4D Project 2 – Process

Artist Statement

This sound piece takes place in a world overrun by the undead. A lone human runs through an infested location hoping to get to safety, but eventually gets caught and bitten. Through this piece I wanted to reflect the feeling of something slowly catching up with the listener, so that there is tension and an eventual release from it. There was also a growing sense of danger through the ragged breathing, zombie growls that grew closer and the heart beat that slowly speeds up. This adds onto the tension of this audio piece. Ultimately, this piece is meant to represent the feeling of inescapable fate and fear.

Concept development/research/artist reference/challenges

The original concept was actually about people who sounded like each other. But it was hard to without using dialogue. Eventually I decided to do something more action packed and after looking at my many deadlines for my many assignments, I also wanted to have something catch up with the listener. So I combined these two ideas into a zombie chase concept.

I researched into zombie sound effects and how to make them. I also looked into how to create the sound effects for bones breaking and flesh eating. Mostly I just went out with a H4 Zoom Recorder and tried to get the necessary sound effects, such as footsteps, ambience and breathing. Although the first recording of these wasn’t satisfactory, I broke down the elements I needed from that first recording and recorded in quiet environment using the original recording as reference.

As for the zombie growls, I was lucky to have talented classmates who could growl quite scarily. I used their voices for the base audio layer of zombies. However in order to increase the number of zombies, I recorded myself making zombies noises. I based the sounds from The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later. Layering these sounds together allowed me to create the feeling of many undead rushing over. The challenge was making each zombie sound unique and making sure the environment would not echo the growls.

The bone snap sound effects was made using some celery and quickly snapping them. It creates a nice crunch. The body slam was just me throwing myself against the wall. For the zombie eating flesh, heart beat and human scream sound effect, I found them on freesound.org as my attempts at creating these sounds did not sound realistic.