Think Cisco Ramon meets R2D2

If you've seen my Youtube video for November you'll know that one of my goals for this year is make my work as accessible as possible. Whilst audio-description won't really work for this piece it doesn't mean that I have to make it boring for those who can't see the visuals. When I first came up with this idea I imagined the soundscape to just go hand in hand with the piece, especially when thinking of it as a gallery installation rather than a theatre piece.

I found this article with Ben Burtt  which I read to get some inspiration and I'm a bit of a Star Wars nerd so this is just really cool to me. I also watched some Youtube documentaries surrounding him, one of which can be found below.

I really do like working with sound and I finally got my hands on the book 'Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema' a book I've been trying to get out of the library since we started our sound project it was just never available! So I ordered it from Rochester instead. Anyway this book basically covers all bases including music in my original post for this project I said the soundscape will be a mixture of 'water sounds' and '8-bit Orchestrations' and that hasn't really changed. I have however realised how hard that would be in the time frame that I have so I'm scaling it down a little bit.

But before starting the project in After Effects I booked out a Zoom and made a list of all the sounds I could possibly need - however there weren't many. I actually recored the majority of them whilst cleaning the bathroom (I know, classy right?) I was experimenting with how water can sound in different situations, I thought I may as well do something practical at the same time.

After that I sat down at my desk and just started playing around with things since I knew what sounds I wanted to make I just wasn't sure how to make them. I wanted 'submarine tracker' sounds - rather specific I know. I started flicking my steel ruler against the table and really liked the reverb you got and how you could change it by adjusting it's position, so I recored that. The way my highlighter rocked on the table when I was simply moving it out the way sounded interesting, so I recorded that. I was  even just messing around with my piano when I realised that when I play the keys and it's not switched on it sounds like something making contact with the ground, just under water and muffled, so I recorded that too.

The only thing I have left to record is the sound of a keyboard typing, I'm hoping to use the typing as the 'keynote' (Which apparently is the sound design equivalent to a tonal centre). I'm thinking that if I have a general typing noise in the background I could layer different versions of the sound, each layer relating to something different. 1) General typing, diegetic in the fact the act will be typing on a keyboard during the performance 2) To show the beat 3) Possibly a pitched shift version of the beat to represent Ariels personality within the situation. I'm still deciding on the beat of the sound piece to go with the text, Ariels monologues are in iambic pentameter and my first instinct was to have the sound in 4/4 to match but then I started thinking that having it in a waltz would be more interesting to listen to juxtaposing the voice over since the voice over is actually quite light and care-free in comparison to the actual subject matter.

On Wednesday I also met with my actress to record the voice over in G21, we recorded a few versions of the voice over some going all the way through, then individual lines with specific direction. Over the next few days I will be putting together an edit of the voice over so I can finalise the timing of the piece and get a better idea of what parts of the film needs to be shortened/made longer etc. I'm also still reading loads of articles on the sound design side of things before I go into protools to have a go at making the soundscape itself.