Digital Media Convergence Ch 12

It is amazing to me how sound works. It can travel through the air around us so fast and we can hear it almost instantly. Alexander Graham Bell found a way to harness that and created the telephone. Around that same time, James Edward Maceo West took that same technology to create the microphone.

 

One of my favorite movies is Singin’ in the Rain. It is about a film studio transitioning from silent films to films with sound. The microphones that the company uses are the size of my face. It was hilarious watching them trying to disguise her microphone with a flower on her dress because she couldn’t manage to speak loud enough to for the microphone hidden in a plant next to her.

 

Now microphones are smaller than my thumb and have no cords. They are now more powerful than the microphones of yesteryears. There is also new technology to dampen natural sound or only pick up specific sounds. Editing software can now isolate specific parts of an audio file to get a background noise or distort a voice so that a person can remain anonymous. Audio has come so far.

~Anne with an "e" 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making Happy Spaces

Image
There are many perks to living in on-campus housing while in college; shorter commute to classes, easy access to the dining hall and living among your friends and peers. One of the things that can be a downside is the interior of the dorm. The walls are all the same color, the floors are a weird laminate and there is usually only one window so there is very little natural lighting. I was at home one weekend and decided to print off pictures of my friends, family, and my time abroad in England. When I returned to my dorm I arranged the photos into a long collage on the wall by my bed and desk.  They were more than just things that hung on my wall they are memories and stories that I got to share with people. my wall from sophomore year ( yeah that's Law and Order SVU in the corner)  Last year I was fortunate enough to live in an apartment with my own room. I  had a large blank wall.  I was so excited!! It was a blank canvas waiting for me to add some colo...
Read more

Digital Media Convergence Ch 13

Image
This class has had a major focus on video production. We have learned how to storyboard, how to set up a shot, how to evaluate lighting, how to mic for sound, and how to edit. We have been really fortunate to have access to multiple types of video equipment from our phones to lighting kits to Lav mics to a fancy 4k video camera.   I had worked on video projects before this class, so I understood the basics of how to set up a shot and light it and stuff, but that was all supervised. For this class, my professor ran us through how to use the equipment and then sent us off on our own. I am not going to lie; it was a little nerve-racking. This camera is so nice and expensive it was like being allowed to test drive a Ferrari without a customer service representative.   It was quite amazing being able to run out with the camera set up the tripod and shoot things like the college’s front fountain and the Raleigh skyline. There were a few not so good shots and it was HOT out, but over...
Read more

Digital Media Convergence Ch 2

Image
As the daughter of tech people, I have grown up around computers my entire life. I remember going to work with my parents and stepping into the processing rooms. It felt like I was stepping into a Zenon movie. There were towers of hardware looming over me and the screens had binary scrolling through. Everything was pristine and shiny, and we were not allowed to touch anything (honestly that was a good call).  I used to walk through the room so carefully and wouldn’t bring anything that was messy. The memories are so clear.   My family had a desktop at home that we all used until the late 2000s. My parents slowly both got laptops and pagers and then blackberries and then the work and cell phones merged into the same phone. Our family’s tech consumption grew during the 2010s. We went from having a desktop and a few laptops for everyone to have a laptop for each person, smartphones, and tablets. During this time, I was the first person in my family to own a MacBook. When it came ...
Read more