Final Project

Here it is

final sound project proposal

A little less than a year ago, I shot a POV short film about a kidnapping (if you happened to go to the student film fest it was there, "32 Radians". Whatever, unimportant), which was designed to have a highly processed and dark, layered soundscape. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I scrapped that idea and just threw a voiceover and some music over top and called it a day- I've been meaning to go back and revisit that.
Which leads me to my proposal, which is to... go back and revisit that. The audio work should be able to stand on its own, and I already have most if not all of the recordings available to mess about with in post. It's supposed to be highly processed and somewhat hallucinatory trip, simulating the kidnapee's altered and deteriorating mental state. I'm not entirely sure how to do this right now, but I'll probably utilize a lot of time and pitch shifts to throw the listener off or to immerse them more fully.
If it's not acceptable to work on sound for another project, then I'll be doing basically the same thing, just without the video reference.

Soundscape 1

As far as my intentions go, I don't know if I can state them clearer than my proposal, so... "I won't explain the genesis of this idea, because it makes me sound rather stupid. So instead I'll just jump right in- I want my project to try to convey the feeling of vertical movement, from a windy rooftop, through a city street/wilderness location (depending on which would be more interesting), and descending into the sewers/a cave (depending on which would be more interesting). I know of a few caves, and sewers frighten the bejeezus out of me, so that might be the deciding factor. The reason I think this would be interesting is simply the variety of sound I'd get on such a trek- I think I'll get all ranges of high-low range sounds, etc. Going from a wide open space to an enclosed one will also provide the listener with a tangible experience (well, not tangible, but SEEMINGLY so), and immerse them in the soundscape more than others might. "

Did I succeed? Kind of. There were a lot of technical hurdles in the way of getting this idea to work, and also a lot of workflow related ones that I was not smart enough to overcome entirely. The one thing I am happy with is the quality of (some of) the recordings, of which what I used in the actual project represents about a third. There's also some weird noises at the end which may or may not work, but I thought were entertaining and so I put them in. The final judgment, of course, remains in your court.

I'm not really sure what it is about envelope based pitch editing in sound programs that seems to be so hard. Analog based editing has been able to do it successfully for years, but in each of the three or four programs (three: Sound Forge, Fruity Loops (kinda), and a really unintuitive way inside Audacity ) I tried, it seemed to think that my perfectly smooth negative 5 pitch envelope was actually me requesting it to Do-Re-Mi it in a staircase pattern all the way down, making it sound like I'd recorded the audio while standing directly next to a blender and then tried to get the blender sound out through wishful thinking.

I eventually solved it by going back to Audacity and throwing in a time layer, which adjusts pitch (perfectly smoothly) as it stretches or compresses the 4th dimension, which is a little less adjustable than I'd like (you can't have a separate time layer for each track, you need to do it over the entire project), but at least it made it quasi-doable.

I don't say any of this by way of excuse, of course. The project is what it is and even though I'm not especially pleased with the result I don't expect blaming Sony for my troubles is going to do any good. I just like writing on blogposts instead of just putting sound files and images. (Speaking of images, Fig A is the map I drew out for this project while brainstorming, as a little extra bonus that I didn't really end up following at all)

EDIT: Never mind, my scanner's broken. I might try to put up Fig A tomorrow. Fig B is up, anyway, the snapshot of (part of) my workspace.

SOUNDSCAPE

Proposal

I won't explain the genesis of this idea, because it makes me sound rather stupid. So instead I'll just jump right in- I want my project to try to convey the feeling of vertical movement, from a windy rooftop, through a city street/wilderness location (depending on which would be more interesting), and descending into the sewers/a cave (depending on which would be more interesting). I know of a few caves, and sewers frighten the bejeezus out of me, so that might be the deciding factor. The reason I think this would be interesting is simply the variety of sound I'd get on such a trek- I think I'll get all ranges of high-low range sounds, etc. Going from a wide open space to an enclosed one will also provide the listener with a tangible experience (well, not tangible, but SEEMINGLY so), and immerse them in the soundscape more than others might.

9/23/2010

1. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/1.wav
2. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/2.wav
3. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/3.wav
4. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/4.wav
5. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/5.wav
6. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/philli42/public/fieldrecording/6.wav

Assignment #1

Jon Phillips
Assignment 1, 9/13/2010
Soundwalk Response (Location: Wisconsin/Water)
Walking, I headed east down Wisconsin. The first and most obvious sound I heard was the omnipresent traffic, which was then complimented by the sound of my pencil scratching the word 'traffic' on a bit of paper. Other immediate sounds: wind, conversations, coughing (mine), the creaking whoosh sound of a stopping bus. When I began to focus on the background noises after stopping and leaning against a wall, I became aware of a ripply electronic hum which became very grating after I noticed it. A group of girls walked by and the soundscape was overtaken by a lot of loud, grating laughter, which thankfully faded as I ducked into Downtown Books. Realizing that this would actually count as a separate soundscape, I purchased an abridged copy of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and slipped back out onto the sidewalk, where I recommenced walking towards the lake. There was now a high pitched whining which I couldn't really identify, and the crinkling of my bag. Eventually I got bored of listening for the various tones of low hums that were pretty much everywhere and sat at a bus stop, whereupon I drew the following acoustic diagram.

what

what