106 Remix: “Welcome to the Cadillac Ranch”
Theresa Richey
ENG 1013.50
Dr. Jackie Hoermann-Elliott
May 9, 2022
Welcome to the Cadillac Ranch
Cover Letter
Immediately I knew I wanted to draw something, so I had to decide which paper would be best suited for drawing. I reached back out to the person I interviewed and asked if he would be willing to narrate part of the project. I changed how my project would be displayed. The project would now be a time-lapse of the drawing with two narrators going back and forth between history and first-person account. I wanted it to sound like those scenes in a museum where you press the button and you get the information about what’s in front of you. I also had the TWU Write Site check over my paper to see what I may want to change or implement into my script.
I had to find a good recording software and drawing app. Originally, I was drawing in Adobe and screen recording, but running that software overheated my laptop and wasn’t exactly what I wanted. So I switched to the Sketchbook app on my Samsung tablet. Switching gave me a better result because the Sketchbook app had an audio time-lapse. It was challenging to start over, but thankfully, I was only about halfway through when I made the switch. I didn’t think coming up with a script would be very difficult, but trying to condense the history into reasonable amounts at a time and making sure it would flow was a challenge. I wanted the narration to go from history to first-person account, so I tried to group similar history with the first account.
The easiest part was the drawing because it only took a few days and I was enjoying it. I could also stop and start when I needed to, unlike a paper where I could lose my train of thought. Editing the time-lapse was also simple; I used Adobe Premiere Elements to edit together the time-lapse and put the correct audio next to each other. In high school, I learned how to use the normal Adobe Premiere, so I used those skills to piece everything together. I definitely enjoyed it and I know where to find royalty-free music and how to use the different tracks in Premiere, so that was a bonus.
After the editing, everything came together nicely. I did have to do a bit of editing because I had to stop and start the time-lapse since I worked on this over several days. I saved the videos in my drive, but they would save in different order so I had to take extra steps to correct that. Additionally, since the person I interviewed recorded their piece and sent it to me, I had to cut it up and put the audio in the right order with my audio. I also got a lot of practice in recording my narration because there was always either noise in the background or I stumbled over my words.
I like how the video turned out, the following is very nice and I really like the alternating between voices. I feel good about it. I also liked using a photo my dad took as the reference and having him as the other narrator. It feels complete having his voice as a part of the video. I don’t know if it’s the app I used or if the time-lapse made some parts look blurry, but the final drawing came out great. If I were to do it again I probably would have recorded the drawing differently.
I wanted this assignment to feel both informational and personal. Having the contrasting voices, one telling the history and the other what their experience was, helped me achieve that goal. Further, the time-lapse gives the audience a different way of watching and anticipating the conclusion of the piece. I think it’s neat to see a drawing from start to finish and to see what changes are made along the way, so that influenced my decision in time-lapsing the drawing process.
Originally, I was just going to draw the Cadillacs from my reference photo, but in my essay, I mentioned the original colors of the cars and decided it would look better if I made the cars in their original form. Thus, I found an original photo and color that matched them and tried to put them in the correct order to make it accurate. However, as I was finishing, I realized I could have easily had the car “spray-painted.” So, I made a copy of the drawing and followed the outline of the cars with random colors to look like spray paint. And I didn’t show this process because I wanted it to be a surprise at the end when the spray-painted cars were revealed. Another element I revealed at the end was how I created spray paint cans and scattered them near the cars. For the audio, I wanted it to almost sound like a conversation of fact more than experience, which paired nicely with the contrast in our voices. One last conscious decision I liked was how I made the image with the original cars lighter than the dark spray-painted cars. This really helped show how time has affected the Cadillacs. At the end of the video, I wanted to show the inspiration photo to connect everything and show a real image from the Cadillac Ranch.
Works Cited
“ANT FARM.” Chip Lord, http://chiplord.net/work#/antfarm/.
Bensound. “BETTER DAYS | ROYALTY FREE MUSIC.” Bensound’s Royalty Free Music, https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/better-days. Accessed 8 May 2022.
“Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas.” RoadsideAmerica.com, https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2220.
“The Cadillac Ranch & Quirky Amarillo, Texas.” Legends of America, AN ELITE CAFEMEDIA PUBLISHER, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/tx-cadillacranch/.
Richey, Harvey. “Cadillac Ranch Interview.” 3 Mar. 2022.
Richey, Harvey. Cadillac Ranch Photos. Amarillo, TX, 1 Oct. 2007.