Sound Art

 Welcome back!

The other day, my class watched the documentary Making Waves to learn about sound production. I found this documentary very interesting, and I enjoyed learning about the various aspects of audio editing. The documentary explained general ideas and then provided specific examples and applications from a variety of films, and there were interviews with sound editors and directors as well— I would definitely recommend watching it if that sounds at all appealing.

To go along with the documentary, my class was later assigned a group project where we had to put our audio-production skills to the test. In groups of four, we had to brainstorm an idea for a quick scene and then compile audio in a way that would allow an audience to understand what was happening without watching video to go along with it. We were required to use at least 4 foley sounds (which we had to put into a video file to submit— I will show that video later), and we were permitted to use audio from online sources as well. Our scenes had to last between 60 and 90 seconds, include no video footage, and have no more than 7 words.

My group decided to use a basketball game as our scene, because we had some ideas as to what sounds we would need to incorporate. Obviously we had to include a basketball bouncing, and our other sounds consisted of the following:

• A player falling on the floor
• A buzzer
• A whistle
• The keys from a lanyard (that the whistle was also attached to)
• Footsteps
• Squeaking shoes
• Crowd noise
• Buzzing (from A/C and general noise)

The player falling, keys, footsteps, squeaking shoes, and buzzing were our foley sounds. 

Unfortunately, our school premiere pro accounts were not working, so I had to find a different way to edit these sounds. I decided to use an application called BandLab on my iPad. I put all of the audio files into the program, then started sorting through the sounds and deciding which ones I wanted to use and deleting the other ones to clean up my workspace. From there, I began playing back, cutting, and arranging all of the audio into a cohesive scene. 

Making the foley sounds was not hard at all, but we also weren't extremely creative with the process. We recorded most of the sounds at school by stepping into a quieter room and filming. For the player falling, I held the microphone (my iPhone) close to the floor and captured the sound as Nevaeh sacrificed herself to the ground. I followed a similar strategy for the footsteps and filmed the other group members shuffling around. For the keys, I had Chloe jingle the key she had on her lanyard, and the buzzing sound came from an electrically connected device (though we had originally considered using the sound of a bathroom fan). The shoe squeaks were the only sound that was not captured at school. For that, I wet my bathroom mirror and recorded the squeak as I dried it. Although somewhat convincing, I can't say that this sound was as realistic as I wanted it to be. 

In this scene, we wanted to express how a pretty empty room (an indoor basketball court) was full of people. This is why you can hear the players moving around in addition to the conversations and movements of some people in the background (the spectators). I feel like basketball courts have pretty open, hollow sounds, and noise travels fairly easily so it can get kind of loud sometimes. The audio is layered in a way to try and express that there is a lot going on in the scene, and certain clips had to be placed very particularly for the sound to match up in a realistic way. For example, the key sound was cut down and placed directly after the whistle, as the key would make noise when the whistle dropped after being used. Though smaller ideas like that may not be noticed by the general listener, they are often important to adding to the effect of a scene. A lot of the time, a clip will be complete only with certain sounds, and the clip will seem off without them; sometimes a missing sound is more noticeable than a sound that is there. 

This project was an interesting learning experience. Audio effects and editing is definitely not one of my current strengths, so I need to practice some more to improve and get the hang of it. Now, as promised:

 The foley sounds

 Our finished audio scene

and as a bonus:

My BandLab program :)

To be continued…