I have been set a new assignment recently that is a little out of my comfort zone but also something that I don't find particularly interesting. I love sound design and like creating foley and editing sound that way but I really don't enjoy editing big sessions of audio files for a video or animation. I find it harder to be given assets that to actually create them myself. I like having that creative freedom to create what I want and have a vision in mind. The audio files I have been given for this project were all over the place. They were all there the dialogue, some FX and all the score tracks. Nothing is level there is a lot of noise in the dialogue and there is about 20 minutes worth of score music to sift thought for a 2 minute movie trailer. There is some foley sounds missing in the clip so I figured that a good place to start would be to create these or find some sounds I could use as place holders at least. I created a list of the main things that needed to be created in the foley studio for the most part of the clip. The first recording session was just to get out most of the little clinks and clanks in the video that would create the realness of the video. There were a range of things such as metal sounds and clothing sounds that were important. There were some foot step files included in the FX given to us however we decided that we would make some of our own also. Here is a rough list of the foley sounds we needed to created.
Foley:
Metal pole into dirt/gravel
Metal pole into ice
Metal onto the ground
Kneeling on ground
Metal scraping onto ice/snow
Icy clothing sounds
Walking on snow
Dragging metal pole on snow
Clothe movement whilst walking
Water fishing sound
Metal clanks from fishing apparatus
Metal door open
Picking up of metal objects
Metal object placed into snow
Winding gears/rotor motor
Beep
Lighter being struck
Gas cooktop igniting
Food cooking/boiling
Knife stirring food in metal pot
Map being opened
Rope dropped
Metal pole into ice
Gas bottle into pile
Zip
Belt buckle being closed
Icepick into ice
Sled being dragged up ice
Pulling rope
Snapping rope
Water drops in cave
Falling through ice
FX:
Wind under score
Loud gushes of wind
Bear roar
Flare
Helicopter sounds
I put a few things in a separate list of FX as I think these will be harder to make than just regular clanks and clothing sounds. They will need some more processing and some more research into how to make them.
As for the other sounds I volunteered to go into the foley live room as do my best at making some of the sounds. The metal clanks we needed were hard to get in time but I have just lined them up in my session after wards. Some of the sounds were harder to make thank I thought such as the belt buckle being clipped. The sound was just not what we wanted. I think we will need to re do this sound in the next foley session for this project. I pretty much just worked through the list while my group were guiding me as to what sound was next and how we all think we should best make it. We decided that even if some of the sounds weren't right it would be a good challenge for use each individually to fix.
Now I have implemented the sounds from this foley session in to my current session I am working in there is a lot more depth to this thing. I have began building the ambience and score but I feel like I might change it once the foley is all mixed. Its actually coming together. After merging the sessions the next thing I did was add in the dialogue. There was some clips and pops in the male voice especially. It was also rather out of time to the video. First I matched audio up. I did this by simply chopping the seperate words and matching the to the video. This too me a long time and I feel like is something I had not done before. I did some research into how to fix this but found that the most accurate way to to manually line the words up with the time code on the video.
This was purely just to match the audio to the video. The levels were all over the place so i have adjusted these a little using clip gain.
I thought that considering I am pretty scared by this whole huge session and everything being out of place and its all a bit of a mess I decided I would look into fixing up this dialogue first. I know I have access to this cool thing called RX but I have never really used it much only for a podcast I made a few months ago. I found it pretty cool and intriguing and i can't believe that technology like this is a thing! So I checked out this video of a guy fixing up some ADR using RX. I liked his work flow and I think I might try it. He recommends adjusting the levels of the overall track before using compression to get the best result.
I also need to create an environment for on of the lines especially. I have a very dry delivery of a line I need to make sound like he is outside standing under a helicopter. This video is very simply exampled and I thought it would be a goof place to start for the dialogue editing. I plan on automating the EQ, Reverb and panning to make the dialogue have some distance and discrepancy between the different environments.
I couldn't find any specific videos for reference as to how I am going to make the voice sound like it is being blow by the helicopter blades but I have some ideas such as using modulation. I also came across this cool video which is a ramping technique in a way. The people in the video want the voice to sound like it is in a helmet so they play it out a speaker and re record it with another microphone actually in a bike helmet.
I was thinking I could try something similar like this but play it out my phone speaker even in the wind of in front of a fan and re record it with a zoom recorder. This is juts something thought could be cool to give the ADR some life I'm not sure if I will actually do it yet.
I found this really random but cool video of an old Disney foley artist making a bear sound using an old lamp chimney. I think it would be cool to maybe add this sound with some other samples of animal sounds and scrapes.
I found this was an interesting aspect of creating the bear sound. In our session we used a combination of human growl sounds as well as some textures such as a chair scraping on the ground. I have started creating this sound by slowing down the chain sound and pitch shifting the human sound in audio suite in protools. I will give a. detailed update on how I made this sound when it is completed.
So this wraps up a few of the things I have been working on a researching this week. I have a mother foley session tonight with my group and will implement the sounds very soon. I will have an updated draft by the end of this week which is exciting!
REFERENCES:
Disney sound effect - Bear. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdW1lGqZAv4
HOW CREATE DISTANCE WITH SOUND. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFX8QTcT6U8
Norman: Featurette / Giving Life to ADR. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-tFp1UN37M&t=305s
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