Sound Design – COMPLETE!

This is part of our Drawing, Drama and Design assessment for this term.

We had to create a 30 second piece of sound for a piece of animation. There were 6 pieces to choose from. I chose an abstract animation called “Night Music” by Stan Brakhage. I haven’t heard the original soundtrack so this is entirely my interpretation. I haven’t included the video in case I get in trouble with copyright infringement.

As it was called “Night Music” i thought the music of any night would be the sound of our dreams. The animation itself is like a psycadelic sequence of colours, with no recogisable shapes or images. Therefore the only thing to go by was the speed in which the frames occur and perhaps the intensity of the colour.

This was created and recorded using Adobe Audition and a Blue Snowball ICE microphone.

To set the basic ambience, i recorded my washing machine and reduced the frequency and tweaked various parts to get an interesting, low tone.

I compiled a mishmash of different pieces of spoken audio from various old projects of mine, songs or pieces of music and cut them all very short. The effect was like fliking through all channels on a television really fast. There are some discernable words in there, which could be memories, feelings or imaginings. These words and changes in tone of the speakers prompt emotional responses in the listener and will hopefully get them to engage with the piece more.

I added some filters to the vocals they had a little musicbox-like note with each voice. This combined with the droning, rhythmic background ambience makes the piece a little more musical.

There are some additional sounds like a small bell, a mosquito and running water – all which add to the distorted dreamscape we travel through.

 

Sound Design…

So, it’s been a while, but here’s what’s planned for the next few weeks –

We have a Sound Design brief where we have to create an audio track to accompany a 30 second animated film.

The film in question I’ll be creating an audio track for is:

“Night Music” – Stan Brakhage

I haven’t’ heard the original soundtrack to go with it, instead the audio will be my own interpretation of what I think would fit well to the animation.

I picked the film primarily because I liked it’s colours and it’s abstract quality. It’s obscurity opens up a lot more room for subjective, personal interpretations and this includes sound. As there are no recognisable objects or characters that require a more specific sound, I can be far more creative with creating a “synaesthesic” soundtrack, using sound to represent the sensation and emotion evoked in the film.

Films which have inspired me in the past include Norman McLaren’s works:

Blinkety Blank

Boogie Doodle

I’ll be recording my own sounds and music, as well as perhaps employing pre-made sound effects from the internet and seeing how I can manipulate all these.

Be sure to check in for more updates soon!