Act III: The Plan for Seeing With My Ears

Soundscape title: Under the Tent

Question: How do you manipulate still images to create an awesome animation about being inside a tent?

Answer: Composite layers, composite layers, composite layers, and on, and on, and on.

The beginning of our soundscape is kinda freaky, so our images will reflect this sentiment. There are mini-movements within the soundscape, so the image complexity and creation will rise and ebb with these changes in the sound as well.

I envision our project to almost assume the perspective of someone on a camping trip, who's gotten lost, is scared shitless, then finds the tent, the safe-place, and relaxes.

On a side note: I'm sitting in the library, by a window facing the parking lot. There's a lady using the pay phone outside... I haven't seen someone use a pay phone in at least 7 years. Do you still have to pay to use a pay phone??? Weird. This is a good day.

Act II: Painting With Sound

After work-shopping our Soundscapes, I really feel that I under-thought this assignment. Not that I didn't put the time into creating ours, but I wish had taken a more rhythmic, musical route, instead of narrative. Listening to the soundscapes that were more musical was more exciting.

Bryan and I chose a more narrative approach because of our title, "Leaving the Confession Booth." We decided to divide the sounds up into different sins, like gluttony and lust. It all makes sense and I still think it was a good idea. Looking back, I wish we had taken each sin and approached it musically. That way our soundscape would have been rhythmic soundscapes within a larger narrative soundscape. That would have been really awesome.

This might be a lame statement for a senior year film student to say, but I am continually surprised at how much thought really goes into creating a film.

this picture defines me

to inspire the truth is to be truthful

The Light in the Mirror

The best bathrooms are those with natural light, say from a huge window 8x5 foot facing a large mirror. My Uncle's bathroom in Maryland has just that. I noticed it after I got out of the shower on Saturday morning. The steam from the water had blurred the glass, but there were still some clear bits. The natural light that was coming through the window wasn't harsh direct light, but softer diffused light, as if through clouds. I loved the way it evenly light everything in the bathroom. Not only does my Uncle have a beautiful house, but he has simple, beautiful things in the house. I just thought the bathroom was so pretty that morning.

After the steam cleared the bathroom was still glowing, persay. It was the perfect light to put on makeup and get dressed in. I just couldn't get over how evenly everything was light, probably because the mirror reflected the soft light. Light is good.

this is true

A light that shines through

I had to drive up to Maryland this past weekend. On the drive back I was riding in the right side back seat, where the sun was pelting down on me. It was impossible to read because the sun made the pages of my book so bright that even sunglasses couldn't help me see through the blinding light. I was getting rather annoyed, not only was I hot, but I was forced to be unproductive and hot. Resigned, I took out my ipod and wrapped a thin striped scarf around my head like a shawl, and relaxed.

Ignoring the sniggers from my little sister at my strange shield, I began to look at the world inside the scarf. Said scarf is thin enough where you can still see through it, so naturally the sun seeped through as well. It was interesting to see how the effect of see-through-scarf plus direct sunlight changed the world into a glowing place with a blue hue (because the scarf is mainly blue). Inside the scarf my skin had a pleasant healthy glow. The sun illuminated the tiny fibers of the scarf and if I focused hard enough I could see each individual woven square of the fabric. It was all rather pretty.

Act I: Recording Sound

Long gone are the days where I sit on the computer searching for sound effects! Is it strange that I never actually realized that I should just go and make my own and stop taking from others?

In my sound design class on Friday we learned how to use the DARs from the equipment room. I wish we could have used those for this project. I think at some point I'm just going to go crazy and record tons of sounds. Then one day I'll have a huge stockpile of random sound effects that I will never have to use poor mp3 tracks that were downloaded off a website. Maybe I'll share, that would be nice of me.

I learned from assignment #1A that adjusting levels is more difficult than I expected. I learned that you really can hear a fridge in the background from the other room. I learned that I should use hand signals instead of my voice to cue your sound maker. I learned that once I know what a sound is, I am completely unable to think of it as anything else. For example, since I know what my group's sounds were, I'm not able to think of the fridge door shaking as the interior of a moving train, it's just the fridge door shaking. Along those same lines:

Dear Group Who's-Tape-Log-Claims-That-You-Recorded-The-Sound-Of-Someone-Eating-Chips,

The sound of someone eating chips? No, that is the sound of death.

My ears told me so.

Thanks,

M.

Belazs

I've written two research papers on sound design in film before. I love sound. I also think that it is incredibly important in films, and usually overlooked as such.

I liked how Belazs drew comparisons to theatre and silent film, to describe how unique the element of sound is in sonic cinema. How silences are incredibly powerful when linked up with an image and heard between sound environments. And silences on the stage can only really last for 5 seconds, but silences in film can last for minutes, without losing their power. Silent films can't create this power of silence, because they are totally silent, and the audience can't feel the shift between sound and silence. I liked the idea how film can recreate different sonic landscapes accurately, because of the use of microphones. And how in film objects can have sonic personalities when inter-cut with different shot ratios.

Belazs had interesting, and even romantic, ideas about sound. It made me think about sound in new ways. I like that.

Subway smells overwhelmingly like bread

Location: Subway restaurant, S. College Rd.

This was a challenge, it smelled too good, and that was very distracting.

The people standing in line shuffled their feet a lot, making scratching noises on the floor. I could hear the crackling sound of subs being wrapped up in the paper, then the soft swish of napkins being slid into the plastic bags, then the louder swish and thunk of the sub being stuffed into the plastic bags. The soda machine rattled to life every now and then. The soda fountain knobs being clicked then the sloshing soda pouring out. The thud thud, rumble rumble, pink pink of ice falling into a paper cup. The sheathing of a sword was the sound of the bread trays being pulled out of the warmers/ovens. There was the clunking of doors/machines/who-knows being opened and shut all over the place.

People eat so loud. Gross.

Crunch crunch, gulping, slurping, muted voices through a mouth full of food, the intake a breath before the ripping sound of a huge bite. The scraping of a napkin across a face sounds like a whoosh.

"Do you want spinach on your sub?"

"No."

Those two lines times 3518299

I could hear the cars driving by on College Rd., the cars passing in the parking lot outside.

Beach

Location: Lying on a towel at Wrightsville Beach

Listening on the beach revealed some sonic gemstones. There are the omnipresent sounds of the ocean, the wind, and the seagulls. But listening closely to the waves, you can hear what direction they are coming from, crashing from the left or the right, growing in dynamics as they get closer. I've aptly named this directional sonic dynamics, it's catchy. Lying on my belly, with my ear to the ground, I could hear my toes crawling into the sand as a muffled-sand-paper-against-wood sound. When my friend moved around on her towel, I could hear it through the ground as well, as a thud, grinding noise. The sound of her footsteps approaching our towels, also travelled through the sand, they were short sounds, no reverberation at all.

Voices were carried through the rushing wind, little girls' happy shrieks travelled through the air. A voice caught mid-squeal, getting lost in an overpowering wave. The sand picked up by the wind sounded like a salt shaker being shook over tin foil or something, soft pingy rustly noises.

libraries are fucking loud.

Location: Library, Downtown Wilmington

These are the dominant sounds I heard: flip flops, people readjusting themselves in seats to comfortable sitting positions, whispering, zippers.

People in the library are walking just as much with their shoes as they are with their pants. Meaning, their pants go, "swish swash", every time they step. I could even hear the sound of some shoes compressing, like air being released from a cushion. The walking was also interesting to listen for sound proximity, walking/footsteps getting louder as the walker gets closer. The library has carpeted flooring, so most of the footsteps were muted, and padded sounding. People move in sync with each other, they feel as if another person decides to move and make themselves more comfortable, it's their chance to snatch something from their backpack. So these sounds usually came in waves: papers turning and shuffling, coughing, sniffing, zipping, chairs creaking, swishing of back pack fabric, thuds of books on desks.

There was the constant hum of the air conditioner, a faint bell somewhere (probably the elevator), people talking openly downstairs, people whispering upstairs. Sometimes I could catch the sound of a person writing, the scratch scratch of pen (maybe pencil) on paper. Some people even breath audibly.

I never realized that libraries are crawling... infested... with very soft, but acutely loud noises made by humans.