Hybrid Animal Sound Effect's Competition Entry

Last time, we discussed and looked at the competition. Today we will create our entry. This is something I have never tried before, so I am both eager and a bit nervous to give it a shot. But this is all fun and games, so let's get going!

First, according to the rules, we need to use one sound from their library. Signing up was really easy and they didn't require a credit card or anything like that. I was able to get my free credit and browse the library quickly and easily. This is the sound I decided to use.

I picked it for two reason, first, is that it is kind of long with a few different things going on. My original intention was to be able to chop it up if need be and use different parts of it. I also really liked the weird, chuckle sound. I thought it would be fun to play with. 

For this effect, I decided to pull inspiration from the sci-fi realm, and I specifically imagined a dinosaur alien. I imagined  a huge beast coming face to face with me, growling viscously, with saliva dripping from its sharp teeth. What I found, was that it is a lot harder than I originally thought to create a natural sounding growl (especially without an image to lean on.)

First, I needed to make sure the effect sounded like a full voicing. I found a few effects from freesfx.co.uk that aided me in both starting the growl and filling out the spectrum.  After I had some sounds put together in the form of a growl, I realized that something sounded off. What sounded off was the fact it was too short for the image in my head. I decided to reverse some of the sounds to bring them back in. This gave them a different sound, that I thought sounded natural. I also used another piece of the Rare Animals sound like I planned on for a breathing type sound.

This effect is not one I am overly excited about. Going into this project I expected better results. I think having an image to work to would help me out, and if I were to try this from scratch again, I think I would pick out some reference images to match the audio up to.

Anyway, here is what I came up with. If any of you decide to give it a shot, I would love to hear your results! 

Pro Sound Effects' Hybrid Animal Sound Effect Competition

A recent post on the Pro Sound Effects blog, brought to my attention by Jordan at the PseudoFish Technology Blog, outlines the details of an exciting competition that I could see Ben Burrt concocting himself. 

The competition is all about creating the sound of an anmial that doesn't exist in the real world by using real world samples of real animals! Their blog has a couple of examples of what they are looking for, which gives me hope that the entries can be varied and as creative as possible.

The prizes are the real reason most of us would try this out, so lets take a look at them. First place comes with a prize package worth about $5000! In it contains the Pro Sound Effects Hybrid Sound Library, a copy of Pro Tools 11, iZotope Iris+7,  a Rode NTG-3 with a Blimp (wind shield and shock mount system), along with signed copies of The sound Effects Bible and Location Sound Bible to boot. That is a lot of loot from this competition that anyone can complete in an hour or less.

Some of the rules for competing are that the sound effects need to be under 15 seconds in length,  you must use one sound from the Rare Animals Sound Effects Library, and all sounds must be cleared and licensed. Pro Sound Effects will give you a token to use for the one necessary Rare Animals sound free of charge when you sign up for an account with them, so no need to spend any money to enter if you don’t want to! All you need to do after that is upload the sound to SoundCloud, connect with them via SoundCloud, and be sure to enter by April 8^th.

Next time I will be creating my entry and taking you though the process of creating the sound. Be sure to check out the Hybrid Animal Sound Design Competition for yourself!

Creating the Heartbeat (Pullin' Rags!)

An effect we talked about in my very first post was the use of an audible heartbeat to allow the audience to feel the tension or anxiety that is building in the character on screen.  This effect is an easy way to elicit emotion from the audience. Usually, the heartbeat will be very low in pitch, hardly audible, and really just adding feeling. Rarely will the heartbeat be the main focus in the audio mix. These are important aspects to keep in mind while we create this effect. 

To record the base of our effect, we are going to physically create a rhythmic beat. This helps to aid in the human feel, but is also easily controllable. We want to take a rag and hold it in both hands. Hold the rag in close proximity to the microphone, we need a strong signal. Now bring your hands close together and pull apart with force. Do this in a rhythmic pattern that mimics a heart. This is the sound I was able to create. 

Now we need to process the effect to help it blend into the mix. Remember, the goal is for it to help add tension and build emotion, not be a focal point.  First we need to get the EQ right. The heart is within the body, so we need to adjust the sound so it feels as if it is coming from within. We will apply a bandpass that has a low cutoff around 100Hz and a high cutoff around 1.3 kHz. 

We also want to add in some reverb. For me, this makes the effect sound wet. Almost like we can hear the blood being pushed out. I set up an aux track and bussed out to apply reverb. I didn't want to lose the punchy-ness of my heartbeat, and just needed a dab of reverb. 

Lastly, I added a bit of compression to just give the track a little bit more punch. I used a relatively quick attack with a medium long delay. I don't want it to pump. This helped to  give the higher end of the sample more strength. A 5:1 ratio worked nicely, and I really liked the effect. 

Here is the final result of our processing. 

So that's all it takes. This is an easy to create effect that can add a ton of dramatic emotion to your mix. Remember to mix in low, and just let the heartbeat live in the scene. 

The Sound of Space Part III: Wall-E

Welcome to part 3 of our exploration of how sound designers conquer the vacuum of space. Today, we once again take a look at the work of Ben Burtt. If you missed either of the previous parts, you can find them here and here.

Wall-E is a fantastic example of using hyper realism in order to achieve a motif, and also elicit emotion.  Wall-E contains no human dialogue that has not been processed to the point of sound human. Instead, the film relies on mechanical and organic sounds to push the story and emotion.  Burtt actually recorded different types of motors in order to bring different emotion into the movements of Wall-E. If Wall-E was attempting to be quiet, one motor was used, while a different was used for when  it was energetic or moving quickly.

He also decided to use human voices in order to create effects in order to bring them to life, and help nonhuman entities feel a little more organic. Once vocals were recorded, Burtt would use vocoders to dismantle what it is to sound human, but allow enough familiarity for the audience to recognize the voice as being a natural voice.

On a side note, the mixing in this film is fantastic. Even only hearing the mix in stereo, the amount of depth and space and the attention to detail is just incredible. Every sound moves perfectly with the image on screen, which becomes important when the entire film is told through sound.

Burtt had an interesting philosophy about this film, that sums up why I like his work, and I love the genre of hyper realism. He says that so many of the sounds we place in film can be used for many things. Especially sounds we invent, like force fields or laser guns.  The deciding factor as to how these sounds are interpreted is every individual audience member. As Hyper Realists, we don't stay true to nature, because sometimes nature cannot draw the emotion we wish to excite.

 Burtt is quick to point out that adding organic sounds to a mix does, however, lend credibility to your work. It allows the audience to feel  comfortable with something that sounds familiar, even if they are hearing it in a totally different way.

I didn't get very deep into how sound was created for this film. Because of that, I strongly suggest checking out this video, which is one that I referenced for writing this article. I believe it is worth a watch or two. Burtt has great philosophy on what it is to be a sound designer, and the techniques he demonstrates are truly legendary. 

Dueling Swords Sound Effects!

Last week we went into the bathroom to create nuclear explosions, and today we wander into the kitchen to create medieval swordplay. Swordplay is one of those topics where the sound designers in Hollywood decided the real thing didn't sound quite right and substituted their own version of reality for the silver screen. Starting from the moment we see the hero's sword drawn from his scabbard, everything is wrong.

What I mean is, we have come accustom to a very shinny, shrill sound of a character pulling out his sword. In reality, the sound produced by pulling a metal sword out of a leather scabbard sounds a lot more like a metal sword being drawn out of a leather scabbard than the bright, almost musical sound we are accustomed to today. Since we are accustomed to the bright shinny sound, however, we will look at a way of creating that sound, and then creating each sound made by swords in a sword fight.

First, we need a couple of household kitchen items. I choose a fork, a butter knife, and a metal wire whisk. We want to start at the beginning of our duel by drawing the blade. For this, we will place the knife in-between the prongs of the fork, and quickly drag the knife along the prong. Be sure to allow the objects to ring out very close to the capsule in order to capture the full ring. We achieved this sound.

Next, we need to create the sound of a sword cutting through the air. I choose to use the wire whisk because it makes a very audible whooshing sound, no doubt in part to having so many long, thin strands of wire moving through the air. With my whisk, I needed to grip the actual whisk portion of the utensil to keep it from making a ringing metallic sound. The final result was this.

Lastly, we need to create the sound of two swords coming into contact with each other. Take the knife and fork again and strike them together. Be sure to allow the utensils to drag on each other a bit to add a more "natural" effect. ( I put natural in quotations because I have no idea if this is true to real life. However, keeping in theme with hyper reality, it is part of the viewers expectations. So for them, the dragging is natural.)  This is the sound of warring silverware.

Adding all the sounds together, with some processing and EQing, and we are able to replicate the sounds of swords in battle. 

Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [Re-Up]

[Disclaimer] This is an attempt at re-writing this article. The original was eaten by the internet, and it will never be seen again. This is a re-imagining of the original article.

The Hunger Games excites me greatly. I am a fan of both the books and the movies, and I look forward to the new films just about as much as your average 14 year old girl. So getting the chance to explore how the sound for the film is created, and techniques used to push realism to its boundaries is something that I am happy to discuss.

For this film, we are going to explore how a hyper realistic sound track was created by pushing the boundaries of the background tracks and focusing less on dialogue and sound effects.

When creating the ambiance for Catching Fire, a great amount of attention to detail was used.  During editing, all of the vocal tracks and music tracks were muted so an immersive ambience could be created. This means that each and every location in the film was given unique and special treatment to ensure that they all were sonically different.

The Jungle Arena where the main action takes place. Lionsgate.

Catching Fire was mixed on Atmos meaning that the sound mixers could make use of an overhead array of speakers.  Seeing as a large portion of this film takes place within a jungle arena, a lot of care was given to make the audience feel as trapped within the jungle as the characters were. Every time the jungle appears on screen, all overhead speakers are filled with the sounds of canopy to enclose the audience in and give a sense of containment. This was meant to cause feelings of uneasiness and claustrophobia.

There is also juxtaposition between the sounds of the “districts” and sounds of the capitol city within the film. The capitol is portrayed sonically as being isolated yet clean. It is not connected to the environment so the sounds of animals or natural elements are nearly non-existent. Instead the audience is met with sounds of a bustling city. The districts on the other hand, while also sounding isolated, also feel more connected to the earth with the sound of nature in abundance.

The motif of the characters visual appearance is also pushed within the soundtrack. Lionsgate.

This divide is pushed further sonically when different characters speak. Characters from the capitol are seen addressing an audience on more than one occasion in large, open areas. When these characters speak, they are met with huge amounts of delay, more so than we would expect in the type of environment they are speaking in. Also, there is no sound made from the audience. In any normal situation, we would expect to here some kind of noise coming from a crowd of 1000 plus people. This helps to push the divide between the districts and the capitol, forcing the audience to feel the tension in the crowd.

Catching Fire also features many sound effects that push realism into hyperrealism, but I don’t want to discuss them here. It is interesting to look at how just using ambiance can create a hyper realistic sound track and evoke emotion in the audience. 

Naval Depth Charge

The naval depth charge. A warhead dropped by US ships during World War 2. Containing 200 hundred pounds of Torpex explosives, when released, the depth charge kept a straight trajectory through the ocean water where it would detonate with a powerful explosion. Check out this video of a test detonation to see the power of this warhead.

I have seen numerous films where these are detonated, and today we will attempt to recreate the sound of the detonation underwater. To start we need to record the flushing of a toilet. I recorded the sounds of two different toilet flushes from multiple angles and locations ranging from directly over the bowl, off to the side, and underneath near where the water rushes out. Here is the recording we are going to work with.

Now we need to edit this to make it sound convincing. First we need to stretch out the clip twice its length, slowing the playback down by half. This will bring the pitch down tremendously while keeping the wet feel to the sound. Next we want to apply ample amounts of reverb and pitch shifting to really give this effect depth. I also copied the sound to a new channel, kept it the same length but pitch shifted it up and used it to create the sound of water coming to rest. Even though our effect exists underwater, we still need to think of the audience and end the effect with the high end. 

Finally, we can add some low end rumble to really push the sound through the mix, and recreate the intensity of the real warhead. We need the effect to start with a low thud, and move towards our high end finish. This will give us a full range explosion sound. Using pink noise with a sharp envelop with a low pass filter along with more pink noise with a much smoother attack and longer envelop and a low pass filter help us to achieve our desired effect. We also need to apply distortion to all of our pink noise tracks.Sounds simple enough, but a heavy amount of editing went into this effect which will soon be evident. 

This is the type of sound that you could spend hours trying to mix to perfection. I tried numerous amounts of reverb, eqing, distortion, pitch shifring, and automation before I finally settled on an effect that I felt would be convincing played with an image. Even though this turned out to be more complicated than I first intended, the ability to recreate the sound of such a deadly weapon with a single flush of the toilet was very entertaining.