PLANNING
PRODUCTION
&
Part 1
Part 2
The set up centred around the mic and a big bucket filled with water. The majority of our water sound effects were created here. We placed the mic strategically away from the water to avoid splashing on it and when necessary, held something in front for protection. We also found a large plastic protective sheet that would work nicely as a tarp to catch all the water and contain our mess. It was a lot of experimentation of sloshing around wet cloths and such. I tested out different containers to see how they held air bubbles and tipped them underwater to release them This worked especially well with a wide brim mug which captured large amounts of air. I pushed it down to the bottom of the bucket upsidedown and then gently tipped the mug so only a few bubbles would be released at a time. Recording that we noticed you could hear a lot of the popping sound which is unrealistic as deep underwater you wouldn't be able to hear the bubble burst at the surface. To eimate this, I placed the damp dishcloth onto of the waters surface to muffle the bubble pops.
For recording the Underwater Perspective rain, I cut an old empty juice bottle and poked holes in the cap trying to Imitate a watering can- a small amount of a human-created rain pattern.
The rain on umbrella sound, however, used the same technique but we cut less off the plastic end away so we could use it to hold more water. The reason why we had to cut away the end in the first place was so that there was air pressure coming from the top to push the water out the holes without squeezing. This meant I could hold it as high as possible and just let gravity do its thing. An umbrella's material was hard to stretch enough to pour water on it. The umbrella itself when put up how you would normally use it was kind of broken so that just wasn't working. Instead, we suggested other materials and decided on the fake leather surface that was on the chairs. This material is pulled tight over the cushion and frame of the chair so water bounces a lot like it would on am umbrella surface. I found out while I was holding the 'makeshift watering can' that if I moved it towards the side of the chair, the water would puddle up on top of the surface less and instead drip down onto the plastic sheet below, creating these occasional blips.
Unfortunately, both my project collaborator and I completely forgot to take any photos of the second set up for recording the rain sounds but I can describe it. We again had set up in the same area, placing the mic next to a grill as in my research I had found out that a common way of creating the sound effect for pouring rain is actually the sound of bacon sizzling.
We did a few takes, protecting the mic by keeping it far enough away to avoid spitting fat and smoke.
As an interesting comparison when it was raining heavily outside college, we recorded the real rain to just see what it sounded like against our fake rain from bacon.
The mic set up was assisted by our tutor who suggested multiple mics for a better quality recording. During the session, I tried extremely hard not to breathe heavily or else the mics would pick it up. I also took off my bracelet to stop any tip tapping from the charms when they hit the keys. The yellow tape over the padlock and latch in the right hand side of the picture is where I discovered the source of an annoying rattling sound coming through in the recordings. We taped down the metal to stop it vibrating against the wood.
NOTE: this photo was taken before the microphone was switched to a cardioid condenser microphone.
I wrote down all the key events of most of the whole clip. When composing we were coming up with all these parts but failed to put them in the order they needed. Its a very long clip and we wanted to shorten it and so writing down all the key events made it easy and ten we chose appropriate events we wanted included and a natural seeming ending. This helped us move forward to actually composing (more on that on my Research Page) and recording the parts.
When revisiting the shape of water Logic file we had made, I decided to add some smaller details. I created a list of some extra things we could add which included:
extra noise for when the fish man swims past the camera, some light footsteps for the woman's heels and some kind of affectionate creature noise/noises. As a pair we worked on creating and sourcing these sounds from BBC library. I had the idea to play around with pitch as it was a new FL studio software capability discovery. The unedited original files [Left] consist of sounds of a camel gurgling and a bassier splash compared to the one we had already had. Minimal editing was done to the splash but the camel sounds got pitch shifted higher to make it sound more loving and slowed down slightly then cut up into 4 sections, isolating the best parts of the noise.
After this, in college, I lined up these extra details while my project partner was busy doing something for his band. I am extremely proud of the work I've done considering my lesser knowledge of DAWs.
I had to cut and slice he footsep recording based on hearing instead of audio spikes as there were none visible. I then lined them up with the scene, stitching them together and even included the small detail of an extra sound when the woman's heel landed slowly before the rest of her foot. I decided to cut out the difficult half-jog in the middle because it was too difficult to track every step and there were other, louder noises taking priority so I just completely discarded that and used the fade tool to make the transitions ,before and after, much more smooth. I also lined up the underwater swimming noise and layered both splash sounds, blending them together to sound more full.
After this was all finished, some more complicated technical adjustments to the piano tone, trying to bring it more warmth and upgraded the details of the thunder claps, creature noise and swimming sound with panning. This is an automated effect and the result is the sound moving in a custom path between each side (left/right), front and back. This small detail really has made our foley come alive.
