Radio Show: Long Distance Relationships | Brett's Blog

When we decided on a topic for our class-wide ?News Cast?, I wasn?t too thrilled but nonetheless I came up with what I thought was a good idea. ?My initial thought was to create an audio piece about my two roommates and their ?Long Distance Relationships?. ?As I explain in my blog post about my idea, as well as in the audio piece itself, I have lived with these two guys for the last three years and have watched the ins and outs of their relationships. ?I felt that since I lived with them, I had experienced enough to be able to convey their relationships through my eyes.

I knew I wanted to do an audio essay, with me simply talking. ?There would be a good opportunity to interview them about the subjects, but I wanted this to be more from my perspective than from theirs. ?I was also worried about length and making it too long. To begin formulating what I was going to talk about, I sat down and brainstormed about all of the good, bad, and ugly that I had seen. As I got some ideas, I began to write my script, tying together all of the elements of their relationships I could think of. ?I also chose to incorporate a brief tangent about my own relationship because of the polar opposite nature. ?You can listen to what I mean by that when I talk about it in the pieces, but lets just say my girlfriend and I live pretty close to one another.

I think one of the most difficult things I came across was how to end the piece. ?I really wasn?t sure what to say or how to wrap it up. ?It took a few attempts to write and record something that just sounded right. ?Eventually I realized that as a senior I will be heading somewhere different for the rest of my life, and at the moment it could really be anywhere. ?The uncertainty of my future made me realize that a long distance relationship could be a possibility between my girlfriend and myself.

Continuing on about the difficulty of the ending, I knew I wanted to incorporate lyrics from Vanessa Carlton?s song?A Thousand Miles. ?There are lyrics that say ??Cause you know I?d walk a thousand miles, if I could just see you tonight? which I thought played perfectly into the theme of the audio piece. ?There is also a very catchy and recognizable piano melody to begin the song. ?I wanted to tie both those together to fade out the piece but playing around with the two clips plus my own voice clip became very very difficult. ?I couldn?t manage to find the perfect balance and transitions. ?The peer workshop helped me solve this issue. ?One of my classmates recommended I play the song?s instrumental throughout the piece as a way to tie it into the ending, and I think it works much better than what it was previously like.

In regards to the other sound effects I had, I really liked the idea of using background sounds to elevate the audio piece. ?After listening to just the recording of my voice, I knew it needed some more punch. ?I thought the airplane noise to enhance the idea of long distance was clever. ?I used a phone call snippet from Drake?s song?Marvin?s Room?while I talked about how the couples communicate. ?I couldn?t for the life of me find a recording of a female voice answering a phone anywhere on the internet!

I recorded the entire piece on my computer. ?I sat in front of my computer with my script and recorded my speech in Audacity. ?I then used the program to edit my speaking voice recording to my liking. ?I produced the piece further in Audacity, adding in the other sound effects and paying with sound levels and other elements to fine tune the recording. ?I used the time shift tool a lot to move around all of the background noises and music. ?It was pretty difficult to use Audacity at first. ?I had only used it a handful of times previously to do simple stuff like make ringtones and convert audio clips into mp3?s. ?This was a whole new level and, even though frustrating at times, I really enjoyed learning some of the ins and outs of the program.

So, here is my finalized audio piece, a view of my roommates? long distance relationships through my eyes.

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Source: http://bsosnik.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/news-cast-long-distance-relationships/

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