Fall Week 5 – Project
Sep 27th, 2012 by vergaraz
Week 5 Peak Soundscape Project 2 – 5 minutes
This project is meant for you to focus and tune in to your auditory senses. Close your eyes and listen to room tones in different environments and notice the layers of sounds present. The goal of this project is to develop a soundscape. What a soundscape is to your ears is what a landscape is to your eyes. Focus on transitional effects, layering sounds, rhythm, perspective, and ambience that invokes mood or visual senses.
Reserve a Field Recorder and various microphones from Media Loan.
Theme: Week 1 of College.
Example questions: What kind of experiences have you had during the first week of school? What has the first week of school been like for you? What is it like living in the dorms? Upsides? Downsides? If you only have access to kids then interview them about their different experiences.
Record field sounds: experiment recording these sounds in mono & stereo.
Outdoor sound effects: foot steps, fire, air circulation, music show (inside and outside) overhead plane, leaves rustling. Distant and close-up micing.
Indoor controlled sound effects: eating, cooking, kitchen, laundry, shower, water, talking, typing, drinking wine, washing dishes. Close micing.
Interviews. Think of a question and ask several people for different perspectives. What is your theme and what sounds can you layer with the dialogue to enhance the theme and make it more realistic?
Use Peak editing tools for file management, effects, and clean up. Use Audacity arrange your soundbites.
Use Plug-ins for signal processing: EQ, normalize, reverb, reverse, vocoder, speed….
Project is due at the beginning of class week 5. Test your work before bringing it to class. Bring your wav file of your mix on a thumb drive and also put it on our Orca share: Orca > Programs > audio-recording > your cubbie
You will playback your work in front of class and the class will critique it afterwards. After critique we will ask you questions on how it was made, what sounds you used, and what effects you applied. Take notes on this project and be prepared.
Make notes of your project and take pictures of microphone setups etc. for your online portfolio.
Final mix should include bits of dialogue, effects, and ambience that support your theme. This does not have to be a linear digital storytelling project but it can be if you want.