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Sound Design

Tascam DR-40 Tutorial 

Hold down home to turn on, #.wav means there’s a file on the sd.

How to format the card:

  • hit “quick” to delete a file

menu → others → system → quick format

  • now it should say no music file

How to  change Record mode - different options. To exit rec mode - hit home

  • Stereo

    • Two mics

  • Mono

    • One Mic

  • Dual

    • makes two files, one 60+db quieter (for when actor yells)

How to raise the level

  • Use side button things to change input type

    • Mic for regular microphones

    • Mic + phantom for shotgun mic

 

Don’t hit record to stop recording. To stop, make sure to press home to stop. In order to raise level of the recording: input level on the side. It is important to try to get it to peak at the little arrow and hit record a second time → recording   (record light is solid). To check file name, look at the bottom while recording

 

    • Change the name of the file

      • Others → file name

    • To hear the last take

      • Go foward and press play

    • To turn off, hold down on home

      • Make sure hold button is off

  • Always record at 16bit 48k

Crash Course Sound Production

People invovled:

 

  • A Sound crew: usually 2 - 3 people

  • The Sound mixer (sound guy)

  • A Boom operator. Their role is to Hold the mic on long boom pole over actorand knowing blocking

  • Utility sound technician. Their role is to be in charge of the equipment/cable maintenance. Also the mic placement and keeping people quiet.

 

Defenitions:

 

Wild sounds: the sound that is recorded and added post-production

  • Room Tone: atmospheric sound recorded with everyone silent and important to keep the film consistent

    • body mics/lavelier mics/Windscreen muffles air

    • Inside and outside screens are different

  • Microphone patterns

    • Omnidirectional is all directions

    • Bidirectional is two directions for two people speaking

    • Cardioid - mainly one direction for one person speaking

  • Syncing sound

    • Time code on slate

    • Guide track

  • Sound editor

    • their job to make the best sound possible, not necessarily using what was recorded already

    • ADR:

replacing dialogue post-production

 

Sound designers and foley artists:

make sound effects

 

Music supervisors and composers

make the music

Process

This is my Sound Design film. The first few things I did was detach the audio and listen to it without sound to see what I thought the video needed. I mainly used the Final Cut Pro sound effects and Youtube for a few things, such as the Peanut Music I used for the video. I tried to have a contrast between the different sounds I was using. For example, I didn't want the head scratch sound to be much louder than the other sound effects or the street sounds to be louder than the footsteps sound.  It needed to be balanced, that way you aren't being overpowered by one specific sound and can't hear the others. I also payed attention to layering each sound effect, because some of the sounds needed to playing at the same time. I started off adding some of the more obvious sounds that needed to be included such as the wagon and the footsteps, and then thought of smaller sound effects I could add to make the audio sound more interesting. After including the head scratch, footsteps, wagon noise, and other smaller sounds, I then worked with their volume and if they lined up with the video. I wanted the accuracy to be very specific or else it wouldn't look as precise. Lastly, I tackled the background noise, so I included ambient noise, street sounds, bird chirps and car honks, and then finally layered in the music and lowered it's volume, so the other sound effects were not too loud. 

This is an example of the layering of sounds and the amount of different sounds I used just for one shot. I also tried to incorporate sounds such as a hummingbird sound effect and a horn honk sound just to make the background noise sound more realistic

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 9.41.26 AM.png

This is an overview of all of sound effects I used for this film 

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 9.48.51 AM.png

I used most of the sound effects from the Final Cut Pro sound library. I knew that there needed to be some ambient background noise, so I searched City, to find a plethora of wonderful city background sound effects. I choose to use City 1, which fit well

Screen Shot 2019-01-17 at 9.37.39 AM.png
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