Thursday 17th May 2012 – How to Make a Robotic Dinosaur – Jay Harris – Sound Designer

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jay

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an old advert that Geoffrey Lebreton had put up asking for help creating sound design and music for his animated short. The advert was old so he had found the help he was looking for, but as I really liked the trailer I asked him if he wouldn’t mind me making my own version of the trailer. He consented to this and here it is!

The trailer only really presented one problem and that is it’s fast-moving nature. This adds to the excitement and mystery of the animation, which is vital for a trailer but meant it could be difficult to follow. To ease this, I wanted to emphasise continuity and detail. Continuity was actually handed to me due to the presence of the ‘runner’s-eye-view’ sections that punctuate the piece. The idea behind adding detail to very short movements was that such detail would make the viewer catch these occurrences as they should serve to prick up the viewer’s ears. I had to be careful though as too much would make the whole thing messy.

With these ideas in my mind, I started work on my favourite part, and that was creating the noises that a gigantic mechanical dinosaur may make!

I started off with the roar at the end of the clip. I could have created my own dinosaur sound, and probably would have done it by combining the noises of various animals (I hear elephant and lion roars are popular) but I heard a perfect ready-made dinosaur sound so I used that instead! The interesting part here would be making it sound mechanical. I did this by trawling through my own recordings and included a clattering fairground ride, the noise of a very old and powerful motorcycle having it’s engine revved and another mechanical-sounding noise (I cant remember where this came from though!).

Next came the sound of the dinosaur running. This was achieved by combining recordings I had made of my electric car windows going up and down and also of the car door slamming shut. These were shifted down in pitch to make them sound lower and therefore more massive. These sounds still weren’t cutting it though as they still sounded far too small. To combat this, I found a synth recording that sounded like giant footsteps and overlaid it. This had a lot of bass in it and was therefore perfect for conveying immense size. On a technical note, I passed all of the sounds through the same compressor and reverb unit to ‘glue’ them together and make them seem as one. Finally, I fed the roar through a further compressor far too loud to make it distort and give a sense of the sound being painfully loud.

Next were the shuffles and movements of the other characters, which were recorded in real-time as a foley artist might. A few takes were made and combined to get things just right. Then, I recorded the gasps and vocalisations of the characters. These were made using my own voice and then processed and shifted in pitch to sound more alien, as if the characters would have made the sounds themselves.

Of course, some kind of background soundscape was also needed to place all of the characters in a realistic atmosphere. This was achieved by using three recordings of various deserts found online. These were trimmed to take out any parts I felt unsuitable.

After getting all of the volume levels just right, I played and recorded the instrument sounds to add atmosphere, got the levels right and then subjected the whole mix to the same reverb and compression to make it sound like that the recordings are all of the same space, and to also ‘glue’ them together more as a single experience.

Well, there’s only so much you can say about a 16 second short so please do have a watch! See if you can spot the noises that I added!

Feel free to peruse my website to find examples of other projects which I have been involved in as Sound Designer. You will also find other works of sound including orchestral and band composing as well as my soundscape work. Soundscape can be applied to film as well as your experiential marketing campaign and sensory branding to enhance your project’s success.

Contact me if you would like me to work on your film or discuss your entire audio package.

If my work in sound design for film, composing or the use of soundscape in events interests you join my mailing list to find out more.

Thursday 26th January 2012 – The Pier

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Jay

Fast Tube by Casper

Here is a short animation by Jason Bennett for which I have recently finished an alternative sound design for. ‘The Pier’ is a beautifully creative and dark animation that speaks further than it’s basic plot. The characters are outlandish and strange but also emit a certain familiarity. The setting evokes a sense of civilisation but also a sense of the power and domination of nature over this. Throughout these aspects, an attention to detail and aesthetic creates a backdrop of beauty which the message and the story, in all it’s discomfort, rests against.

From the film, you can see that desolation is common through-out: the overall setting is bleak; the grass is caught up in an uncomfortable breeze; and the pier itself is in a state of disrepair. I wanted to reflect this with background noise and sparse use of music; the main musical (Cello) theme, used at the beginning and end, being a reflection of this desolation.

The main character is humanoid, bird-like and exotic whilst the monster character is stealthy, exotic and (initially) seen as closer to nature due to its juxtaposition with the main character. This meant that the main character needed a bird-like voice and was to be represented by an exotic instrument (Esraj, an Indian string instrument) . For the monster I chose delicate sounds to represent it and therefore the delicate sound of the recorder-like Shakuhachi from Japan as it’s musical theme (also, the playing techniques used give an air of the sinister). However, it is fair to say that these instruments are only exotic to the non-Asian but due to the obvious parallels between our main character and Man I didn’t let this worry me. To be truly outlandish and exotic to all I could have warped the sounds and also maybe used some kind of micro-tonal scale.

Because I saw both characters as being a part of nature, caught up in it’s endless cycle, I decided to bring them both together at the end by bringing their musical themes together; and to show that they are both part of the desolation that nature has created, these themes are both used in conjunction with the Cello theme at the pinnacle of the film. You may think that my use of the word ‘desolate’ in relation to nature is not fitting but nature creates desolation as well as beauty and the former is prevalent through-out the film (anybody that thinks only Man creates desolation should consider if Man is a part of nature or if there is an opposite pole of which Man is created).

To make the atmosphere of the film as realistic as possible, I added audio detail to compliment the visual detail and used sounds that reflected what was going on rather than using them to bring attention to the narrative. The exception here is the noise coming form inside the main character’s belly: this had to be disturbing and ‘in your face’ to get the main point of the film across, not just to be gross! The main chracter’s voice also gave an opportunity to try to induce this realism. For this, I didn’t use a bird sound as I wanted to tie the creature in with human emotion. Instead, I recorded myself making straining noises (insert joke here) and manipulated them with filters to get the desired effect. This meant that the emotion behind the noises remained intact even though the character of the sound had changed.

Below, I have included a link to a scanned copy of my original (rather messy) notes that I made prior to starting the project, set out as the animation’s timeline. Have a look to get a more detailed idea of my thoughts regarding the interplay between the different aspects and themes within the film (any non-highlighted sections beyond the first two boxes are yellow – this doesn’t scan well!). Please do feel free to comment on this post to tell me what you think of my version and you can also click here to see/hear the original with wonderfully atmospheric music made by James Slater.

The Pier – Notes

Thursday 8th December 2011 – Music for Berlin Montage

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Jay

Here is a montage containing various photographs of Berlin taken by a friend who asked if I would like to make some music for it.

I wanted to use a mixture of synth as well as orchestral sounds to fit the various moods throughout the video. This is because working with this combination presents a slightly different challenge: orchestral instruments on their own pretty much balance and mix themselves really as the orchestra is a well-designed instrument in it’s own right and is a well-trodden path. In an orchestra, each instrument has it’s own particular function, frequency range and timbre meaning each has it’s own space to sit in (although there is overlap if you need it). This ‘personal space’ ensures each instrument get’s it’s voice heard with clarity and/or effect because building up similar frequency ranges and incompatible timbres can lead to a confused and ‘muddy’ (unlcear) sound. Synth sounds don’t really come with this control as such because any synthesizer can create such a huge range of sounds on their own and therefore output any range of sound frequencies; it is up to the musician to make the instrument focused and efficient in it’s intended area by adjusting it’s controls.

As the combination of orchestral and synth sounds can sound pretty cheesy, I made a conscious effort to stop that from happening by thinking about the sounds that I needed to use for effect. The synth sounds weren’t replacing orchestral sounds as such (which would be a sensible choice as they could just slot in this well-honed instrument), but had an atmosphere to convey. Orchestral instruments could have done these jobs (although slightly differently) but the overall effect is a precise mood that I wanted to convey.

Well, there are the reasons for my intended path on this one! Please have a watch/listen below and let me know what you think. If you would like me to do something similar for you, or you know somebody that would, please do get in touch.

Displayed with kind permission from Peter Flower.

Fast Tube by Casper

Thursday 26h May 2011 – My very own orchestra

Posted on May 24, 2011 by transientmusic

As mentioned last week, here are the first couple of pieces of music that I have written with my new software and hardware. As you may know, I recently bought the East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra sample library as well as a Roland GR-55 guitar synth. There are no synthesised sounds in the following pieces but one happy side-effect of owning a GR-55 means that I can also play synths and samplers located on my Apple Mac Pro, meaning all of the following was played on my guitar! As midi guitar has been such an undeveloped and expensive pursuit, being able to do this is quite a revelation! Please do feel free to leave a comment telling me what you think… (before you mention it though, I do realise I need to tweak the realism a bit more but please do write any tips you may have for me in the comments !).

Old and new compositions.