Sound Design Update (27/11/13)

So I have been busy working on my sound design task and have either added or changed parts. I made my own laser sound using the technique Ben Burt where he hit a metal cable to make the laser sound for the blaster in Star Wars.

Links:

http://filmsound.org/starwars/

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/05/star-wars-and-sound-design/

Both say the same thing but I thought I would post it again anyway.

Transmission Incoming background

So I went back to this scene and added a few more sounds but at this point I will talk about the background voice that can be seen above, they are the green bars. Like I normally do I watched the scene several times more and thought what else could I do to make it sound bigger and busy. A thought then came to my head, how about a line from a female voice that is either a human voice or a robotic female voice. I chose human in the end because there was enough lifeless stuff being heard in the back already. I then thought what would she be doing or saying and then it hit me. Tom Cruise’s character is looking for someone and I thought maybe in the back a woman is doing something related, but is then interrupted by an incoming transmission from a higher up.

I then thought she would speak up to notify Tom Cruise’s character who is still looking for the said person. The transmission won’t ever be explained and is there to make the room sound more busy like. I ended it with her saying “Download complete” so it would make it sound like he would listen to it later.

Vibrating Phone

After the female voice I wondered what else could happen in this scene. After a moment I wondered if a phone could fit in, but not any type of phone but a mobile phone that is on vibrate. This got me thinking that a lot is happening around the character Tom Cruise is playing. A mobile would be there, well I am sure each of them would have one and so who’s is going off will always be a mystery as the phone vibrates a few times before stopping altogether. The best part it is not distracting and so the attention will stay on stuff happening around the room such as the beeps, buzzing and so on.

Electrical Shock+Metal Ping

Back to the Terminator scene. In this scene I listened to all that was already added before thinking on what was missing. I watched it several times before saying to myself “The sound of the target getting hit is missing, a metal like sound should work for this morphing killing machine.” So I went to find a nice ping sound and started placing it in spots when she was hit by the impacting shotgun shells. they do sound a little weak but at this point it is good enough to be used. I then thought “Well she is being fired upon and the shells seem to be hitting her in certain spots so maybe some panning will or should happen. So I made two channels and split the pings up to either the left channel or right. The realism is not completely there as the pings are just there no matter if it hit the left or right side. I will fix this later if I have time.

Footsteps Panned

After putting the metal pings in for the Terminator scene I decided to watch the who trailer to see what else needed some more. I watched each scene twice before making myself come to the frozen city scene again. Here I went “Hey wait, don’t people make sounds when they walk or run on or through snow?” Clearly they did and so I started my search for snow sounds and when I came across one I took it and I played around with it by taking a segment. With the selected segment I went on to pitch shifting it and even time stretched it to get the sound I now had for it. The sample was a snow sample made from the sound of crisps. It had the crisp element there but I took it a little further and now sound more like snow being crashed as the two men run from there impending doom.

On that note I thought a little more before thinking maybe some panning would work here as each are running and to show or hear the difference I would pan on right and the other left. One sample plays before the other due to the scene of Man A dashing before Man B.

Laser sound (Self Made)

So as I mentioned at the start of this update I went and made a laser sound for the trailer, I needed two and now I have two but this one is not something I am too pleased with. I could play around with it more but then all my time would be taken up and I have other things that needed to be done. I used Ben Burt’s technique of a metal object being struck but I used a bike for the sound. I then loaded it into Cubase before playing around with it, though Ben Burt only used one sample I thought I could add something to add some flavor to the sound. So I added a electric sound and then morphed it through time stretching and pitch shifting as well turning a large segment into a small segment.

The segment which is the yellow bar with the scroll rolling over it. I added a phaser to one of the samples and a little reverb or delay to it. I then exported it and imported it to the sound design file where I placed it and started to play around with the previous mini gun sound. After a little playing around I ended up with one segment of the mini gun sound and copied it several times as the sound built up to the laser sound being shot off. It sounds better but the laser sound still feels weak and in many ways don’t like it but a second sound was needed and so this is what I ended up with.

So here I am at the end of this update, there is not to much to do now other then maybe add a few more sounds and add some more panning and FX to some of the audio that does not have it already.