Another fine day of storytelling through digital audio! The day started off with an enjoyable break from the norm - watching a film making documentary! Elizabeth explained a little of the background of the film, Persepolis; it portrays the story of a young girl growing up under the tyrannical state of Iran before and during the revolution. The story is crafted completely in black and white old style animation, each frame of the movie painstakingly drawn.
In discussion afterwards, Carrie mentioned that she enjoyed the film, though she had come in the middle of it. Jose pointed out that each of the actors really put a lot of emotion behind everything they said, even though they wouldn't be seen in the end by their audience. Elizabeth pointed out the the scenes describing the Foley Artist and his work - a foley artist is a professional job where you create the sounds necessary for a film or cartoon. The foley artist for Persepolis would move, dance, sway, using regular household items to create sounds as ordinary as the swishing of clothing in a crowd to the rolling chains of approaching tanks. For more information, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_artist
Afterwards, Paul led a lecture on SFX, explaining various sound effects in Vegas and the basics of creating them. For more information, see the examples on the student wiki: https://ita.wisc.edu/studentwiki/doku.php?id=program_knowledgebase:digital_audio:audio_effects_run-down
Paul challenged everyone to create a "story without words", a scene that is completely told through sound effects. Two examples he played were: someone coming in out of the cold and sitting in a rocking chair; and someone sharpening a sword, then fighting someone else, and then going back to sharpening the sword. Students nodded around the room as the scene began to make sense to them, as they caught on to how Paul had crafted a small 'storyline' using only sound effects and strategy.
Afterwards, break time! Most everyone sat at their computers and checked facebook, myspace, etc.
The Exploration section of the class began with Paul splitting the class up into groups to continue working on the "recording a scene" projct from the previous week. Tenzin, Diana, Nina, and Jose all stayed in the room to create a restuarant scene - Alli and her group ended up in the recording studio, though the H4 wasn't working so they ended up having to wait for the H2 from another group. Michelle, Jaylah, Malibu, Krystal were in the conference room on the other wing recording.
After the break, not many people had finished working on their projects - Alli's group was still adding sound effects and Krystal and Malibu's group still had editing to do . . . but soon after a little more work time, the groups were able to render their projects! Taylor and Diana's group shared a scene they had created of a French restaurant scene, with Jose as the waiter! Alli did a lot of the editing for their group. Michelle's group did a scene of girls at a dance discovering one another outside the dance room and going back in. And apparently, the groups switched a little since last week and they took the same idea with them! Because Taylor and and Alli had a very similar restaurant idea! Eventually, they also finished and we listened to a funny scene about people getting angry about a piece of hair in their salad and throwing food on one another!
In the midst of waiting for everything to be rendered, everyone worked on their blogs/did the learn@UW quiz. Paul went through the questions, getting answers from the students as they went - mostly from Jose, Keke, and Alli in the back!
Overall, it was a fun day - learning about editing and sound effects. Till next week!
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