Category: Sound For Screen

It’s now time to create my personal Soundtrack for my short film of choice “ANGST”. After having recorded all the sounds needed for the Sound Design I started a project in Pro Tools in order to arrange everything and also compose some music, is it worth to mention that I also had my Drone Machine device ready to be recorded. A drone machine is a synthesiser that plays continuously standing notes, but with the use of the parameters and volume we can recreate interesting textures.

To create the various musical instruments that we can hear on the short film I used my modular synth. These are some bass sounds and lush pads that I created using Moog Mavis and 4ms Ensemble Oscillator, the sounds were then recorded into the project also manipulating some parameters live.

This was an early stage of the musical composition:

Finally, this is how the final project looked in Pro Tools, after some mastering modifications my project was finished and ready to export.

Some sound effects weren’t able to be recorded with “natural” techniques so I used a couple of additional sources to create these sounds.

Wind

Representing wind is a hard task in the sonic language, so I thought that the best idea was to use Procedural Sound Design with pure data and the result was quite good, you’ll be able to listen to the wind sound at the end of the short film. This is the special Pure Data patch that I downloaded to create wind:

Steps

Steps are normally known to be done in Foley so I did a little foley session at home to record the steps sounds, I use the Zoom H5 and my shoes against the floor to create the sound. After synchronising the steps to the image and adding some reverb I had a very realistic sound. I was happy with the result of this procedure.

Radio

I used an old walkman to record some sounds, voices and effects from the radio, I would definitely recommend to record sounds and voices from radio because they are very useful and always have a special feel.

In order to create the sound design for I had to make a couple of field recording sessions. After carefully watching the short film of my choice, I made a list with the kind of sounds need for the project, the se sounds were the following:

• Plane
• Night
• Tv Distortion
• Train
• Wind
• Cars
• Radio
• People
• Cafe
• Steps
• Machine room
• Fan

Some of this sounds were possible to record outdoors, but some others like wind or the steps were added with other techniques. The recording was made over two days, on one I recorded cafes, restaurants and cars; and on the second one I mainly recorded outdoor sounds like for example the train and the plane. Recording trains was actually quite fun because surprisingly, there was plenty of train coming and going in my local station, quick or slow and I had plenty of choice on this kind of sound.

In relation with this sixth lesson on the unit of Sound for Screen, I’d like to share here my main film composers for inspiration and my reference for my upcoming project for the Specialising and Exhibiting assignment. These composers are mainly famous for having composed film score exclusively from electronic devices and synthesisers, and the majority of them are also recognised musical artists, having released solo albums with good acceptance from fans of electronic music, as well as being highly acclaimed for their film compositions.

Vangelis

Vangelis (1943-2022) was a Greek film composer and musician famous for his work with synthesiser on his creations. His most famous works are Chariots of Fire, from which he received various Academy Awards, and other films like the original Blade Runner, a reference on synthesiser music as well as sci-fi musical scores and sound design.

As a musical performer, he started his career playing at rock bands but after moving to Paris he started his solo projects. Later he settled in London were achieved a big commercial success and built his home studio recording facility called Nemo Studios.

Wendy Carlos

Born in Rhode Island, Wendy studied physics and music at Brown University before becoming one of the earliest synthesizer pioneers and music composer. She worked with Stanley Kubrick at Clockwork Orange and The Shinning, and Tron for Walt Disney. She also contributed to the development of different Moog synthesisers, having been one of the most recognised artists playing their instruments.

Tron: Legacy (Daft Punk)

Although they’re mostly known for their work as electronic music producers, Thomas Bangalter and Guy De Homem-Christo (Daft Punk) composed in their work at the remake of Tron a magnificent score which featured a combination of orchestral music with electronic sounds. The film featured the duo on several scenes of the film, making this work a truly reference for electronic music scores fans, as well as being a film extremely attractive both in visual and sound effects.

We are on week 5 in the Sound for Screen Unit and we’ll be having 1-2-1 turbo tutorial to see everyone’s individual progress on their projects. I have also been experimenting at the Synth Workbench and I’ve created a little piece of music; this was just an experimentation but it could resemble a little bit with my idea for the score that I’m looking for on my short film sound design. I’ve recorded this improvisation with Tascam Model 12 mixer and preformed the sounds with the modular Eurorack system. Here you will be able to listen to it:

I also booked the space again on the evening and I experimented with different instruments; specially with Soma Lyra 8, Roland TR8 and Korg Arp Odyssey. This session really inspired me and helped me to get familiarised in the studio, here is a little jam that I recorded during the rehearsal.

Having chosen your film, please update your blog by posting a still of your film choice, the title, director and year it was made. Please write a paragraph about why you chose the film, what it is about and how you are approaching the sound design.

After having a look at some possible choices for a sound design exercise, I came up with a couple of them, from which I’m not really sure which one I’ll be finally choosing. However, I’m thinking that I could be using a combination of them, in order to achieve a multi tonal piece of experimental film where I would make use of diverse techniques that we’re learning during this term as well as enhance my creativity and even video editing skills. Here is a short description about each of the films I found.

This one is my favourite so far for some reason, it’s a 2013 conceptual film from Dennis Didinger, a German filmmaker. I love the urban takes and there is also some scenes where sound design takes importance so I think it would fit really well with what I want to do.

65 is a Sci-fi film released this year by director Adam Drive, and music by Chris Bacon. This would fit really well for a more traditional film sound design and score exercise.

Hidden is an amazing short film created by Uygar Genc in 2022. Surprisingly, the same director is composing the score and the sound. I love the nature environment, would be great for some Foley sounds.

This is a 1974 experimental film by Margaret Tait and my choice from the proposed films for the unit. I’m delighted by the vintage look of it, the original music and looks good for some sound design too. I think that I’ll be combining some scenes from this film for my project.

During this third week in the Unit of Sound for Screen we have been practicing Foley techniques. We attended in groups to an induction session of the recording studio and then also performed some recordings over an excerpt of We Need to Talk About Kevin. In small groups we were told to book the studio space and finish the Sound Design of this little scene, we arranged a meeting then and worked on Foley effects on our own, achieving this result:

I think I’m quite happy with the result, we need to think that this was just the work of two hours (Actually just one because we spent quite a lot time to setup Pro tools) but the most important thing is that we enjoyed the session and realised how this technique works and how important a smooth team work is. I really looking forward to similar exercise and I have to say that Foley is an exciting and interesting area of work within Sound Design and Audio Post Production for film.

I’ve been visiting this week this recommended exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, it features 4 short films by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy among some other artistic works. The gallery explores diverse fields of science, DNA ancestry and video games topics. I was honestly delighted by the CGI graphics in the films as well as the soundtracks, going from ambient sounds to more techno orientated beats and synthesiser sounds. Highly recommended.

During the first (Brief) lesson due to strikes and the second class, we’ve been using a wide range of different microphones and sound recorders in order to capture some of the sounds that we can find around the college. We also followed some listening exercises where we’ve analysed the sounds surrounding us and represented them on a piece of paper in the form of a drawing.

It is worth to mention the verbal ID technique, which means to include some spoken info at the beginning of each recording, as a description of the sound. This will save us a lot of time later, and we can label the recording accordingly later on as well.

Here are some recording and some pictures of the recording sessions:

Please chose a film/ artistic work about place/environment and add it to your blog to share next week. Consider the soundtrack.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Very vintage choice of film but very interesting for me as it is credited to have been the first soundtrack entirely made with electronic equipment. This score was composed by “The Barrons”, a couple of electronic music pioneers whose studio was probably the first electronic music studio in New York. This was just the beginning for other Sci-Fi scores like Blade Runner, Star Wars, Avatar or Stranger Things to name a few. I love this kind of sound tracks because they feature computer generated and synthesiser sound effects and compositions.