Sound Design & Research

“Tsunami” – Sofie Kampmark

This film covers many atmospheric noises especially in the indoor scenes. The shallow noises allow an underlying silence to breathe and show us the lonely depression of the character. The film awakens at the peak noise of the fish suffering. This highlights his trauma from the terrifying Tsunami experience he faced. So on from this film, the reluctant relief in film crescendos gradually with the soft bells and positive sound droplets and echo. The track line below shows the films mood. As we can see it is a stable pace of mood- in this case loss and hope.

“Encounter” – Howard Wimshurst

This film uses a very quiet soundtrack mainly. The main segment of track that ascends is the point of introduction to the main character skiing and atmospheric sounds take over and mix in a balanced level to capture the environment and character through his voice used for effect. This film decides to use more jump cuts to exaggerate the value of time and life. In comparison to Sofie Kampmark, Howard Wimshurst uses many jump cuts and pauses into rapid high pitch sound. This is effective for this film because it focuses on moment of energy whereas the film by Sofie focuses on depression,relief and hope which is not at all meant to be energetic. As you can see the track line below shows the contrast in levels which represent change of mood and scene like how this film shows contrast in energy between hunter and skier.

“Sensations” – Olof Storm

This film uses a music composition for entire film with lower level of audio where needed to enhance the value of atmospheric feelings hence why this film is called ‘sensations’ and represents nature of life. This film takes on a very steady pace and level of audio. It is almost a mix of Sofia and Howard in the sense of having an underlying silence yet maintaining an extra source of mood for the character, however this film also targets objects and its purpose to life by ensuring its appearance has a strong dominance to film and story. As you can see this track line has a calm and steady volume.

Definitely the energy of Howard’s animation is more appropriate for my story line with a Tsunami sequence taking place. The idea of showing contrast in environment and character is surely an essential for my film. I want to a slow start and an unexpected mid point of plot which leaves the audience terrified, then I want to place a message of hope in the audience through the use of heavenly music and soft bells to help that. Silence is a strong substance that can hold the weight of my film generally. I believe atmospheric sound use would be key to my film as there will be many action sequence and object collisions and without the sound effects my film would not breathe.

Link to Film:

20 second ( 1:00 – 1:20 )

Most of the sound effects are stock sounds recorded in real or bought on online from third party. This maybe to enhance realism or due to budget. This 20 second sequence starts off with a heavy atmosphere with a breeze sound effect whistling throughout, its pretty low volume which extends the depth of field for viewer as the scene focuses on a wider shot of the landscape. Meanwhile there a huge weight of snow sliding down. The rough drawings could show shading so the sound effect being more bass did justice for it to show a more convincing approach. Then the deer’s footsteps are highlighted to our ears through the lowering volume steps to show gradual depth change. Then comes a loud pop sound of a man gasping for air. The man breathing is lower volume than the pop and is transitioned to do so. This is effective because the loud pop transitioning to a lower volume of gasp shows the pain of gaining relief the character had to take. In addition the sequence follows with main character limping unstably with the help of random rhythm of step sound effect according to imagery to show the dizziness or fatigue the character felt. The chemistry of this sound works well with visual because if it was not for the footstep sound effect taking place, anyone can misunderstand the character to dance? have a broken leg? or even believe the animation was not animated properly. A voice is added further in as a sign of success and happiness but was limited in volume to show the fatigue within character simultaneously. The character in joy kicked the snow and we happened to hear a heavier snow than a lighter snow due to the heavier bass in sound. This was effective as we can understand that he is standing on many deep metres of snow than a pavement with 30 centimetres of snow. The character’s jacket is only block red and the art does not show a glossy or metallic texture which means that without the sound effect that is placed this footage would not convince the viewers that hes a wearing a jacket in a specific material nor would the director be able to showcase his original idea. The final scene is of the character breathing in shock whilst encountering a hunter who is about to strike his shot, meanwhile we can hear the small foot steps of the main character whilst also hearing a layer of breeze. As soon as we hear the next element which is a archery pulling sound of stretch, we get a visual of camera turning to the opposite side of character showing us the ‘villain’ aiming the archery. This segment of sequence is effective because scene of camera angle switching borrowed sound of the archery element in transition of revealing villain, this creates a tension and empathy for the main character as we simultaneously move with camera and sound (archery pull sound effect) to see the villain. It livens the turning motion.

My 20 seconds of my film starts off with already fallen cigarette on sand at a beach next to the foot of the main character of my documentary film. In front of the foot is an encountered King Cobra. This scene is about the tension for the ominous snake and how it (as the messenger) creates a positive pure energy religiously.

In order to produce a composition inspired from Howard’s style, I need to ensure that I use more sound effects layered and also correctly levelled. My scene that I will use is a tension beginning, so I need go from D to Mid C. This means that I will need a steady sound underlying to keep a grip on viewers pressure and to create a positive energy within I need soft bell like instruments. A village atmosphere will run in the very background to create depth to scene.

Introducing High C (Drawing Music Software)

I composed a simple track to catch an ominous yet also God / Heaven like sound to capture the Cobra scene’s mood. This composition was produced on ‘High C’ which is a graphical music creation tool. It is a synthesizer, a sequencer and a mixer. Its goal is to make music composition as simple and direct as sketching.

This is the music I produced. I have basic keyboard skills and I tried to composite different instrument simulations in place to capture an atmospheric ominous but god like sound.

The sound was successfully exported on High C, however the audio had a fuzzy noise at back so I placed the audio into Audacity and tried my best to remove random fuzz that occurred.

Software called ‘Soundly’, very easy to find good quality sound effects and perfect in terms of exporting sound as it is a drag and drop instant feature which makes editing more time efficient.

In addition, I placed various layers such as ‘Sea wave sound effect’, ‘Light Breeze sound effect’, ‘Rooster in village sound effect’, ‘Hissing sound effect’ from Soundly and another ascending audio at end created using High C. The layering was done on Adobe Premiere Pro and faded in the correct audio points of sequence to ensure a harmonious experience to the viewer. My computer was capable of running the needed software to edit audio.

Here is my first attempt with only High C.

This version has more complex environment with use of High C (Noise removal using Audacity), Soundly & Adobe Premiere Pro

Evaluation

The sound sequence is good but not great to use in my film. The sound quality of the High C export was not great as the playback and I realised that it could be a bug in their software which I have emailed them about. I need to capture texture more, like the snake’s skin rubbing against the sand and the hissing could have been more dramatic to create a better feel for my film. The village sound could have been more soft and less going on and I should have captured the fisherman nearby than the road further ahead. The audio sequence does a good job in delivering the sound for movie and communicating the story however to suit the theme of film, there should have been a specific palette of choice and an underlying music could have been used to show the villages culture as this scene is still beginning stages of film and has not reached the pressure point.

In terms of software, my computer is capable of running the software required. I would not use High C because of its beta mode bugs and there is not enough time or support to produce the right composition on FL Studio. Currently, I will experiment on Soundly as that gave a great editing efficiency and great quality too. Adobe premiere Pro will be used more for audio layering and I will need to learn about different audio related plugins and effects for further accomplishments. I will practice audio layering on couple more scenes using Soundly and Premiere pro and hope to develop my skills further.