Week 2 - Sound Recording

Sound Recording

Discussing the homework task

Our task was to find two film scenes that we thought would make for 'an interesting sound design'. After putting some thought into it, I decided that a film involving water would be interesting, especially in terms of recreating the sound. There are so many possibilities with sound, you can record above the water, in the water or even underwater (with the right equipment).

 In this scene specifically, you can see the two characters sitting on a homemade raft and paddling in the water; you could definitely recreate this scene using a variety of different props. When the camera is further away from the characters, you should really focus on the position of the microphone when recording the SFX, otherwise it will not have the same affect. When the camera is further away, the sound should be quieter, if there is something happening to the left of the screen, the sound should come out through the left speaker / earphone.

Click here to watch the scene

I watched Don't Breathe (Alvarez, 2016) a few months ago. In the film, the antagonist is blind and so he uses the power of sound to get around his house and capture the protagonists. He does this by placing specific items in parts of his house, such as a chain, knowing that it produces a specific sound; when he triggers the noise he automatically knows which part of the house he is in. This scene mainly focuses on the use of SFX which I thought would be the best film scene that you could pick for creating a foley soundscape.

There are a variety of different items in this scene which make specific sounds such as metal clanging or gun shots. 

Click here to watch the scene

Homework Feedback

After sharing our different film clips in our subgroups, we all agreed that scenes involving water would be the most accessible due to all of the possibilities. On the other hand, the group agreed with the fact that the scene from Don't Breathe solely focuses on SFX; this gives me the opportunity to work with various types of sound recording equipment and then manipulate the sounds on Adobe Audition.

From the reading, The Sound Designer by Marc Mancini, I learnt about sound designers, who were originally called 'supervising sound editors', and their job role. The reason that they changed the name was because it lessens their job role. Sound designers are in charge of the films score from sound to end, they take so many factors into consideration when directing the sound - even interpreting the directors expectations.

One point that I found particularly interesting from the reading was that "Audiences must have heightened sound effects, if only to perceive them at all." which reinforces the importance of the sound designers job role, especially foley sound artists. As previously mentioned, if foley artists are recreating a characters footsteps, they need to think and act how the character would act to get the most precise sound - this is how important SFX are.

Marantz Digital Audio Recorder and Senheiser K6 microphone

Click here to hear my recordings

In today's task we were put into pairs were given the equipment listed above. Our task was to go around campus and record various sounds that we thought might sound interesting. We took turns wearing the headphones, holding the microphone and recording the sounds that we thought might sound interesting. I uploaded the most successful ones onto my SoundCloud, the link is stated above.

"The capsule features a highly directional, cardioid polar pattern yielding great attenuation at the sides of the microphone, maximizing pick up at the front. The result is a focused pick-up in highly ambient environments." - https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/LIS/Sennheiser_ME66/K6

That description is very accurate. When recording in the woods it picked up a lot of quieter sounds despite the fact that the motorway was nearby and it was very noisy. As well as this, one of the recordings was clapping sounds in a tunnel, this produced a very echoed sound which the Senheiser picked up flawlessly.

This microphone would be good for recording any background noise that I will need for my final soundscape.