When told to create a podcast, I was slightly fearful, as my technological abilities are fairly minimal. I had used audacity in middle school, but had not inserted sound effects, nor looked for sounds online before. Going into the project, sound effects and working around my recordings were my biggest fear, but I envisioned my podcast utilizing sound effects for humor around interviews and my interpretations of the interviewee’s responses. I hoped that my podcast would begin with an introduction of the weekly show, go straight into a scientific and descriptive interview, and would have a couple of listener’s calls dispersed throughout the podcast. One part of the podcast that I did not originally anticipate, but I think worked out to be the most successful and convincing part of the podcast was at the end, when the podcast was cut off by the government. The best part of the cut-off was the robot voice of the government. The goal was to make the government sound controlling and computerized. To accomplish this, I used an app that would change my voice to sound like a cyborg, and by surrounding it with static, it sounds like a realistic government intervention. While this part of the podcast had the most steps, it was not the most challenging, but instead was actually the most fun. The part that was the most challenging was when I messed up a word, but didn’t realize it until the whole podcast was recorded. One word I missed was in the beginning of the podcast and I had to figure out how to cut out just that word, and re-record that word in about the same tone and volume as I had previously. Then I had to make sure the word fit in perfectly to the rest of that segment of the interview. This part was difficult because the recording of a single word is such a small segment of time. Fitting it like a puzzle piece into an interview can be a difficult task and took many attempts of listening and moving the word around, as even if it’s misplaced a tenth of a second, it could sound incorrect.
Making a recording in podcast form allowed me the freedom to add humor, and sound effects for humor, in order to make a potentially boring and scientific topic more interesting. I made the most of the format by inserting many interviews to emphasize how “realistic” my claim was, and by attempting to add humor, made the audience feel more comfortable, allowing their absorption of the topic to be straightforward. In this project, I demonstrated rhetorical analysis and composition by organizing the podcast with introductions, interviews, and a conclusion. There was a specified audience; the listeners of “Oh yeah, prove it!”. The audience could be broader by including anyone interested in discovering new creatures in the world. The purpose is dictated as to prove the existence of the Tree Octopus by using facts and interviews. I met objective two, writing as a process, by revising my draft of my script multiple times, and by going through my completed podcast and cutting it by over two minutes. By editing what I’d created and by learning to use new resources from the internet, I learned how to make better and more convincing arguments, deciding what worked as convincing and what was not. Given the opportunity to rework my assignment, I would use more people, including my classmates. It was hard to use others, as I was traveling while completing the assignment, but I feel that if I had used my classmates as Dr. Gull Able, for example, rather than trying to speak in a British accent, then the argument would be more convincing.
I like your use of numbers and scientific “facts,” which made your hoax more convincing. I also like how you ended your podcast with thought provoking questions.