Sound Manipulation

WORK BY DAN NEARY

Once we had collated all the footage and ordered the shots chronologically onto IMovie, I decided to do some independent research into typical, suspenseful sounds that would enhance the climax of our production. Using 'FreeSound.Org', I explored the various, existing sounds that had associations with the words, eerie, ambience, suspesne, climactic. This allowed a narrow search of specific sounds that would be of benefit to our production and therefore, was more efficient. For example: I found audio files that replicated a tense, climactic-build up, with 'clang'-like sounds embedded into the audio which gave the desired effect we were after. The fact that this audio was 'reversed' allowed the climax to be magnified further and this contributed to the tense atmosphere.

Afterwards, we decreased our search variation and focussed on the particular diegetic elements on freesound that were of better quality, rather than using original audio from our footage. Examples of sounds we collated included an old-record player (to synchronise with our own vinyl), an opening of a door & the washing of hands. Sounds such as these allowed the disruption of the narrative to become even clearer, as oppose to the quiet, confusing sounds generated from the audio footage. In particular, the use of an old-record player emphasised the eerie quality to our piece and therefore, created the impression of terror through the use of an out-dated feature. Our decision to use this record-player was influenced by our previous research of Sinister - where we established that the opening whirring sound of the video-recorder created a supernatural feel to the introductory shots. Therefore, by using a similar prop with an overlay of a static vinyl-recorder, the prop became more stereotypical of the genre & added to the peculiar aspect of the sound.


We also used 'Garageband' to manipulate existing soundtracks in order to add a more surrealistic pitch, tone & rhythm to the audio. We started by searching on Youtube for tracks that had influenced us from the Fallout movie sequences. An example of the soundtrack used in the opening title sequence was called: "Ink Spots-Maybe" & "Ink Spots - I don't want to set the world on fire". We believed that these tracks generated an eerie, slow paced atmosphere to the narrative, although, "InkSpots-Maybe" was decided upon as the music that is able to be most manipulated. This is an essential part of the editing  so that we are able to manipulate original sounds in order to eradicate the copyright restrictions.