Narrative Statement (195 words): Link to heading

I was inspired by the game Control, and its “objects of power”,’ and wanted to represent what it could look like when a normal person could be chased by an object that possesses an ungodly strength or power of some kind. So I decided to make two timelines and spliced them in a similar fashion to Dune. The audience can decide our character’s fate, but I wanted to create the setting and tension around it.

In the first timeline, the audience will hear the perspective of a nondescript character fleeing something in the forest. Whereas in the second timeline, the audience will hear the object escape from its holding.

I wanted the audience to experience both aspects of the timeline continuously, rather than in two separate situations, as it would add a lot of contrast and intrigue to the reason the character is running.

I also wanted to add a pathetic fallacy to the object’s timeline, featuring roaring thunder that is heard again at the end of the character’s timeline. On top of this, I wanted to add a contrast between the natural diegesis of the character and the synthetic diegesis of the object.

Recording Notes: Link to heading

As you can see, the picture above shows the way I have ingested the audio. Whenever I ingested audio, I would put the location name first (Blue), then the sound effect it was of (Purple). This is, of course, with the addition of the specific times provided by the recorder itself.

*[ACRONYM]*LOCATION_SoundEffect.WAV (Time in metadata)

Just for clarification, however, the tapes recorded on “25 April” I believe were actually recorded in “25 March”, as that would make more sense with the timeline, especially since I borrowed a microphone temporarily that week to get thunder sounds [to no avail :( ].

But simply put, I ingested it this way, so it’s easy to know where and what I recorded.

I also recorded some sounds late at night. This was because it was easier to isolate the specific sounds I wanted to record and reduce overall noise in the recordings. I also found that not wearing a jacket and listening to the mic’s output were very helpful while recording in the field, as I could test how well the mic was picking up sound.

Technical Discussion: Link to heading

As mentioned earlier in the narrative statement, I wanted the audience to experience the two timelines in a conjunctive manner; accordingly, I decided to take a similar approach to that of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Where the main character experiences flashbacks and flashforwards, I created two separate timelines that represent the back/front of the story (which I wanted to leave ambiguous).

General Technical Aspects: Link to heading

Nested Timelines: Link to heading

As you can probably tell, there are actually 3 Reaper projects. However, the only one you need to look at is the combined one. Since it includes the others as subprojects, double-clicking the files opens a proxy for those projects within the combined project.

All I did was try to drag the RPP file into the combined project, and it worked. So the updated version of all the timelines is actually within the combined project. But I wanted to include all three just to be safe.

Helm on the Reaper Timeline: Link to heading

I also learned I can trim/automate any of the effects sliders in Helm through Reaper, which was really useful because I could fine-tune the tracks’ bpm and volume.

Submixing: Link to heading

I used submixing to help collate the sounds in the project and keep them associated with one another.

Relative panning: Link to heading

Some sounds were just slightly panned to add nuance to the soundscape throughout the timeline.

Noise Suppression: Link to heading

There were some general things that I found were simpler to do with the ReaEQ function than with the ReaFIR function. Specifically, for noise Isolation, I used the Band EQ and, while looping the audio, selected the audio frame I liked best from my samples. This made the noises less effective.

On top of this, I understood how to use a spectrogram from my knowledge of noise reduction in Adobe Audition. And so after fiddling with Reaper’s in-built spectrogram, I was able to easily isolate audio. This is really easy to see in the Thunder Effect, as I wanted to isolate just the thunder.

Transitions: Link to heading

One of the many transitions I used was the Noise transition between the two timelines. I created this using a noise generator in the effects panel and pitched it down 10 semitones. This created a deep, bassy noise that I could use to transition between the two
simultaneous plots. This also helps with keeping the story’s timeline ambiguous.

I decided to use an L-cut for the last transition and also shifted the panning of the sounds to create the illusion of the timelines syncing up. Only for the audience to hear the character stop and listen to the thunder that they heard at the start of the second timeline.Character Timeline [100s] Technical Aspects:

For the character timeline, I largely used this reference as the basis for the sample’s audio.

I used a low-frequency oscillator [LFO] to help pitch the breathing effects throughout the timeline. This made it sound much less similar and less like a looping sample.

I randomly panned the cricket timeline. Such as to make it seem as though there are a lot of crickets in the background, as if the character is running past.

For the heartbeat, I used an arpeggiated synth from Helm, which I had created using one of the kick-sample synths [I forgot which one, Sorry].

Object’s Timeline [90s]: Link to heading

For the objects’ timeline, I used variations of different synths, including the Initial synth, to create the various sounds heard.

I also purposefully added some noise in general such as the GYG_FanHood.Wav which created a big airy sound that helped exaggerate the spacious area the object was in

I think the graph above does show quite well how I wanted to represent the object in this situation. And most of the methods I used are quite self-explanatory. [Also, I’m running out of pages!!]

Reflection: Link to heading

What sounds did I record?: Link to heading

I recorded basically anything and everything I could, as I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted from my project. Later on, I came up with the idea of doing the chase sequence because it seemed approachable and fun. So I recorded anything that I thought would sound interesting, including a lot of Walla.

I think this helped me a lot as I was able to basically pick and choose what I wanted to use rather than getting perfect samples that were super specific. It also gave me creative flexibility with what sounds I could implement.

How did I use the captured audio? Link to heading

I primarily used my samples for ambience and diegetic sounds, such as the character’s breathing and the breaking of the object’s cell. I think this helped in keeping the setting more secure, kind of like “mise-en-scene” in film.

What am I most proud of? Link to heading

That’s a tough question. Overall, I really enjoyed making the scene as a whole; however, if I had to pick one thing, it would likely be the running effect of the character that I created and also the Searching/curious effect of the object. These repetitive sounds and drones are so engaging, yet don’t feel repetitive, and I think that makes them quite unique in the scene.

Something cool I tried was playing the timelines simultaneously, and it gave me chills!
It was so cool. But because of the assignment structure, I decided to stick with the conjunctive timeline [Reaching 3:00].

I also liked that I was able to completely delete a bird from the thunder clip. By editing the spectrogram.

What would I improve? Link to heading

Overall, I think if I had more time to play around with the synths, the object would sound scarier or more ominous. But because I got sick over the semester break, I wasn’t able to mess around with it as much.