Project 1: Post-Mortem

I'm happy to say that our group have finished Project 1 and it was a success! For a first project in Studio 1, I think we did a great job, especially as we've never worked on a sound design project before and have never worked together. We were able to finish the project on time and everyone was happy with the end result, and we got positive responses from our class as well. Really enjoyed working with the girls and working with sound design has really opened my mind and has made me want to work more in this genre. This blog post will be a post-mortem of how Project 1 went. I will also talk about the editing stages and the reasons we chose certain foley sounds and instruments, so you will have an understanding of our thought process when progressing through this project.

In the beginning, we were a bit behind schedule as most groups were already recording their projects while we were still planning, but we came up with a good plan so that we'd know exactly what we were doing once we hit the studio. Throughout all our sessions, we never wasted time and tried to get as much stuff done whether it be recording or editing sounds, and I found that I was more focused as I was also working alongside focused and cooperative team members. Yeah we had troubles with signal flow here and there, especially in the Neve but when we figured it out, we got straight into it. Everyone also had different ideas which helped our progress as we'd be trying out everyone's ideas and also discover new ways to better the project.

One of our first sessions were in Audient B and only Brea and I were available to come in. It wasn't really a big problem but I'd say scheduling times would be one of the things to improve on as everyone in the group has jobs or other commitments outside of uni. But we were able to work around that by booking ahead and organising which days everyone was available. In that session, Brea and I were able to create the Pro Tools session and get some foley sounds off YouTube such as the rain, the vehicle sound, etc. We didn't really do too much except place the sounds we collected into their locations where we wanted them as the whole group wasn't there to approve of anything.

Foley Sound and Instruments

We chose to collect most of our foley sound from the internet as we thought it was easier (most of us were unfamiliar with recording foley) and the samples would have better quality. The ones we collected also suited the scenes well such as the rain scenes. Because the video is a compilation of gameplay scenes that had cutting transitions, our sounds had to sound like they're in different environments, so we were able to find different rain sounds online such as harsh ones, soft ones, etc, to suit the different scenes.

Our requirements for this project were to use synths and sequencing so for the melody and bass line of the soundtrack, we used synth presets from Xpand!2 on Pro Tools. The main melody for the first half of the video was a mandolin synth, which was used along with the guitar to represent the boy innocence and his curiosity for the environments he goes through. We included a bass synth a quarter way into the video and it is the scenes begin to be more action-filled and there are a lot of chase scenes. The bass synth also fills the bottom end of the mix as in these action filled scenes, it was missing some low end as the mandolin and drum hits were the only ones in the mix at the time.

The guitar was the only acoustic instrument that we recorded and we decided to have it play in the underwater scene until the end of the video. This decision was made because Brea explained that in the game, when the boy is underwater, he is free and the water represents freedom and the guitar melody has a calming tone and is played at a moderately slow tempo. We decided to not add any effects on the guitar as the tone and warmth of the guitar was enough to show the calming mood that we wanted to portray.

For the breathing and heart beat sounds, we recorded that in the live room. As I explained in my previous blog post about our Neve session of this project, we recorded Brea's breaths and the heartbeats were recorded using my throat. Both sounds were then edited using EQ and reverb and with the heartbeat sound, we dropped it a few pitches to get that low resonant sound, and because we recorded several takes, we were able to pick our favourites and use it.

In the beginning, we wanted to get other foley sounds such as vicious dog barking sounds, crickets, leaves rustling, and other sounds, but as we to the editing stage of the project, we found that less was better and that the sounds and instruments that we had did well to portray the mood we wanted and that adding extra sounds would have made the soundtrack messy.

Summary

I've learnt a lot of things while working on Project 1. First off, I've learnt to be more appreciative of sound design and working with foley and I've enjoyed working with it and am keen to work on more future projects like this. I've also improved with my communication skills and have been more focused when working on this project, and working with cooperative, focused and outgoing team members were a big help. Being more focused helped me improve my time management as well as I tried to work on this project whenever I had spare time. I'll be definitely applying what I've learnt to future projects and hope to just keep improving my soft and hard skills.