{"id":1266,"date":"2013-06-22T17:06:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T22:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rockylouproductions.com\/blog_wp\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2014-12-28T15:34:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-28T20:34:29","slug":"chickenheart_production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rockylouproductions.com\/blog_wp\/2013\/06\/22\/chickenheart_production\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicken Heart Terror – Behind the Scenes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""It's<\/a>

“It’s going to eat you up!!”<\/p><\/div>\n

The\u00a0It’s Going to Eat You Up!<\/a><\/em>\u00a0animated GIF [DS106 AnimatedGIFAssignment1162<\/a>\u00a0] was definitely fun to create. It combines two very fond childhood memories: The old campy Batman & Robin television show<\/a> and the Bill Cosby comedy routine Chicken Heart<\/em> <\/a>.\u00a0But the bulk of the project time and energy was put into on-line research to locate and link the images, audio files, and relevant websites that provide the story behind the story. Here are the Why’s and How’s of producing the GIF.<\/p>\n

\"Arch<\/a>

Arch Oboler recording “Lights Out”. \u00a0(Photo Source<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

During audio week of the UMW DS106<\/a>\u00a0summer 2013 on-line course in Digital Storytelling, I was introduced by our audio mentor Scottlo <\/a>to the\u00a0Arch Oboloer The Devil and Mr. O<\/em>\u00a0radio plays<\/a>. \u00a0As I started listening late one night I found that Oboler had created the “Lights Out” radio play Chicken Heart,<\/em>\u00a0which inspired the infamous\u00a0comedy routine by Bill Cosby<\/a> from his Wonderfulness<\/em> album that my little sister and I would recreate playing inside an old gutted radio cabinet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Excited by my find, I eagerly began what turned out to be a fruitless quest to locate the original 1937 Oboler recording. Sadly, I discovered it was one of his lost episodes. \ud83d\ude41 Recordings of the original radio play and rebroadcasts in 1938 and 1942 are lost or unavailable, although he later recreated the episode for a record album in 1962 – which I couldn’t locate. \u00a0There is an 8 min abridged version<\/a> that many mistake for the original. \u00a0And amazingly while researching this blog post, I actually came across a December 31, 2008\u00a0recreation of the entire Chicken Heart radio play<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Post Meridian Radio Player<\/a>s.<\/p>\n

From Wikipedia:\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0Arch Oboler made effective use of atmospheric sound effects, perhaps most memorably in his legendary \u201cChicken Heart,\u201d a script that debuted in 1937 and was rebroadcast in 1938 and 1942. It features the simple but effective \u201cthump-thump\u201d of an ever-growing, ever-beating chicken heart which, thanks to a scientific experiment gone wrong, threatens to engulf the entire world. Although the story bears similarities to an earlier Cooper episode (about an ever-growing amoeba that makes an ominous \u201cslurp! slurp!\u201d sound), Oboler\u2019s unique choice of monster was inspired by a\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/i>\u00a0article announcing that scientists had succeeded in keeping a chicken heart alive for a considerable period of time after its having been removed from the chicken. Recordings of the original radio broadcasts are lost or unavailable, although Oboler later recreated this episode for a record album in 1962<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Credits & Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n