Creating the Neil Armstrong - One Giant Leap for Mankind Playlist was incredibly fun while at the same time scholarly. I really enjoyed searching for songs, finding videos, and selecting parts of the lyrics all of which contributed to my goal for the playlist, to transmit through music the physical and emotional experiences that Neil encountered up to and during the Apollo 11 mission.

To start off, I would like to take you through the steps I used to create the playlist. First, I brainstormed possible characters from novels that I had read senior year of high school to build a playlist around, however, I was not satisfied with any of my options so I decided to take a different path (after consulting with my really cool professor, Daniel Anderson, of course) and make a playlist around a historical figure. To make a long story short, I decided to make my playlist on Neil Armstrong because for one, he is one of my favorite historical figures, and also, the Apollo 11 mission which he was an instrumental part of has many interesting components which I thought would be exciting to build a playlist around.

I then refreshed myself on the history of both Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission. Next, I scoured the internet for songs that I thought conveyed the physical and emotional experiences that Neil may have gone through during the mission. For instance, Elton John’s “Rocket Man” masterfully interprets and relays how Neil may have felt during the mission through a melancholy tone and lyrics that convey the feelings of loneliness and separation from earth and loved ones. Then I found YouTube Videos for each song that if possible had a space theme to them.

The next step, which was to analyze the songs, was more difficult than I had anticipated. Although I could sense that the songs I had found fit perfectly with the emotional and or physical experiences I was trying to portray through them, it was often difficult to explain in words the way the song made me feel. However, I found one website, http://www.understandmedia.com/art09.htm, particularly helpful. Another part of the assignment that was also helpful for analyzing the songs was to select parts of the lyrics that were significant to the message that was being conveyed. Case in point, I selected the lyrics from "I'm Here (Another Planet) by Juno Reactor and The Creatures - All was surreal / On this planet / I felt so regal / It was so romantic - to convey how unreal and fantastic it would be to walk on the lunar surface in gravity only one-sixth as powerful as earth's.

Finally, after I found all the material I wanted, I began to start formatting the playlist on the Litcast website. I wanted to make my playlist aesthetically appealing so I spent a lot of time playing around with the html code to make it look the way I wanted. For example, I had to create a table and cells in order to have the background with twinkling stars that I wanted. As you can see, there were many steps involved in creating this playlist, however, the end result is certainly worth it!

Learning more about the Apollo 11 mission's history was another aspect of this project that I found fascinating and educational. Although I was aware of the basic aspects of the mission, I was unfamiliar with aspects like the Lunar Receiving Lab where the astronauts were tested extensively for any signs of exotic infection before being released.

Ultimately, I am very excited to share the first version of my playlist with you. I hope you find it a memorable multimedia experience.

Click Here to visit the Neil Armstrong - One Giant Leap for Mankind Playlist page on Litcasting