Narrative Project: Sound Refinement

I had been meaning lately to get this out of the door to progress with other elements due to an approaching deadline. However so far I think there is a marked improvement. Some sounds could do with further improvement but the key ones such as the sound of the fish swimming and struggling in the water were the priority.

Infiltrate Exploit Spread: Soundscape Search

    When I made my animatic I came across some music that while interesting was probably not the most appropriate. As was suggested I should probably see what is preferred as the last two attempts at choosing an appropriate soundscape have been less than perfect. Not one to shy from delving deeper I loooked into the creator's profile to see what she had and found a few tracks of note, although there were less than I thought that switched the beat dramatically at the one-minute mark.

My preferences are leaning towards "Road Trip Through Installation 04", "Invading a Submarine" and "Waypoint A", with the former two being my personal strongest favourites for the soundscape.

Soundscape Submissions

Soundscape: Sonic Concept

My three final soundscapes. Despite my best attempts to refine the volume, the tracks still seem a little quiet, so viewers should their master volume sliders accordingly.

    I discovered that when videos are made with Adobe's Premiere Pro rather than After Effects, I can upload much more high-fidelity video clips that are much, much smaller in filesize.

Ethan Van Der Ryn: Designer Profile

    This video is a collection of my cropped and postprocessed sounds, of which there are 43 in total according to Windows explorer which made it slightly impractical to upload each one separately. In order to fit them on the blog I assembled them in After Effects then compressed the files in Adobe Media Encoder after upping the volume a little in Premiere Pro. So hopefully the sounds should be a lot clearer on lower-volume machines.

Soundscape: Getting There But Not Perfect

    This morning I tried touching up my soundscape videos. While I was working I realised that the sound files for pictures 2 and 3 might fit better when swapped over and I think I was onto something. I still feel there is a bit more to do with these two before I am completely satisfied. They don't have that "punch" yet and 3 definitely needs something to pop but I think picture 2 is closer to being considered finished than picture 3.

Soundscape Progress

    Today I made some modifications to my soundscapes to give them a bit more life and a bit more of a narrative. I realize now that the best way to retain the quality of the image of the final presentation would be to submit these to Vimeo - where the file sizes won't be so limited - and embed the video into my blog posts. But since what matters with these creations at the moment is the sound, I will continue uploading this way for the draft soundscapes.

    I also figured it would be prudent to present the multitrack makeups of each image in order to show what is happening in each soundscape. I figured it could also help convey what's going on when discussing the refinement of my soundscapes.

Multitrack for Picture 1

Multitrack for Picture 2

Multitrack for Picture 3

Soundscape: First Creations

    The first drafts for my Soundscape audio are complete. It was interesting tweaking sound files to make new sounds but I am unsure about the final feel. I suppose partially because this project was quite brief - 3 30-second videos that portray some kind of ambient or active sound. So overall the outcomes were not that complicated. I probably had the most fun making 1 and 3. I had to compress the renders a lot in order to upload them to the blog as at full resolution (1440 x 1080 pixels) the video files measured 1GB in size on my hard drive. I made half a dozen test renders in order to find out what settings I could compress my videos down to although I wonder if I could have simply reduced the number of frames as I learned from mu Maya classes that the 1GB file at 25 frames per second contains 750 instances of the same image repeated over the video.

    Presumably since the images are there for visual association I might be able to escape with cutting down the mumber of frames. Experiences with framerate lulls in video games have taught me that sound and visuals can potentially run separate to each other; for example I have noticed when framerates hit 20 or 15fps for a game designed to run on at least 30, animation and sound for in-engine cutscenes would desync, leading to characters mouthing silently for a second or two after they should have finished speaking as even when framerates drop t oas low as ten per second, the span of the sound file being played does not change..

    I think what I loved about the work on the audio for picture 1 was the vividness I had in my head, so it was one of the easiest to visualise. The moment I saw it I instantly imagined this underwater world. So my head was swimming with bloops, churns and that general echoing ambience you have whenever you submerge yourself in water. It was very fun to make. I was pleasantly surprised with myself that the echoing noise heard thoughout came from recording the overhead ventilation on the lower 3rd floor. Admittedly I didn't exactly go too far out with this one; the "gloop"ing and the sloshing heartbeat came from me messing about with a water bottle.

    As I mentioned in a previous post, this one was made bu trying out various bristling noises. I got an interesting sound from sorting dried spaghetti and I also tried rubbing the bristles of a toothbrush. with my finger to see what sound came out. Perhaps this one could do a bit of improvement with the scratchign being more gradual.

    The final soundscape was another interesting creation. I recognised these as viruses so I had no idea what sound could be associated with them. I had thought about pollen so I considered brushing noises. The ambient hum was acquired from another ventilation system, this time an extractor fan behind a door. I thought it gave a nice spacey echo as at the scale of viruses water and space become less distinguishable (if that makes any sense, viruses are measured in nanometres and can be as small as being only twice the width of a single DNA sequence). It was drowned out by the hum but I had also managed to include a stationary bus engine as an initial ambient noise before including the louder hum.

    Overall, despite a few hiccups I have enjoyed this project. But there must be more to do as it feels very brief. Perhaps trying to improve these soundtracks.

Thursday update 08/01/15: Sounds And Sound Connections

    Since Tuesday I have been exploring Rochester and the UCA campus looking for sounds to record and potentially use either in the current Soundscape or future projects. As of uploading this post I have gathered a total of 41 files of recordings that vary between 8 seconds and one minute that includes the following sources:

• Bus engines
• touching/poking/bouncing a balloon
• Lower 2nd and 3rd campus floor ambience
• footsteps
• materials in contact with wood
• sloshing water
• an extractor fam
• car engines
• a zipper
• fabric rubbing

     Several of them are of better quality than others and some are repeat attempts, but so far I have really enjoyed looking for sounds and for coming-on two days' exploration I feel I have built up a basic but solid sound library to work from.

    I managed to work out a way to upload my soundfiles to the blog. Blogger's video player does not appear to accept sounds on their own, so I experimented with what happens if I combined the audio files with a placeholder picture (in this case an open-source image of a P-47 Thunderbolt) to allow for a successful upload.

    However after listening to the recording several times I realise now that the propellor noise I had created using what I think was the sound of a toy lawnmower is a bit tinny. And I myself interpret it as either something that sounds more authentic to a 1940s recorder than a modern one, or that the engine is dying even before the alarm sound I created starts sounding off.

    For the pictures provided to me in the soundscape project I have had a few thoughts on what associated sounds could be present. From further examination I get the feeling I'm going to need to keep searching for all the sounds I need.

Picture One looks quite fluid. So I have considered using sections and moments of my recordings of moving water to simulate an aquatic atmosphere. I could alter the pitch  with what I have to make the sound file sound closer to what someone often hears when submerged underwater.

Picture Two looks fairly dry but the fibrous bristles that dominate the lower half of the picture could be one inspiration. I am tempted to investigate what sound comes from rustling spaghetti/pasta and disturbing the bristles on a toothbrush or the teeth of a comb to see what sound comes form these.

Picture Three I remmeber from my years of science in school: These are likely viruses. Again pasta or toothbrushes are two options for a source of the sound of hard collisions or I could try some sort of echo  as a really "out there" ambience. Maybe I record combing or rustling hair.

    As well as soundscaping I did spend a little time further trying to refine the story iea with a few idea-jogging phrases and images. It has helped me somewhat as I am building a more solid picture for an initial storyboard which I should see to doing within the next few days. The like-for-like practice on Tron Legacy has given me a better idea of how many sotryboard panels I may need.

Image references

• (Video Image): US Air Force Photo, 2006; 140530-F-RN211-002; available at http://www.af.mil/News/Photos.aspx?igphoto=2000798363 (last accessed 8th January 2015)
• The three images footed by extensive captions were provided as the source material for the Soundscape project.