Category: Specialisation module

I spent the last few days giving myself a break from listening and watching the piece I’d made. I had a crit and showed my work to Sam. He gave me advice that really stuck with me. He spoke mainly about the sound mixing being too loud with the footsteps and cloth sounds, as well as in the beginning the atmosphere sounds changed a lot when zooming into the paper rustling. Apart from that, there wasn’t a lot to change.

I did a previous session on Friday and did the editing and did volume automation on each track to take everything down a notch as after taking a few days out I felt the same as Sam in relation to my mix.

On Saturday the 4th of December I spent the day at university referencing my mix to the Genelecs. I found the hiss hard to remove. I did a basic eq on a few channels and compression. As well as a limiter for the master. I did find that my initial foley recordings were perhaps a bit too quiet and I had to turn the preamps incredibly loud to record them. In hindsight, I should have recorded the foley and sound effects louder so the hiss from the preamps wasn’t so prevalent. Although my thoughts at the time were about mimicking the actors on screen. I didn’t anticipate the hiss being this much of an issue. Apart from that, I’m really content with my work. I worked incredibly hard and did a lot of editing and recorded all the sounds myself which was a great practice, I’ve learnt a lot.

Last Night I focussed on the most delicate part which was in the scene the mother is looking for pills, she finds the one she needs and rolls the pillbox towards her and gives it to her child.

The first part of the recording was the pillbox being moved and then rolled. I searched through the foley area looking for something similar. I started with using little stones and putting them in a plastic cup but when hearing and doing the foley I found the stones to be too low pitch and sound heavier than what is on screen. Mathias came to help me and offered me this box of pins in a plastic container and it sounded very alike. I recorded in time to the video and captured what I needed.

I then concentrated on the roll that pillbox does, I found a plastic lid and rolled it on the glass of the painting. As the pillbox rolls on a glass shelf. I did a few attempts and it sounded perfect on screen.

Then the last part of the moving of toy at the very end before he drops it off the metal shelf. I layered up some plastic pieces into a bowl and scraped and moved them in time on this piece of metal I found. It sounded ok, not perfect. I will need to do a bit of post-editing to make it work. Again, I feel like I need to do a long sound editing session and see what else I need to record instead of just recording a lot of sounds.

Today I planned to transfer all the recordings I did on logic back to pro tools. I bounced out individual stems of each channel and transferred them into the pro tools session.

I then imported the atmospheres and got to create a rough edit. I colour coded each group category and edited the gain structure on pro tools.

I also trimmed the audio files and left a little tail on each side for when I get to the real editing stage. This was just a rough edit as I wasn’t sure exactly where I was in the whole process. I had a Pro Tools file with feet sounds and a Logic file with other sound effects as the video engine doesn’t work on my M1 Macbook Pro.

I now feel a little more aware of the whole clip and where I stand with work. In terms of recording, some of my foley work has spill of bass from the synth bench and the comp room of other people using the spaces. I also found my interior atmos weren’t too good and everything has a lot of hiss. Now, this is without any mixing so I’m not being too negative. I would say I only need to re-record a few things and should be on the editing/mixing stage in the next day or two.

Today I continued on from last weeks session. I needed to record the rest of the cloth tracks. I brought with me denim jeans to record the sounds of the denim jacket the daughter was wearing. I also brought with me my housemate’s knitted jumper for the mother. I performed the clothing sounds differently to the child from yesterday. As the daughter was older and more aware she moved more quietly. And the mother even more so. She was the most careful.

I also recorded the child drawing on the floor. To create this noise I brought my paintbrush and recorded the sound of the wooden handle and the actual brush in synch to his movements. I didn’t have a crayon so had to improvise. I will layer these sounds in post.

The next session and all I have left to record is the toy moving on the shelf and the mother handling the pills before passing it to her child. This will be the most tedious foley part yet.

I did a foley session yesterday with Raul and forgot to export the files back to my laptop so I lost around three hours of work. We mainly did foley for cloth and a few little SFX in the clip. I decided to go in alone today and redo what we did. Try and be more efficient and see if it was possible to record alone.

I had my laptop hooked up via HDMI to the tv and a smaller interface to record the 416 in. I also had to use Logic Pro X to record as the Pro Tools video engine doesn’t work yet with the new M1 chip MacBook Pros.

I began by recording cloth entirely for the smaller boy child. He was wearing a sleeveless puffer and my jacket had the same texture as his. I record about 5-6 scenes and performed them with my jacket.

I then recorded an SFX of a bottle being opened and poured into a child’s mouth. I had my own water bottle to do this. I made sure to follow the script and concept of the movie and really keep the movements minimalistic and not loud.

I then recorded the atmosphere scene at the beginning of the film clip. There was a bag of tape of different thicknesses and materials in a basket. I used the thinner brown tape for the wind rustling grass, and the thicker black tape for the leaves moving in the second scene. The thinner brown tape had a lighter gentler sound in contrast to the other tape.

I also recorded the sound of the toy falling off the shelf which the daughter catches. I felt it would have more than one layer to it. I recorded three parts. An apple mouse for the light plastic sound when caught. A large clock for the more beefy sound of the toy. And a light layer of this thing I can’t describe but it had a rattle to it which a toy would have and I will add that as a final layer.

I also recorded a small plastic cup, in the scene the small child is on a milk crate trying to grab the rocket ship toy. I felt like the crate would be quietly creaking. I also recorded and squeezed the cup as an SFX.

The last recording I did today was of the wanted posters, the posters fluttering on the board. There was a notebook full of old paper that felt and sounded like the ones on screen. Not quite perfect A4 paper but the right consistency and texture. I recorded a few as I want to layer them up to immerse the scene.

Now I need to do at least a rough edit and plan the next foley session tomorrow. I’ve got a lot done today and plan to do the rest of the recordings alone. Unless someone decides to help me as I managed to be a lot more efficient.

I watched my clip after recording footstep sounds and felt I should have recorded my atmos sounds first. To not only help the foley artist who was doing it but also for me to not nitpick my sounds.

I watched the clip back and looked at my initial sound plan and realised it was mainly three-ish atmospheres. The initial village outside the pharmacy. The close up against the wall with the missing posters. Then the varying changes in the pharmacy. I really needed some isolated atmosphere and felt it was almost impossible to record in London so I took a weekend out ton Brighton as it’s where I’m from originally and I know the place well enough that I can cycle outside the city and have no noise pollution.

I rented out the Sennheiser 418 for its stereo recordings with a mid-side polar pattern for the lovely stereo sounds I was promised to receive. I also decided to use the Sound Devices 633 as previously the other recording box ZOOM F4 had very loud preamps.

The night before I learnt the machines and prepared for the next day. Wired my bags up, scouted locations and made a plan to record. I started with recording sounds of the ocean at low tide, I got really close on the rocks to the ocean holding my mic stand. I wanted to also get these recordings to use for experiments as Tim spoke about recording at 192khz and reducing the octave for frequencies we wouldn’t normally hear for sound design. I will follow up with a blog post after I’ve done this well as I’m really interested.

I then cycled up to a small farm area with a plot of green land and set up my mic and started recording, I found that even though I was more than a mile away I could pick up road sounds. I felt really frustrated, I recorded anyway and decided to keep heading away from roads. I walk and arrived near another farm around the university of Sussex. I pushed the gate and heard a really creaky horrible metal sound and decided to record it again at 192khz for experiments later. It sounded like the perfect scary movie metal gate.

I went up the hill and pointed the mic towards the scenery and managed to find a spot without any noise pollution (fingers crossed) I waited until planes drove past and set my timing correctly, even sometimes lowering the mic to reduce the spread and pointing away from roads, I figured this out after subtly even more than a few miles away still hearing the road traffic.

I haven’t yet put the atmospheres into my clip but the process will begin tomorrow most likely.

I started by inserting one of the atmospheres I recorded over the weekend in Brighton. I had known about compression anyway before the lecture but felt I wanted to practice on it anyway. I loaded in an ocean-atmosphere and used the logic compressor as my pro tools wouldn’t download or work with plugins.

I found the more interesting parts the attack and release. I found that when using the attack with very little time and the ratio incredibly high just to notice it, it stood out obviously. The knee helped in smoothing it but I wanted it to do it in extremes so I could notice it. I messed around with the other settings as well such as switching compressor types from vintage to classic. Each had its own sort of flavour and distortion sounds. Sound parameters were gone to reflect on the vintage equipment. I’m glad I did a bit of messing around as I have to compress a few things in my clip and this will give me a bit more context after that lecture.

I watched The Guilty initially not doing too much research into it. I skimmed through the movie quickly to see that it was the same thing the whole time, a police dispatcher in his office and initially, I felt no motivated to watch it. I then read about the use of limited space in this movie from the email and gave it another chance and paid full attention.

To start I really liked the use of sound in this movie. The POV sections really focus you on the characters conversations. I found myself captivated and imagining with full vividness what was going on through the dispatcher’s conversation. I found the use of sound in context to the environment over the phone specifically in parts when he made the police officer on the scene keep the line on while stopping the white van initially that was the wrong vehicle. Or when the officer arrives at the house and searches for the baby brother. The audio is designed very well, the sense of proximity to how close things are as well as the phone effect really make it easier to have an imagination as to what’s going on, as well as keeping you captivated.

There was also basically no music as far as I can remember and this again really makes you focus on the conversations as if you even drift for a second it can be hard to grab your attention and begin the imagination process. I feel like I spent most of the time in my thoughts instead of watching, I watched it with my housemates and it also gave me the idea of how we all must of imagined the film completely different, we all associate the sounds and country with different memories and ideas.

The last thing I want to talk about is the POV used in the film, I think it’s really done well. You forget at times that he’s even in this call centre until it goes back into the room or you see his colleague next to him. The juxtaposition between hearing the room and not really makes the brain focus on what’s in front of it. And when you can hear or start to realise he’s in the room again it brings back to your thoughts that he’s saying things without thinking. It’s almost like you are in his head.

I really liked the description of room tones, and recording atmospheres. The process of using the EQ to warm or cold a sound similar to a photo. To enhance the atmosphere in the scene relevant to what the sound designer wants to convey. In my clip for A Quiet Place the room tone initially in the pharmacy I’ve recorded and it had a lot of hiss. I need to EQ that out, as well as the lower frequencies to rid of the rumble. I want to also use the EQ and pitching as explained to create a nasty atmosphere and optionally try the pitching as well perhaps even creating harmonics. I think this really helps as I keep having this dilemma of trying to replicate the scene to as much realism as possible. But then realising this isn’t at least the idea for this film. It’s not real, so we want to emphasise and create specific effects and intentions with out sound, and possibly how can we improve on what we’ve recorded to emphasise our decisions.

The most engaging part of this short text was the ending part, which was acting with sound. The qualities of a character, do they walk timidly? Are they boisterous, unpredictable? The text continues to speak about how the actors bring another element to the performance. Including the script also. I think the role of a sound designer is also in how they want to push the scene into. Potentially another take, changing the performance entirely sonically. Or mimicking the correct foley as I’ve read and watched in other resources. Foley even in walking can mimic characters. I need to do this for my quiet place clip assignment, as in the clip the family walk differently and have a different personality. For example, the youngest child is nieve while the parents are extra careful. This should reflect the foley performance.