Sound Project: Part 2 of 2

Seb talkimg in Friday's crit session

Myself and Moses taking notes during the crit session, giving feedback to other classmates.

Emphasizing High frequencies for clapping and voice recordings, trying to replicate the big airry stadium feel of a football pitch.

Arrangements and multiple layers of my sounds, I aimed to texture my vocals enough and manipulate them to replicate an authentic sounding football crowd.

Levelling/Mixing my sounds, aiming to create space for one another without too many conflicting and confusing frequencies, levelled in order of audible importance/emphasis

After manipulating my sounds I exported them individually as WAV file after mixing.

Emphasizing the lower bass frequencies for my fake football stand sounds,aiming to replicate the big bassy noisy banging from thousands of supporters.

After creating a heartbeat by rhythmically striking my chest in front of the microphone, I manipulated the sound and made it much deeper, with more of a punch and bass using the plugin above from my Waves plugin.

Applying a noise gate to my false heartbeat sound. A noise gate cuts off interfering frequencies and maintains the strongest signal within the recording as per manipulation.

Applying reverb to create space and more presence to my sounds. Depending on the reverb plate I can imitate certain acoustic settings.

After manipulating my false camera noise, I exported it as a singular layer post-mix

After re-importing my mixed audio files and creating a new project, I used the fade tool to transition sounds as seamlessly as possible.

 

 

 

Project Evaluation:

For our sound project we were briefed to create a 60 second journey through sound without the use of dialogue. After last week's interim crit I changed my initial idea as per the direction from Tom and Seb. As my initial idea involved a car I was told I couldn't use it as it was not creative enough. With my new choice of journey (football player walking from tunnel to pitch) I knew I had my work cut out for me. I aimed to replicate a football crowd with the help of friends, recording numerous applauses, cheers and murmered conversations while layering them together, adding a big reverb effect to amplify the vocals and create the stadium feel. I replicated the sound of football studs by using the heel of a pair of shoes on bathroom tiles, trying to also synthesize the room acoustics as I thought the enclosed bathroom space would be similar to that of a football tunnel. All sounds I created were from scratch, with no help from a sound bank. I watched the England world cup qualifying game beforehand to have a listen and analyse the components that made up the crowd and then aimed to replicate, starting recording as early as half time. After recording all of my sounds I manipulated an edited them where I saw fit and re-exported them as WAV files after mixing. I then created a new project and re-imported all the edited sounds and began placing my sounds in order. After placing the sounds to my liking and mixing further I exported my project as WAV. In the crit I was praised by Tom for some aspects of my work but was told where I was lacking. Seb on the other hand seemed to criticise almost everything I did and I was told by both parties that my use of heartbeat was unneccessary and cliche. I stick to my guns with the choice of heartbeat however and didn't use it as the main point of focus within my piece, but merely for further texture and illustration of the anxiety of the football player in question. I believe my final piece met the brief in every way possible, I didn't use dialogue, I illustrated a journey and conveyed emotion which gained mixed reception from the rest of the class. My piece was mistaken for a riot and the beginning of my piece (Long inhales and exhales) being mistaken for a hospital respirator. I believe I could've applied more effort to my project and have suffered because of this, however I believe my project was a difficult one which I particularly did myself no favours in choosing but at least I pushed myself. In comparison to the other pieces (the majority involved cars - which I was told not to include) and others included dialogue (which I was also told I couldn't use) which annoys me as I feel like I was more limited by listening when everybody ultimately chose as they pleased anyway. I believe my project was original in comparison to the rest of the classes ideas and felt I had little praise from Seb for at least attempting to create all of the sounds, which would be seen as an overwhelming task for many, myself included. I could've improved my project by emphasising the change in environmental dynamics to signify change in surroundings (being in a tunnel sounds different to being on the pitch etc.) I did try to create these transitions but believe I didn't help myself by editing using my Dre beats headphones for the majority of my editing (they are very bass-heavy and not truly reflective of the sound I was creating). Ironically, I looked forward to this project the most due to Sound Design being my actual interest and the reason for joining this course, and I feel this is the project where I recieved the worst feedback.  I am now reconsidering my pathway choice.