RESEARCH

To achieve a good portfolio, I must show a variety of projects that relate to the job role of a sound designer. I will demonstrate that I know how to create my own original sounds as well as enhance sounds gathered from various sound libraries.

I will show that I am able to use various skills such as editing, recording, mixing, composition and foley to accurately capture sound required for the artefacts that I intend to present.

I will also demonstrate skills that are required in a professional environment such as networking, liaising with clients, performers and venues, good organisation and workflow, time management, knowledge of copyright and knowledge of health and safety.

For my research, I chose to investigate various professionals in the industry and their way of working.

Joanna Fang – Foley artist

Joanna is a foley artist for PlayStation Studios where she creates sounds for movies and video games. She was originally trained as a classical musician which she feels gives her an advantage as she thinks of foley as creating music and props are the instrument. Joanna shows the importance of layering objects to create a specific sound much like we also layer SFX tracks in ProTools. The part of the video that really interested me as when they gave her a clip and asked her to foley it in 2 different genres, as an action movie and a romantic comedy. From watching the clip and looking at the way she walks, Joanna determines that from the leg spikes she must be wearing heels and that the character has a definitive cadence to her steps. For the romantic comedy, Joanna is quite light with her steps with most of the focus on the heel part of the shoe, the leather jacket the character wears wouldn’t have much creaks and squeaks and that because it’s a rom-com you would probably hear the light jingle of keys or a bag. For the action style, she chooses heels that have a “darker” sound to them. They have a little more lower end to them and she uses grit on the floor to add some texture and create suspense by something so simple. She also accentuates the sound of the jacket and baguette sounds more to heighten the experience for the viewer.

Another part is she shows how she creates a scene for the game God of War: Ragnarok. Through this she highlights the importance of recording multiple tracks to layer them and enhance the sonic image shown. One in particular is for the villain character having his head smashed. Joanna shows you can create a realistic sound by layering a wet rag, celery breaking, pasta in a leather case and the smash of a cantaloupe melon. It shows how these everyday items paired together can create a sound, like a head smash, that you wouldn’t associate with any of them. I feel this has inspired me to think more creatively about choosing and layering sounds when it comes to my sound design.

I found it extremely interesting as I never realised that foley was also utilised for games so this gave me a different perspective on the craft. It’s clear when watching Joanna talk about her career in foley that she has passion and enthusiasm for what she does and that translates into her work.

Tobias Lilja – Audio Designer

Tobias Lilja was the audio designer for the horror game Little Nightmares. I found his interview to very interesting as he highlighted that when creating the sound design for this game he didn’t want to rely on obvious horror game tropes by using music and loud SFX to create suspense. Tobias instead used ambient sounds as not just ambience but as SFX and music also. As the game takes place on a large ship, he made use of heavy industrial noises such as metal creaks and bangs that he paired with large reverb to give an indication of how large the environment is compared to the player character of Six. I found this to be very intriguing as I never thought of using ambient sounds in this way. There is very little music that plays throughout the game, only being used during important scenes for the story or run ins with enemies, and the suspense is built solely on the ambience created.

He also spoke about the importance of motifs through the game as the scenes when the character becomes hungry are key moments in the game and to highlight this, there is a musical motif that plays. It is quite a mellow piece for the first few times but for the last scene of this it becomes something darker and more terrifying while still holding to the original motif. This is also shown through the villain character known as The Lady. When Six encounters this character in her room, we hear her humming a melody which in itself is particularly eerie. The melody of this then becomes the characters theme and plays during the final boss fight with her.

Theo Green – Sound Editor & Sound Designer

I watched an interview with Theo Green who was the supervising sound editor and sound designer on the movie Dune. Theo states that once he received the script, the first thing he did was to go and stay in a hotel in Death Valley which is a desert valley in California where the Mesquite sand dunes are located. His reasoning for doing this was so he could understand the atmosphere and sounds of standing in silence on a sand dune. He had also listened to a mix by another sound engineer called Doug Hemphill called Singing Sand Dunes which is a natural phenomenon that occurs where sand dunes produce a sound that it similar to low pitched humming or groaning. As this must be produced by a natural resonance, Theo decided to use an innovative technique of planting mics underneath the sand and then running, walking and acting out parts from the script on top of the sand to capture how it might sound. To capture sounds for the sandworm, they would use the microphones themselves as props by digging and dragging them through the sand to mimic the worm’s movements and how they might sound. I found this to be particularly interesting as it can give you a real sense of the movement and rhythm of this creature and also to enhance the ambient sounds captured in the desert.

To then create sounds for the sand warm, they initially experimented with sounds usually associated with a monstrous creature such as gross, gurgling sounds or things that would evoke fear from the audience. After speaking with the director who advised them that this creature was not something to be feared but instead revered they changed their approach entirely. By finding that this beast is the driest thing on the planet they took out any ‘wet’ sounding noises as well as using small fluttering sounds to establish that it was approaching. They also used their creativity to figure out that if this creature can move through sand their must be some fluidity to it so they recorded sand vibrating as various speeds to add to this.