This project was inspired by a Sklar brothers bit that I heard on the VA Beach AM comedy channel the other day. An edited and condensed version of track 16 is here.
Now on to the assignment . . .
Take any video.1 Add your voice over as if you were a local TV news anchor attempting to provide color commentary without stating anything as a fact or with certainty. Add all the hedge words and banalities that exemplify this kind of coverage.
If you’re looking for the DS106 tag/aggregation for the assignment go here (AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1085).
The basic idea is this is almost the opposite of what we want students to do with writing. We want them to be specific, to eliminate hedge words, to make a strong argument, and to take a specific stance. In a class, I might flip it both ways. Have one understated version with no definite statements and then do another version which overstates things (like this Daily Show clip description which I may dig up the video for at some point). Or you could simply give them the option to either understate or overstate the commentary.
This is a quick and dirty example where despite my efforts I accidentally say a few facts. For instance, there’s no way I could really know that humanoid is small, nor that the utensil is plastic. Allowing for an editing cycle based on other people calling out facts might be possible depending on time.
1 The worse the video, the easier this is. Look for something with virtually no action. If it’s exciting, you’ll never keep up.
