fire

We were tasked to create 2 stories from 2 different genres using nothing but only sound effects.

For this project, I chose task 1 as I felt that it gave me more freedom in being able to play around with the different sounds to create the stories that I want to portray.

We were given different genres to create our stories and these are the 2 that I find intriguing to explore and create my story from.

1 ) War

Synopsis: This story begins with a guy in his house, making a cup of coffee. As he sits down and reads his newspaper, an overhead plane crash accompanied with machine guns startled him. He hurries over to the door, knocking the things around the house, to check on the situation. He opens the door and a war breaks out right outside his house. He runs out of his house, avoiding the bullets and shrapnels and falls to the ground. He stands up and continues to run to escape from the war into the forest where he passes out.

Influenced by the movie ‘FURY’

I decided to go for this genre because I am always intrigued by war movies and how they use multiple layers of sound to create a specific battle scene. The time and effort put in to create such a battle scene interests me to challenge myself to try it out.

Camera Warfare by Devinsupertramp

A more quirky representation of how war is presented through the use of cameras as rifles and how sound is layered to give off this ‘war’ effect.

Workflow

Just for the war scene, it took me multiple layers to achieve the effect. I had to experiment with different types of gunfire, explosions, and the main character running at the same time. After reviewing a couple of times, some of the sounds felt like they did not complement the other sounds and I had to re edit a few parts, removing sounds and adding sounds to the spaces that felt empty. It was a tough process deciphering each different sound as it involves lots of different layers altogether.

2 ) Horror

Synopsis: The story begins with a guy walking in the forest. As he is making his way through the forest, he stops and notices an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. He knocks, hoping to get a response from someone. With no responses from his knocks, he opens the cabin door. He walked around the house and rummage through the items in the drawer. As it was dark in the cabin, he managed to find a matchbox and lights up a matchstick. He walks further into the cabin and opens up another door. A zombie chanced upon him but he manages to shoot the zombie down with 3 shots. After the scuffle, a woman crying for help knocked on the door and he hurries to the door to let her in. He opens the door, and is then eaten alive by a horde of zombies.

Influenced by ‘The Walking Dead’

This story is inspired by the walking dead. I personally like the horror genre of the show and how they use sounds to accompany the grotesque imagery in their scenes. The idea of using multiple layers of zombie noises, clothes ruffling, screaming, blood dripping for this scene has allowed me to better develop my story to make it more believable.

Workflow

More of the layering of sound effects are done at the last part of the whole composition. I had to try to make it as real as possible to that of zombie films. I also incorporated some distance towards different sounds to give the idea of how close the main character is towards the audience and I had to consider things that were happening in the background. I also made use of panning for some of the walking parts to give the audience the idea of the main character walking from one end to the other end. I added a constant cricket sound which was influenced from the walking dead to portray the still atmosphere in the whole composition.

Reflection

Overall, I felt that I’ve learnt a lot about the use of sounds and how sound plays an important role in our visual experience. I realise now how a lot of effort is put into sound in movies, even with the simplest scenes. It has been a great learning curve for me and hopefully this knowledge will help me with my final project.

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice

Fire

In my opinion, fire and ice in this poem represents human emotions. Firstly, fire represents the burning desire. Fire can cause destruction in many ways in an instant. The word ‘tasted’ in line 3, implies that the author has not felt the full brunt of the energy that fire can produce but has only gotten a little teaser of how powerful fire can be. The author suggests that we can control our desires. If conditions aroused that causes us to lose control of this ‘fire’, it can cause damage and affect the masses. In this photo, I display the different types of war (chemical warfare, military operations, nuclear warfare) that can happen if our desires are not controlled. Sexual desires and jealousy is also an important element in contributing to the end of the world through ‘fire’. The image of the lips, heart and a lacy bra represents these sexual desires.

Balance

For the second photo, the scale right smack in the middle with a line across dividing the 2 sides of fire and ice represents the balance between fire and ice. No matter which side we choose, at the end of the day, both will still bring destruction to this world, its just a matter of how it ends.

Ice

For the last photo, ice represents hatred. Icy actions require thinking and deliberation. It takes careful planning and a great deal of time. The slowness of ice takes a hold of things similar to hate, it takes a lot of time to get someone to actually hate someone and it is not instant, compared to fire. It is more of playing with the mind, and how it can torture someone with mind games. I displayed photos of stress, torture, the brain and poison to show that ice is somewhat like a venom, it will slowly have its side effects that will eventually kill the person with the venom.