The past couple of weeks my AICE Media Studies Class has been all about learning to use sound elements in films and how they can make an audience feel a certain way.
In class, we took notes on some of the key features of sound design and I learned so much! I used to think that there were only three sound types used to develop a soundscape (music, dialogue, and sound effects). However, I was shocked to figure out that creating a soundscape is much more complex. There seems to be infinite possibilities. As a class, we discussed things such as foley and diegetic/non-diegetic sound. Additionally, our homework after class was to watch a couple videos on the foley process and then take notes on them. I found the process quite fascinating and exciting. It was so interesting to learn how some of the sounds foley artists created were made. Contrary to what one may think, most of the time the objects foley artists use to make a sound are completely different to what is shown on screen.
After our lesson, my class was tasked with two sound-related projects. The first project was, for me at least, especially challenging. We were divided into pairs and had to develop a 90-120 second soundscape. For this particular project, we were not allowed to use any sort of visuals, it had to be purely sound. To develop an interesting plot, my partner and I brainstormed for a long time to thing about how we could make such a short story capable of maintaining a listener's attention. Eventually, we created an outline to a soundscape about a man who lives in NYC and while on the metro to work realizes he is extremely late. We then hear him running through the busy streets, dodging bikers, traffic, and even dogs! Eventually he arrives at this office and can start the day. For this project, planning was extremely helpful, the outline we made was very detailed and helped us organize all the sounds we wanted to add to the soundscape. At first, I found it difficult to layer the different sounds to make the soundscape more realistic but once I got the hang of it, I quickly fell in love with sound editing. To edit the sounds together, I used the Microsoft ClipChamp and found it super useful. Overall, I was very happy with how the project turned out and in my opinion, it is a quite accurate execution of the storyline. For next time, I would like to use more of the fade tool to help smooth some of the sound transitions more. (Below I attached the link to my project and part of my editing timeline!)
On a more recent note, this last week my class started another sound project. This time, we needed to add sound to our existing "One Word Films". For me, adding sound like this to an existing project was even harder than starting something from scratch, but once I finished I was also quite happy with the results. For this project, brainstorming was much easier because the sounds I had to find/create using foley were those that were shown on screen. Once again, I developed a detailed brainstorming sheet that included everything from background noises to scene descriptions. I honestly don't think I could have completed my project without this careful planning step. If you don't recall from my last post, my "One Word Film" was on the word "loving". We still couldn't use dialogue, but we were allowed to edit in a music track to add more feeling to the film and evoke a certain emotion for the viewer. Apart from background noises (birds chirping/wind/heartbeats/breaths) and foley sounds (writing utensils/paper moving), I added in the song "Space Song" by Beach House. I found this was the perfect song to represent the couple falling in love as it starts of very quiet and then slowly ascends to a happy tone. To edit both the video and sound elements, I imported my video prom Premiere Pro to ClipChamp, as I was already familiar with its sound editing tools. On the whole, something I believe I did well in this project was finding accurate sounds that fit with the visuals of the film, For next time, I am going to work some more on making the timing for the video/audio even more accurate. (Link to my project below)
Thank you so much for reading my blog! I look forward to writing more about new film elements I learn in class!
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