MA Experimentation Project - Variations of Emotive Sound Design

A Quiet Place:

As a direct influence from theoretical research, the concept of evoking emotion through sound design was something that I wanted to explore; which is why a horror film was the first clip that I considered.

‘A Quiet Place’ (2018), directed by John Krasinski, is particularly interesting because it has very little non-diegetic sound, and very little dialogue meaning that the sound was the main ‘driver’ of emotion.

Fear. Fear is the aim of this piece. The narrative is based on the survival of the family, meaning the only way to ensure viewer immersion is to create believable events and environments and in this case - monsters. The monsters see through sound, and track down the family through their assumed heightened sense of hearing.

1:33 in this clip shows a close-up of the monster, opening its skin to show it ear as it focusses on the sounds in its surroundings. Its skin looks thick and rough, and at first sight it reminded me of tree trunk bark, so I first started recording the sounds of breaking of dead wood, snapping tree branches and sticks to try and directly emulate the tearing of these rough materials.

Wood Recordings.zip

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This however, didn’t have enough weight to be fearsome, so needed some extra layers. I was inspired by Steve Baine, the credited Foley artist for ‘A Quiet Place’, as

he states in an interview that he used various fruits and vegetables recordings to get the desired ‘ripping’ sound. This method is also suggested by sound designer Ric Viers, in his book The Sound Effects Bible (2008)[1]. I therefore recorded myself tearing, stabbing and crushing many food items such as cabbages, watermelons, and celery sticks.

• [1] Viers, R. The Sound Effects Bible, How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects. California: Michael Wiese Productions. 2008. P.213.

Tomb Raider:

Firstly, this clip is an introduction to a video game, which meant that I was trying to build tension through texture and dynamics, for the game narrative to develop, rather than a specific emotion which was my aim in the ‘A Quiet place’ clip.

A key experimentation with this clip was the recoding and application of water sounds. I used the Zoom H6 field recorder with an X/Y stereo pickup, the Rode NTG-2 short shotgun and a Sennheiser mkh40 shotgun microphone to capture the sounds of water, but also a pair of JFR hydrophones to capture an underwater perspective. At 00:38, the main character is stuck underwater and is seemingly unconscious, I therefore aimed to convey the tension of this by portraying her perspective, inspired by the underwater perspective effect to the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998) by sound designer Gary Rydstrom.

I wasn’t convinced that the emotion was coming across with the sound effects alone, so I started to experiment with music composition to assist the sound design.

Tom and Jerry:

The main experimental concept of this piece is the use of sound design in order to be humorous. First inspired by Lee Gilmore’s comedic Foley input to the ‘Scrubs’ (2001) TV show, in which he uses sound effects to comedically suggest the emotional state or the intentions of a character, I wanted to be able to use sound to be a consistent provider of humour (rather than dialogue). A main issue I had with this clip was making it sound believable as well as funny, as the original soundtrack is heavily focussed on a ‘mickey-mouse’ style of music composition and fewer sound effects.

Star Wars Parody:

After following the narrative and focussing on conveying emotion through the sound design in the other clips, the experimentation in this piece was combining fear and humour, by taking an existing film scene with specific emotive expression, and re-design the sound to convey very different emotions. The first issue I had, was establishing a cue point that triggered the change of tone. In order to get inspiration, I had to look at un-published practice on YouTube to see other sound design parodies, yet I found that most parodies are comedic for the whole clip. I therefore, decided to watch the original scene in ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ (1983), and note what the cue point was where fear was triggered which was at 01:41 with the image of the immergence of ‘Darth Vader’. This was therefore the cue point I used to turn my piece into a parody.

Another key point of experimentation was the breathing of ‘Darth Vader’. Ben Burtt, credited for the sound design in the ‘Star Wars’ (1977+) trilogy, states that he originally used scuba diving equipment to create the robotic-style breathing of this character (Wuest, 2015)[2]. With this in mind, (and with COVID-19 restricting accessible props), I recorded myself breathing through an inhaler spacer.

• [1] Viers, R. The Sound Effects Bible, How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects. California: Michael Wiese Productions. 2008. P.213. • [2] Wuest, P. The Dacor Suba Reg Behind Darth Vader’s Breathing. [Online]. https://www.scubadiving.com/dacor-scuba-reg-behind-darth-vaders-breathing 2015.