LO2: Constructing Gunshot Layers

So far, I’ve learned that the audio provided for guns in movies and video games is often exaggerated, or just completely made-up, as they tend to sonically display a variety of loose moving pieces even though guns don’t usually make much noise the real world.

My next step was to find out how to construct some effective gunshot sounds. I looked online for videos and found one that really helped break down what makes a good gunshot sound (Marshall McGee, 2017). The narrator broke gunshot sounds into four layers:

Weight – The low frequency sounds that make it seem as though the gun is hitting your shoulder upon recoil.

Thwack – The mid-range frequencies/the main body of the sound. This is the “attention grabber”/most noticeable layer.

Rattling – The mechanisms within the gun.

Tail – The sound that takes place after the gun is fired (e.g. the reverb and the sound of the bullet cutting through the air).

I decide to use these layers as references for creating my own sounds. To create the ‘thwack’ layer, I combined recordings of party poppers and CO2 weapons. The party poppers provided some higher-range frequencies and were distorted using VST effects to make them sound more like explosions than pops. The CO2 gunshots were pitched down to provide some lower/mid-range frequencies. Next, I created mechanical sounds by recording myself tearing apart thick pieces of cardboard.

Since the video demonstration mainly applies to first-person gunshots, I decided that the weight of the gun wouldn’t be too important of a feature within my sounds and therefore decided to use EQ effects to boost the lower frequencies of the CO2 gunshots as a substitute for an individual weight layer.

The final layer was the tail layer. I created the tail from two reverb effects. The first was a very short but also very wet reverb that very briefly extended the sounds of the party poppers and CO2 shots. The second was a longer but quieter reverb to help create a general echo as, within the narrative of the animation, the guns are to be fired outside within a big city.

References

Marshall McGee (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqU6JbubJQ

LO2: Guns Are Noisy

The Ragtime Gals animation requires a few gunshot sound effects. I originally thought that guns would be easy to provide audio for as they’d only require a brief explosion sound. I soon realised that my expectations were far from the truth.

To closely observe how guns sound in existing media, I played around with some guns in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. I quickly noticed that the guns were incredibly noisy even when they’re not being shot. In the video below, I compare the sounds between some in-game guns, an air pistol and a broken cap gun.

I thought it was weird that the guns in the video game kept rattling – it was as if they had loose pieces inside of them. This idea of guns being noisy seems to be a trope within a variety of media.

“In real life, guns are carefully designed, well-constructed tools that – provided they are well maintained – can last a lifetime. Or somebody’s lifetime, anyway. On TV, they’re apparently filled with rusty nails and loose change, and held together with masking tape. As a result, whenever someone hefts a weapon – particularly if it’s a machine gun or submachine gun – it will make a whole load of clicking, clacking and clonking even though all they’re doing is rotating it through 90 degrees. This trope is likely the result of the fact that a noisy gun adds drama to the scene” (TV Tropes, 2018).

Any rattling heard coming from a gun, such as that heard coming from the cap gun, would indicate that it is broken. Apart from when they’re being fired, guns are usually quiet. The Ragtime Gals animation team originally requested for “realistic audio” but after confronting them with this information and telling them of how quiet guns realistically are, they have since decided that I should exaggerate the sounds within the few scenes in which a pistol is flicked around in someone’s hand.

References

Grand Theft Auto V (2013) [Primary observation] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmRFbTRu4sw

TV Tropes (2018) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoisyGuns

LO1: Piano Recording Attempt 2

The recordings taken from our last recording session contained a lot of unwanted noise such as squeaky pedals and rattling parts from within the piano. Also, my client and performer, William Healy, wasn’t too happy with his performance. And so, we decided to give it a second attempt. I first recorded the piano with a single Rode NT1-A microphone placed behind the piano, positioned low down and centre. This time, I recorded the piano with a pair of AKG C414s, both behind the piano on the left and right sides. They were placed a bit higher than last time to avoid picking up the mechanical noises at the bottom of the piano. The piano was also moved to the centre of the room so that it wasn’t too close to any walls. This was to help reduce the pickup of reverb.

Healy informed me that he’s been planning on featuring another artist’s song in the credits of the animation. And so, he wants the piano we record to end just before the credits. However, I requested that we record some of these short takes and some longer takes that could play over the credits just in case his guest artist was to pull out of the project at the last second. Overall, the recording process went well. We got some really good takes and, with the new microphone placement, we managed to avoid recording any unwanted noise.

LO3: Recording in Stereo

During our first recording attempt, I recorded the piano in mono without putting any thought into it. However, after further thought, I decided to record the piano in stereo during our second attempt. I wanted the song to be treated as somewhat diegetic and non-diegetic.

I got the idea from a particular scene in the movie Gangster Squad (available to watch in the video above). Within this scene, a group of men are about to raid a bar while a musical performance is taking place on the stage. The music seems diegetic as it is coming from a known source within the scene. However, it is also non-diegetic in the sense that the tonal and dimensional properties of the music don’t change as the camera transitions between each shot, placing the viewers in different areas of the room. Instead, the music is treated more like a non-diegetic background song.

I wanted to treat my piano recording similarly within the animation I was working on. I wanted it to seem diegetic and fitting with the scene, yet recorded and mixed like a non-diegetic background piece. Hence why I decided to record in stereo rather than mono.

References

Gangster Squad (2013) [Primary observation] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsXWKMwfV8