unsounded

I booked out the studio for a Voice Over session with Martha for the DPF advertisement. Ariadna and Beata directed the session from inside the booth due to issues with the equipment on the day.

Issues with ‘mouth noise’ on the recording. This is partially due to the Voice Actor moving slightly over the course of the 2 hour recording. Sadly, some of the clearest and best takes are towards the end, where the voice these noises became slightly more noticeable on the recording. There aren’t many fixes for mouth noise. I’ve it up online and mostly the answer is to record better. So lesson’s to be learned about recording Voice Over sessions, setting Microphone placement and checking the position of the microphone regularly with the voice actor over the course of the session.

Mouth noise can be natural and to do with the person. But in this situation, I think we started off with a good microphone placement at around 6″ away from the microphone, slightly elevated from the microphone with a popshield. However when we changed direction and did louder takes the actor instinctively moved away from the microphone instead of testing the new level, I said stay put in the same position but when we started doing quieter takes, again instinctively, she got closer to the microphone and I didn’t notice resulting in clicks and lip smacks from where the microphone is picking up body sounds as well as dialogue. These weren’t audible in the studio, I wonder if I had used headphones to monitor whilst recording, this could’ve been caught there and then, as I hadn’t noticed it from the speakers, which could’ve been down to how long the session had been running and my slight frustrations with the studio not being able to send my voice from the control room that day. There are ways to edit this sound out but they are unreliable and arduous, however if needs be will have to be done. Moving forward when recording VO sessions, there is definitely some lessons learned.

Thankfully due to the De.Coded project with Rethink, the process of editing this 2 hour project is much easier than it would’ve been without that experience of intense editing. Another gripe I had with the session we did was we couldn’t get the microphone to work from the control room, with tech support.

So, I was unable to easily offer advice from the control room and Beata and Ariadna directed from the recording room. If we had let Martha get to the end of the recording more, I would’ve had more to edit from, as a lot of the time she was given different direction messing up one line without getting to the end, which meant these half takes are less useable and I have had to do more editing and mismatching of the dialogue. If the notes from Beata and Ariadna had been from the control room. From looking at the wave form alone, I could work out where the takes are and where people are just talking… which there is a lot of. And also, I would’ve been able to more input on the voice over, considering I am editing radio shows on a weekly basis, it felt a little like there were too many cooks on this session.

I ended up getting 8 takes out of 35, which I’ve sent to Arianda and Beata for their input.

September:

Job search.

One of the first places I tried, Falling Tree (a great immersive Sound Art adjacent radio production company with great ambient sound design, as well as really compelling stories) were unable to offer me any placements, however Alan Hall, one of the company’s directors offered to chat to me on the phone and give me some advice, which I welcomely obliged… I got some advice about places to apply. He spoke about how Falling Tree offered more individual, non-canonistic shows that were a little more bespoke and that they fell into a smaller type of company that would struggle to cover the cost of work placements/experience. Companies that tended to have bigger offices and more staff would do serial shows for BBC and have more steady streams of income. He recommended trying places like Reduced Listening, Rethink and some other companies that catered to more ‘serial’ audiences than they do.

He also recommended following ‘Short Cuts’ online, a show made up of audio contributions from aspiring producers – to look out for when the next season starts. I spoke to Jo about linking this in with a SIPS project. Which she said seemed like a good idea. Creating a small audio piece that I could then use as portfolio with the option to submit to Short Cuts or other radio shows.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jc0d

I applied for Reduced Listening, heard back from Sarah that they don’t take on work placements anymore, but do take on paid placements sometimes through the Multitrack Fellowship, which aims to create pathways for people into the audio industry who may have historically struggled through race, class and disability. I felt it was disingenuous applying for this and respect the company for taking that stance. I asked if they had any advice other than that and Sarah very helpfully passed on a few lists of audio companies to try. I added these to my ‘hit list’.

Worked on my professional CV.  Added in experiences at University, i.e The Exhibition at Gallery 46, where I installed my Sound Art piece, and also helped install others pieces. Spoke to Jo who recommended updating my CV, removing pointless jobs. Making sure that information is concise and useful to a potential employer. My CV was a little too broad in range and not specialist to the subject of Sound Design.

Jo gave me a contact information for Veronica who works through the University and was starting up a podcast, she lives in Brighton so Jo thought it was a good opportunity for me specifically. We also spoke about my CV and how I’d made it a little too long, needed to be punchier. 

I emailed Frank about work placements and sent him an updated version of my CV, he works for Cup & Nuzzle.

Episode 252: New Order

I spoke to Ed Baxter who runs Resonance Radio who recommended Just Radio and Novel radio as potential studios that could offer placement opportunities and also said he could offer me some voluntary work – but I couldn’t do that because it was un-paid and I’d have been commuting.

I also spoke to Iain, one of the production assistants at Slack City radio and asked if I could get some work experience with them. He told me there was a live event I could oversee at The Green Door Store coming up.

Sent an email to Rethink Audio. Got a response from Matt saying to jog his memory mid-October.

Emailed Open Audio (no reply), Chalk & Blade (no reply), Just Radio (no reply) and Tim Harrison about Film projects. Prime Academy National Television School application (unsuccessful). Voluntary work with Carousel charity (training sessions next year) who run a radio show in Brighton with Radio Reverb.

Applied for NTS Radio job, inquired about Work Placements at the same time.

Frank passed me on to Rebecca from Cup & Nuzzle and I sent a few follow up emails after little response through September.

Had to get a summer job, so was working full-time at Evening Star this whole time. Meant it was tricky to find the time and energy for job applications and personal statements.

October:

Job search

Worked full time at the pub.

Worked on my 2^nd year Audio Paper again, as I was learning about radio editing, I was trying to keep this up to date with my experience level.

Followed up with Matt Hill. Mid October had an online meeting Thursday 27th. He gave me templates and a bunch of trial episodes to get my template sounding as close to the show as possible. Which I started working on.

These are the Intros and Outros, You can hear the dates that change every time in the Intro, and the trail for the next episode in the Outro. This is the third draft that Matt was happy to sign off on, after I had replaced a ‘Next Time’ with tomorrow. I hadn’t realised that these things weren’t interchangeable initially. I put my own processing on the vocals and added a ‘vinyl crackle’ to the VO at the beginning to give it a slight retro vibe. Matt said these effects were too intense though so I ended up rolling them back.

Sent Rebecca from Cup & Nuzzle a couple of nudges throughout the month, no response.

November:

2^nd November, had a few hours of work experience at Green Door Store with Slack City, learning about how they run their live show from the mixing desk for a festival venue set up as part of Mutations Festival in Brighton, a city-wide festival taking place across Brighton’s music venues. Slack City were set up in Green Door, airing everything out onto the radio live.

I found out that Slack City use 3 programs to function:

Radiodeck, which stores and can schedule all pre-recorded shows.

Sharp Stream, which they use for a live internet radio signal through a raspberry Pi

LibreTime, an open source radio automation system, which works as a scheduler that can switch between a live and pre-recorded broadcast automatically seemlessly connecting Radiodeck and Sharp Stream together. For the show at The Green Door Store. We ran two outs, one from the Mixing Desk in the venue for the live bands and one to the Decks in the Bar. These two signals went through a Mixing Desk so the signals could be faded between eachother and the Mixing Desk output into the Raspberry Pi. Which broadcast’s the signal to Sharp Stream, which is picked up by LibreTime.

Spoke to Cup & Nuzzle, got sent a message from Sara, she said she’d find some work for me working on Music documentaries in December. Told me to put aside two weeks and that I’d potentially be paid £800. Worked on Audio paper to send to her so she could get an idea of where I was at. The job would be from 24th of November to 16th December. It seems like a daunting job. eight 40-minute episodes, £100 per episode. Pay is a little steep. But it’s great experience and £800. I have a feeling an experience person may get paid nearly double that though. As finishing an episode in a day is tight and a standard day rate starts at about £150 for producer work. (blessing in disguise I didn’t get it potentially, as I don’t think I was ready). I have started working for Rethink. But have said yes to it and will have to work it out with my pub job, which I’m currently full time at.

Sent off first draft of The Retrospectors, spent a few days looking at Voice Over processing to make sure the sound was correct. Matt said it still needed some work. I had to set LUFs levels right. Read up on LUFs and mastering standards for all platforms. The Radio standard for volume.

Met the Cinema Museum crew on the 10th of November, we discussed the upcoming project, where we will meet Catherine, who is overseeing the advertisement we will make to attract property investors.

Spoke to Sara from Cup & Nuzzle on the same day by phone. We spoke about the projects in more detail. She told me to clear my schedule as it would be a lot of work.

Sent off a second draft to Matt on the 11th. More tweaks needed. Sent off an amended version. 14th of November – Matt is happy with the template.

Sent off amended audio paper to Sara 15th November.

21st November meeting about cinema museum visit with Beata.

22nd of November gave Sara a jog on listening to my Audio paper.

Had a meeting with Matt 25th about starting Retrospectors. He will send the rest of the templates for me to create, a Sunday template with a different outro, and a Friday template with a different outro. Once I have those templates done, he will put me on a week of episodes. He has given me another episode to edit in Descript, their editing software for producer and non-audio specialists which I will have to get to grips with to render the episode content before dropping it into the templates for final mastering before upload.

Sara apologised for not replying sooner, enjoyed the paper and the topic. Said the job had passed onto the in-house editor due to time constraints and her coming down with illness. She told me she would consider me for any future projects. Two days before the work was supposed to start. After telling me I’d be paid £800.

December:

Had issues learning new technology for Rethink Audio project The Retrospectors. Sent off another trial episode on 3rd December. Needed tweaking. Sent another version 7th December. Matt then sent me Templates for different days of the week.  Started working on Templates for Rethink Audio.

Sent off Audio list ahead of first shoot to Jo, planned what equipment I would need.

Recorded Sound for first few interviews for Cinema Museum. Had issues with recorder not being booked, Nico wanted to go with a company rental, the recording devices I was after weren’t available, and my SD card didn’t work with the Zoom H5 Jo had brought. Thankfully it worked with my TASCAM, but my phantom power is broken, so I couldn’t power the shotgun microphone and had to conduct the interviews by holding the inbuilt microphones as closely as possible to the interviewee. This was less than Ideal but the sound should be salvageable.

I jogged Victoria about podcast through Jo. Said we’d speak after Christmas.

Worked a busy Christmas schedule at the pub, with these edits I was completing for Retrospectors and commuting for The Cinema Museum in the build up to Christmas, I couldn’t look for much other work.

Sent off my templates to Matt Hill on the 17^th December, after a couple of weeks of getting distracted by other projects. He had already broken up for Christmas holidays.

I adjusted the LUFS setting on these, and mastered them. I think they are clearer than the last bunch. It took me a while of researching VO Processing. These are some videos I watched.

And here are the results, which I think are clearer than before.

No response from Matt yet.

January:

11^th Cinema Museum Shoot for evening event. Meeting beforehand on Teams with Beata, Ariadna, Despina and Nico. B-roll In morning, no sound needed. Vox Pops 6.15-7.15 – we ended up not having permission to shoot during the film. So, 18^th we went back again.

Got through another project with Beata and Ariadna, UAL advertisement for the DPS!

Had a day out in Cuckmere Haven following sound recordist Chris Sciacca.

It was unpaid, but a valuable experience, we shared tips and tricks for field recording and he gave me equipment to try out.

Victoria responded and tried to organise a meeting, asked for my CV. Didn’t respond when I sent it, I was too preoccupied balancing work, Retrospectors edits and the Cinema Museum to send a follow up message. So contact never resumed.

Met Matt on the 9th online. He offered me a job, not a placement. We agreed a fee for the episodes and the templates I’d been making the last month and a half. I sent off my first Invoice to Rethink and expect to start a weekly editing position with them from now on. 26th Jan. I would use Descript Audio, a programme I haven’t used before for the initial edits.

As you can see below, the audio is automatically rendered into script form. The radio editors can then highlight areas they want me to fix and I can edit the audio at the bottom of the screen in more detail. It’s a tricky piece of software to use, that plays up if you don’t have enough story space. Once I backed up my files it worked fine, I’m still getting used to some of the features and it doesn’t work well without internet, so I can’t do edits whilst on the move, which is quite frustrating.

February:

Met with Matt on the 1^st. Established regular weekly work with Rethink Audio. 2/2 sent off my first whole week of episodes. Started uploading the episodes too as part of payment as they weren’t sure my pay grade was sustainable for just the edits, I decided it’s worth having the regular work so didn’t protest. Recorded interviews for DPF. Spoke to Rethink about the ‘De.coded’ project. A bigger more ambient sound recording project that would take a month to complete. Starting in March. Matt offered to take me off Retrospectors for the De.coded project but I decided to do both and drop shifts at the pub.

17^th February had a meeting with Matt where he talked me through the uploads for The Retrospectors.

I upload the episodes on Apple Podcast Connect & Acast Network. This distributes the podcasts to every streaming service.

22^nd-23^rd February, Production calls for DPF. Spoke with Sound Team, delegated music elements to Yusuf. Ariadna and Beata called a meeting to discuss the recordings. I couldn’t commit to every recording. But Yusuf also being remote could only commit feasibly to doing the Soundtrack.

Went to Carousel volunteer meet up, expressed an interest in working on any sound projects they needed. Monday 6^th Evening.

https://carousel.org.uk/whats-on/carousel-radio

27^{th &} 28^th  Interviews Recorded in LCC – For the first recording on the 27^th for Nicole & Jo, I forgot to pick up Room Tone for editing the interviews. I recorded with Sound Devices and Sennheiser Shotgun. There were some issues with some of the recordings I got and I had to try a few different boom positions to get rid of loud environments. There was a bit of a trail and error. No DPA clips – I didn’t have black tape either which would blend better with the clips. Some of the Microphone positioning exacerbated shuffling sounds, so will be careful with microphone placement going forward, and also getting the microphone as close as possible to the sound source, as I was worried about ruining the shot… which whilst it didn’t ruin the dialogue, made it much harder to use. Herietta and Stephanie.

March:

6^th March Remote Interview Polina. Recorded on Zoom, I planned of time just to make sure things would work smoothly with Beata, we both recorded the sessions for back up. My internet connection was annoyingly slightly unstable which might have caused a bit of lag. But there wasn’t much I could do in a kind of avoidable scenario.

6^th March Jaci Remote Interview. Same situation as Polina. It isn’t ideal, but we planned how we were going to record before and researched which video call was the best, and Zoom seemed to be the most straightforward, me and Beata recorded the interview with different viewers on Zoom (Speaker & Conference?) so we could see which looked best on video.

8^th March Urte Interview, this interview went quite nicely, the fan for the projector was fairly loud, but I communicated the issue with camera and we set up the boom so it was as far away from the projector as possible. We needed the projector to be on for the backdrop. I remembered to collect Room Tone and learned from my previous mistakes.

13^th March Cai Interview. This was by far the easiest interview too conduct. The studio was sound proofed and Cai spoke very clearly and articulately due to doing some voice acting in podcasts. The only issue I found was this was quite an exhausting shoot, going on for 40 minutes, so I was holding the boom for a considerable amount of time. It would be easier, for a longform interview to use a clip on microphone, so your arm doesn’t fall off. Whereas on set for a film, you only need to hold the boom for the length of the take and get a breaks in between.

14^th March Beata & Ariadna, Leo interviews. By this point I was feeling in the swing of things, Beata and Ariadna were interviewed it quite an echoey room. But we had stopped packing the radiomics when we realised that the kit room didn’t have clips for them. As we didn’t want tape on the interviewees. I think in retrospect, perhaps this shoot in the echoey room and the shoot with Herietta and Stephanie in a loud Digital Space would’ve been best with a clip on microphone, so the interviewee is as close to the microphone as possible, eliminated the background noise a little more. Similarly the reverb of the voice bouncing back off the walls can slightly obstruct the dialogue that follows. Which can be as distracting and discernible. 

Cinema Museum scrapped. No edits. Carried on uploading and mastering The Retrospectors for Rethink Audio. Mixed and mastered 101 unique pieces for Rethink Audio for De.coded. Which I will expand upon in a separate blog post.

April:

April 17^th DPF Voice Over with Martha. Recorded in the Sound Arts Mixing Room and Foley Room, there was an issue with the microphone so we couldn’t run it through to the booth. This meant that Ariadna and Beata gave instructions to Martha in the booth with her. Which meant I was sort of left out of the producing element a little bit and to help run the session easier I just flat out recorded the whole thing. This meant my job for editing later was a lot more than It needed to be.

April 18-19^th I edited Henrietta and Stephanie’s recordings because Beata, Ariadna and Polina said the background sound was distracting. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do the help, but I tried to EQ it a bit differently so the voice would come through, they were both being quite quiet in a noisy room though, so unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do. I sent over an edit for them to use, I asked them to try and be selective with what snippets they use based on the background sound and that I might be able to make it less abrasive with the room tone I got to fade the sound between cuts.

April 20^th SIPS recording with Sam. I went to a water treatment facility in Barcombe with my friend Sam. We captured some field recordings around the treatment facility as I’m interested in doing a SIPS project about Water Treatment Facilities and Sewage Pollution. Unfortunately we couldn’t get inside the facility legally. So we ended up getting lots of ambient recordings around the outside. Some of which would be quite nice background sound for a documentary on the subject. Once I have the time to plot out what my SIPS could look like.

April 27^th Meeting about Animated Sound UK

April 28^th Uploaded Edited VO session for Martha down from 2 hours to 5 takes. This took me about 2 days.

Carried on regular work with Retrospectors. Started planning SIPS project.

Quit my Pub job because it was becoming quite a toxic environment to work in. Got a new job so was still working a lot.

May:

3rd May, Recorded sound for Animated UK project. Wasn’t a lot to do. Me and Constantine recorded a little bit whilst the break out groups were happening, but the UAL tech department were already covering the main presentation, so we just took over from them for a short period and asked if any students wanted to do some vox pops.

Got offered Table Reading project with Beata, did sound recording for two projects and started preliminary mix. Booked studios but had to use the new performance labs.

18^th May – Cancelled Table Reading with Beata. Met Matt Hill in the Afternoon, we spoke about The Retrospectors, he had some notes for future uploads he’d like me to change. He has also given me more responsibility and wants me to arrange my own format for a new Saturday episode, which will be longer, has given me a lot of creative control and wants to see what I can come up with. I will be paid for the draft work and it’s quite an exciting prospect. The last version of the project I did in March has now been turned into a radio show too, which he would like me to listen to. Which is quite exciting.

22^nd May Recorded First session in the recording studios at University with 4 Voice Actors. Set up the microphones, across the room and engineered the whole session. This one ran a lot more smoothly than the last VO session I did. I only wish we had got the actors in a bit later because there was a bit of standing around waiting for me to be ready. The timings can be quite tight for the music studio so made sure I was ready to jump out of the gates on the next session.

Met with Martha for lunch afterwards, she gave me some ideas for sound design. We are going to collaborate on creating something quite cinematic in the background of her piece.

26^th May Recorded Second session of table reads, a little more challenging than the first I think because the cast weren’t trained actors. But I think with my combined editing experience from podcast editing, I should be able to make it work!

Still have to do a sound edit for the Cinema Museum, DPF, Animated Women UK and the table read. As well as work on my SIPS project, if I can find the time and draft this new episode format for the Retrospectors.

Through my Foley session we had the base of the engine sound. We had the mechanical part of a cistern or piece of old machinery that was on a cog, that we wound to create a sort of mechanical rhythm. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph but I pitched this recording captured with Szymon and Monika down a little and added a pitched down recording of Szymon making noises with his mouth – which for modesty reasons I won’t show unedited. I reversed this as well so it was less noticeable human. I placed these sounds on top of eachother and added EQ, Compression and Reverb. I then felt it was lacking the hum of an engine, which I used a makeshift recording of my terrible (probably not legal) kitchen fan.

The sound isn’t as mechanical as I would have liked. On a future project I would like to experiment more with finding these motor-like sounds. The metallic sounds are a little too high end and if I try to drop the pitch due to the frequency response of the microphones used, there is too much of a drop off on the higher frequency.

The idea was for the moped to sound like when someone is navigating a street with little burst of speed. So this idle engine sound in conjunction with the revving of an engine could create the illusion of a dynamic engine.

I recorded various revs to apply through our mixes by using my blender. I tried it with the lid off and on and recorded various velocities.

Responding to questions posed before our crits;

Whether you have met your production goals so far?

Our goal was to create simple but satisfying sound design. The MA students said their big inspiration was Flappy Bird. Which is an incredibly simple one button game for mobile devices. It was hard to think of how to approach this initially due to its simplicity, eventually we drew on inspiration from Nintendo sound design. As well as aesthetic influence from Gameboy games, and similar SNES games like Paperboy and Frogger. We tried to blend classic 8 bit music elements with more modern high quality ambience, using a mixture of foley and field recording.

We are happy with how the game sounds, but are aware some minor tweaks may still be needed. One of our loops isn’t between the requirements the spec gave, for example. Perhaps things could be finessed a little more.

What aspects you will address in post-production?

Final check of levels, and that the EQ balance is correct between files. Make sure ‘action’ type sounds have more priority of the low end, so they are more impactful. Making sure each level has a distinct feel. Double checking all elements are in the right place and that the overall tone is correct. make.

What feedback or testing will be useful and if you can use this crit to gain these insights,

If any sounds stick out – feel repetitive. If some of the more foley produced sounds are noticeable as that or go unnoticed. Mostly due to the looming deadline these will be for consideration on future projects.

What has changed through problem solving?

Foley aspects, when creating the engine sounds we had to get quite creative… Making wind sounds from a mixture of foley and noise generators with notch filters and using synthesizers to help build ambient textures.

After showing the video in class Szymon requested a change to the delay on the final level which I will amend before hand in. It was said there could be more ambient sound in the crits, so I will try to boost for the final video. Overall I am happy with the work we have created. It is essentially an 8 bit game and I think an element of our sound design definitely reflects this, with some subtle level design to differentiate. If we had more time these differences could have been expanded on, with a few extra background sounds for each level to fully account for objects… However, it is a balancing act and looking at flappy bird…. we were much closer to overdoing it than under doing it.

Level 2 is a desert level, with Tumble Weed. I collaborated with Szymon on Wind Sounds, Szymon’s using a white noise generator and filter sweeps and mine using recorders and an ocarinas, obstructing the holes so there was no prominent notes.

Recording at home, I used my recently required LOM microphone. – A mono ‘Mikro Ucho’ – (omnidirectional mono is more effective in panning than stereo recordings and I will place these mono recordings at different spatialities to help build the a fake ambiance) In tandem with my TASCAM DR-40X, which is a stereo cardioid pair, but because it’s a field recorder, was useful for recording around my house (I captured extractor fans, oven sounds and shutter skids and doors slamming for experiments).

Recording loud analogue equipment I had with a contact microphone to potentially add to the engine noise – none of these options ended up coming in handy but they were useful experiments.

This is a bit too nasty to be an engine sound but is something that I could use as a piece of self-destructing equipment on a future project. I pressed rewind on one of my cassette recorders and the speed kept increasing which created quite an uncomfortable sound.

I then played around with wind sounds with my wind instruments (one of which a gift from when my friend worked comic con and got me in for free ten years ago….)

I took the recordings from these wind instruments and played around with their pitches and then I placed them into a 15s loop based off the length of the loop for level 1 ambiance by Szymon for continuity.

I cut a few files across the beginning and end of the loop so there isn’t a noticeable change in sounds. I have added a little bit of reverb, but not too much as to create a jarring change.

The engine sound is in the background, as for this type of game where there is no spatiality, it doesn’t make sense to attach a sound to a seperate source. Unless however, we wanted a start up sound to the engine – which we should look to do if we have time.

Various wind sounds are fixed pan, and the tumbleweed is automated, just to add some movement to the level.

Szymon did a preliminary crash sound, which I thought I’d try to beef up. I wanted to add a skidding sound before the impact. Szymon’s impact sound is really good and I didn’t want to take away from that. I have a mental cabinet that creates quite a bassy slam which I thought could make quite a good trailing off sound after the impact. I recorded the cabinet, along with my blinds and my double bass to try and get some material worth playing around with.

I recorded some squeeks to pitch up on my Double Bass also,

I wasn’t entirely happy with the sound of the screeching on the double bass. I layered a few on top of each other. The blinds usually have more of a tone to them than they did when I tried recording. They weren’t as screechy as I had hoped. I was hoping the blend of something screechy with the double bass’ tonality would work. I tried wet rubber on certain woods in my house but they were all laminate. I experimented with windows which was not course enough of a sound.

The trail off metal door worked quite nicely but felt it needed padding out with glass sounds. I didn’t feel comfortable smashing glass so decided to bulk it out with a royalty free glass smash.

I am going to speak with the others and see if they are happy with using it as we had intended to not use samples.

Collaborating with Szymon and Monika in the Foley studio, we managed to capture some potentially useful sounds for layering. Whilst Szymon had ambience for Level 1 sorted by building some sounds on top of a field recording captured in London. We were struggling to work out how to record wind sounds. As neither of us possess microphones good for capturing wind specifically, we also found we got microphones out to capture wind, there was none… and when we had hadn’t rented out the microphones good at capturing wind… there was wind… So… we quickly decided that instead of hoping to get lucky we decided to resort to foley and other techniques for level 2.

In this video Ben Burtt talks about the ‘Wind Machine’ which was used for classic foley performance in early cinema. You would wind this wheel to cause friction between a fabric layer and wooden panels creating a screeching wind.

In this clip, Ben Burtt using a roll of fabric dragged over a carpet for wind sound. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything heavy enough, or a long enough stretch of carpet in a silent area to try this.

Szymon had experimented before with noise generators and filter notch sweeps. So that formed part of our wind, and then I got inspiration from a couple of podcasts about very simple and effective ways to create wind sounds.

In Ghost of Tsushima, a samurai open world game. Wind is used as a compass, it carries a certain mysticism to it which the sound designers explain during this podcast/video. The sound designers ended up using an assortment of wind instruments to contort and subtly obstruct a regular breath sound. The result being a kind of mystical spiritual wind sound.

I was also sort of influenced by Jason Singh, and whilst I wouldn’t dream of calling myself a nature beatboxer… his use of layered loop voice in this radio show to recreate the sound of ocean. Saying he just mimicked frequencies he could discern from a recording of the ocean until he had mimicked enough to recreate the ocean with his voice.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013hx1

Crits

In the build up to the Crits, there was a moment of radio silence (understandably) from the MA students as they were wrapped up with their hand in. So Szymon created a video to show our progress with the class.

The response was positive mostly, main feedback indicated that the engine rev sound was repetitive. With Harry I believe saying it was quite easy to input multiple sounds to one action with a randomiser. This is a good suggestion that we will implement into the next build. We hadn’t managed to speak to the game design group about it yet so had just gone with one of the engine revs I had recorded. However I have recorded 7 at varying dynamics so that will be easy to edit in. Some were slightly too long but I have a feeling they can be faded before the next event in engine.

We personally decided on a little more variation to the background sound, which Szymon will edit for the next version.

MA Student Feedback

We received a video of the game running in Unity from the MA design students, they didn’t use all of our sounds how we had initially intended, but were very positive about our contributions and very happy with their hand in. They used one of our idle engine sounds as the background sound for Level 2 which was quite jarring to us, but in their minds it made sense because there was a mining cart on tracks later in the level and the sound had a train-like quality. In their defence, my laptop broke unexpectedly and took two weeks to fix after I had just got back from covid absence, so I think it was more out of necessity as we hadn’t managed to get a background sound for level 2 to them in time. Level 3 was a last minute addition which we didn’t know about until a few days before.

They chose to use a sound from Monika’s menu as the action sound over the engine rev sound. I think in both demos, there is a point at around 35 seconds where the same sound quickly happens about 5 times within two seconds with no variety which was a bit jarring to us. So on our hand in we will see if that can be improved with the randomised engine revs and the additional background sound missing. I also noticed that the menu uses the same sound for each click, whether you are pressing start or navigating your choice of level. The crash I think could be a bit more beefy and also I think the ambience shouldn’t reset after crashes. As the fail sound is musical, it makes sense to cut the music and start again as they would clash but the sound effects starting again I think is slightly unnecessary.

Alongside the influences from Nintendo games and Last of Us that I’ve already referenced, I am thinking about what game design springs to mind in response to ‘Super Delivery Game’ and will work out if there are any aspects I can bring into this project. As a one-button click adventure is even more simplistic than these old SNES games, and might be an example of a kind of nostalgia type trend within games. Flappy Bird’s 8-Bit look springs to mind games such as Frogger, and Paperboy. But also Super Mario with its suspicious use of green tubing.

Paperboy 2 is I feel nearing the kind of balance we will hope to achieve. Minimal punchy sound effects with playful music. Background ambience wasn’t really utilised at this point in gaming and as a group we are quite keen on bringing in background ambience alongside a soundtrack just to give a slight change of atmosphere to each level and also set it apart from retro games. As you can tell with Frogger at the top, the lack of any background sound is quite jarring and whilst music would help alleviate that it could also get repetitive quicker than it would with other background elements.

Monika has chosen UI Design and Menu Music, whilst Szymon is working on Background Music and Sound for Level 1-2. I will work on the action sounds within the game collaborating with Monika’s UI Design choices and I will work on Background Ambience alongside Szymon. We have identified a list of influences, including Animal Crossing, Hill Climb Racing, Frogger, Paperboy 2 and Flappy Bird. Monika hopes to create Gameboy-esque tones to the UI Design and Menu Music, alongside animal crossing and Szymon is looking to create music similar to that in Hill Climb Racing. I want my sound affects to have a similar punch to early sound design like heard in Paperboy 2 but I am drawing from foley created ambience alike to a more modern influence like Animal Crossing for my ambient sound.

We also wanted to give the option of providing engine sounds and level ambience to the MA students as we immediately felt that with the limited sound effects requested it might create quite a repetitive feel to the game. This also made it easier to delegate tasks between us with me primarily on engine sounds where I would work towards creating an idle engine running, alongside engine revs to act as an ‘action button’ sound.

We booked the Foley room at University to work together on capturing some of these sounds.

The concept for this 2D one button delivery game is simplistic, the game designers stating Flappy Bird as an influence. We got sent this brief along with a spec for the sounds the MA team wanted.

I met with Szymon and Monika, and we formalised a response to this initial brief with a series of questions that we sent back to the MA students, which are as follows:

• Is this a browser only game or for mobile as well?

Depending on console, computer or mobile – the game will be played out of different kinds of speakers. Good to think about how the sounds will be most heard before we begin designing.

Computer Only

• What is the theme of the second level?

For music and sound design it would be good for them to give us a finalised theme, as they said in our initial meeting they were planning an extra level.

Cowboy Western

•  What happens if you fail the second level, do you start from the beginning?

If the game is a stamina type game where the odds and stakes are higher, this might change the approach in theory. How challenging the game is supposed to be.

Reset to beginning of Level

…And finally two quite self-explanatory questions

•  Will there be additional sounds that are individual for each level? (example: sci fi sounds, truck and different types of vehicles sounds, different types of crash sounds etc.)

•  Are you okay with expanding the sound design after your deadline? (our deadline is in June and we want to make sure we meet all the assessment criteria)

These two were answered in one:

The list was small so the basics of sound could be achieved in the short deadline, any extra sounds past the MA’s deadline date are welcomed.

Potential additional sound effects – these are sounds that immediately came to mind that weren’t included in the initial list:

1. Start up sound (before the menu shows up)
2. Soundscape/background sound apart from music, for example city ambience along with background music
3. Vehicle sounds (trucks, alien spaceship etc)
4. Engine when moving (brief sound) and standing (continuous sound)
5. Different types of crash sounds in each level
6. Clock/time (only if it fits to the background sounds and music, we need to check)

I spoke with Szymon and Monika and we delegated out tasks. Monika went for title sounds and background music, Szymon did some background ambience and music, and I did background ambience and car sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O2cbPAYxFs

In our early Whatsapp communications and meetings, the MA team repeatedly cited Flappy Bird as their source of inspiration. So we start with this playthrough as our first reference point and from it, build a reaction to the brief.

My initial response is that Flappy Bird features incredibly minimal sound design with a start sound, flap sound, ‘point’ sound for getting through a gate and a fail sound. Music, background ambience, and randomisation within the action sounds will be key to giving the game some variation. Similarly, the spec provided has 5 sound effects and 3 Background Music specifications.

Flappy Bird is a game that has garnered mixed reviews and is somewhat controversial, my concerns moving forward is that we create sound design which makes the game more frustrating. Monotonous sound design aspects in a game that’s difficult can probably increase a players level of annoyance and frustration, we need to make sure our sounds are satisfying to hear when the player is doing well, so they are less frustrated when they aren’t doing well. I think if a game feels like a nice experience, its potentially less likely to frustrate and annoy. So we have to get the aesthetics right.