Documentation (3/17-3-28)
I have made a great amount of progress in the two weeks since my midterm demonstration.
During spring break, I took home a Tascam recorder and collected sounds back in New Jersey. During my time at home, I gathered several sounds that will be used as “impact sounds”. For example, I recorded myself opening/closing and hitting my garage door for when the monster is ripping a door off its hinges in the film.
For the scene in which the monster is pursuing Melissa through a pantry and she is throwing various items at it, I recorded myself banging a pot with a wooden spoon. When editing the scene, I can use the sounds I recorded in different ways to create the sense of the monster being pelted with various objects.
I also try a new approach to gather sounds to use for the monster’s footsteps. To do this, I took different recordings with the intention of layering them on top of each other. These recordings included myself hitting the floor of my garage with a rubber mallet, hitting a plastic garbage bin that is slightly filled with water with the mallet, and dropping a jug of milk on the counter. My idea was to create sounds with different amounts of base to them in the hopes that together they would sound like a large creature stomping on the ground.
The final thing I did while home in New Jersey was gather sounds to use for the scene in which Melissa fires her gun at the monster. To do this, I went to a firing range.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I do not own a gun, nor do I ever plan on owning one in the future. However, I recognized that the senior project presents me with a unique opportunity to do what I wish to make a career out of while being able to experiment as much as I want. I knew that this was also how sound effects for guns are made in film/television and video games, and I decided to do the same because I would be following the same methods used in the industry I wish to pursue in a safe, controlled environment. When I arrived for recording, I was instructed on how to safely operate the firearm, and the instructor stayed with me the entire time.
This week, I took the sounds I recorded during spring break and created some drafts of their official sound effects to be used in the film.
The one effect I was having trouble getting to sound the way I wanted was the monster’s footsteps. Similar to the last time I tried to create the footsteps, it always ended up just sounding like hitting a plastic bin (which I did do, to be fair).
I decided to record myself stomping on the ground in my dorm room hoping that it would sound more natural than the recordings I took back at home. While they did sound a little better than my previous recordings, it still ended up sounding like someone was hitting a plastic bin.
I knew I was missing a very specific sound, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. So, I listened to the stomp sound effect of the t-rex from Jurassic Park. Upon listening to the sound effect, I realized that the t-rex had a sort of “chu” sound in its stomp, something that my recordings lacked. Upon watching a video explaining the creation of the t-rex stomp sound, I learned that one of the sounds they incorporated was the sound of a redwood tree falling. I decided to try and incorporate that kind of sound as well and see if it improved it.
To do this, I found a royalty free audio sample of a tree falling down (linked below). I tried to record myself making as similar a noise to that as possible. To do this, I recorded myself crinkling a giant bag of cough drops (have of which I used after recording myself doing the monster’s roars). After incorporating these recordings, I was able to get a footstep sound that was much closer to the results I wanted. I will still try and play around with them and see what different results I can get, but I am very happy with the way they sound so far.
Afterwards, I took my new footsteps sound effects and the growls and roars previously made to create a soundscape demo. If the listener is wearing headphones, the soundscape pans from left to right to create the sense that the monster is walking past the them.
Gif: “Loading Loading Forever Sticker” — https://tenor.com/view/loading-loading-forever-bobux-loader-gif-18368917
T-Rex YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0iSCfmIdqg
Falling tree sound effect: “Tree Fall Stres Creak PE698801” — https://www.videvo.net/sound-effect/tree-fall-stres-creak-pe698801/260096/
