【Sonic Design】Task 4 - Silent Movie
NAME: LEE XIN YI, CINDY | STUDENT ID: 0373299 | PROGRAMME: BACHELOR'S OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
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Task Requirements
Final Project - For the final project, students are required to design and produce original game audio for a given gameplay video. This project focuses on applying sound design principles learned throughout the semester, including sound recording, editing, layering, spatial design and integration into interactive media.
My Chosen Movie: Battleblock Theatre
The approach used for this project was designing sounds that are of high priority for the silent movie then sync sounds that take up most of the silent movie.
Audio Assets List
Firstly, list out all of the visible sound components essential for the game.
Audio Storyboard
Next, an audio storyboard is made to visualize which sound components are highly recurring and thus prioritize on designing the sound components that are substantial and needed more effort in sound design throughout the whole silent movie.
📍 Sounds that are prioritized in production:
- Collect Diamond
- Rainbow Checkpoint
- Character Movement
- Attack Enemy
- Explosion
I targeted the diamond and checkpoint sounds first as they are supernatural sounds that can only be obtained from adding effects to a natural sound source where lots of experimenting are required to get the ideal relative sound. Next, I chose to do character movement as it is a major part for the silent movie where there's a lot of syncing to do. Therefore, I went back and forth from the sound experimenting sesx. file with the silent movie sesx. file. Both silent movie file and sound experimenting file helped me track down the sounds that I need to design, refine or to be synced with the video while keeping backups of the processed audios in case I need to change the processed audios.
Our Recording Session
This is the recording session we had on 9 Dec, it was a new and fun experience as it felt like recording as how professionals do it. Although I didn't bring a lot of stuff to record, I tried to use everything we had to record as more variation sounds as possible. Special thanks to my friends as I won't be able to record the sounds on my own.
Sound Experimenting Adobe Audition File:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tjmHhq44ugQK0dUaOwCRMICmGFvM5hNq/view?usp=drive_linkThis is the file that I used to design the sound components for the silent movie. It is messy as there are some effects tunes are reused to make other sounds. Therefore when I making a specific sound, I would usually solo the tracks that are related to the specific sound component then if I want only a specific sound track to be heard at the time, I would mute the other solo tracks. After finish designing, I would disable the solo from the master mix instead of disabling one by one.
Final Movie
Final Silent Movie
This is final product where the processed audios were synced with the movie in Adobe Audition.
Watch on YouTubeAudio Journal
The best 5 of the processed audios were documented under this audio journal. The chosen 5 were the ones I personally think that is relevant to the silent movie and can represent the visuals best.
Reflection
This project was a really fun experience as I had a chance to record high fidelity sounds in real studio compared to only capable of recording with handphone mics. This project gave me the chance to try out how different sounds can be mashed up into a unique game UI sound. Even though it was hard to get the actual ideal sound in mind, some experimental sounds really came off amazing and mind blowing.
Future improvement would be on collect yarn sound and the water ambience, these 2 sounds turned out to be either less relevant or less soothing to the ears.
The initial idea for the collect yarn sound was inspired by thread spinning sound, thread pulling sound. However, it became something that sounds less alike to that idea. Imagine that there's a power up zip that summons multiple ninjas jumping out swiftly from that slit opened by the zip, and after that, the player is rewarded with something. What I just described is exactly what it sounds like now:
Hence, the collect yarn sound is less relatable to what is seen on the screen.
Next, the initial idea for water ambience was to sound like the splashing of sea waves by the seaside. Owing to recording limitations, I can only use water in the water bottle to record water related sounds, to ensure it doesn't spill and break the facilities in the studio room. The final sound consists of the water tumbler metal sound that is followed by a little water reverb which couldn't be removed with effects.
All in all, I have learnt a lot from this module, from recording to designing sounds and even had to edit videos, this all had been a wonderful experience although it was tough due to the deadlines.
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