The Assignment: 80’s Product Radio Commercial (Five Stars)
The Story: I have actually been watching Stranger Things (when I am not slaving away at my ds106 class, of course) because a new season just came out. For those who may not be familiar, Stranger Things takes place in the 1980’s and Netflix actually did quite a good job creating era appropriate fashion trends. I got the idea for this product after watching some of the new episodes.
The first thing I did after deciding on my product was writing a short script. Even though the assignment was a fairly brief one (under 45 seconds) I did not want to “wing it” or mess up. I wrote down dialogue for my commercial and practiced a few times. I have a Mac, so I recorded on Voice Memos. Once I had a recording I was happy with, I tried opening it in both Garage Band and Audacity. Neither would accept the file, as it was an MP4 and they prefer wav (?? picky picky).
I had to Google how to convert the file. Once I figured that out, I opened it on Audacity, as I noticed that is what Dr. Polack recommends and I am not the most tech savvy person. After I opened it, I found a background song I liked on this site. I downloaded the song and opened it on Audacity as well. I used this clip to figure out how to open/import multiple files on Audacity. I then used the effects tab to make the volume on both clips more equal, as the music was disproportionately loud. I also used the “Studio Fade Out” effect only on the music to create a nice effect towards the end of my commercial.
Finally, when I was finished I noticed that my commercial was 29 seconds long and it had to be 30-45. Since I did not want to lose credit, I created a new Voice Memo of myself saying “order now”. I converted this to a wav file, opened it in Audacity and added it towards the end. I then used the effects tool to make it louder than the other two audio clips because much like a real commercial I wanted to get the audience/customer’s attention.
Once I was satisfied, and sure I met the time requirement, I saved my audio clip and uploaded it to Soundcloud. I added in a brightly colored Google Image of leg warmers to finish it off.
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