assignments ENGL298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
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SURROUND SOUND
The title of this assignment is my lame attempt at funny, but I’m going to guess you can pretty much figure out, just from the title and from being in this class for the past three quarters of a semester, what is going on in this assignment. This is sort of a fun assignment. I know I say that about almost all of our assignments, but I mean it this time.
As the lame title implies, your job is to compile background sound and music for your eventual podcast. You need to compile sound files and some reflection (in writing) for the following:
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS A GROUP. . .
1) THEMED MUSIC. If TAL had a story about a the wife of a cowboy who walks out on him after thirty years of a bad marriage, they might play “These Boots are Made for Walking.” If they were doing a story on the science of light refraction, they might play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” When we listen to the “Ghost of Bobby Dunbar” story, they play a song that was written for Bobby Dunbar. They often play this music right after the story to drive home a point. So your challenge is to find a couple of different songs that might serve as your stories theme. This is a pretty creative opportunity, but I know for some of you it might be hard. But think of it more as fun. This song selection should reflect what you think your Big Idea of your story is.
Keep in mind that you won’t really use all of the song. Time the running time of a song played at the end of a story. Typically it’s just a few seconds. So you might think about what part of a song you would use.
2) MOOD MUSIC. If you think about it, and maybe you have, there is a lot of instrumental background music that is a part of TAL. If a story is funny, they play funny instrumental music. If a story is sad, they play sad music. If a story has an element of mystery, than they play music that plays up the mysterious quality of the story. Whatever the story is—romantic, quirky, epic, militaristic, ethnic—the story has music that complements the feeling of the story. I know that a lot of you don’t regularly listen to instrumental music, so you’ll have to do some searching. But you can do it. This music selection should reflect the tone of your story.
Also, if you’ve got musician friends or are a musician friend you can record and post music you develop for your story that might help someone else out. If you start to listen to a lot of TAL’s, you’ll start to realize that they use a lot of the same music in different stories. So it’s totally legit to do this.
3) OPTIONAL: AMBIENT SOUND. I know that not all of you are telling a story that requires you include ambient noise, and I’m going to guess that many of you think that you don’t even have any ambient noise to include, which is why this is optional. Another reason is that you can go overboard with this and it turns the whole story cheesy and goofy. But, that said, chances are that you probably could (use sparingly) some ambient sound—noise of someone feeding chickens, noise of a crowded train station, noise of a babbling brook or the rushing wind of an outdoor setting, the zizz of a needle tattooing somebody. You may or may not use what you record, but it’s good to have it. These sounds should help your listener visualize your story.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS AN INDIVIDUAL. . . Two-page, double-spaced, typed reflection about what your group come up with for sound. Address the following:
The title of this assignment is my lame attempt at funny, but I’m going to guess you can pretty much figure out, just from the title and from being in this class for the past three quarters of a semester, what is going on in this assignment. This is sort of a fun assignment. I know I say that about almost all of our assignments, but I mean it this time.
As the lame title implies, your job is to compile background sound and music for your eventual podcast. You need to compile sound files and some reflection (in writing) for the following:
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS A GROUP. . .
1) THEMED MUSIC. If TAL had a story about a the wife of a cowboy who walks out on him after thirty years of a bad marriage, they might play “These Boots are Made for Walking.” If they were doing a story on the science of light refraction, they might play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” When we listen to the “Ghost of Bobby Dunbar” story, they play a song that was written for Bobby Dunbar. They often play this music right after the story to drive home a point. So your challenge is to find a couple of different songs that might serve as your stories theme. This is a pretty creative opportunity, but I know for some of you it might be hard. But think of it more as fun. This song selection should reflect what you think your Big Idea of your story is.
Keep in mind that you won’t really use all of the song. Time the running time of a song played at the end of a story. Typically it’s just a few seconds. So you might think about what part of a song you would use.
2) MOOD MUSIC. If you think about it, and maybe you have, there is a lot of instrumental background music that is a part of TAL. If a story is funny, they play funny instrumental music. If a story is sad, they play sad music. If a story has an element of mystery, than they play music that plays up the mysterious quality of the story. Whatever the story is—romantic, quirky, epic, militaristic, ethnic—the story has music that complements the feeling of the story. I know that a lot of you don’t regularly listen to instrumental music, so you’ll have to do some searching. But you can do it. This music selection should reflect the tone of your story.
Also, if you’ve got musician friends or are a musician friend you can record and post music you develop for your story that might help someone else out. If you start to listen to a lot of TAL’s, you’ll start to realize that they use a lot of the same music in different stories. So it’s totally legit to do this.
3) OPTIONAL: AMBIENT SOUND. I know that not all of you are telling a story that requires you include ambient noise, and I’m going to guess that many of you think that you don’t even have any ambient noise to include, which is why this is optional. Another reason is that you can go overboard with this and it turns the whole story cheesy and goofy. But, that said, chances are that you probably could (use sparingly) some ambient sound—noise of someone feeding chickens, noise of a crowded train station, noise of a babbling brook or the rushing wind of an outdoor setting, the zizz of a needle tattooing somebody. You may or may not use what you record, but it’s good to have it. These sounds should help your listener visualize your story.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS AN INDIVIDUAL. . . Two-page, double-spaced, typed reflection about what your group come up with for sound. Address the following:
- Why did you pick what you picked for theme music? How do you think it represents the Big Idea of your story?
- What about the mood music you picked helps your reader understand the spirit and tone of your story?
- Why did you decide to record the ambient sounds of your story that you did? Why do you think that it is helpful for your listeners to visualize this particular part of your story over some other part?
- How are you doing with your project?
- How is your character, problem, struggle, resolution stuff working out?
- How is your big idea taking shape? What are you worried about?
- What was your contribution to this part of the project? Who in your group do you feel really made an important contribution to the project?
- What do you have left to do?