Shopping Fail

Transcript:
A man goes on an errand. His task? To buy clothes. Unfortunately, he’s never bought his own clothes before. He had no idea what store they would even be in. woefully lost and confused, he walks into the first store he finds. That’s when he receives a call from a friend. They want his help. The man says he can’t help, he’s buying clothes. The friend tells the man to hurry up and come over. “I can’t find them” the man replied, referring to the clothes. “What do you mean you can’t find them” the friend asks, bewildered. The man restates his last response and adds “there’s only soup.” “What do you mean there’s only soup?” the friend questions, growing frustrated. “It means there’s only soup,” the man answered, also frustrated by his predicament. “Get out of the soup aisle!” the friend shouts. The man grumbles in response, asserting the friend doesn’t have to yell, and heads over to the next aisle. Unfortunately this new aisle only had more soup and the man said as much. “What do you mean there’s more soup? Go to the next aisle!” the friend orders, starting to lose patience. The man again walks to the next aisle. “There’s still soup!” the man explains. The friend demands to know where the man is. Looking at his surroundings, the man answers “I’m at soup.” “What do you mean you’re at soup?” “I’m at soup” the man reaffirms. “What store are you in?” the friend loudly persists. “I’m at the soup store!” the man retaliated just as loud. “Why are you buying clothes at the soup store?” they howl. The man indignantly replies with an expletive and hangs up.

I choose this story based off a popular old meme that you might recognize. I had several ideas on what tale to tell, but ultimately landed on retelling this meme in a story format. I decided this because it’s really funny and my family and I often reference it.

I had a lot of fun making the story even though it was a bit tedious to put together. Again, I used sounds from freesound.org for the sound effects, then I narrated the story myself. I picked various sounds such as garbled talking, a phone ringing, background grocery store ambiance, and a little music. I struggled a bit with making volume adjustments for each clip while making sure each sound is heard. I also worked hard on adjusting the timing of each sound. I think it turned out well and I hope you agree.

Step 1: Collect sounds from freesound.org and upload to Audacity.
Step 2: Record your narration on Audacity.
Step 3: Fiddle and edit all the sound clips to make a cohesive story. For this assignment, I had to copy-paste a lot of segments and adjust gain or use the effect “amplify”. Other effects I used were “change pitch”, “change speed”, “distortion”, and the “fade out”/”fade in” effects. I had to make sure my voice was clearly heard over the other sounds, but that the other sounds weren’t drowned out.
Step 4: Export as MP3 and upload to SoundCloud.

Assignment this audio story was based on: Story Time Fun Time! (3.5 stars)