You may be looking at this title and thinking to yourself, what the heck is this girl on about. Well let me clear things up for you. I am currently 4 months into my Postgraduate course and i’ve already completed 2 sound design assignments.
As a composer, these 2 assignments were a real shock to my system, for once I not only had to create the music but the sound effects too.
Chirality was my first sound design assignment for my Postgraduate course, I was faced with the challenge of designing every little bit of sound that I thought would occur alongside the footage. For example, the story behind the Chirality video is a small little creature exploring a cave, he so happens to see a crystal sticking out of a ‘rock’, he pulls the crystal out (like an absolute thief) and awakes a beast who is actually the ‘rock’ (no, not the WWE superstar). A chase scene occurs and eventually the small creature falls into a pit of lava along with the crystal he stole, ( sounds like LOTR to me). So all of those events occuring in that video, I had to design the sound for.
In order to prepare myself for this assignment, I had to dive into the world of sound design, this involved me reading books, such as the Sound Effects Bible (2008) by Ric Viers and taking down notes of everything my lecturer said. An important key word my lecturer uses is “diegetic” and “non-diegetic”. In order to properly study this terminology, I researched an Ebook of concepts written from other University professionals called ‘Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments’ by Mark Grimshaw (2011) and came across a segiment on page 60, chapter 4, about Diegetic Music written by Axel Berndt from Otto-Von-Guericke University.
Berndt describes that “Music which is performed within the scene is called diegetic” (Berndt 2011 p.g. 60 )
Having read into Berndt’s clear definition of “Diegetic” I was aware that the sound design I was creating was going to be “Diegetic” and the music was going to be “non diegetic”
The technological side behind the creation of Chirality stems from the equipment I used which was an AKG C480B microphone to capture the foley I created and incase you’re wondering what foley is, feel free to access my previous blog post where I have inserted a few videos on foley.
Another great source that describes Foley is a thesis on ‘Foley Music :An Exploration of the Relationships between Sound Design and ‘Music’ in Film‘ by Diale Daniel Mabitsela (2016), Mabitsela talks about the film ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007) which funnily enough I have an assignment based on that film where I must compose music for a scene from that film. Anyway, I digress, Mabitsela says that in the film there is a scene where the character is faced with dead bodies, drugs and a suitcase full of money, Mabitsela describes how “The light and hollow whistle conveys a sense of fear and anxiety. The wind sound is now the manifestation of a haunting atmosphere that is visceral.” (Mabitsela 2016 p.g 9) this reflects how powerful Foley can be.
Mabitsela then continues to say : “This example and many others like it in film soundtracks provide for us a ‘sound’ basis for a discussion and exploration of the capacity for foley sound-sounds that are designed for and deployed within films primarily for the purpose of representing the natural sound environment of the given filmic context” (Mabitsela 2016 p.g.9) I dont know about you but I think that’s a great way to explain what Foley is and why we need it.
For my second Sound Design assignment, my class and I were lucky enough to be lectured by an Industry professional, Josh Smith. He currently works for a company called ‘Splash Damage’ which is a game developing company. One of its main ‘DAW’s (short for a digital audio workstation, which means a software that a user can create music on) is ‘Reaper’. Within 3 months of me starting my Master’s Degree, I had already learnt so many new things and the Reaper software is one of them. Although I was anxious about using a new software besides ‘Logic Pro X’, I eventually got my head around the software and got the work done quickly.
For this assignment Josh wanted us to use Reaper to add sound effects into the ‘Dirty Bomb’ (2015) trailer, not only did he want us to add the effects, he wanted us to manipulate the sounds to create a more realistic overall sound.
The ‘Chirality’ (2015) and ‘Dirty Bomb’ (2015) assignments have taught me so much about sound and it has shown me a differerent path that I could go down in the music industry.
Sources: MARK GRIMSHAW.ed,AXEL BERNDT . ,Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments’,(2011) {accessed ONLINE} University of Bolton UK, link to eBook can be accessible by : https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sWPeR9nMVCcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=sound+design+university&ots=rHOi56Gtl0&sig=SF1AiDbUh5sKq67KMPyA3QfirvY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sound%20design%20university&f=false (accessed on 3rd December 2019)
DIALE DANIEL MABITSELA, Foley Music :An Exploration of the Relationships between Sound Design and ‘Music’ in Film, (2016) {accessed online} University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, link to thesis: http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/22001/Diale%20Mabitsela-MMus%20thesis-Foley%20Music-Thesis%20%28Electronic%20Submission%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (accessed on 3rd December 2019)
Film and Game Music by Amber Durant 