Week 3 - Creating SFX

Sound and Image

From this reading I learnt that the combination of both sound and image is totally necessary in film making. However, both are completely unique in their own ways. The ways in which the eyes and ears pick things up are very different; whilst our eyes mainly focus on one things and move onto another, our ears are always listening. Our ears are very sensitive to sound frequencies and we can hear so many different sounds at the same time, whereas our eyes can only focus on one thing at a time. 

A reference from the reading that reinforces this fact is "When we are at the height of lovemaking, our eyes will often be closed, but our ears will be wide open, gulping in the volumes of sensory excitement as we bridge to another person". I thought this was very intriguing because you don't realise how many sounds you can hear until you close your eyes and just listen. You simply cannot naturally stop yourself from hearing, unless you block your ears yourself.

This highlights the important of the films score to its audience. They hear every sound effect, every song and every conversation which is why sound designers go to so much extent when directing the sound of the film.

Brighton recording task

Click here to hear the recordings

Our homework task was to go out to Brighton and record specific sounds; for this task I decided to use the Sennheiser K6 microphone, as mentioned previously it picks up sound effects in very ambient locations. Brighton is usually extremely busy so I was expecting it to be loud. 

I was very pleased with how the sounds turned out especially the one with the train and car pulling away. The reason I liked these ones the most was because if you close your eyes, you can imagine this car / train passing in front of you. The sound is pristine and it passes from the left speaker to the right very clearly. Same goes with the rest of the recordings. I am definitely considering using this as my main source of equipment for my final soundscape.

Doing this task and receiving positive feedback from the rest of my class made me feel more confident about using the Sennheiser microphone.

Contact microphone 

In this part of the lesson we were put into pairs and groups of three.We were each given a contact microphone and a hydrophone. Unfortunately, our hydrophone did not work so we did not get a chance to use it. On the plus side, we were able to spend more time using the contact microphone and figure out how it works. 

Unlike a standard microphone, this one records vibrations from solid objects like a wall or a tree for example. Using a clip, attach the microphone to your desired object and create sound vibrations; for example, if you attach the microphone to a door and open it, you will get an interesting sound

All of the successful sounds that were recorded have been uploaded onto my SoundCloud.

Click here to hear them

As I was not able to use the hydrophone, I did some research on it instead. Hydro obviously means water and so I automatically assumed it was a microphone for underwater recordings. It works by putting the microphone underwater and it is triggered when there is a change in pressure. 

This video also helped me understand the hydrophone better and how to use it properly. For example, an affordable and easy way of using a hydrophone is with a pool noodle. By wrapping the hydrophone around the pool noodle, you are reducing the likeliness of recording the sounds of you handling the microphone.