AUDIO PRODUCTION ACTION.

A scary task. Having to design a sound system that incorporates wireless control, then present it to my lecturers. I used ArrayCalc to help me with the design and the coverage for the space. Also went with a simplified network design from my earlier project. Had to do some intense speaker research and had to research on the amplifiers to see what allowed for wireless control. The system gonna run dante undoubtedly. 

Introduction

The assignment was to recreate sound for a Tron game trailer. Being a sound alike assignment, we had to make it sound similar to the actual trailer. Which was quite a difficult task in my opinion as the trailer mainly had sci fi influenced sounds, which were generally not common and normally had many layers to them. My group members were Rohaizad and Hang. The same group members from my last project. We had delegated the roles accordingly during a class we had. Rohaizad was to do the sounds for the light cycles and gunship while Hang would do the explosions and mix the entire thing and I would do the fight scene at the end plus the outro.

 The Original Trailer – Preparation

I watched the original fight scene over and over again to identify what sounds I had for to do for the fight scene. I found that for most of the disc impacts, I could use sounds from the light saber from Star Wars as they were extremely similar and had the same sparky futuristic impact. I went ahead and tried to analyze the sound of the disc when they were turned on. Which consisted of a static sound, some low end mid resonance and what, to me, sounded like a blade’s resonance. The ambience at the start of the duel sounded a lot like a generator humming with what could possibly have been a low end sweetener pulsing at every beat. I realized that every time there was a throw or a catch there would be an accompanying sound either a thump or a whoosh. The last catch especially with the metallic resonance would be a challenge. The landings as well as the jumps had very subtle thumps too. The sound of the disc hitting the bad guy and the following explosion was particularly troubling as it was an extremely unique sound. Not to mention the follow protagonist’s ally dropping in. The outro would be less so. With the intro having sounds I could actually identify except for the final part where the words pop out. The sounds I could identify were the static part followed by a pretty standard intro screen impact type of sound coupled with what I thought sounded like a very dull but resonant bell.

 Sourcing

My next step would be to source for the base files I could use for the sound alike. I had to find sounds similar to the trailer or even sounds that sounded like it could fit as a layer for the sound. I first looked up Star Wars sound effects particularly the blasters and light sabers from the show; these sounds would be primarily for the disc impacts and deflections. I downloaded a library of “whoosh” and “thud” sounds for the catches and the jumps/landings. Along side some sounds of an object flying past by for the sound of the disc flying through the air. I found that it was very difficult to obtain good quality/appropriate sounds for the electrical static part for the disc turning on; I actually pulled the sound from something entirely different. The sound I pull it from originally consisted of the sound of faulty equipment powering up, which had the static sound at the beginning of the track. I had to cut out the rest of the sound and fade it so that it would not cut abruptly when it played. The electrical sound heard in the outro was easily found online. I also auditioned some tracks for the trailer’s music. I actually had to folly my own metallic resonance for the “disc turning on” sound, which led me to experiment with different hollow metal tubes as well as other metal kitchen utensils. I finally settled on a fork and the back of a frying pan for the metallic resonance sound. I recorded the sound in my toilet, as my entire house was noisy even at 4 a.m. in the morning. I had to cut the impact sound of the fork out of the recording and fade it in to make it sound nicer when it came on.

 Creating the sounds

I first started with the ambience at the beginning of the fight in which I used a low generator hum and I layered it with one more higher generator hum which I EQ and cut to fit the parts where the ambience pulses. I then moved on the “disc turning on” sound where I layered three sounds, an electrical static burst at the beginning followed two sounds both the metallic fork resonance I created and the a low bass humming resonance sound called deep bass swell 2 which can be found inside the Sony SFX library under hits & tones. Obviously I had to EQ the bass swell to fit the sound so I boosted some of the mid frequencies and dropped the highs to make it fit better with the fork resonance.  After auditioning for a while I found some very fitting sounds for the disc impacts from the star wars sound library I found online. For the “thumping” and “whooshing” sounds I had to EQ them, as they were either too outstanding or comical. I EQ’d most of the “thumping” sounds which I used for the landing and catches by putting a low cut filter on them to remove the low end and make it sound less exaggerated. I did the same thing for the “whoosh” sounds but I also cut a bit of the highs to remove the exaggerated wind sound that accompanied these tracks. For the outro sound I layered three sounds consisting of electrical static, a title intro frame sound from the Sony library called flash frame lite, which was under the title sequence effects section, and a metallic bell tone I found online. The flash frame as well as the bell would play first followed by the electric static sound would play last as a precursor to the words appearing below the Tron sign.

 Challenges

Due to poor attendance and miscommunication on my part I did not give my sounds to Hang on time which forced him to complete all the work alone. He was kind enough to layer my sounds together on top of his, which did in my opinion sound pretty good.  He also took some of my songs suggestion into consideration. Along side that coming up with some of the sounds was really challenging, as I had no experience with time flexing and phlanging, only modulation. This led to some pretty frustrating situations.

 Conclusion

Using a gant chart we planned our approach, delegated our roles and made our calendar. I was the scriptwriter, the talent scout and also one of the voice over artist for the project, Hang did the folly, music and Mixing, Rohaizad was in charge of the overall recording. I had a few candidates in mind for the voice over artist but most of them were unable to help as they had incredibly busy schedules or clashed with our recording dates. Ultimately the roles for the voice over artist fell to a vocalist from Diploma in Music level 1 named Shauna and myself.

This was to be a radio commercial spot for the Lasalle confession’s page.

I started my scriptwriting by researching the Lasalle Confession’s page and found out as much as I could about the trends and what people were generally interested in. I found the use of aliases as well as Initials were pretty popular and that people generally used the page to find out who some of the attractive people they saw were and new on the general power couples in school. From there I started writing the minute long script. The first draft did not sound at all like a commercial spot and I had to change the script to make it more like an advertisement.

We recorded inside Rohaizad’s studio using Logic Pro X. The board used was a Presonus studio live 24 and we used a Shure SM7B microphone for recording. We monitored on Yamaha HS80 and another pair of KRK Rockit 8s for second monitors. We decided that we should record both Shauna and myself together in one take to make it sound more like a two radio show host. We managed to finish it off in 10 takes. Not too many problems were encountered but after taking the recording back and listening to it, Hang found a hiss in the background.

Hang mixed the recording in Pro Tools 10 using a pair of Adam monitors and an Apollo twin interface. He started by remedying the hiss found in the recording and did this using X noise. He also used the SSL comp plugin for his compressor to make the levels sound better.

Production - Dance Thesis 2015

I was assigned to the dance thesis for my production my job was sound designer and basically I was in charge of whatever was related to audio. I had three guys from year two to help me out. Shawn, Firdaus and Philip all of which were very helpful and did their fair share of work. The main sources of audio were mostly playback for the dancers. I opted to use a Left Center Right setup with another two 2 speakers behind audience and 2 subs. I also had 3 L’acoustics 108p’s for monitors for the dancers to hear the music. The LCR speakers were L’Acoustic’s 112ps, the two effects speakers were 108ps and the subs were Q subs. I also had two eon 10 speakers placed outside the space at the entrances and the dance act had a part outside. There was also video audio and playback. I forgot to mention that this was done in the flexible space. I decided to use another 3 wireless sm58s for the Q/A session at the end. The board used was the Yamaha CL3 we also had a motu interface as well as an Imac to play the cues from.

Most of the work was to be done in Q lab. Unfortunately I had to source out most of the playback files as the ones given to me by the dancers were mostly in the mp3 format. The most tiring part of this experience was all the changes that the dancers kept making to their audio, taking or adding in parts they suddenly started to like or dislike.

LTC - Head of Audio

LASALLE 30TH - LAST POST OF THE SEMESTER