Month: June 2021

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CREATIVE PROJECTS #2: REFLECTION

Overall I think this project has been successful as an investigation into scoring with diegetic sound, I think due to time restraints and inexperience the outcome isn’t as effective as I would’ve hoped for.

I found the search for a scene probably the hardest part of this project. I imagine if you are involved in the production of the film, you have more control over the audio, you can manipulate the individual sections of audio. I presume you can also create a situation in which this scoring technique would be effective. Using a scene from a film means that the audio is cemented, you can’t separate the dialogue from the room sound etc… I think this results in a significant creative restriction. It reduces the amount of things you can manipulate, and makes you rely on diegetic sound not made for the scene (in my case at least).

I thought that I would be able to think of more techniques to achieve my goal but I sort of reached a wall. After using the vocoder and noise gates I couldn’t think of any more techniques that would work with the context of the scene and my audio resources.

Vocoding-

I found that the vocoder worked well for my intentions, it allowed me to build melodies and scores from the diegetic sound. However, I found it difficult to create a diverse palette from the plugin. All of the synths had a similar sound, and I felt unable to create many layers without muddying the mix. Another problem I had was discussed shortly in the last post, struggling to get definition with complex audio inputs. I felt the ‘plates and chatter’ audio was dense with sounds, especially the high pitch clinking of the plates. I think the vocoder really struggled to pick up these sounds, and the resulting synth sound was more of a rough approximation of the sound, and I think it’s very difficult to hear the connection between the audio and the synth.

Noise gating-

I only really found one use for this which was the breathing. I wanted to diversify the palette with some organic sound, and assign a sound to the protagonist to make the audio more personal, anchoring the score to the protagonist highlighting his emotional turmoil. I think that this worked pretty well, it brought a melodic element to his laboured breathing, and the bit crusher brought a gritty distortion. The only problem I had was the distinction between the inward and outward breaths. I feel the effect would’ve been a lot more effective if I had found a way to make the vocal harmonies resemble and inward breath, I think this would have contained the sound within the character.

Conclusion-

If I were to attempt this project again I would like to be involved in the production of the film, gaining more control of the individual sounds. I would put more research into vocoders and how to retain information from the original audio input. I would also consider creating the sound for a longer scene, and not restricting myself to only instruments created through the diegetic sound. I think the most effective form of this technique would be to ease into the score using the diegetic sound and once a slow build is achieved, start adding elements of a traditional score using normal instruments.

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CREATIVEPROJECTS #2: PROCESS

I have isolated the different elements of the sound design in the scene, and using the BBC sound effects library I have recreated the soundscape.

Air-conditioning unit-

I began building the score with the air conditioning, i used a vocoder to create a bass synth out of the audio. I put this sound quite low in the mix with the original aircon sound, the intention of this was that the synth would be unnoticeable as an instrument. Im trying to use a technique I discussed in the tinnitus retraining therapy section of my essay, desensitising an audience to a constant sound by surrounding it with other sounds. With this technique I have established a melody from the offset of the scene without the knowledge of the audience. I kept the note constant so as not to draw attention to it, until the emotionally substantive part of the scene. My hope is that the audience’s emotional involvement with the scene coupled with the subtlety of the change will maintain the musical suspension of disbelief.

Plates/Chatter-

I found a sound effect of plates and chatter that seemed to fit the diner scene, although it doesn’t sound exactly the same as the original audio. I used this audio to create a mid frequency synth, this carries the most of the melodic information. I found it especially difficult to create a synthesiser that felt connected to this audio, although I know the synth is inputed by the audio it could just be any synth to my ears. I think this might be because there is a lot of information in the audio, or it could be that I don’t know how to vocoded this type of audio, either way I think this is didn’t work how I wanted it to.

Breathing-

I recorded myself breathing to match the characters movements. I then recorded 4 vocal harmonies to add to the higher end of the mix, I contained all of these tracks in a stack/bus. I then noise gated the bus, and side-chained the input to be the breathing audio, this anchors the vocals to the breath. I also added a few plugins to the stack such as chorus and a vocal doubler, and as the scene draws closer to the climax I automated a decreasing bit resolution.

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CREATIVE PROJECTS #2: DIEGETIC SCORE

I need to find a film scene suitable to my project, I will first outline the necessary qualities of the scene:

-No score (this will get in the way of my score defeating the object of the project)

-A lot of diegetic sound (this will give me a lot to work with in terms of side-chaining)

– Ample emotional context ( I need to have something to express through the score)

I have decided on the ending diner scene from Lynne Ramsay’s ‘You were never really here’, it fits all of the criteria. Something I realise I need to do is to isolate the different elements of the sound scape so I can manipulate them melodically. The elements that make up the scene are dialogue, chatter, plates clinking and air conditioning.

‘You were never really here’ is renowned for its sound design, it won a British Independent Film Award for Best sound and a best Score award from the Boston Online Film Critics Association. There are particular moments in the sound design where the diegetic sound blends with the score, this is the exact thing I am trying to achieve. This ending scene is devoid of a score, it only has the radio playing in the background and extenuated diegetic sound. Im going to try and use this to my advantage, vocoding the diegetic sound to create a score.