Sound project

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A girl comes home from school, grabs a snack and fills her water in the kitchen, falls while walking up the stairs and then lays in bed and starts to listen to music. 

For this project we were given the prompt to create a scene spanning 1-2 minutes using only sounds we either create or found online. My partner and I decided on our scene (look at project description!) and needed to figure out the specific sounds we would include to make the scene make sense without visuals. So during class we wrote our soundscape (click link to view!).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/160oPgOwctC7109fpjxMYVJXmysbsMCgUoZ0WuzXYBwg/edit

When we were creating our soundscape, we had to think about different sounds you would normally hear outside and in a suburban household. We had to stay very specific and be precise on every sound you could possibly hear as the character walks through her house. During the outside portion of the scene, we first came up with the consistent sounds you would hear while walking outside. Bird chirping and wind blowing were the main background sounds we agreed on to include in this portion of the scene. Same with the inside the house portion. We had to think of the different sounds you would hear such as the AC in the background or the television on in the background. We also had to think about how the character would exit her car and the sounds a car makes while parked and the sounds a backpack makes while being picked up and moved around. Being specific was the main struggle we had as we never realized just how many sounds there are even during a simple walking sequence. 

Once we figured out the sounds we would include, we had to find out the actual sounds. We first looked on different sound databases online and the sounds we couldn’t find we decided to create using foley. Foley was a huge obstacle we had to face as well. Figuring out what kind of sounds could create the sounds we needed was difficult. We knew to create the sound of footsteps we would just have to record our feet walking on different surfaces to achieve the sounds we wanted. Here’s a video of all the foley sounds we were able to include in our project!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YunrEh-5F-s

When we started to edit our project, we came across another obstacle. How to actually edit in adobe premier pro. Neither one of us had any experience in this aspect so we both had to start from scratch. To learn how to use this platform, I watched multiple videos and uttorials on how to use the tools provided and actually be able to create my project. Once we got the hang of editing on the platform, editing was a pretty smooth process. Here are a couple pictures of our editing timeline and how we layered the sounds and created a fluid soundscape. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RBkGICOA2nN_0kFwLjOwJ5gAZwdcETaD6dNO6IWiyUM/edit

Overall, the project was an amazing experience and it allowed me to understand the effort that goes into making a soundscape for a movie. Here’s our final project. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi1Vb2Ain_4

camera shots/angles quiz!

The camera shots/angles quiz was the first official project that we’ve done this years. We had just finished learning about the different types of camera shots and angles, so what better way to practice them then to make a still short story. The first thing that we had to do was choose one or two inanimate objects that would act as the characters in our visual story. The story had to consist of 15 shots, each of which must have included 10 specified shots (an establish shot, a long shot, two medium shots, two close ups, an extreme close up, a pov shot, a high angle, and a low angle). The images must all fit together to create a story that is purely developed by the visuals and organization of the images. Then we had to put all the images in order into a powerpoint with a description of why we used the shot we did. Not too difficult right?

Wrong. My partner, Sofia, and I had trouble figuring out the inanimate objects we wanted to use and most importantly what story we wanted to tell. How could you tell a story with just pictures? It was extremely difficult, but we eventually came to the conclusion that we would tell a story about someone being bullied and then them standing up for themselves. We organized our shots to create a coherent story and made sense for the shots used and we got to work. 

Our shots worked really well together and they were able to tell the story we wanted to share. We included our own creative takes on it, such as having the nail polish, the one being bullied, mark the chapstick, the bully, with their nail polish, which demonstrated them fighting back. Something we could improve would probably be the quality of our shots. Some shots were hard to tell what kind of shot they were supposed to be. High shots and low shots were difficult to do, so I think if we had taken the pictures on a high surface instead of the ground we could’ve pulled off those shots much easier. Overall, I feel we did a pretty good job, especially for our first time working with these types of shots. 

Anyways, here’s a link to the final project!!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kuRkZuvo5u2Xf6guCfCsXoVMvEP57vj6mON1s7be3iQ/edit

introduction

hi! My name is Ayami and I am currently taking aice media studies as level at my school. I’ve made this blog to track my progress and show my growth throughout the course. I am so excited to begin the process and see how much I learn!