Experimental Sound - Final Sound Piece

This is my final sound piece. This project has definitely been a learning curve for me. I know that there are a lot of things that I could have done better but at the same time there is a lot of things for me to learn with sound so overall I would say that I am happy with what I have produced taking into consideration that I had never been near sound before this project.

Experimental Sound - Process of Making my Soundscape (Editing)

The editing process for this project was an interesting one. There were points where everything just fit very well together but there were other times which required manipulation to pitch, duration and tempo. One sound in particular that needed adjusting was the sound of the body being dragged across the floor. When recording this sound I must have made the mistake of not getting the microphone close enough to the bag so when it came to editing, the audio was quieter than the other sounds. Because of this I had to increase the volume of the whole clip, making it suitable to fit the rest of the track. 

Another problem that occurred was I hadn't read the brief completely and had made my soundscape about 2 minutes long. It wasn't until one of my classmates told me that the clip had to be between 30 seconds and a minute so because of this I had to cut a lot of sound out which was a bit of a pain at times. I had to take out certain clips which sometimes made other clips ping out of place but eventually I managed to fix it. Overall I am fairly happy with the outcome of the soundscape. If I were to do this again I would want to try and be more abstract instead of creating a narrative so I could experiment with more clips and try to distort them.

Experimental Sound - Process of Making my Soundscape (Recording)

When recording the sounds for my project, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to record. I had the idea to see what sound I could record with the resources that were available to me and then come up with a narrative based around the sounds that I gathered. One of the first sounds that I recorded was of 2 knives sharpening against each other. This was the sound that made me think of the narrative for my soundscape. After recording the knives I decided to try and collect sound that would make a soundscape for a murder scene taking place. After deciding to follow the route of a murder scene, I then had to think about the sounds that you would normally hear in a murder scene. I thought about what sort of noises I could use to replicate a body falling on the floor and so I used a packed bag and dropped in on the floor from head hight which created the sound perfectly. Another sound that I created was of the body being dragged across the floor; I got this sound by using the same bag and just dragged it across my bedroom floor and the outcome was exactly what I needed. Overall I really enjoy recording sound , the only problem that I find with it is knowing what materials to use to create the best possible outcome.

Experimental Sound - Southern Guns (Short Film)

Although sound is definitely not my strongest asset, I wanted to improve it and I felt that the best way to do that would to be to implement my strength of sketch making and try to focus a lot more on the sound side. I decided to make this film called Southern Guns which is just a light hearted sketch of two men having a wild west stand off, using their fingers as hand guns. The reason I named it what I did was because it was filmed in the southern side of the country but they still shows signs of the old wild west fighting. I also tried to work on visual effects in this project which was very different but I think I pulled it off quite well for a first time of using effects.

There were a few different ways in which I recorded the sound for this film. All of the sound that was recorded during the filming never made the final cut, instead I wanted to make the soundtrack the most dominant thing in the film. I then found sounds online for the sounds of the guns and also re-recorded the sounds of the runaway cowboy's screams as he ran off on a different day in a quiet room so the screams were as clear quality as they could be. The final technique I used was to do with editing a sound clip. The sound that is played right before the sniper shot is taken is same sound as the actual sniper being fired but just reversed and so it ends up in this kind of build up sound of tension. 

Overall I was really proud of this project, I think visually the film looked good but more so I had a lot of great feedback about the sound in particular on the project.

Experimental Sound - Introduction

In our first lesson with James, he have us our brief for the soundscape project and inducted the class on how to use the zoom microphones. He also split us up into groups and gave each group an emotion and we were told to go off and record sounds that we felt best represented the emotion we were given. My group were given 'Serenity' so we decided to record sounds that we felt would put the audience at ease and help them relax and appreciate the tranquility of the sounds. One of the sounds we recorded was the sound of a kettle boiling and when we played it back, it sounded a lot like rain which was very soothing. Another sound that we managed to get was the sound of spreading butter onto a slice of toast which when played back really was lovely to listen to in such a clear frequency.

The brief that we have been set is to choose one of the provided images and make a soundscape that we think best represents it, considering it follows one of the following:

• A Journey
• A Narrative
• A Space
• A Passage of Time

Below are the 8 images that we were given to choose from. I have decided to choose 'House' by Rachael Whiteread as the image I want to make a soundscape to.

House, Rachael Whiteread, 1999

Study After Velasquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Francis Bacon, 1953

The Mystery and Melancholy of the Street, Georgio Di Chirico, 1914

Dull Gret, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1562

Maman, Louise Bourgeois, 1999

Obnoxious Liberals, Jean-Michel Basquait, 1982

Shibboleth, Doris Salcedo, 2007

Yellow Red Blue, Wassily Kandinsky, 1925