The Interview

	For the human voice project I created a sound design for this nerd being interviewed for an accounting job over the phone. This piece is a comedy because the main character is a gamer, Excelsior, who lives in this fantasy world and would never actually qualify for a job in accounting and answers each interview question completely wrong.
	In this piece there are three characters, voices, which all take place in a different spaces and that where all recorded with a field recorder. The first character you hear is Excelsior’s mother, which was played by me. She is in another room yelling at her son to pick up the phone because she is occupied when the telephone rings. To make it seem that she in a different part of the house I used Pro Tools and added a reverb making her sound farther away and I also brought down her volume. Next, is the main character Excelsior, who was played by Carson Hiser. Hiser created Excelsior’s voice from the beginning, which inspired the whole story. In Pro Tool I did not have to do much to his voice because his effects were made during live recording. What I did do was base everything else on his voice. The idea here was for the audience to feel as if they too are in Excelsior’s room when everything is happening; the audience never leaves his room.  The next character the audience hears is the bank representative, who was played by Andrew Park. The bank representative is the person conducting the interview over the phone. In Pro Tools I made the bank representative’s voice sound as if it was coming over the phone. I did this by missing around with equalizer and reverb. 
	Once the voices were done it was time to move on to sound effects. The voices alone sound good, but it is not anything special. The sound effects I added make this piece come to live. Many sound effects were added in Pro Tools I made about 10 tracks of just sound effects. Basically when choosing the sound effects, I wanted them to enhance the space each character is in. The piece starts out with the phone ringing and in the background you also hear the game Excelsior is playing. This is my establishment shot in film terms. I wanted the audience to known that Excelsior is a true nerd.  The telephone ring, the telephone being picked up and for the telephone hanging up all of these sound effects I got from different websites as free downloads. The game in the background though I recorded myself using a field recorder. As the piece goes on as an audience member you will hear many other settle sounds. I tried my best to make it seem as the audience was in Excelsior’s room with him. In Pro Tools I did not do much with the sound effects all I really did was tweak the volumes on them. 
	I was happy with the end result more so because I am a beginner user with Pro Tools. I would have liked to make everything sound crisper and to have cleaned it up more, but with not knowing Pro Tools I did what I could. In all, the piece was a success it is funny and I feel like you are able to build a connection with main character and learn to like him. 
	Doing this project I have absolutely learned a little bit more about Pro Tools, which is important in my field of study, digital filmmaking and video production. I know how to write a story, I know how to operate a camera and shot, I know how to edit and make the whole thing come together, the only thing I have never really gotten down is audio. I always focus on how my videos look and less on how they sound. Knowing a little bit more about Pro Tools will help me clean up my audio in my video so they not only look well, but sound good too.


Disclaimer: 

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Not all of the sounds used are original, not taking credit for the whole thing. I am an art college student, who is learning how to use Pro Tools and this project was for learning purpose only.

Human_Voice_Project: The Interview

Mediation Project 
May 2, 2012
“while the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze and I watched how the water was kneading so neatly gone treacly nearly slowed to a stop in this heat - frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath  press on me: we are restless things webs of seaweed are swaddling you call upon the dusk of the musk of a squid shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib 
awful atoll - o, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow! bawl, bellow: Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow  toddle and roll; teeth an impalpable bit of leather while yarrow, heather and hollyhock awkwardly molt along the shore  are you mine? my heart? mine anymore?  stay with me for awhile that's an awfully real gun I know life will lay you down as the lightning has lately done  failing this, failing this, follow me, my sweetest friend to see what you anointed in pointing your gun there  lay it down! nice and slow! there is nowhere to go, save up up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream”     Joana Newsom – Only Skin

	When we ( Kevin Rogers was my partner on this project he helped put this piece come together) were given the task of creating a sound interpretation of the lyrics above, we knew what we wanted to do. After planning a basic outline, we took a field recorder and shotgun microphone to several water sources in the Schaumburg area. We received a good number of great quality recordings from the session. The constant stream sound is a shot gun microphone above a rock in the middle of a stream. The “rain” sound is water falling into a manhole cover. The “thunder” is actually wind blowing past the field recorder’s on board microphones, EQ’d and saturated in reverb.  The rest of the noises were recorded with moving water in my bathtub. A piece of information that can be taken from this that water itself cannot be recorded until it comes into contact with other entities. 
	After the field recording session we did a few experiments with water manipulation and recording it with piezo transducers. Even though the experiments were fun and interesting, none of the clips made the final cut. The next step in recording was the acoustic guitar. The guitarist, David Gonzales, did a wonderful job taking our interpretation and requests and translating them into abstract piece. The recording session went flawlessly and we feel like it is the one part of the piece that carries the rest of the elements of the design through the mix. The last element that was recorded was the vocal part. We really wanted to make the vocal mix seem dreamy and far away from reality. After achieving a dreamy vocal part, we automated the panning to let the vocals travel through the mix. 
	In our master plans, we wanted to interpret the piece as if it was recalling a sorrowful memory, most likely of loss. The listener is not sure what specific memory is being recalled, which we feel empowers the audience to create apply their own memories to the track. This interaction with the piece is what I feel to be the strongest point beyond the design. We are proud of the fact that what we produced was even more than what we expected. The piece is a very appropriate illustration of the lyrics we were given. 

Only_Skin_Project: Mediation

	To record the jewelry I used a field recorder. I recorded various pieces of jewelry to complete this project such as, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings. I did was hold each piece of jewelry in my hand and moved it around and recorded the sounds which it created.
After recording all of the jewelry sounds I was still not sure what kind of beat I wanted to create, so I choose to move on to the next step. Creating a library of samples, which I did using Pro Tools. Once I finished creating my library of sounds I used Reason to develop patterns using my various sample. During the process of building the samples I began to have a feel for what I wanted to do for this project.   
	I huge problem that I ran into when doing this project was not understanding how to use Reason. I tried to get the hang out it, but it just was not working out at all. I watched tutorials on how to use Reason, but none of them helped me do what I needed to accomplish. Running out of time to complete this project I settle on just using Pro Tools. Using Pro Tools I program I have become a custom to I started out by taking a sample I really liked and used it was my ground level beat. From there I picked and choose which samples I thought went well together and build off each other. It was not long before I had something going.
	After a few hours I had created a simple, but challenging pattern for myself. When I was done I went back to fix things I though did not sound so well and cleaned it up the best I could. I am proud of my final product, but not satisfied. I wish that I had a better understanding of Reason and more time to work on this project. In the end it was not horrible, but not great. I do believe I captured the feel and sound of jewelry regardless of the program I used to create this track.      


Organic_Project: Jewelry

Flux

    I created a sound design for a short animation inspired by the works of Ilhan Koman  Flux, by Candas Sisman (This short animation can be found on Vimeo). I threw away the original sound effects and soundtrack use in the video, in order to create the sound design. I wanted to make this piece feel dark, by which I mean to make it feel mysterious, unknown, and to imply fear. I decided to give the circle and/sphere its own character. Its character is darkness, I wanted it to have the sense of a shadow. This circle/sphere contains something beyond the audiences observation, that may hide unseen dangers. From this emerges the audience's fear of the unknown and so our fear of the darkness.    

Although, the main feel I wanted to get across is the feel of darkness and fear of the unknown. Then piece is very much mechanically enhanced meaning I did make it sound like a machine when it transformed from shape to shape. In a way this sphere can be thought as a dark machine hiding in the shadows of the incognito.

I wanted gloomy, dismal and evil sound effects for this particular piece. I did not record any of the sounds used in this project. What I did was rent CD’s full of  sound effects from the library and found sounds which I thought fit the piece and incorporated them into my sound design. After, hours of listening and choosing the right sound effect I brought them into Pro Tools and edited them. I manipulated each sound effect according to what the circle/sphere was doing in the video. I changed the volume, lengths, added fades, speed up or slowed down the sounds, reversed the sounds,looped sections, and the most challenging part was timing everything just right. I kept this project straightforward, keeping to everything I was comfort using; such as only using Pro Tools to create this sound design.

In the end I believe I accomplished what I was initially going for. Which was creating a dark mechanical character for the circle/sphere. This piece does seem spooky to me, definitely the most dark project I have done thus far. I do think it gives off the sense of fear.

Disclaimer:
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Not all of the sounds used are original, not taking credit for the whole thing. I am an art college student, who is learning how to use Pro Tools and this project was for learning purpose only.


McCloud_Sound