Sound Design

 

SOUND DESIGN

Assignment 1

 

“Black Water Sinking Boats”

 

Link to the audio:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q72lUmgcZpfFN4dktuUrvxc7F_Pc5lYB/view?usp=share_link

Research and Planning:

 

For my assignment, I was looking forward to creating a soundscape that does not particularly involve chaotic sounds and overwhelming actions, instead I wanted to create an atmosphere that gives off a feeling of extreme tranquility and serenity combined with a flick of an indescribable uneasiness. The most obvious soundscape that would fall into someone’s concept would be that consisting of people with the hue and cry of human life and nature, but to avoid that obvious atmosphere I decided to base my location at the sea. To create a more calming environment, it was important to choose a location that gave off a feeling of solace, and even though a mountainous place with a gentle breeze would have gotten the job done I still wanted to get an atmosphere that not only is soothing, but also takes a lead in giving off a more mysterious aura.

 

The sea is a place that I personally think gives an epic feeling to any media’s visual and audio elements. On screen, the serenity of oceans and seas is always aesthetically pleasing, and the sound of the ocean is even more calming. I wanted to add some fantastical representation in my audio scape so I have decided to base the plotline on a mermaid. With a subject like mermaid in the concept, I can easily add more imagination and fantasy to the atmosphere and story. 

 

The song that will be played in the background is the original soundtrack instrumental of a famous Korean TV series called “ The legend of the blue sea”, and the name of the song is “ The Missing memories”. Not only is it one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, It also fulfills the purpose of the concept. 

 

The narration at the start of the audio is done by one of my very good friends named “ shiroll”, she is an aspiring japanese voice actor.

Idea :

 

It starts with a japanese narration saying

 

“ A long time ago, I heard this from someone.

A shooting star doesn't fly,

It falls. 

To wish upon something that is “ falling”

I wonder what that means for our “wish”

 

The basic idea is to describe a scene where a mermaid is swimming around in an ocean, and then swims onto the shore. She moves out of the water and starts walking on the sandy shore, and during her walk she is transformed into a woman with human legs. As she stops, she finds a strange lantern and tries to light it with a matchstick, and continues her journey. 

 

Process:

 

The software I used to edit the soundscape is “ Adobe Audition”. The steps by which I have created the audio are as follows:

• Firstly, I asked my friend to record a small narration for me, and exported the audio file onto multitrack in adobe audition
• I added a long file of ocean waves audio and decreased the volume so the sound of the waves is audible throughout the entire audio.
• The narration pans into the soundtrack “ The Missing Memories” which goes on till the end of the audio
• At around 35 seconds I added the sound effect of water splashes and dissolved the input and output to indicate that the mermaid has moved out of the water
• After a few seconds I added the effect of the mermaid walking on sand and the sparkle audio to show her transformation
• Lastly I added the audio of her picking the lantern and lighting the matchstick and panned them both. 

 

 

Audios Used:

The different audios I used to create this soundscape are as follows:

 

Assignment 2

Sound Analysis of Hugo (2011)

 

The sound design of the film “ Hugo”, just by looking at the first 13 minutes of it, shows how the circulation of ambiences and elements is constructed well with every particular scene. In such a way, it gives the entire film a very ‘ alive’ and ‘ breathing’ feeling, and enlightens the importance of little elements and factors shown on screen. Just from the sound design of the introduction, it can be easily concluded what the conceptual and atmospheric relevance and plotline of the film is. One of the first vivid sounds that we are introduced to right from the start, is the evident sound of trains on their tracks, leading our minds to think that the establishing shot is to be taken at a train station. It is then followed by clicking and ticking sounds of the gears of a clock. 

It is perceptible from the establishing shot/opening that the film takes place in Paris. As the camera goes around the station, showing everyone else who is present at the scene, the mechanical  sound of clock ticking and gears turning is emphatically audible throughout the entirety of it, even when the clock is not shown. The tweaking of the foley sounds and dialogues is incredibly done, as the conversations between the characters are quite audible yet muffled to a point, along with the mechanical sounds. 

As the story is based on the protagonist’s ( Hugo’s) passion for mechanical building and gears, these are the sounds that are the most distinct when the scene switches to his perspective. So even as b-rolls are shown, the sounds of clicking and turning continue, connecting the concept back to the perspective of the main character. Moving towards the first actual dialogue, when it is said, the music or background sounds are almost lowered to zero. Giving more dominance to the dialogue and the diegetic sound. When Mr Melies shouts the words ‘ go’ and ‘ thief’, that itself creates a strong presence because the words echo and prolong with repetition until we see the dog and the station master acknowledging them. 

The next few scenes are also accompanied by sound effects needed for a chase scene, along with live music playing, which adds more emotion and background sound. It is important to notice that the clicking sounds of gears are not added when the scene is being shown from someone else’s perspective, for example the dialogue that happens between the couple and is followed by romantic music, as it is not displayed from Hugo's perspective.

Overall, the sound design of Hugo does really well in highlighting meaningful and essential sounds that would not have been easily distinct in real life. More particularly, the mechanical sounding elements are the ones that have more focus in this, like the sounds of steam, the station master’s metal leg and churning of gears. 

 

Assignment 3

Sound FX

In this assignment, we basically had to record 15 sound effects from a chosen environment and compile them as different audio files. I chose “ Kitchen” as my place of recording, where I recorded several sound effects with my iphone and transferred them onto my PC, where I edited them on Adobe Premiere Pro.

 

Link to the Set of Effects is as follows:

Link for Sound Effects

Assignment 4

Interview in Public

For this assignment, we were required to film an interview in public and then clean out the sound. This process was quite challenging because removing lighter sounds such as wind, breathing etc is easy to do but in my case, my entire interview was shot at a sports gala. Due to that, there was a lot of active noise in the background, with a ton of screaming and shouting along with the person giving the interview. 

I chose NBS Sports Gala to film the interview, where different students talk about their experiences with the sports festival and how they went on about it. 

I used Adobe Audition and Audacity to clean my audios. In Audacity, I selected the audio which I wanted noise reduction for, then went to noise reduction in the effects panel and got the noise profile, which I then applied to the entire clips.

In adobe audition, I tried to Denoise the clips through the effects panel, and added some changes to the echo, compression, etc. I then transferred these clips onto my ipad and compiled them there on the inbuilt software. 

 

Link To Watch the Interview is as follows:

Link to Watch Interview

Assignment 5

Sound Film

In this assignment, we had to make a short sound film while using various effects of sounds over a series of pictures, to tell a specific story. The pictures I used are from the webtoon “ Operation True Love”, and I chose the starting scene of the comic to show my story. I used various sound effects from youtube and google, to make the scene look as if it was extracted audio from a film. I edited all these on my ipad. 

Link To Watch the Sound Film is as follows:

Watch Sound Film here