Senior Project Documentation March 17–28, 2024
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.
Link to Documentation Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PnbGtQ92abVPkVEzohADz4Az0LjCe0hZ/view?usp=sharing
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/
Link to footstep sound effect folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DTsmMXYVtzM87ogwD-ZlGYAb2OCsYdP9?usp=sharing
Link to soundscape demo: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zL4vX9jVAUGBSwb2Xq8vxYl2SSoWcJnU?usp=sharing