Summary

 

Before I go into detail about how I achieved my finished video, I would just like to say how much I enjoyed the project from start to finish.

This project really gave me an appreciation and love for foley art as it highlighted the importance and marriage of sound and music. I had done a little foley for the earlier tasks in this module, but I really feel that I’ve come to understand foley art on a new level thanks to this project. It also gave me the opportunity to with someone on the other side of the planet, thinking and working as a small team.
Although sometimes it was quite difficult to sync up our times and talk regularly, when we did manage to, it was fun and exciting. I enjoyed talking about ideas for music and sound and what we should do to make our project as good as it could be.

Now that I have a completed version of silent, I would like to explain my overall process which lead me to the finished product.
Once Manny and I had chosen Silent to be the video we worked on for the project, I thought that I should do some research to help me shape the sound effects.
My first thoughts were to look at cartoons and animations to see what role the sound effects played as well as what kind of sounds were used. For example, were they realistic or were they stylized?  In the end, Manny and I agreed on a blend of both. You can click HERE to see my blog entries on this matter.

After I had a good idea of what to create and why, I wanted to get in the studio and start recoding from an early stage in development. I felt this was important, as the first time I really studied Silent, I realized how much I would need to record if I wanted to make this sound good and feel right. My approach in the studio was to break each session down into chunks. I gradually built each layer of sound, so I could always watch the clip from start to finish. For me, having at least one thing for each scene helped give a rough idea of what the clip, as a whole, would sound like.

My first recording session was purely to record all the footsteps for the clip. To maximize time, and to do it as professionally as possible, I had two other class mates engineer the session as I recorded the foley. This provided me with an outside opinion straight away that helped me hone in on what would sound the best. I would recommend looking at my blog post regarding this day, as it demonstrates the overall method that I put into practice for the whole project, not only for what I did in the studio, but my approach to editing and organization. Click HERE to give it a read.

In the end, I only had about 6 sessions in the studio. I got a lot of great sounds for silent recorded, but I knew that not all of the scenes would be achievable through foley alone. I expected to create effects combining and manipulating sounds that I had specifically recorded for a scene. To make sure I had a lot to choose from though, I spent one session recording a wide mix of various sounds to help build a sound bank. You can read about that day in the studio HERE.
I found it quite fun to create a sound from scraps of random recordings, which by themselves sound like nothing. Two in particular stand out from my time editing, both of which demonstrate some creativity and research.
Click HERE for my Projector post. And for HERE for my post including how I made Thunder.

All of these sounds would have been slightly meaningless had I not been able to discuss and develop them with Manny. We tried to keep in contact as regularly as we could to help the process and encourage an attitude of professionalism. We were both responsible for ideas when it came to the music and the sound effects so by the end, it felt like a collaboration. There were some aspects to the music that I didn’t agree with, unfortunately. Manny also ran out of time to finish the music to how he originally imagined it, and the end result suffered because of that. I go into a bit of detail regarding one of my blog entries. Click HERE to read.

In the end, I feel satisfied and happy with the sounds that I contributed to the project. Although there are areas in which the overall video could have been better, the experience was great and I genuinely enjoyed working on it. I think I must have had over 108 separate tracks in my Cubase project by the finished cut of Silent, all packed into neat little folders that I had made to stop me from getting a headache.
I included a version of the finished video without any music so that you can pick out and define all of the sounds that I have worked on. which you can find HERE.
Hearing it, then listening to the final cut with music, is also a great comparison and shows how both work together to fulfill a common goal.
You can also watch the final cut of the video which I included in my final blog post HERE.

Here is a short video recaping my experience of this project:

Thank you for checking out my page and hearing my thoughts and progress regarding the project.
If you have any questions regarding silent or my process. Head over to the Contact page