Derek!

Introduction

Mr. Fisher asked us to write a blog post about either our radio plays that we just finished, or our videos for the ITL project we are working on now. He mainly wanted us to write about the software (about it, challenges, learning), process, editing and production choices, and literacy. I think he just wants to get inside our heads a little bit.

I have decided to write about the radio play because it is nice to look back on things we did in the past. Also, I’m writing about the radio plays we just did because it gives me a break from worrying about what I’m going to do next in the ITL video.

Software

About it

First of all, we used a program called “audacity” to make our radio plays. Audacity is a program that allows you to record what ever you want into an mp3 file. You can record for hours and hours and hours on it, and it would still record everything you need.

Challenges

One of the challenges in using audacity is learning how to use it. When you first learn how to use a computer program, it takes a while for you to get used to everything. It can really slow down the process.

Another challenge was saving. I know when Matthew and I worked on the radio play, whenever we saved it, the program itself would close. I’m not saying that this is a bad program, I’m just saying that the only reason why it did that was because we didn’t save every five-ten minutes. In a program like audacity, it is very important to save frequently, because you never know what will happen.

Mr. Fisher asked us to keep our play in an estimate of 8-12 minutes and that was a challenge. Throughout the process, Matthew and I were worrying if it was going to be long enough. But when we were almost finished, we could relax because we passed the 8 minute mark.

Learning

Like I said before, learning was a challenge. Then, when we were getting the hang of it, things started to speed up.

I guess learning how to use audacity was fun. We got to play around with the program for a little while and we did some pretty wacky things to our voices. When we were doing these things, we realized that we could use some of these voices in our play.

The process of learning is try and try. If you make a mistake, you learn from it and you try again. That was what Matthew and I did as we learned how to use audacity, and I’m pretty sure that’s what everybody else did while they were learning, too.

Process

The process of working on the radio play was just to keep on work our butt off. We tried to do many things to see if they could fit in our radio play like change voices, trying different sound effects, and more.

There was a certain way we worked on the radio play, though. First, Matthew and I wrote the script. It was a struggle, at first, because we didn’t really know what the play was going to be about or what the genre would be. Then, we started talking and then we got our idea. We started to write our radio play like crazy. We had many ideas about what would happen next in the story.

After we wrote the script and did all the editing, we started to use audacity. After the learning process, we would record our lines. If we messed up or it just didn’t sound right, we would get rid of it and start over. This process took the longest of all.

In the middle of the recording process, Mr. Fisher gave groups and iPod and a recording thing that came with it, so that we could record our sound effects. When it was our turn to get the sound effects, I went to my house and made the sound effects that Matthew and I discussed about before. I also got sound effects off of the Internet (because some of the effects we needed we couldn’t make ourselves.).

After we got our sound effects and finished recording, Matthew and I put the sound effects where they needed to be in order to make the radio play better. This was a fairly fast process because Matthew and I knew what we wanted.

The final step in making the radio play was to make it into an mp3. This went by fairly quickly. As soon as we made it into an mp3, we were finished!

Editing and Production Changes

While you work on a radio play, or anything else for that matter, you have to edit what you have and make production changes. When I edit, I think of the first idea of what I actually wanted the project to be. If it isn’t what I imagined it to be, then I would edit it. If I have a partner in the project, I would do my best to convince him/her to make those changes.

Literacy

When Mr. Fisher asked us to write about how either the radio play or the video for the ITL project, he said that beforeliteracy used to be if you could read or write and that nowadays literacy is so much more. I completely agree with him. Literacy has now grown to so much potential. For example, blogs and wikis are the literacy of today. Even the video for the ITL project and our radio plays are the literacy of today.

Because of the rise in technology, literacy is no longer if you can read or write. It is now how you can use your ability to read and write.