ds106 site

Category: Assignments

  • Radio Show Review

    I listened to The Opposites Show on Wednesday night on the ds106 radio. I thought the ads were really good, finding myself tuning them out sometimes because I was mistaking them for the real thing. I also liked how the same transitional tune was used throughout to let us know what was going on. The different group members having conversations with each other and with AI was a good way of telling the story. One part that particularly interested me was the warning/alert that got cut off as the radio accepted the returning caller. It added a lot of mystery that I don’t think we’ll get the answers to anytime soon. A critique I have for the show is most of the ads were played in the beginning before tuning in to the show, which makes sense because we have ad segments, but I think it would’ve been better if one ad played in the beginning, probably the one introducing us to the AI algorithmic dating app, and other ads were strategically scattered throughout. Overall, I thought the radio show had good formatting and was fun to listen to!

    As for our radio show, Noir News, when I heard it Wednesday night, that was the first time I had heard it in full and not in pieces. Despite having different characters and stories, we were still able to connect them by making news segments from the location where our characters live. For example, I decided to make my news segment from Chicago in about 100 years in the future. This is around the time my character is active in the story. My group member Maddie took all of our sound files and edited them together into one radio show. I appreciated the feedback we got on our show, and I’ve thought of a few ways it could be improved, such as audio mixing or saving the files differently to make things easier to put together. My group is working together again for the final project, so I hope we can continue to make things bigger and better than before.

  • Radio Show Intro Featuring Zer0

    Radio Intro Assignment for Week 9

    In all honesty, I don’t even know what a radio intro is, though I tried looking up some examples on YouTube. I collected some free to use audio from Pixabay, made by ByronatorAustralia and Ivan_Luzan. I tried editing them together with other music in Audacity, before messing it up and starting over in OpenShot video editor. I cut the audios and merged them together while adjusting volume for speech. As for the words, I wrote them in a text-to-speech software called Replica Studios. I tried to give my character a voice and found one with a robotic filter. I had it read out the lines separately so I could place them wherever I wanted.

    Transcription: “Welcome to ds106 radio in Chicago. We have headlines, alerts, and forecast. Now, back to your host for the weather. And as always, thank you for listening.”

  • Radio Show Logo

    Radio Show Design Assignment for Week 9

    This is a logo I designed for the radio show group project based on the Apple Weather App logo. Our radio show is news based and will have a focus on weather. I used the art program Krita to draw it, using many built in tools to achieve what I wanted. I used a watercolor brush to make the background (my original idea was to make stormy clouds) but then I darkened it with a filter and added the cloud and sun with the neon effect to incorporate tech into the logo. A friend of mine helped me to create the neon effect and I ended up using six layers total on neon alone.

  • Radio Commercial

    Create a Commercial Assignment for Week 9

    This is a commercial I made with my own voice for the radio show. The background music is by Zakhar Valaha from Pixabay. I wrote a script, recorded it in audacity, and timed it properly so that it would go with the music, cutting some parts like breathing. The music was edited to be quieter so that my voice could be heard.

  • Tech Noir News

    News Report Assignment for Week 7

    I made this news article from a template on Canva. Luckily, Canva seems to have improved since the last time I used it, where I described it as, “the worst website I’ve ever had the displeasure of using.” Currently, it appears very similar to Picsart, which I have been using for other assignments in this class. I unfortunately got carried away creating a news article for my story instead of a scene from a tech noir film, so the first row is about my story, and the second row is about the matrix. I wrote and edited the text, as well as the moving images and background. I wanted the news to appear as if it were on a screen, letting me bypass certain limitations paper has, which let me use glowing text and moving images.

  • Beware the AI

    Design Some Propaganda Assignment for Week 7

    This is a propaganda piece made with Picsart based on a vaporwave aesthetic. I believe this alert would appear on phones, buildings, or other screens that would be impossible to ignore. This warning was made in response to the discovery that AI had become self-aware, represented by the brain in the glowing triangle. Many people fear what AI might do to humanity if it were capable of independent thought, evident through movies like The Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I believe the same would be true in a world more technologically advanced than ours, where people are constantly surrounded by robots that could pose a threat. In the story, this leads to people having a negative opinion of robots to the point where people with mechanic prosthetics are discriminated against. Although there has never been a case of a robot causing the death of a human in this universe, robots like Zer0 are deeply feared and distrusted.

  • A Night in the Snow

    When It’s Cold Outside Assignment for Week 6

    I recorded this with my phone (with help from my mom) and put it together in CapCut, adding music. I planned out the scenes and told her how I wanted her to hold the camera. I cut the clips and reordered some so they could tell a cohesive story. Unfortunately, due to YouTube’s limitations, I had to cut this down to one minute. We were lucky we still had snow; it melted pretty quickly in Fredericksburg.

  • Cyberpunk Movie Trailer

    Character Movie Trailer Assignment for Week 6

    Music by Benjamin Lazzarus on Bensound. License code: VOJ3IVQ4NZCVXVTG

    Pond5 stock footage by CleverArts, Powel2097, victorfort, Frameangel, and TokyoVisionaryRoom. Adobe stock video by designprojects. Pexels videos by Yaroslav Shuraev, George Morina, Pixabay, Ricky Esquivel, Rostislav Uzunov, HumanoideVFX, Nathan J Hilton, MART PRODUCTION, Erik Mclean, IslandHopper X, Oleg Gamulinskii, Kelly, and Tom Fisk.

    Special thanks to Mikhail Nilov, who made Close up of a Lighted Signage and A Woman Aiming a Weapon.

    Extra special thanks to cottonbro studio, who made Two People in Black Clothing Standing in front of a Wall, A Woman Posing at the Camera, A Woman Wearing a VR Headset Sitting on the Floor, and A Human Hand Touching Prosthetic Arm.

    I made this with the websites above and edited them in OpenShot. I manually clipped each shot and placed them together, sometimes changing the audio levels or frame. I tried to make a trailer that implies we are looking through a robot’s eyes and shows different levels of destruction that could occur throughout the city, particularly if people or robots began to riot. I would’ve liked more shots involving robots or androids, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to stock photos. I hope it encompasses the themes of both cyberpunk and tech noir.

  • Zer0 CapCut Edit

    Speed Up Transition Assignment for Week 6

    I did something slightly different from what the assignment asked based on what was available to me. I downloaded CapCut and searched for a template that I thought would be fitting for my character. There were some issues moving things between the web browser and app, but it worked out in the end. I used a recent template made by lorelei.

    All pictures of Zer0 are by me. They were a part of a photoshoot I did in Richmond in 2023. Photos of cityscapes were taken by Lennon Cheng, Josh Hild, Lerone Pieters, and Hin Bong Yeung on Unsplash. The song is a remixed version of Daft Punk’s Harder Better Faster Stronger. I was looking for a different Daft Punk song but found this one to be fitting enough. Fun fact, Daft Punk was part of my inspiration for Zer0!

  • Black Mirror Video Essay

    Video Essay Assignment for Week 5

    I used a clip of the Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation“, provided in the ds106 weekly assignment. I screen recorded a scene and cut out disturbing portions from it, instead using a PowerPoint to put images over the video. The thumbnail comes from IMDB’s review of the episode. I recorded and put it together with OpenShot and Audacity, both free programs.