Saturday, March 22, 2014

Exercise: Creating a new soundtrack

Man alive, this was fun! I took the sounds recorded for the listening exercise and added them to the Alcoholic sequence back in the heady days of Project 2.  I had originally detached all the sound files from the sequence but I found I had to add back in the coughing bit as this is prominent.  

The other soundscapes were birdsong, a car in a nearby street, the sound of sawing and an angle grinder from a garage.

I like how these worked to symbolise a hangover or the feeling of fear and lack of control. I used four layers in the end. I heightened some bits to intensify the effect and had to be careful to keep them below the 0 dB level.
















I think the birdsong running throughout acts effectively as an 'atmos'. [An atmos is described in the course notes as the sound of silence on set or location. A room full of people sounds different to an empty room even if they are silent. There are always extraneous noises in any location. Record some minutes of silence to give options to fill gaps in dialogue - can also play with the level and quality of the background atmosphere in post production.]


3 comments:

  1. Hi Helen, I really enjoyed that. A couple of questions for you:
    * What gear did you use to capture the sounds?
    * Do you have a good reference to learn about the creation of a soundscape?
    Thanks!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks JP - sorry it took a while for me to notice this comment. All the sounds were captured on my camera.

      In terms of reference, there are a couple of pages of notes in the manual for my course (which you are welcome to read) but I mainly just explored You Tube for a few tutorials and then messed about with my editing software (Final Cut Pro X). It is fun but I really need a lot of practice!

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