#unit12

As discussed in our Zoom meeting, Unit 12 will make up 40% of your final grade. 

This week I will need you all just to take some time to consider what your suggested concept is for your FMP.

Things to consider include:

Theme 

Location

Stage Design

Technical Requirements

Intended demographic 

Everyone will be required to talk through their initial FMP concept in a short 1 min presentation on Tuesday 12th Jan @ 11:30am.   This is a great opportunity to share some of your initial thoughts and also to hear other ideas that might help you to finalise your concept.

Past FMP concepts include:

A Side & Rarities (A look at popular music and alternative underground music)

Closure (A musical journey looking at the themes in Dante’s inferno - Lust/Greed/Anger/Jealousy etc…)

Where we stand (Sharing our points of view on social issues through music)

(Zoom details will be uploaded on Monday)

Please click the link below to access the new brief.

https://marcmorrisonnk.wixsite.com/fmp-proposal

YouTube. (2018). See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kavxsXhzD48&index=3&list=PLauBCIhQ7LuHYX0hxjMN44gh-D-FGfP2y [Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Beggs, R. (2018). Richard Beggs. [online] IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0066740/ [Accessed 15 Jan. 2018].

Soundsonline-forums.com. (2018). Richard Beggs master class - sound design - Soundsonline-Forums. [online] Available at: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=30499[Accessed 15 Jan. 2018].

IMDb. (2018). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). [online] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304141/reviews[Accessed 15 Jan. 2018].

Farmer, D. (2018). David Farmer. [online] IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267736/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Extra pt. 1. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3xc3b5taDg&index=10&list=WL [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].

(SOURCE:  peta2TV. (2016). Where hermit crabs come from. [Online Video]. 27 June 2016. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSda2pzAMGA. [Accessed: 1 November 2017].)

(SOURCE:  BBC. (2015). Where hermit crabs come from. [Online Video]. 7 May 2015. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02n7sc6/shark-episode-1. [Accessed: 12 November 2017].)

(SOURCE: PETA. 2017. The Egg Industry | PETA. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/chickens/egg-industry/. [Accessed 20 November 2017].)

YouTube. (2018). See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kavxsXhzD48&index=3&list=PLauBCIhQ7LuHYX0hxjMN44gh-D-FGfP2y [Accessed 19 Jan. 2018]. 

For my specialism i chose to look into Sound production.

Research:

Richard Beggs

Beggs, R. (2018). Richard Beggs. [online] IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0066740/ [Accessed 15 Jan. 2018].

Known for: Children of Men (2006), Apocalypose Now (1979) and Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2006).

Current Projects: Suspended Belief.

When researching into Richard Beggs, I’ve found that he prefers to have free reign over the sound design of the movie. he will often opt to have separate tracks for all of the music and the vocals, so that he is free to add reverb and play around with the sound to find the right way to present it.

This is displayed in his work on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The sound design for this movie fits really well with the picture. From the very first scene, when Harry blows up Aunt Marge, the way that the diegetic and non-diegetic sound makes up the scene is clever. Each scene has the musical make up which gives it its own individuality.

Specific scenes like the Knight Buss scene show this, where the soundtrack is quirky, and the music has a fast, clearly audible beat to it, and making great use of the string instruments such as the violin, and the base drum to make a great, contrasting soundtrack that has a heavy impact. When Stan starts talking about Sirius Black, the jolly sounds drop out of it, and you are left with a low, fast paced tone that has no nigher notes in, and the jarring change between the two makes you uncomfortable, suiting the uncomfortable conversation to follow the change.

Another way that Beggs uses certain instruments and tracks in order to create suspense in a scene is the Great Hall scene, where Dumbledore is giving his start of term speech to the students. The scene starts of with no musical soundtrack, in fact, the only sound giving the scene atmosphere is Dumbledore speaking and the sound of the rain on the roof of the great hall. However, this all changes when Dumbledore warns the students to give the dementors not reason to harm them. This is when a violin and maybe a flute are introduced, but they play very much out of sync with each other, in a tune that is unnerving and unsettling. This could be seen as an effort to jar the viewer, and make them as uncomfortable about the situation as the students and the professor. The rain only leads into this jarring symphony, and it added a sense of unease. However, as soon as Dumbledore’s conversation takes a turn for the friendly side, saying ‘Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on a light’, there is an immediate lift to the tune. It is as though the mention of light has activated the lighter notes of the song, and brings it into a much warmer, full bodied symphony, which settles the viewer for the next scene, as a pose to the stringy, unsettling, whiny tune beforehand.

There are various sound effects unique to the movies that would be possible for me to recreate. In the boggart scene, the whirlwind sound that the boggart creates when changing form would require a lot of experimentation with wind sounds to try and recreate - other sound would be the sound of rain and wind together during the quidditch match, the squeaking of the door the boggart is kept in and whistling of spells through the air in the final few scenes. 

All of these have bases in real world, but all of them will also need tweaking to recreate exactly the sound make in the movies. There isn’t a lot of material on how Beggs created these noises, but one could speculate that there would be have a lot of experimentation with a bank of library noises.

Soundsonline-forums.com. (2018). Richard Beggs master class - sound design - Soundsonline-Forums. [online] Available at: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=30499 [Accessed 15 Jan. 2018]. 

For my specialism i chose to look into Sound production. 

Research:

David Farmer

Sound designer 

Farmer, D. (2018). David Farmer. [online] IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267736/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].

Known for: Ant Man, King Kong, Space Cowboys, The Hobbit : An unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: battle of the Five Armies, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Thor: Ragnorak.

Current projects: Avengers: Infinity War, Underwater.

YouTube. (2018). The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Extra pt. 1. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3xc3b5taDg&index=10&list=WL [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018]. 

In the Hobbit, Mr Farmer was responsible for designed the sounds of the movie, but one of the most important tasks was making sure that when Smaug breathed fire and it hit a wall, that it actually sounded like it was hitting something, that it sounded realistic. ‘Make sure that every fireball had a vocal launch to it’ is the quite that he used, as directed by Peter Jackson. He used a modified version of his daughter roaring to create the first on scream sound appearance of smaug - the first time you hear him its actually his daughter, which is quite cool.

The most arduous task was to process Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice to sound more like a dragon typed speech tone. For the most part he kept it the same, but he used reverb and effects to add additional body to the voice, to make it sound like it was coming from a much larger creature.

He then used the gurgling tone of an alligator in mating season to create Smaugs growls. The reason for such a unique sound was because Smaug is widely considered to be the first dragon of modern English literature - the archetype that all others were based off. Given this he needed to create a sound unique to Smaug, not just a generic library dragon growl.

he also used these growls as another layer under benedicts voice, just for some fluidity between the growls and the voice distortion. It adds more body and gives it an even larger feel. it also adds more of an animalistic quality to the voice, makes it something that you would expect more from a dragon or a reptilian creature.

Another challenge he would have faced would be creating a sound for the spiders movement across the web, and for this he utilized a sound he’d originally created for Treebeards movement in the two towers by moving twigs across different surfaces. There would also have to have been squelching and wet, stringy noises for when the hobbits were being wrapped in webbing and captured by the spiders.