Storytelling Through Sound Design
This was created for my Professional Audio Techniques For Studio Module whereby we were tasked to create sound effects for a creature based on a given description followed by creating a soundscape and telling a story based on a given storyline.
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Creature Sound Effect Creation
We were given a list of creatures and a description of what they look like. For me, I chose the creature "Shadowsun". According to the brief, the creature is a human sized alien of unknown origin. It is organic and has metal/ceramic armour.
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I had to make 4 sounds for this creature: A normal creature call, a war cry, a normal movement and a fast movement sound.
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As such, here are the 4 sounds:
Normal Creature Call:
I went onto the Pro Sound Effects website and found a soil spraying sound effect. Then, I applied digital signal processing to it thus resulting in the sound effect above.
Creature War Cry Call:
I didn't want to change the call sound too much and instead wanted to layer it with something more to make it a war cry. Hence I went onto the Pro Sound Effects website and found a man screaming sound effect and applied digital signal processing to it and lined it up with the normal creature call to make this war cry call above.
Normal Movement:
For this sound I wanted it to sound metallic due to the creature's armour hence I went into the Pro Sound Effects library and found a sound of footsteps on metal and another regular footsteps on concrete sound effect. I applied digital signal processing and lined them up in Pro Tools to make this sound.
Fast Movement:
Similar to the creature war cry call, I planned to layer the normal movement with another sound to make it sound like it is moving fast. Since it has a metal/ceramic armour, I wanted to bring out the ceramic part of it by adding a ceramic sound effect to give the impression of the armour shaking when the creature is running/moving fast.
Storytelling Through Sound
We were then given 4 different scenarios to choose from and the one I chose lined up nicely with the sound effects created above as the sound effect was meant to take place in an abandoned building thus the slight reverb heard.
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The scenario description given:
Time unknown - Abandoned building – subject is exploring – subject hears strange thumping – eerie moaning – huge wall of glass breaks In front of subject - conclusion (left to audio editor)
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For this scenario, I expanded it into a more detailed description such that I would be able to tell a clearer story.
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This is my expanded description:
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Subject is walking through an abandoned building alone, laser gun in hand. The only sounds heard are the distant ruffling of trees, their own footsteps on the cold concrete ground reverberating through the entire place, some water dipping sounds nearby and their own heartbeat.
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They open a metal vault door into another section of the building leading into a strange hallway with a glass wall at the end. They start walking with the intention to check out the glass wall and suddenly a strange thumping sound is heard followed by some eerie moaning, which causes the subject to stop in their tracks, their heartbeat slowly getting louder and faster.
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Suddenly a huge wall of glass breaks and a creature stands in front of them, only a few feet away. The subject activates their gun and starts shooting at the creature’s metallic/ceramic body shield, which lets out a cry, and starts to run towards the subject. The subject is scared and runs out from the door and shuts it, hearing the muffled sounds of a creature call and the pounding of the door. Their heart rate slowly decreases.
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Then, I highlighted all the sound effects that were needed from this description and went onto the Pro Sound Effects library to gather all the required sounds.
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Once again, this is what my Pro Tools session looks like:
My Edit Window
My Mix Window