Soundscape Development

 

Welcome back! As we continue to cover more material, we now are going to go over building the environment and the artificial aspects. Again, I want to begin with another clip from my show Fall Out. In this scene from the pilot episode (EPS1: Fall In), Tom (Main character A) with his driver John (B character) and several other squadrons are transporting a very important piece of cargo back to base within their city's walls. On their journey back, one of their transport vehicles breaks down. Tom is an engineer and is required to fix it faster than it normally would take due to the urgency of their delivery task. Tom finishes the repairs, but the captain is frustrated with the amount of time it took repairing the transport vehicle. In the midst of them arguing, gun fire begins to break out further back in the line of military escort vehicles. The captain takes the keys to make sure Tom doesn't start driving yet and goes to check on the situation. Tensions begin to rise and to everyone's discovery they quickly find out that they had stumble upon an enormous, deadly, mutated creature, manifested by the unforgiving wasteland.

Thanks for listening! Now I'd like to do a little explanation on how and why things were placed.

Picture the Environment

When creating the environment (which should be the first step in the entire layout) think about where it is and what it consists of. Break it down like you would in order to make a pie. What aspects make up the entire place to make it whole. For my project the scene is a wasteland, so what makes up a desert wasteland? Maybe wind, sparce amount of animal life like a single vulture in the sky. Maybe some wind or a breeze, the sound of grains of sand sifting across the ground, dead branches moving with the breeze. These are all things to consider. But now to get specific, what is the weather like? For the scene you had listened to, it was the beginning of a desert storm. The wind was more aggressive, the sand wasn't just sifting around, it was in the air. You could hear the density of it all, and because of this the characters voices were more distorted especially when yelling from a distance. In that instance the environment was now affecting the way vocals are perceived. 

The Artificial

After you figure out the baseline to the environment, the next thing to think about is what other artificial aspect make up the space around you. For example, if you're in a city, a lot of the environment will be comprised of artificial components aside the weather. There are cars, bicyclists, people chattering, maybe an open food stand and you can hear the grill sizzling as Big Tony slaps on another burger yelling "Order up!" These are the parts that make up the artificial environment. When figuring this out, know exactly what it is that's taking place in the scene. In my project, Tom and the Captain are arguing when suddenly gun fire begins to break out further back. Next thing you know they are in a full-blown shoot out. Take note that it didn't start like how it ended. This is because I wanted to show the progression of what was slowly panning out. So, I began with a few shots fired here and there but ultimately it built to every single personnel taking part in the fight. I wanted only a few soldiers to notice something wasn't right at first rather than everyone starts shooting at once (This builds suspense). 

After (B character) John yells, as Tom runs to find the captain on the front line of the fight, we hear that all hell breaks loose. There's shooting, placement of various soldiers screaming, variation in guns. There's just a whole lot going on. Even when the monster is struck with a bazooka, we can hear the bazooka fire off its shot and hear the monster scream in agony as it's hit. But detail is what brings this scene some livelihood. As Tom is running, we can hear his footsteps and the gritty sand (not soft sand) crunching below his feet. We hear a trace of his heavy breathing as he's panicked, but also because he's running. Once Tom reaches the captain on the frontline, Tom asks for the keys back to the cargo vehicle. We then can hear the keys jangle as the captain hands them over to Tom with urgency. 

Lastly for a cinematic effect, I wanted the scene to end like a Michael Bay movie when the fuel tanker explodes. To go about this, I knew I had to isolate the voices from all the havoc going on and focus on the moment before the explosion. So, what I did was find a sound (from my sound bank) that gave a slow-motion effect but didn't actually make anything into slow motion. I used this noise as a breaker between the soldiers yelling and shooting, and the explosion. Next, I cut out almost every sound except 2-3 voices yelling and added an echo effect to them. Thus, giving the moment a "still" effect as if everything slowed down for a brief moment. Then I brought in one instance of the monster roaring to signify its role of destruction, followed by the explosion. And the explosion was instantaneously followed by the vehicle's glass shattering plus the metal framework smashing. 

Here is a recap of the end scene described. See if you can identify the aspects of what we just covered.

(All illustrations are done by my coworker James Stead.)