Reflective part 1

The tests have been complete and the draft dissertation submitted so what I would like to do here is a bit of reflective writing and go into more detail on what I did over the last 4 months.

To begin, what is in the Blog is not a full disclosure of what actually happened, just a condensed version for people to see progress.

The choosing of the film took many weeks and it was only after the 9th week of term that I had agreed on the topic to do the project on - I originally started with spiders and motion sensors for games controllers trying to create new and improved game mechanics. Once I had the film - Urban Abstract - I began to ponder just how to design it sonically, I chose this because of many factors, one; it was a completely CG piece, two; it had universal relavence to what was happening today, three; it had a lot of rain aspects which I have often pondered about in relation to the mothers "Shh" when she tries to calm her baby seeming similar to the rain noise which relaxes me.

The start of the project My initial methodology of working was to collect samples, keeping in mind the design I had already portrayed in my cue sheet that was submitted last term. I initially wanted real world sounds to build a base from so, cars and streets where my first point of call, this would become the minimalist foundation forthe films. The ideas was to create films in line with previous films of minimalist, realist and hyperrealist styles.

I sampled areas from Dundee st in Edinburgh as well as the dual carriageway in Dundee to get my samples - for the bike however I acquired that online. The results where applicable at first but there was something missing, so I began taking recordings of ambiance in the Overgate shopping centre and also train stations which made the mix much more diverse.

The rain which is the big key feature in this project was difficult to get as it was not particularly that type of weather but I did manage to sample from whitespace when the rain cascaded down the open hole and it hit the polythene which was perfect as the impacts where clearly recorded.

On my frequent trips to Edinburgh and recording all the way I also caught the chance of a downpour and recorded pipes that water spilled out of, the cars again but with obviously splashing of the tyres as they rolled on the wet road which was not used a lot in the end because at the points of rain there was no need for the sound of cars are can be heard when watching the film.

however it was used at one point where it seemed to create a nice transition landscape to rain while still holding the illusion of urban ism. I pause only now to mention that every recording I did was with my Tascam DR-07 as I wanted continuity about my work except from the sourced material which could not be helped.

Continuing my search for the base for the minimalist film which is how I wanted to create it minimalist to hyper realism and using each previous sound layer in the preceding one. In doing this I maintain my argument of incrementing sound effects. Once I had the ambiance I now turned my skills to making synthesised Ambiance which were constructed by manipulating all my previous project recordings and synthesised samples that I made.

This took nearly as long to do as the hunt for all the ambiance as the scope of what I wanted to hear the film sound like and what actually happened because of random experimentation was vast. the details of such experiments are too many to explain but suffice to say reversing samples with EQ cuts and filters made the most interesting sound that were not too over processed.

As this was going on I went into researching traditional methods of recording and creating sound effects and seeing the contemporary ways - my feelings on this is that there is not a distinct line between the two but if I had to choose I would say the musique concrete movement would be the turning point from where sound design was no longer about recording what the object you wanted as sound for, but more of finding smoothing that sounded similar from other material.

This research piece was very interesting finding out the history and methodology of sound designers and what caught my eye, which i have found very true, is that most say the best sounds come from accidents and to always experiment.

that is all for today on this Honours Project reflection.