and overall sparkle. Facebook gives you an idea of the link you’re clicking on beforehand with a picture and a caption which is automatically included. Facebook lets you leave video messages. Facebook is easy. Email is boring. Will Facebook eventually take over email? No, but it should.

Podcast

Well I had my first rough recording today and it wasn’t so bad. My voice did sound kind of funny but it wasn’t too terrible. So I was wondering what your experiences were like. Were they as lack luster as mine? Or does anyone have any cool stories? Did anyone have a breakthrough? I hope so. 

I can’t seem to upload my audio file so you’ll have to wait till next time to hear a a bit of me.

 

Interactive Ads

It’s interesting that the undisputed king of ads, the Barbarian Group, would say that no matter what you do, banners will increase traffic for your site. More and more I’m seeing banners that not only advertise but play music, move, and talk to you, especially on Playbill.com. Broadway show after Broadway show asks for your attention in fancy banner form. But with a limited audience would you think that these banner are improving audience turn out for all the shows or just the ones with the most ads?

New Moon

This weekend the new Twilight movie New Moon will be released in theatres. In honor of the release I found this video. 

It seems more and more sites are advertising this way. They give a bit of a hook on Youtube and try to lure you, the audience, to their main site. Youtube watch out, you’re just being used. But I feel like they’re okay with that. 

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Music Tuesday

This morning I came across Youtube’s Music Tuesday which highlights music videos from famous artists. It’s another way for Youtube to take a moment and spotlight some of the videos that might not get as much traffic. I personally am excited about the fact that Youtube spotlights various videos throughout the week. Who has the time to go through the library of videos that is Youtube and find the gems? Thanks Youtube for making life a bit easier. Here is one of the videos spotlighted today.

 

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Podcasting Narration

A short while ago I was assigned a narrative project in podcast form. I will be crafting a story over the next weeks that details an experience of my own involving new media. The story has to be interesting and poignant so I think I might write about a toy puppy dog. That’s interesting and poignant right? Never mind. The point is that I’ll have to record my own voice talking about my life. As much as I love hearing myself talk, this is a little bit scary. Everyone hates hearing themselves, mostly because we sound different in our heads, but non the less it’s uncomfortable. I’m wondering if you guys feel the same way. I’m new to this recording thingy and I don’t know how we’ll get along. Have any of you used something like this before, and if so what kind of new technology is out there to make the process easier? I’ll look forward to your answers. I hope you tune in once my podcast is finished and see how things turn out. Until then, wish me luck.

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Storytelling

Ira Glass knows a lot about storytelling. He’s been doing it for a while, and he’s recognized as one of the best in the business. So it would be natural to study his type of storytelling in order to make sure the podcast I’m making for class doesn’t suck, so that’s what I did.

I watched a video of Ira talking about storytelling. In the video Ira made some points that were insightful such as a story’s need for a moving progression of events, what Ira calls an anecdote, and also that a story needs a moment of reflection, a moment where the events are laid out and surveyed, so that meaning can be extracted. I’d never thought about this before, but he’s right. A story can have a point but not be interesting, and a story can be engaging yet lack message. In either case the story is lacking and is what Ira would call “crap.” I’m glad I saw his storytelling video because now I will be sure to watch out for those two points when making my own video.

After watching the storytelling video I listened to This American Life  which is an audio show that Ira narrates and writes. It was interesting to see how he integrated his own advice into his segments. He talked like himself and always had the stories moving forward. The stories were interesting and probed deeply into the mind. He asked questions like, “Didn’t you realize you might be putting the family through emotional trauma?” These questions expanded the discussion and moved the story ahead. 

Overall the sturcture of Plan B was steady. For instance, the segment called Another Tequila Sunrise which talked about Cuervo Man was opened up with a personal anecdote and then faded into an interview. Then sound bytes from the two’s experiences together were used throughout the bit to depict their relationship. In this way the story was clear, effective, and fun to listen to.

Not only did the segment have good story but they added in ambient sounds as well as music, which was layered on top of dialogue in an extremely effective way. It gave listenersa feel for the setting, mood, and an awareness of more than one perspective. 

Together all the segments point back to the Plan B theme. Each segment takes a different look at what might be a Plan B and ultimately achieve a unified structure. By using different perspectives the audio comes across in an interesting way.

Overall I was interested throughout and rarely did I lose interest. I found myself engaged during interviews as well as the times they used music especially. The times I lost interest were during long times when the story didn’t move forward. I believe this was due to the speaker’s talking like a TV anchor and a lack of forward motion in the story. Needless to say, Ira wasn’t in these parts.

Thanks to Ira Glass I feel that I can move forward, confident in my audio script writing abilities.

 

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Podcasting? New Media?

Is podcasting really new media? In my opinion it isn’t. We get caught up in the fact that you can put podcasts on your iPod and they download automatically. The bells and whistles deceive us. After all, anything this cool must be new media. Right? Wrong. Podcasts are a new form of radio which act almost like VCR tapes, which enabled people to tape their favorite TV shows and watch them at a later time. However, this is delayed gratification, not new media. 

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Online Newspapers

Newspapers are a dying breed. Even the NY Times is suffering because of mediums such as blogs, TV, and the web. What was once the main source of news may not be around in twenty years. Personally I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not. If we get the same info why not kill a few less trees, but on the other hand there is still something nostalgic and fascinating about getting a newspaper hot off the press. What do you guys think? Keep em’ or toss em’?

 

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