Please do the following before you click the play button below:
1. Don’t read the artist’s statement yet.
2. Plug in your earphones.
3. Press play.
4. Close your eyes.
Faint is a transient sound piece revolving around the perspective of the experience of a fainting episode. It is based on a recent personal experience, and one of the rare occasions of alertness during a time of disorientation. The sound piece ignores the daily human conversation and instead brings to attention our sense of awareness of not only what goes on around us, but also within us, in a diluted environment. The switching between the diegetic sounds and the panning of the soundtrack takes the viewer into an immersive 360-degree experience of a first-person perspective within the represented space.
Sound is probably one of the hardest mediums to work with because of its limitations, and the risk of having some sounds sounding like other scenarios/situations instead. I started off doing some basic research by literally googling “sound story“. I thought it would be interesting to do something alone the lines of this audio, where the sound is a direct representation of the situation/characters involved in the story.
However, I felt that the experience was not there as all the sounds were very segmented. It was a direct translation of using sound effects and putting them together and didn’t really play with the panning of sound, though it definitely does tell a story that one can immediately visualise.
I had many ideas along the way from the philosophical “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” to the stupid “sonic portrait of ghosts from their perspective” (to give you an idea of the kind of stuff that was going on in my head LOL).
But I knew for sure that I wanted my sound to be something that is experiential for the viewer, that they can place themselves in the perspective and feel like part of the story (after thinking about it, I guess that’s what a sound story is supposed to do, but anyway). I thought this scene from Ant-Man was a very interesting form of perspective:
While thinking about the project, I was reminded of a recent incident that happened to me while it was my family’s first time at Swee Choon (super famous dimsum place, highly recommended!).
So basically, I fainted.
If you were expecting some long story I’m sorry to disappoint HAHAH. I’m quite amazed that I actually remember that my hearing was quite affected when I was at my pre-fainting stage, 1 hour before the incident. Anyway it was quite an experience for me, albeit unpleasant, but yes I would like to bring you into my personal fainting experience.
This was what I experienced:
1. Bubble blocking right ear
2. Rubbed ear
3. Stupid bubble still doesn’t disappear
4. Hearing slightly blocked
5. Adapted to it
6. Gradually resumed to normal hearing
7. Right ear got blocked first
8. Followed by ringing
9. Repeat on left side
10. Light beeeeeep sound
11. Told my mum: “mum, I’m gonna faint”
12. Fainted
13. Woke up to muffled sounds
14. Can’t register anything around me
15. Slowly gaining back hearing
16. Very disoriented
17. A lot of chattering around
18. Resumed to movable/walkable stage after 15-20mins
There are more in-between but those are more of the visual elements, so I’ll leave them out.
I got a few friends hear my audio and one of them suggested that I watch this video, which I thought was really funny (i still think its funny) and I can’t stop laughing hahahahahahahahhahah
I thought this was a really creative idea, using sounds that can represent something because of their existing function (in this case the windows start up and shut down sound). I’m not sure if this sound only works just because there is a visual to accompany it. I don’t think I wanna take the risk to over complicate the sound that I’m focusing on since it’s supposed to be something experiential.
Anyway this was the sequence that I settled for, for viewers to immerse in the fainting experience. I only used the key elements of my actual fainting process to relate it to what I’ve gone through.
SEQUENCE:
Hears normally
Surrounding sounds
One side gets blocked off
Rubs ear
Clears slightly
Slowly blocks again
Rubs ear again
Surrounding sounds
Ringing in the ear
Hearing starts to fade off
Silent single tone beep noise
Thud (could end here?)
Slowly gains back hearing
Very muffled and dreamy-state sounds
Gains back hearing
Just some thoughts,
Contrast – noisy + loud surroundings and quiet + soft sounds in head
Both could have similar effects – fading + unclear
Could play with difference of hearing in left and right ear
Maybe a looooooooooooooong silence before regaining consciousness
How to make it distinctively fainting sounds only?
PROCESS:
I recorded a single sound and edited it since I wanted the focus to be on how the effects affect the listener. Using a H2 zoom recorder, I stood in the middle of marina bay (not in the water) for about 2 minutes. I recorded my surroundings, of people walking by and of distant noises in the background. The main point of this was for the listener to be attentive to the movement around him/her and to not be able to form any context in their head with any ongoing conversation (since in class we learnt that people tend to hook onto audible and understandable words first). In the sound piece, we will be able to hear bits of conversation, but not being able to put them together and understand them coherently, since they all do not form any link with one another.
Since I was recording around the area where the iLight exhibition was taking place, I did consider using the context of the space (there was a carnival there). I thought it might be a possible direction where the idea of the horror ride being scary triggered the person in perspective. However, I wanted to show the vulnerability that I experienced, that the reason for fainting was not caused by my surroundings, but from within myself, or the consequence of my pre-incident actions.
The sound piece required some editing, mostly with the panning of the left and right, to bring up the idea of blockage in hearing, as well as the timing for the internal and external experience. There were three royalty free sounds which I found online, ear rubbing (5:231 to 8:242), ringing in the ear, and body dropping.
For me, this project had quite a few takeaways. From Lei’s presentations, I was already learning a lot about how sound artists/producers/directors have different approaches to sound and the kind of experience that they achieve with the use of this medium.
After working on my project, I now have a heightened awareness of sound, both internally and externally, since listening to my classmate’s audios showed me that there are more things to pay attention to than the common sounds we hear daily. As mentioned previously, sound is quite a difficult medium to work with because of its constraints. However, I feel that sound does play a very important role in changing the mood or bringing about focus to something. It also stirs a lot of emotions in the listener, and is definitely more immersive than visuals.
In the technical aspect, I kind of have an idea of how to do basic stuff on Premiere Pro (instead of using imovie all the time), which I think will be very useful for me in the future.
Yay to learning! \0/
