Humbug! Hoaxes in Literature and Culture.

I would like to do my podcast on an approaching apocalypse; basing my conclusion on the blood moon prophecy, and explaining how the recent lunar eclipse is signaling the ending of the world. I plan on taking advantage of the auditory format by being over dramatic, bringing outside sources and bringing in sound effects. I believe it will be successful because it’s involving current events and the use of effects and sources; similarly, to the War of the Worlds broadcast. The War of World broadcast brought in guest speakers and had very dramatic scenes full of emotion and excitement which were effective and convincing; I plan to use these tactics in my podcast to win over my listeners and earn their belief.

I’ve decided to make my podcast about the IPhone Wave hoax that circulated the internet a few moths ago. The hoax describes a new and easy way to charge the IPhone 6: heating it up in the microwave. I want to take a comedic approach to analyzing this hoax, think John Stuart. I think that a few expert appearances will help to support my argument like those people featured on the two “War of the Worlds” analyses. The podcast medium will benefit my aspirations because the listeners focus will be one my words rather than anything that would be on a TV screen. I also want to try some funny voices to impersonate my “experts” so nobody will be able to tell that I’m doing all the voices with a podcast. All in all, I want to strike a balance between comedy and analysis when talking about the hoax.

My hoax will be based on the Cornell’s rhinoceros prank, where a student, Hugh Troy, faked rhinoceros tracks in the snow around campus and fooled many professors and students. However, my hoax will be set on the Emory campus instead and it will involve Emory students and staff. The podcast will portray a breaking news story broadcasted on Emory’s radio show, WMRE. This story would be well suited for a podcast because it doesn’t require any visuals and it will rely on the credibility of the people being interviewed along with the tone and style of the radio show. A lack of visuals will be beneficial in convincing the audience because fabricating a false image would be too difficult. The effective usage of a panicked broadcast with little visuals has been very successful in the past, as the “War of the Worlds” broadcast effectively convinced the general public without providing any visuals, just a very realistic dialogue.

There’s apparently an endangered tree-dwelling octopus living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The tree octopus resides in Washington’s state parks. Its appetite is fairly normal, consisting of frogs and rodents, which could potentially convince some people that this was true. The part of the hoax which is overwhelmingly falsified and unbelievable in my opinion though is that it’s main predator is the Sasquash. For believers though, there is plenty of information and sources to reference, as the author is notorious for providing adequate site listings and websites for readers to delve into. There are wiki pages, videos, photos, fact pages, and “help save the tree octopus” organizations to refer to for curious and non-believing viewers. Those who have “seen” the elusive tree octopus could personally account for the creature’s behavior in interviews, which is why the autdiotry format would suit this hoax so well. Interviews with prestigious scientists and experts in fields attributed to the success of “War of the Worlds”, so would definitely be helpful to the audience believing this story. Also, by using specific parks and sites where the octopus has been located, it would provide a sort of “prove-me-wrong” tone from the author, me. Finally, there could be references made to the video regarding the sounds that the octopus makes and by being able to explain and reflect on these sounds, I can fully utilize the audio medium.

Park City, Utah is one of my favorite places in the world due to the incredible ski conditions and the close friends that my family has there. One part of the city that has always stood out to me though is the immense forests which surround the slopes and number of skiers who go out alone. Forests are key settings for many horror films, and so it could be believable in the eyes of some to see a ghost hidden in the trees. This seemed easy at first, but after finding the images, I had to teach myself to use photoshop which was no easy task. The online videos did not help and I had a lot of trouble trying to cut the image of a ghost and drag it into a new layer of the picture. After finally learning to use the eraser and layer tools together, I realized the main issue was finding a ghost photo that actually came close to blending in with the background. This could be convincing now, because the ghost does look mildly similar in color to the background and remains unnoticed by the children who should be the most affected. Since ghosts aren’t usually seen until after the fact, when looking at photos at home, this could be a typical ghost photo that believers are fearful of.

I set the photo to black and white in order to make it more ominous and dark. The room’s light is obstructed by a towel. This photo appeals to the audience’s fear of the dark. The figure behind the girl looks like the grim reaper. However, “it” is actually a person wrapped in a blanket.

This photo was taken at Music Midtown with Alessia Cara. By using the ghost camera app on my phone, I was able to photoshop an eerily realistic figure in the background that looks as if they wanted nothing more than to be in the picture.

I originally tried using my computer to edit a picture, but I was having trouble, so that was one of the challenges. I downloaded an app on my phone that made it easier to insert a ghost into the picture. One hard part was sizing the ghost so that it would be believable. This picture has very tight spaces, so the size was a challenge. Once I found the right size, it was easy to make the ghost seem convincing. The ghost also rotated very easily when I was adjusting the size, so keeping my fingers steady was a challenge.

Many people have a fear of seeing ghosts in the reflections and most commonly in a mirror. This photo shows a picture taken where you can see a vague image of a ghost wearing dated clothes, typically aligning with the depiction of ghosts from ancient pasts. This photo was created using a ghost app on a smart phone. It was fairly simple and just goes to show how easy it is for people nowadays to create a hoax!

For this brilliant ghost effect I merely use a preset photo effect on MacBook that is called Cloaking Effect. Obviously, there is a strange paranormal figure watching me as I prepare to doze off in the library. The hardest part was finding a program that could even do anything that would make an image appear paranormal. I am not tech savvy at all! The easiest part was actually coming across this effect and merely taking the picture and adjusting the orientation. It was the easiest thing ever and I am just fortunate enough to have come across this as I am horrible with technology.