my audio podcast project pro forma for my audio project york college

1. Audio Project
William Young

2. Story
The story of my audio project is rather simple.
Someone at a high school is sceptical of a
rumour floating around that there's some kind
of monster running around the town at night,
and he goes to check it out, but finds nothing.
The next night, the sceptic's friend accompanies
him to go looking for the 'monster' and they are
both presumably killed by someone with a
sword, with the last thing they hear being the
sound of a sword unsheathing.

3. Existing Products Research
• War of the Worlds – HG. Wells
– The original novel 'The War of the Worlds' is said to take place in 1894, but the
audio-drama version of the sci-fi novel, which was broadcast in 1938, was
adapted to be in the present day (which was 1938 at the time). The drama
seemingly tells of a (supposed) invasion of Earth by Mars, and was done so
realistically and so well that it caused real-life panic all over the United States,
where the drama was broadcast.
– One of the ways that one could say the drama was done extremely well was
the way it began. The program began with a simulation of a regular evening
radio broadcast, which featured a weather report and some music, later
interrupted by news flashes about strange explosions on Mars. After a while, it
then goes to the immediate moment of the invasion of Earth by Mars, which
works so well as the drama draws the audience in with its normality (making
them believe that this is just another radio broadcast, like any other evening),
and then hitting them with something fantastical, but done in such a way that
it felt real enough to cause mass panic amongst the population that listened
to the broadcast.

4. Existing Products Research
• Doctor Who – Sydney Newman
– Doctor Who follows the adventures of the title character, a rogue Time Lord (a species that
hold command over time travelling technology) from a planet called Gallifrey who goes by the
name 'The Doctor'. The Doctor fled Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS ("Time and Relative Dimension
in Space"), a time machine that travels by materialising into and dematerialising out of a time
vortex, and goes on adventures throughout the series. The series is most well-known as a TV
series, but it's had its run as an audio drama as well.
– The main reason that Doctor Who is so popular is because of the elements of fantastical
technology that, in the current, real world, is indistinguishable from magic. The main example
of this would be the famous 'sonic screwdriver', which has a wide variety of funcitons, which
include but are not limited to opening locked doors, accessing computer information and
actually being a screwdriver. However, one of the major misconceptions about the sonic
screwdriver is that it's not a weapon, and hasn't been used as one.
– Another example of incredible technology would be the TARDIS (Time and Relative
Dimension in Space), which is a ship that can do pretty much everything and anything.
However, the humourous thing about it is that, compared to other pieces of Time Lord
technology, The Doctor's TARDIS is old, obsolete and barely functional, with the irony being
that it's still far better than any kind of tech that humanity has been able to create, even in the
present day.

5. Bibliography
1. https://www.shmoop.com/war-of-the-
worlds-hg-wells/literary-devices.html
2. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/An
alysis/DoctorWho

6. Planning

7. Idea Generation/Initial Reaction
• Have the main character be implied to get
horrifically murdered at the end.
• Have more than one main character.
• Involve a potential monster-type character
• Try and make it so the readers can draw their
own conclusions from what was going on.

8. Proposal
Working Title:
The Rumour
Audience:
My audience would be young teenage boys, as the main characters of the
story are young teenage boys. I believe my product would appeal to this
group of people because young teenagers would be interested in this kind
of simple storytelling, and the suspense of what kind of horror is behind
whatever is going on in the story.
Project Concept (approx. 200 words)
The concept of my project is a small portion of a potential audiobook of
the horror genre that revolved around rumours of something horrible
happening to people in a shady part of the town the story takes place in.
The main character is sceptical about these rumours and goes to try and
find out what is going on for real, but finds nothing on the night he goes.
The day after, the main character's friend accompanies him to the shady
part of town, and the last thing they (and the audience) hear is the sound
of a sword unsheathing.

9. Sound Effects
Sound Effect Needed How I Will Create the Sound
School chatter Downloaded off YouTube
Steps Downloaded off YouTube
School bell Downloaded off YouTube
Hands clapping together (hi-five) Record myself clapping my hands
Wind blowing Downloaded off YouTube
Cat hissing Downloaded off YouTube
Cat meow Downloaded off YouTube
Phone vibrate Downloaded off YouTube
Phone typing Downloaded off YouTube
Slapping of face Record myself slapping my own face
Sword unsheathing Downloaded off YouTube

10. Resource List
Resource Owned/Cost What sound effect will it be
used for?
Internet (YouTube) Owned Finding music and sound effects
Microphone Owned Recording my voice
PC Owned Having the audio editing/recording
software on
Recording/Audio Editing
Software (Audacity)
Owned Cutting all the audio together.

11. Production

12. Daily Reflection Day 1
• On the first day of my audio production, I downloaded all of the sound
effects that would be used in my audio podcast. These included general
school chatter, footsteps, a school bell, wind blowing, a cat hissing, a cat
meowing, phone vibration, phone typing and a sword unsheathing. I also
recorded all the speech lines myself, with the intention of cutting the
entire audio project together at a future date.

13. Daily Reflection Day 2
• On the second day of production of my audio project, I imported everything
into my audio editing software (Audacity, a free program available for
Windows, MacOS, Linux and Unix) and arranged them in the order that they
would play out in. I didn't apply any effects to any of the audio that I imported
into Audacity, as I didn't have the time that day. I plan to add effects such as
fade-ins, fade-outs and raising/lowering the pitches of one of my voice
recordings (in order to make it sound like I'm talking to a different person as
opposed to me talking to myself) tomorrow.

14. Daily Reflection Day 3
• On the third and final day of production of my audio podcast project, I applied
the needed effects to everything on all the audio in my podcast project. Effects
I applied included fade-ins and fade-outs for background noise (like the school
chatter, steps and wind blowing), and a pitch-heightening effect on the voice
of one of the other characters.
• Once I was entirely done with the production, I exported it onto my
PC and uploaded the file to YouTube.
Audio Project File: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnZax0ysR7Q

15. Sound Effects
Sound Effect Needed Link
School chatter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMaHyZmbqdc
Footsteps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFOUHkCXnMQ
School bell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEgfbMYiP_c
Wind blowing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhHdFcQ36iw
Cat hissing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHza05fG3sc
Cat meowing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdYE3Wm6jX8
Phone vibration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TYPGl8ZJO0
Phone typing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=johVa_3lnmY
Sword unsheathing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQV5rbBMjCQ

16. Evaluation

17. Research
• The research I did for my audio podcast was rather in-depth, though it
wasn't exactly used to make it the absolute best that it could be. This was
because I wasn't very passionate about what I was trying to make in the
first place, which reflected itself in how the product turned out.
• Some of the things that did rub off on me from the research that I
did included the use of background noise to make the audio podcast seem
more atmospheric, and the use of other sound effects, such as steps and
slaps.
• There's a few things that I could've added to the audio podcast, such as a
theme song or a second voice actor to voice the second character of the
story. The possibility of adding even more characters than just the two
that were featured in the actual story wouldn't have gone amiss either.

18. Planning
• My planning for the production of my audio podcast wasn't as good as it
could have been. I didn't see the point in doing much planning for it
because I have a hard time sticking to my plans for certain things, as it
helps me with coming up with ideas for projects in the moment. However,
a major disadvantage of this was that I had very little idea of what to do
with the audio project, given that I wasn't very passionate about the idea
of making a horror story in the first place (as I'm not a fan of scary stuff).
• If I were to do this audio project again, I would have done a basic plan for
what I wanted to create, so I could think about how to develop my podcast
in order to make it as good as it could be.

19. Time Management
• My time management throughout the whole of the audio project, in my
opinion, was alright. For the most part, I stuck to the schedule that I had
set out for myself at the start of this project for the entirety of said
project, but one thing that didn't go as planned was that I ran out of time
for the production of my audio podcast, and had to rush its completion.
Apart from that, everything went as well as I hoped that it would. I knew
what I was doing as far as recording the audio, finding the sound effects,
cutting everything together and adding effects in went (as I was doing all
of this at home, on my own equipment that I knew exceptionally well).
• I was able to complete the entire on time, and I'm decently happy with
how I did throughout with everything except the audio podcast itself.
Upon listening to it again, I felt that I could have done it quite a bit better.
• I believe that, if I had more time, I would be able to fine-tune certain
aspects of the audio podcast and make it as good as I believe it could have
been.

20. Technical Qualities
• My audio podcast is quite a simple thing. It involves voiceovers from two characters (which were both
voiced by me, since I wanted to undergo the entirety of production myself and not have help from
anyone. The voice of one of the characters was edited to be at a slightly higher pitch, while the other one
was just my regular voice.
• Effects that were included in the audio podcast included footsteps, a school bell, a cat hissing and
meowing, a phone vibrating like what happens when you get a notification when your phone is set to
vibrate, the sound of a phone keyboard typing, and the final sound of the entire podcast, a sword
unsheathing.
• Other effects, that functioned as background noise throughout the four scenes of my audio podcast,
were just a background sound of unintelligible chatter from inside a school, and the sound of wind
blowing through a town. These effects in particular worked to bring the audience into the story and make
them feel like the podcast was really going on inside a school, or in a shady part of town in the middle of
the night.

21. Aural Qualities
• My audio podcast sounded alright. The sounds of the character's voices were
intelligible, most of the time (as sometimes the sound effects seemed to be louder
than the voices), and the effects that I downloaded off of YouTube sounded like
what I needed them to sound like. However, there was a bit of white noise in the
background of the entirety of the podcast (caused by an issue I had with my
microphone that I couldn't fix in time for the recording of my audio podcast, but
I've fixed it now), which got a little annoying at times upon re-listening to my
finished work.
• If I were to remake this audio podcast, I believe I would do a better job of it, as my
technical issues with the microphone have been fixed, and I would probably put my
pride aside and ask someone else to do the voice for the second character. This
would make the characters sound more different than they already do, and leave
the listening audience in no doubt that the two characters are two different
people, just by their voices.

22. Audience Appeal
• The only way that my audio podcast really appealed to my target audience was in
the way that I attempted to create suspense as to what was behind all the
disappearances in the short story that I had created. The fact that my audio
podcast featured mythical creatures that are known for their use in horror-related
media would, most likely, appeal to my target audience (fans of horror), as they
would enjoy things that scare other people.