Midterm Already?

This week is/was midterm week, and we had to use new software called WeVideo.

WeVideo was not too scary, especially after learning how to use Audacity last week.

I was originally going to use this week to formulate a rough draft for our final project, but ultimately decided to go back to Week 1 and revamp the story of how I met my best friend Taylor Williams.

I knew that creating a full video off of the original podcast would be a fulfilling process, and that pictures and the like would be readily available. It was particularly appealing because as I played around with the WeVideo software, I learned that one of the preexisting templates would work perfectly to tell this tale.

I would have liked to have revamped the narration, but I felt that the track I ended up using worked well with the music I chose, and created a cohesive story for this week's assignment. I feel that the pictures and the sequence I used them more than accurately sum up my friendship with Taylor, and I only wish that we had taken more pictures together during that first week of knowing each other.

Here is the link to the WeVideo I created. I hope you all enjoy!!

Audio Mixing Success?

Hey all. So this week's assignment had us trying out a new tool called Audacity, which can be used to make a mixed audio file. While the task seemed a little daunting at first, I was able to learn the basic skills pretty quickly thanks to Marilyn's tutorials.

For the assignment, I found that when I first began to play around and get familiar with Audacity that the closest thing at hand (I was soaking an injured foot in a sat bath) was a small book by Tom Shay-Zapien called "Jingle All the Way". "Jingle All the Way" is an interactive storybook to accompany a stuff dog, which Hallmark sold/sells during the holiday season. I quickly discovered while the book was great for practicing, it also would work well for this week's assignment.

In the story, Jingle is a puppy without a home. One day he is outside of a school when either the recess or end of day bell rings (the story does not make it entirely clear) and Jingle gets to play with the children. Jingle has so much fun that he goes back the next day! I ended my audio recording of the story about halfway through the actual book, as the whole thing seemed a bit too challenging for editing, at which point Jingle is happy with his new friends. The story continues with Jingle being found one night by Santa, and he is taken to the home of one of the children and adopted for Christmas.

As part of the assignment, we had to add music/sound effects to the story to enhance the storytelling experience. I was able to find a song which I felt worked nicely to introduce and end Jingle's story. I also found several sound clips, one of a school bell and one of a dog barking, to emphasize several of the sounds within the story. I really wanted to find a sound clip of children playing, but after searching several sites, I was unable to find something which I found acceptable for this particular story.

Anywho, here is the clip for the story. Enjoy!

Click here to listen!