The Road

In the end I decided to chose The Road as the clip that I would create the sound design for. The clip is self is quite simple its two people walking on different surfaces while pushing a trolley, however the clip is full of potential for me to explore the world of off screen space, creating my own world using sound. At these early stages I looked through the clip again making a list of all the on screen sounds I could see, that I would need to record, after creating recoding and adding all the sync sounds I would then go out and record all the off screen sounds likes barking dogs for example.

Long ambient atmosphere

Footsteps, different surfaces, gravel, concrete, carpet, snow

Old rust trolley

Metal clunks

Bottles

Heavy damp clothing

Spreading paper

Tree falling 

Branches breaking

Gravel hitting the floor

Plastic bag rustling

Squeak signpost

Fire

Clock

Walking on rubbish

Open trunk

Whipping clothing.

One of the most important sounds will be capturing a good long atmospheric atmosphere, without the interruption from human activity. I plan to go to the Peak District to capture this sound. The Tree and Trolley sounds will be a combination of loads of different individual sounds.

Midi Key Board

In todays session we looked at Midi compositions and how we could use it to create tone, tension and atmosphere. We attached a midi keyboard to the computer then opened up Pro Tools. We used the software instruments called Xpand2 that has a vast library of different sounds, synths, pads and harmonies. 

We got given a clip from Solaris; biggest problem for me was the navigating through the vast library, as we where only given a couple of hours, I found myself to listening to sounds lots of different sounds to see if they worked with out actually recording them.  After a bit of trial and error I came across the haunted house ambiance, I pitched the sound down to create this nice atmospheric piece.




The second clip is quite a delicate atmosphere which to me sounds quite space like, i didn't think it fit the clip but thought it was a nice atmosphere which i could use later.

               

At home I have midi drum kit so I experiment using Garage Band. I understand that Garage Band isn’t industry standard but it’s the only software I have at home and was keen to try it out. What I recorded is a very simple fill but knowing that its possible is great, as I could compose my own tracks in the future.

EQ

In todays seminar we look at EQ (Equalization) the process of adjusting different frequencies. We had look at EQ last year so, where we simple got rid of unwanted low and high frequencies in dialogue. In the session we add the 7 Band EQ to music to make it sound like it was coming through the wall. We looked at scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Blonde tortures the cop; the music Stuck in the Middle with You is EQ when he walks out of the room

We then where given a mute clip form the void and the song Kangding Ray. for the start of he clip i had the High Pass filter For the clip I had the low and high pass filter very steep to cut off all the, then used the auto function on the low pass filter  so as the person gets closer to the club you begin to hear more of the high frequencies.

We also got shown how to us EQ to emulate the sound of something been played on the radio. With radio the sound the quality isn’t great and the speakers might not be able to reproduce the high and low frequencies.  We got clip of CNN Radio and the added the 7 band EQ to get rid of these frequencies but also to raise the mid frequencies. I also added a little bit of white noise to create the effect that it was playing of an old radio.

Field Recording

In this week seminar we looked at field recoding we watched a video of Sheffield based field recodist Chris Watson. We had been told a lot about Chris Watson as last year he had a sound exhibit in Sheffield Millennium Gallery called Inside the Circle of Fire. The exhibit, where he collected different sounds from the city crated this wonderful atmospheric piece, which captured the essence of Sheffield life. In the video you can really see how passionate he is about his art from and the way he got excited about trying new things as you might hear something that you’ve never heard before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL-nTv5LL9g

After we watched the video we look at the different bits of equipment we where going to us when capturing atmosphere. We where shown a Rode Stereo microphone, before hand the only stereo microphone we had used where the built in stereo mic on the zoom.  We split up in to groups of two and collected the equipment; we plugged the Rode into the mixer, then mixer into the zoom. As we only about 30 minutes to capture an inside and out atmosphere we where quite limited on where we could go and the weather was terrible which meant that we had to find somewhere with cover so the equipment wouldn’t get wet.  We decided to go outside the Stoddart building to capturer the atmosphere of the rain, traffic and general movement of people.

As most of the sounds where mid to low frequency, the sounds where all fighting for the same space. The sounds then become a little busy and it becomes hard to pick out the individual sounds. We did the recoding again where the traffic died down, the sound became clearer and it was easier to pick out the different sounds, people walking and the rain, which got drowned out by the traffic.

The inside sound we decided to do the inside recoding inside the supermarket across the road, they is a lot of interference with different people talking into the microphone. However what I like about this clip is the you can hear the self checkout machines as you the microphone goes through the shop.