Week 5: Juliette

Sound Design

It was a lot of fun getting off Campus this week to film our Soundscape adventure sequence ‘The Disturbance.’ We went to the location earlier in the week to brainstorm together and think about what types of things could happen in the place. Our location was the Ystwyth Trail near Llanilar.

We had a pretty solid idea of what we wanted to do on Friday until Rod threw us for a loop explaining the assignment in different words. We discussed if and how we should change the idea to create the entirely separate soundscape for the story. In the end we decided to continue with the original idea but with a heavier layer of man-made sounds to create a metaphor of Humans disturbing Nature.

On the day sound recording was capturing the ambiance and sounds of the setting. Wind in the trees, bird song. The Rushing of the bursting river, footsteps in the mud, splashing of puddles, snapping of branches and heavy breathing of our character running through the woods. For most of that I had to stay a bit away from the filming unit as they were talking through blocking and could be heard on the recordings if I was nearby. I had time to take some photos as well for the first time on our set and I think this may have been the most documented short film ever.

Carefully collecting other sounds such as Helicopters, explosions, dogs barking, machinery was also a task as in the vast libraries of creative commons sounds we had to find the right fit for the theme and feel we were intending. Also as we didn’t have the opportunity to create the sounds afterwards to match the picture, Korneliusz and I collected a plethora of possibilities try during post production.

On the day of editing the picture lock took longer than I would have hoped due to some differences in opinion and that meant the sound designing was pushed back and felt more rushed than I would have liked. However, we were able to create a soundscape 16 tracks deep, full of fades and effects thanks to Korneliusz’s excellent editing skills and dedication to matching footsteps, twigs snapping, splashing and tumbling. Overall I am very happy with the results and the overall sensations the film creates.