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.