Category: Specialisation module

Ben Burt also known as the grandfather of sound design worked as the lead sound designer on Wall-e. He speaks about his process of creating sound for this movie and his process. He starts by speaking with his interests in the roots of sound design and his early recordings. I found his explanation of starting with mechanical devices intriguing. You’d had to go out with a portable table recorder and locate effects to use instead of digitally manipulating them.

He also spoke about animation in general vs feature films and the differences between the sound design between them. He spoke that in animation there is no recordings filmed on set. There’s no base to add and amplify of its all creation. Because of this, all the sounds have to convey emotion. From how the wheels of a car sound when it’s driving to the sounds of a door creaking. This he says, is where the emotion comes from. Even more specifically in a film like Wall-e where the robots have little communication. It’s important to make sure that every sound has meaning and emotion as if it doesn’t then the viewers will create their own meanings and perceptions. someone will take a meaning you don’t intend.

He also spoke about his fascination for sound objects. The early days of Disney cartoons had makeshift machines created to add sound effects to the screens. Recording studios back then were heavy bulky and impossible to have portable. because of this instead of being out in the field capturing the sounds to manipulate everything was done in-house. I never entirely realised the extent of making sound objects they went to as some of the examples shown are incredibly creative. He states that he created a few objects to use in Wall-e as he wanted control in the sounds. Such as the wind in one of the scenes. He dragged a microphone along the floor while recording its movement.

He finishes by speaking about the possibilities of sound design in animation. The idea that it’s set in fictionality. When the environment isn’t real you have the ability to create items that can exist where they usually wouldn’t fit.

I found this video really revealing. The process of foley and its processes even more information than I know already. I think the way Peter and his team described the way that foley is used is captivating. The process of choosing the correct sounds and their placement in the word. Foley is a performance art that makes you need to think about the characters on screen. What their personality is, how do they want to walk?

I also found the different traps interesting. At LCC we only have 2 or 3 different traps. The mud trap and water trap was something new to me I didn’t know existsed.

Overall I would of liked to perhaps known a little more on the control room side and how they get the pro tools files ready and the gain structure. Types of microphones and mic techniques. Perhaps this is something I can go into.

Now everyone has submitted their work it has been put into a VR space that you can walk around and click everyone’s work and listen. I’m really happy with the result. This has also been my first time showcasing any sound piece to the public or even in a gallery (even if it’s virtual).

Here is the link to the gallery.

https://soundlab.scm.cityu.edu.hk/soundenvelope/

I’ve never done any foley before and felt I should try to work on the We Need To Talk About Kevin clip before I start working on my own clip as a way of finding out problems and techniques before the real thing.

I brought Dan with me as we needed one person in the control room and one in the foley room. Since I knew Pro Tools more I ended up being in the control room. Although next time we will swap as I want to try doing foley art.

We started by watching the clip with the atmospheres I’ve added and just started writing down things we could do in synch. The main part that stood out was when she was lying down on the sofa and then gets up. The pills fall of the table puts her slippers on and then she breaks the doorknob opening the door.

I labelled up and marked the areas on the Pro Tools project that we wanted to record and then got dan in the foley room.

We used a Sennheiser MKH 416-P48U3 shotgun mic for the close-up footsteps sounds we wanted to record. I chose this mic as the last time I used the 418, which is stereo. But in this instance, we didn’t need that. The polar pattern on the 416 microphones is perfect for the subtle effects we wanted to record. The polar pattern is hyper-cardioid which means it will only really record what’s in front of it which makes it perfect for what we were doing that day.

We also set up an XY recording stereo setup in the room for a test but I found it wasn’t that useful. The shotgun held up better for the subtle movements. Maybe I should try to use the condensers for a more close up recording than to record the room and compare it with the 416.

We set up the 416 on a short mic stand pointed towards the wooden floor for the recording. About 10-20cm away from the source. I synched up the tv’s in the foley and room and set up the talkback so I and Dan could communicate.

I then got him to do some random effects to get a signal so I could create the gain structure in the interface and make sure everything was going into pro tools correctly. I then put the video on a loop and let him practice the foley of the steps and let him attempt it a few times. Then counted him in and recorded.

We did a few more foley recordings such as the pills dropping from the table and the door being pulled which I think ended up really good and almost perfectly in synch.

We did try to do more but ran out of time as we spent an initial hour and a bit setting up. There were two main things I learnt during this session. Number one was the gain structure was hard to balance and keep where I wanted it to be. When you crank the gain as high as you do when recording foley as you need every subtle detail if the foley artist speaks or does something louder there is less ceiling as we are in the extreme gain territory. So it clips very easily. I need to practice more foley to get this gain structure how I want it to be. The second thing was the sounds. We tried to make the tomato being thrown sound with dan filling up a bowl with water and moving his hands in it but it didn’t really work so we left it. Even though we used a lot of the props in the room we should have perhaps watched the video before we went in and thought of some props to bring. Properly plan more than planning when we arrived as the time is limited.

I started by watching the video and deciding on the cue points. I used pro tools editing to create markers to situate the important areas that needed recordings. I started by layering the ideas of atmospheres and where to cut them / fade in and out. Then fx and lastly sync points.

I rented out the microphone to record atmosphere. Sennheiser MKH 418-S Stereo Shotgun Microphone. I used the 418 instead of 416 as this one is stereo and I really wanted to capture immersive atmospheres for the clip. I started by watching the clip and writing down in time code where the atmospheres should be placed and which ones should occur.

I thought that within my vicinity I could perhaps use the white noise effects of a busy road to use for the intro with the curtain fluttering in the wind. In the movie its plays an actual sprinkler sound to foreshadow the ending. I felt like because I was limited to the 3-4 minutes of the clip I had to use my sounds to not foreshadow anything that isn’t in the 3-4 minutes.

I set up the mic and then took it apart from the housing to learn its functions properly and did a test recording at home. I then left to a busy main road very close to my house and did a few recordings.

I Found the mics polar pattern was not the best to record a decent ambience of the road. I couldn’t quite work out why the mid side recording was much lower in the gain than channel one. I felt the polar pattern was too direct to capture the ambience and felt like I should have got an Omni or a figure or eight. I need to ask Rory or Micheal if there was something I was doing wrong as I didn’t find the mics stereo capabilities that good.

The second and third recordings just for atmosphere was internal and was in my house. I recorded the boiler working as it made a nice low hum drone sound. I ran the bathroom tap on hot upstairs and set up the mic to record.

The recording was great and I felt it will suit the clip very well. Especially if I time stretch it. I also recorded the steam leaving the pipes outside as it was a similar noise but less intense machine noise.

The last atmosphere recording that I needed was the part of the clip when she walks out of the house and is in her neighbourhood. My area is filled with noise pollution so I wasn’t to optimistic about the outcome. I set up the mic on the stand in the garden and left it to record for a few minutes at a time. It was a windy day and even the huge dead cat on the mic couldn’t keep the wind noises from happening which was frustrating. I’ve learnt that these wind protectors aren’t that powerful.

Following from week two exercise we brought in our parts of the storm. We shared our one-minute pieces onto the one drive to share amongst ourselves and had to combine two other pieces to create one. To make the make second generation. This exercise wasn’t about adding anything simply to change what was there already. Cut it up and mess with the sounds to create something new.

I combined two pieces, Wain and Thunderstorm. I blended the two together to create the calm before the storm and then to begin into the lightning chaotic part. I mainly used delays to emphasise the piano glitchy part. Then made one of the sounds with delay sound like rain. I automated the auto filter to create a sense of something missing in the frequencies so when the storm comes in it feels like this is what we’ve been waiting for.

I found that I focused more on experimenting than when creating. Almost like how I use samples in my own music. The sounds are there for me to mess around with and deconstruct or maybe not deconstruct. But I find my lack of musical skills to hinder my ability to generally start with a nice sounding piece of audio. I also feel like using samples or sounds in this case from other people can allow me to use the context in which it’s created to enhance the production. I feel it also allows you to think how you never would as your using someone’s pieces to add to another piece to create something new.

I was speaking to Dan my housemate who is also in the course for us to try and do this at home and send each other stems and keep adding more and send it back and forth to see the results. I will keep the blog updated on this as it happens.

In the lecture for this week, we had a good conversation about AI and the future of sound arts cannon. We spoke into thinking about the years ahead. For myself, I have been thinking about this anyway and this lecture struct a thought for me. When I think about the artists I really like such as Madlib and MF DOOM. In their time they were pioneering their music scenes. Using modern equipment that others weren’t using. At the time everyone was using MPC and SP1200 and Madlib was using the sp303 which was criminally underrated. I think it’s easy to want to idealise yourself as your favourite artist. But for me to feel like I’m moving things forward I have to use the things available for me now. And break the current cannon of underground hip hop. I want to do what Madlib did for music back then but now. I want to think outside the box and take things forward.

We also spoke on AI and how to use that in our favour. I’ve never been too fond of AI but this just might be the old man in me. AI does have the possibility to become the most powerful and helpful thing humanity ever creates if done well. I just wonder what will happen to art if AI gets involved. It’s inherently questionable that the abstract process that is art. To say it can only be produced by humans is definitely an unprogressive thought. I just think about art and what for myself at least personally is the errors, the expression. The thought process behind what your doing can and cannot be important. Art is such a subjective thing that I’m sure robots or AI will be able to make art. I just wonder to what extent will we create the cut-off point? Once AI is completely creating its own coding and growing and learning by itself when is it no longer artificial?

I also decided to look Into create.playform.io. A platform that generates images based on the image you give. The AI computer generates random choices based on the samples of the image you give. I messed around to see what I could create. I’m remembering back to the first year when Gareth showed us an Ableton plugin that created an image you submitted into midi onto Ableton. I want to try this again.

I had an idea of a performance-based on our week four lecture. If created some graphic scores for people to follow and created a spontaneous performance. Or a reflection from the sound for the screen piece I’ve chosen. The quiet place. I wanted to combine both sound for screen and studio praxis. I was thinking to do all the foley and sound effects for the short clip. But when it came to the actual music or synth parts. to have an improvisation over it. Have a few people set up some synths in the live room and play the clip and see what happens. record everyone’s outputs into the desk and then after a few takes create my own blur from them. I need to try this!

I finally watched We Need To Talk About Kevin after recording the ambience for the foley experiment I wanted more context towards the piece. The sound in this movie is really well done. I read the small blog post on a feminist approach to this movie and after watching it I can really tell what she meant. The dialogue is minimal, the way it carries the story is through image and sound. Not directly telling you what’s happening. The beginning has the curtains flying with a sound of a sprinkler which until the ending you would never know why it’s happening. Throughout the movie, you can hear the subtle sound of the sprinkler coming on and off. Foreshadowing the ending, the sound is playing even though the sprinkler isn’t on screen.

One of the strongest elements I felt the sound design helped was to convey the film from her point of view. In the intro scene where she is in a tomato festival and she lies down and is carried in the air, you can see she’s in a dreamlike state. The audio in the clip conveys a similar message. Throughout the movie, there are constant flashbacks between her post-life after the murdering by her son Kevin to flashbacks before. The sound design never makes you feel like your comfortable and always unsure of where you are in the story.

In some scenes, the sound design is very minimalistic. Whenever there is a dialogue that is very little the sound effects cut out. All you hear is the room abience and very close mic technique recordings to get all the subtle mouth movements. I feel this creates concentration and suspense within the viewer. As most of the movie has synths and drones to make you uneasy that as soon as there is silence you know something bad is about to happen.

I’m going to carry on the exercise and do a bit more foley on the scene from class before working on my own clip. I think the practice is going to help a lot.

Today in our studio praxis lecture, we got instruments and connected the cables up the mixing desk and then through into Ableton.

Cai brought a no-input mixer and the sounds were immense for sound design. I want to try by myself no-input mixing as it seems fascinating.
I didn’t bring an instrument although I should have brought my sp404sx. I was hesitant to bring it as it’s not an instrument. I do use it as an instrument but it requires sounds to work. So I was unsure of using it, but now it could have been a cool effects unit to go through in between the mixer and the interface.

We started with a jam in general and like how Dean said the instruments seemed to have taken dominance over the over things, and how they lead the improvisation. Once they started creating a rhythm or the drums came involved the other things would follow.

Then we did a second take and this time gave every group a time to solo and then go through the others and then combine.

We discussed at the end our ideas and thoughts.

I had thoughts about improvisation in general and how it was interesting that we had set mind states about how we wanted to work, as soon as we look at these instruments or foley sounds. Our brain wants to create patterns, find a meaning or a possible thing to catch onto, perhaps a state of safety. I also felt that people’s personalities came across or at least how they were feeling when performing, as it was an abstract performance without a definitive structure we were free to do as we wished. Some people were more boisterous than others, I felt this can reflect how we are feeling that day or about performing in front of others.

I also thought back to the storm exercise, and how when creating my part of the piece. I had already started playing chords with the synthesizers I was designing. Almost as if my ritual was in place. I believe it can hold someone back from exploring new avenues when doing this. I felt similar today about the use of instruments. Indeed beautiful and fascinating how the players combined the harmonies and keys & tones. It felt again like they had predetermined ideas of how they wanted/were going to use their instruments. Joshua came out with a good point about how limiting his instrument the guitar felt once he tried taking it out of context. I felt he was correct. It is interesting how we need perspective on things and sometimes it takes us doing the unknown to acquire these.

In context to my assignment. I think this has made me want to collaborate or at least get some artists to play improvised work towards a visual piece of my choice. I want to experiment with this.