MA Sound Design Project - 'Planet Earth II'
- camspeirs
- May 3, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 4
Feedback from the Experimental Sound Practice module has led me to think about the style of my work, and how to show a range of skills through it. Having spent the majority of my time working in symmetry with the visual narrative, an interesting project to experiment with would be a clip with no obvious narrative.
A documentary was my initial instinct, but to ensure I am able to face sound design challenges, and approach these challenges effectively in various stages of national and local lockdowns, I have decided to work with a nature documentary.
Pre Production:
Inspirations and Creative Influences:
'Life of Pi':
'Life of Pi' directed by Ang Lee, shows many environments such as Indian cities, torrential rain at sea, an abandoned tropical island and underwater. The interesting aspect of these are the seamless transitions in environment ambiences, and the perspectives of those ambiences in synchronisation with the visual camera cuts. The video linked below from the Soundworks Collection shows the sound designer, Eugene Gearty talking about his approach to this film. Specifically, at 01:36, he discusses his need to record location ambiences in the same environment as seen on screen, and to record the vocalisations of the exact animals in the narrative in order to build a believable setting.
'Our Planet':
Netflix's 'Our Planet' consists of a number of episodes that focus on specific environments at specific places on Earth. One episode was in particular influential was the episode titled, 'Forests'.
I've managed to download the trailer for BBC's 'Planet Earth II' and remove all existing audio. The clip is roughy 2 minutes and 45 seconds, and showcases the variety of environments and animals that the series will cover, and therefore the types of environment ambience and vocalisation recordings that I will need to collect.
The first step in approaching this piece, as with any piece, is spot the clip and add markers in Pro Tools to understand exactly which locations I will need to emulate. This includes any perspective changes to mark dynamic contrasts and hyper-realism. This also helps with synchronisation, by placing a marker on the exact frame at which the audio file should land. The immediate tasks will be to collect recordings to emulate tropical/jungle environments, dry desert ambiences, and mountain ambiences. This will also include collecting various animal vocalisations to layer and build a more convincing environment, such
as at 00:43, where the visuals show a group of monkeys jumping from wall to wall, and at 00:53 to match the open beaks of close-up flying birds.
The other main task will be the Foley. 00:13 is the first close-up shot of any animal, and shows a monkey leaping from tree to tree, for which I will need to collect various foliage recordings, and layer them with the snapping of sticks and twigs to match the claws of the monkey as it grabs the tree trunk. As well as this, the clip includes snow-filled environments for which I will need to emulate with props, as I am doubtful I will be able to access any real snowy environments.
Production:
In order to create believable atmospheres, I need to collect organic recordings of the creatures that the clip shows, as well as those that would live in that environment.
The first scene in this clip shows a forest, so I took a trip to Marwell Zoo Tropical House to gather material. They allowed me to arrive before official opening hours so I wouldn't be interrupted by noise of the public. This also meant they were able to turn off the fans in some areas, allowing me to capture the sounds of the animals with minimal interference.
Here, I was able to capture sounds of animals such as, tropical birds, frogs, meerkats, monkeys and bats (see images below). This will not only be useful for this nature piece, but also for layered vocalisations for future creatures that need sound design. I used a Zoom H6 microphone with an XY stereo pick-up, and attached a Rode NTG-2 short shotgun microphone for close-up recording (see image 3).
As well as the animals, the Tropical House in Marwell Zoo also had small waterfalls and lots of foliage which allowed me to collect recordings of the environment too. I could therefore use all these recordings to layer and build a jungle atmosphere ambience, that would convince the viewer.
Foley and Footsteps:
Environments that I couldn't access presented sound design challenges. At 01:15 in this clip, a fox dives, head first into deep snow. The government travel restrictions obviously prevent me from collecting natural snow recordings, so I had to get creative. I took to Ric Viers' 'The Sound Effects Bible', a book that suggests props and methods to create specific sounds. He suggests that cornflour is a good sonic substitution for snow footsteps. I therefore, built my own Foley stage, and recording myself squeezing and hitting a pouch of cornflour. The result was a distinct crunch that could be associated with a snowy terrain (see video).
(Viers, R. The Sound Effects Bible: How to Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects. California: Michael Wiese Productions. 2008.)
The following scene, at 01:18, shows a sloth swimming in a river. The interesting and therefore challenging part of this clip, is the camera angle cuts. This scene switches between above and underwater perspectives, which I wanted to directly emulate and distinguish between. Viers states in his book mentioned above, that underwater ambiences can be achieved by recording above water ambiences such as waves or splashing etc, and using pitch shifting and low pass filters to dull the transience (Viers, 2008, p.248).
This method worked for a general ambience, but there were still features in the scene that needed more detail, such as the moving of the sloths arms and the air bubbles produced.
To tackle this, I used a pair of JFR Hydrophones, and placed them in a stream in an attempt to capture natural underwater sounds.
Listening back however, these recordings added to the underwater ambience, but didn't sound as if it were coming from an animal.
The following session, I set up a bowl of water, and used a hydrophone to
record myself blowing into the bowl (see video). This captured a much more natural 'lung bubble' sound, rather than the sound of water passing the microphone in the stream.
Sound Manipulation:
After watching my work back, It became clear that in some scenes where the visuals would fade in and out of slow-mo, my sound design did not match which disconnected from the suspension of disbelief. I used a Pro Tools plug-in called 'Vari-Fi', which allowed me to select a specific audio file, slow it down or speed it up, and control it using automation.
I used it to slow down 'wooshes' and crackles of tree branch snaps for slow-motion shots of a monkey jumping from tree to tree.
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