An audio assignment - Tell me your secret

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Tell me your secret
You can listen to this file better with a headphone.
I don't know why its sound is too low with my labtop speaker..

The process of an audio piece - Tell me your secret!

I worked on an audio assignment with Kristin. Initially, we wanted to make an audio piece with some sounds of the way going to school. So each of us tried to collect sounds such as sounds from footstep , wind, people's voices, treffic sounds and so on. To get some sound, I used a shot gun microphone and a regular one which is built in M audio but it was really hard to get good quality sounds from outside. So we decided to collect sounds inside, especially at ITP, to get good quality ones. Because Kristin works at ER, we could get specific sounds from empty ITP. We got a lot of sounds from doors, keyboards, floors, a tea pot etc. so it took much time to check the sounds and try to recognize which sounds are from where. As recognizing the source sounds, we had fun to guess what sound comes from where. So we changed our plan and decided to make a quiz with sounds! We were so excited about our new idea but we thought sounds from empty ITP were boring as sources for the quiz. Trying to look for interesting sources for the quiz we decided to record the voices from ITP students. Whoes voice is it? We thought this question could the most interesting question for classmate. So, we started recording ITP people's voice about answering our request; tell us your secret. We took people to the quit room and used a shot gun microphone to get a clear voice. On this process, someone did not want to record his secret and someone gave us a very interesting answer so we had a lot of fun. After getting various sounds, we started editing them but it did not take long time because we recorded their voice in the same environment. Using audacity program, we put all voices on the program and cut some noises and some sounds that were recorded unintentionally. Actually, we did not need any sound effects, because indeed voices from people were really interesting by themselves. Finally we played our audio piece in the class and it was a great contest! Chris got a best grade with13 answers among 16 questions.

Actually it was the first time for me working on the sound itself. Before this work, I was not interested in the sound so I was worried about this assignment little bit. But working on an audio, I learned a lot how to record, how to use recoder and how to edit sounds.

Internet Ecomony

Fame vs Fortune:Micropayments and Free contents by Clay Shirky
Misunderstanding Micropayments by Sccot MacCloud

It is very interesting reading articles that have totally different points of view about same phenomenon. Shirky published an article, “Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free contents” about the ecology publishing power on the internet and based on this, he supposed the failure of micropayments. Scott McCloud published an article named “Misunderstanding Micropayments” to respond Shirky’s article.

I have finished these two articles, and conceive myself as an Internet contents consumer. Have I ever paid for Internet contents? The answer is No. Sometimes I find some contents that I really need but if I should pay for these, I usually start looking for other contents. So I think about what makes me think like that seriously. There are two reasons that I have for not paying for Internet contents. First, I am always sure that there are other contents that I can get without paying on the internet. As Shirky says there is a huge world of free contents. Second, whenever I get information from the internet, I used to doubt weather it is reliable or not. Sometimes I could not find where the information comes from. Because in the internet world, anyone can post everything no matter whether is true or not. And when I face the contents that I have to pay, I could not check whole contents. I should decide if I would buy them or not just depending on a little preview. But paradoxically if I could check whole contents through the preview, I would not buy them because practically I already got the information that I needed. In my case this is a huge dilemma.

After reading I was aware of my actions are related with “mental transaction cost” that Shirky mentions in his article. Because of these two reasons, I can not feel internet contents are worth buying willingly even though these are very cheep. And also, my reasons are based on internet’s distinctions which are opening to anyone and being full of open sources speaking of free contents. These distinctions make the economic situations of the online different from the one of the real world. Because of these, I consider micopayments system was failed.

On the other hand, as a creator, of course I agree with McCloud’s argument that creators should be paid for their works. But still I am wondering that the same paying system with the real economic system could be the most effective way to be compensated for their work on the web. The internet world is one of the biggest possible markets to show our works and hopefully to get compensations for them. So I hope, even though online world is changing too fast and too big to control, internet market would be getting mature to a positive side.

Understanding Media -Marshall McLuhan

Understanding Media - Marshall McLuhan

Normally medium is treated as a tool to convey contents. But McLuhan says “the medium is the message.” And according to his arguments, medium is also any extension of ourselves and it shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action. (p.9) People are making media and following this people is being changed. I could understand media influence the contents. Media can change trait of the contents. For example, if we find the same articles on the web and on the newspapers, even though we would get same information, it influence the way we accept it. But if media is just a message, would this different information from the same media be the same thing? Could jean and corduroy pants deal with the same? Indeed, could the media be the message itself?

I was interested in compare hot media and cold media depending on participation by audience and amount of information. These two characters can be standards to classify media, but I think only two categories lacks explaining many different kinds of media. And I think to define the distinctions of media; we should consider not only the messages from the media but also the contents that media show us.

I totally agree that media has its own voice and it has enough power to influence us. But at the same time, the media without any contents is just media for us. In my opinion, people expect more meanings form the media than just the message form it. I mean people often pay more attention what media says than what it is by itself. People just feel notice the message from the media unconsciously, but people try to read the contents that they can notice consciously. I want to say that the message which is from the media and the contents that it has make the different dimensional messages that we can accept.

The man on the stairs - movie

Shooting and editing videos

We needed 3 categories sources for our video; footsteps on the stair, shadows and the reader.

Footsteps.
With a storyboard, we started shooting our video on the staircase. I was an actress, actually we only needed my footsteps. And Jose shot me with a camera and Daniela took many pictures of almost same shots with camera's at the same time because we need a movie and still shot as well to mix a video and a stopmoton. We tried to make a lot of footages so we repeated shooting over and over again with different angles.

Shadows.
In order to make shadows we need a special light so we installed a light(I forgot the name of this light..) with a white wall. Because of the back light I could make a big shadow on the wall and Jose and Daniela shot these shadows as a same way with shooting footsteps.

The reader.
To shoot a scene of the reader, we set up a chair and table like a living room beside of the big windows. Because of these windows, there were enough natural lights so we decided not to use extra lights but we should shoot fast to keep similar environment not being affected by quick changing of the natural lights. I took many still shots and Jose shot a video.

Sounds.
To present this story, we had decided to use a voice-over as a main sound so we did not need to care about original sounds during shooting. After getting all video sources, at first, we got rid of all sounds and started recording Daniela's voice. Because we did not notice the difference between reading with eyes and with a voice( this one takes longer time) before recording, our description was too long to fit in 3 minutes so we should revise it over and over again. Finally, we could get straight voice-over that fits in our video without any pauses. But I think we need some pauses following to the story.
And luckily we could get great music from Angelica who is Jose's wife. Personally I really like this music and it was perfect for our movie.

Editing.
Mainly we followed our storyboard, but details were changed little bit following footages. At first we put footages orderly on the timeline mixing and controlled durations to fit the flow of the story and then we trird several effects on every scene to make most efficient scene. At last we edited music, and put voice-over. It took a long time to edit the movie because all of us were very beginners of Final cut but after editing videos I am familiar with this program fairly.

The storyboard for a video

The man on the sairs.
At first we chose several scenes from the story and talked about how to present them. Developing many ideas, We decided to set up two different situations; one of them is the situation of reading as if a movie follows the contents that a reader is reading and the other one is presenting the story. So, to begin with a movie, there is a reader and a camera shoots her back. The camera gradually zooms in the book that the reader hold and a video about the story is started. So, our video repeats going in the story and going out it. At last, we are goint to mix these two situations to make veiwers experience an unexpected situation. To present this, we are going to represent shadows that is one of the elements of the story on the situation of reading.

Here is our storyboard.