SPECIAL EFFECTS

When we finished our spotting notes for the special effects, we recorded a little over 100 sound effects. With our selection of sounds, to replace the current sound effects of the video, we tried to tell the same story as in the original video but with a little bit of exaggeration. Most of the sound effects in this video occur together with the music so the exaggeration will make it a little more noticeable maybe funny, without overshadowing the role of music. Based on the character and emotions we want to pass on each scene, music and sound effects will co-exist and maybe on one or two occasions, one may have to play a more central role than the other. Most of the sound effects were chosen from the library at the studio. A lot of the sounds from the scene where Susan’s sister prepares dinner were made using Foley. Fewer sounds were made using synthesis and restaurant background noises of a full and empty restaurant were recorded in actual restaurants. To make the sounds blend with the dialogue as well as the music EQ and compression can be used to bring them to ideal levels for the feel of each scene.

  • Spotting notes (yellow-foley, white-sample library, red-synthesis)

  • Cue sheet for foley session

  • Foley Before

  • Foley After (1)

  • Foley After (2)

  • Analogue Modular Synthesizer

We only run one foley session to replace sound effects from a series of scenes where Susan’s sister is in the kitchen making dinner. One of our members had worked as a sous chef and was comfortable chopping vegetables fast. So for our foley session, we brought a table into the booth to cut vegetables and fruits. We placed an AKG 414 microphone right above the table, on a cardioid pattern, and we start the recording process. Matthew cut apples, carrots, celery, and carrots for the needs of the foley sessions. Not all vegetables and fruits were needed but we took a lot of takes and some sounded better than others and fit the scenes better. Besides the cutting, Matthew also did some knife scraping to replace some metallic sounds the knives made while Annie was cutting the vegetables. For the scraping, he moved the knives closer to the microphone scraped them against each other, and produced a very nice and soft metallic sound. Besides the cutting Annie was doing in the kitchen, we also used foley for the two chip bites Susan performs, by eating a chip.

Most of our sound effects were picked from the sound library at Studio C. There was a lot of editing applied to them to fit the feel of the scene and exaggerate compared to the original video. There was a lot of EQ applied as most sounds had a lot of High frequencies we wanted to get rid of. There were a couple of cases where we wanted to get rid of low frequencies but not as many. Some sound effects were reversed because their role was a lot more meaningful compared to before. A good example was a sound clip of chalkboard writing; that was reversed to replace a towel scraped against a mirror. A majority of our sounds did not fit the scenes as we wanted, they were either too long or too short, so we had to manipulate the clip to find the ideal size without, at most times, alternating the pitch. To do it we entered the audio track in warp mode entered a new event marker towards the end of the clip, and based on our idea and preference we either elongated or shortened the clip. Clips that were made from a single sound were altered in monophonic mode, clips that were made from more than one sound were entered in polyphonic mode, and in some cases, we wanted to alter the pitch so we entered varispeed mode.

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