Producing the audio for two projects has been a fun but challenging experience. My first project was a collaborative effort with an animation team called the ‘Ragtime Gals’. The second project was a self-set learning experience in which I attempted to redesign the audio for a short clip taken from the animated film ‘Heavy Metal’. Before working on these projects, I set myself some learning objectives to research upon during the process. These learning objectives had strong impacts on the development of my work.

LO1: “Learn ways in which music is used in film and animation”

I’ve found that music can be used for a lot more than just background noise – It can convey a lot of information. In the Rag Time Gals project, I used piano music as a diegetic sound effect. As a sound effect, it had to react to it’s source and surroundings. And so, the piano music can be heard changing in tempo and even stopping depending on how the character playing it is feeling.

In the Heavy Metal project, I tried to give my music multiple purposes. At some parts, I used strings and drum rolls, combined with rising dynamics, to create feelings of tense build-up. Other times, I used it as a substitute/addition to sound effects, reflecting directly what is happening on screen. For examples, crashing cymbals can be heard at various points when characters get hit by objects. I also gave one character a theme song/instrument. Whenever the main bad-guy is present, a synthesized brass instrument is almost always playing along side him. I even wrote him a motif that plays when he is first seen in the animation and then later repeats when he gets the upper-hand in a battle.

I chose to use synthesizers and digital instruments as I had easy access to them. I think they worked great because they reflected the 80s period really well. However, if I had access to other instruments then I certainly would experiment with them. Some acoustic strings could offer a lot more emotional control through playing techniques such as note-bending and tremolos.

LO2: “Learn methods of producing gun sound effects”

I’ve always wondered what makes guns sound so impactive, hence why I set myself this learning objective. This basic objective surprisingly turned out to be one of my most useful ones. I first found that sound effects can be theoretically deconstructed into a variety of layers. Once you have an idea on what layers are needed, you can then construct the sound as you see fit. After using this process to make some satisfactory gun sounds, I soon found that I could use the same process for many of my other so far lackluster sound effects. As a result, I managed to better some of my other sound effects including swords and body hits.

LO3: “Using references from other films, learn when it is appropriate to pan sound and music and utilize the stereo field”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much research material for this learning objective other than films and forums. I set it as I know that in music production, panning is used to create space and balance mixes. I wanted to know this would be similar when mixing sound for visuals. I’ve found that panning can still be used to create space but it can offer a lot more information as well including locations of objects (for example, wide panning, combined with changes in EQ, could suggest that an object is far away), what direction objects are moving in and what perspective the audience is listening from. Deciding on which perspective the audience is listening from seems to mainly come down to creativity. However, I have at least learned that too many extreme changes can become quite distracting to an audience and so it’s sometimes best to leave sounds equally panned left and right rather than have them change in a number of scenes. For this reason, I decided to keep the piano panned equally left and right throughout the entire Ragtime Gals animation – sometimes simple is better.

LO4: “Learn ways of effectively communicating with clients”

I’ve had good and bad experiences while communicating with my clients, the Rag Time Gals. At first, we had a number of miscommunications. With them not having much knowledge on audio-related lexicon, they found it difficult to tell me what expectations they had of their animation’s audio. The best they could ask for was “realistic” audio (but realistic audio is a complicated term. What most people think is realistic usually isn’t realistic at all). To get around this, I sent them renders of my work-in-progress frequently so that they could hear for themselves how the audio was coming along. Feedback was usually vaguely approving of my work. They knew what sounds they wanted in certain areas but overall most of the creative control was left to me. This could mean I’m either meeting their requirements or they’re just not too interested in having much control over the creative decisions behind the audio. The image below is a screenshot of our latest exchange of works in which they tried to send me a scene from their animation (but the link didn’t work) and I sent them my latest audio render (which was at the same level of progress as my submitted artefact).

Although social media is a popular option for most people, myself and my clients ended up communicating via email most often as it allowed us to send files over to each other. In hindsight, I would have pushed to use Facebook more as there were many times in which the animators were quite slow to respond to emails. This often slowed down my production. I also should have pushed for more regular meetings as some studies of netnography show that social interactions over the internet can sometimes be different, and sometimes even untruthful, compared to those expressed in person.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m happy with what I’ve produced. The Rag Time Gals project is still ongoing as I am waiting for some more recent renders to sync my sound effects too. Some sound effects in my submission, such as the footsteps, will have to be completely re-synced in the near future. The Heavy Metal project was fun to produce as it offered me a lot more creativity than the other project. Creating sounds for fictional cartoon weapons and creatures offered me a chance to imagine what things could sound like rather than just give them literal interpretations.

Syncing and mixing sound effects was the most tedious aspect of the work but putting more effort into it (like using multiple layers for each sound) can be very rewarding. I’ve found that writing music for visual is a lot different to that of regular standalone music. You have to take a lot of things into consideration including what information you wish to convey, what sound effects is the music going to mix with and when the music is even necessary as sometimes, silence can be an effective feature. I’ve also found that music is difficult to sync to already-existing visuals unless you’re willing to create something with a flexible BPM and tempo.