User:FluffyDunlop/Sound

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Assignment 1

I did this assignment together with Lídia Pereira

We both agreed upon doing 4 types of sound design. Realistic & Abstract stop motion sequence Realistic & Abstract animation sequence

Day 1 (Morning) Realistic stop motion sequence

We took the first 2 minutes from the stop motion animation and we started with a realistic version. Our Version -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZIB-He8SGc

The work flow was as followed:

  • Converting H.264 to Proress 444 (So pro tools runs better)
  • Importing Video into Pro Tools
  • Design of ambient tracks
  • Design of foley
  • Design Sound Design
  • Recording and "dub" of voice
  • Mix and exports

Ambient Tracks: Things that came to mind.. A desolated place / wind / abstract / creepy We translated these words into sound by choosing the right tracks We ended up with:

  • Wind (eerie) High frequency
  • Train horns / to give the desolate feel
  • City rumble / to give some body to the background without ruing the desolate feel

Foley: For the lamp guy we recorded several servo motors (from furby and child toys) Metal squeaking for movement were recorded for a different project but reused Footsteps clothing Metallic objects have their own sound design / foley according to their "function" within the clip Stretching of rubber / wood break / some delay filters were used to get the timing right (poinginginginggngg ;) )

Sound Design: The monkey interested me, he/she felt to me as a guardian with a heavy natural presence. In combination with the child/doll playing I had a beauty and the beast idea. The monkey is mechanic therefore the mechanic sound, when the monkey talks he should be loud and scary (like the Beast) But it summons more nails for the doll to play with so all is good. The sound and volume is designed is such a way it should scare the audience :) The glimmer of light felt like it needed some sound so we used bacon frying and cut of the high frequencies. (what isn't better with bacon?)

Dialogue: Just my own voice with some creepy acting The guy looks at plastic hands touching naked upper bodies / torsos and should have an audible reaction

Mix & Exports: Normal stereo mix with nice dynamic range. Nothing fancy.


Day 1 (Afternoon) Realistic stop motion sequence The second clip we did was the animation sequence. We have been doing to realistic stop motion clip in the morning and after lunch we thought we should do this one. It seemed to us that an Unrealistic / Abstract version of the animation would be fun to do and was a nice balance to the other one we did that morning.

The work flow was as followed:

  • Converting H.264 to Proress 444 (So pro tools runs better)
  • Importing Video into Pro Tools
  • Recording of Voices
  • Experimenting with effects
  • Mix

The thought that came to mind was that we were looking at some sorts of astronaut / space voyage. We worked out an idea of what it could be for our realistic version. But we agreed on starting with an abstract one. Somehow we came to the idea to use only our voices for the sound design.

We played to moving and recorded our voice interpretation of the video. After doing both 2 versions of experiments we took our experiments and used track insert audio filters to "mangle" our voices. Audio filters that where used:

  • Noise Gate
  • EQ
  • Delay / Reverb
  • Various Waves plug ins for sound modeling
  • Distortion

After we had some kind of coherency we mixed our tracks to what sound well and exported our mix. This way of "sound design" was certainly fun.. RESULT -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT-qLURrjdI

Day 2 (Morning) Unrealistic / Abstract stop motion sequence

While thinking what we could do with this version, we thought of the limitation set by the assignment: no music.. I'm not a big fan of trowing music from music collections under edits to make the edit better. So we thought of the idea to make our own sampled sound effects music track.. We cheated a little bit by using 2 samples of songs. The first sample we took is the intro and the second is the trolololollll guy sample. We also utilized a sample from the famous light saber sound (this came to be to show lidia what a light saber is (she has never seen star wars)) After using them in our way we used every added sound in the design as an element in the music. With all the samples we tried to create our own rhythmic sound design piece. The car in the end is a little wink to the English heritage in sound design & music -> spoiler http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9qEsTCTuajE#t=387

The export shows best what is described above -> RESULT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtz8JY0AoTI

Day 2 (Morning) Realistic Animation

To get an good idea with this clip was kind of hard. It should be something different than the Abstract version and have some kind of meaning. We could see some kind of shape of an astronaut and the clip felt spacy overall. It is clear that in our version we choose to ignore this and went for a more "real" approach. The sound design represents a writer on a drugs trip trough a shopping mall. He makes notes of his experience in his notebook while he is walking trough the mall and seeing various of shapes and colours.

The sound design is a reflection of what he wrote. And we incorporated what he wrote as a voice over. Due to time the voice over could have been better (more worked out / articulation / speed / expression) We added some reverb to give the idea that you are also in the head / mind of the author

The workflow is the same as for the realistic stop motion animation.

  • Converting H.264 to Proress 444 (So pro tools runs better)
  • Importing Video into Pro Tools
  • Design of ambient tracks
  • Design of foley
  • Design Sound Design
  • Recording and "dub" of voice
  • Mix and exports

RESULT -> http://youtu.be/JsHs6bd4ViY