VFX Week 3: Audio Workshop

Today we started to look at audio and how important it was to include it in a film. We first watched 2 YouTube videos looking in depth at the sound effects and how they are used to create an atmosphere and then we watched another making of Star Wars where it documented sound.

Contact Intro: Earth, Universe, Space Zoom Out
This is the opening sequence from the film Contact, which is a film about alien contact and life outside of our universe. The title sequence is fascinating, it starts by showing the earth and zooms outwards until it gets outside of our galaxy and into the depths of space; but what makes this video so interesting is the audio that goes with it. As the camera pans across the Earth we start to hear load radio frequencies, playing quite recent music; for when the film came out, and then as it moves away from Earth and moves backward through the solar system the radio frequencies get more faint but go back in time. We start to hear things from the 60s and then eventually as we get further out to the each of the galaxy we hear the very first radio broadcasts and things from the war, until it eventually fades to nothing - representing the vastness of space itself and how there is no sound.

Lewton Bus: Cat People
Lewton Bus is the original horror gag that is used in most films today. The footsteps that follow the lady and echo slightly suggests that there is something there, following her. As she quickens her pace, the audio becomes louder and starts to become more erratic. She then gets to were she needs to be and the footsteps stop only to be replaced by a growl, which we expect to be the cat people that are going to jump out on her, when a bu break loudly in front of her. Its a very anticlimactic ending in which we don't expect to happen because we think that there is something after her.

Star Wars Episode II: Sound Design 
Films Are Not Released; They Escape
We then watched another documentary from Star Wars, this time Episode II. In this documentary we see how sound is created for the Star Wars franchise and how much time and effort have to go into making it. During the filming the sound isn't always useable, down to how much machinery that has to be used to create the atmosphere on set, like wind machines. ADR is a way of getting actors back into the studio to record them again to ensure they have a clear version to use in the final cut.

Foley is a technique used in film production as well as special effects to be able to create realistic sounds to accompany the synthetic ones; in order to create the best possible sound in the end. During the film as well, to create the sounds of the insect like people, they would use regular English words and then cut them up, slow them down and then speed them up to be able to create a strange mess of sounds with the occasional clicking sounds inbetween.

Final Mix is a section of production in which the sound editors and the director get together and watch the whole film in small sections to be able to analyse the audio properly and break it down to make sure every bit of the film sounds right and the correct sounds are being used. This can be a lengthy process and sometimes only a few minutes of film is analysed per day. Due to the fact that they recycle sounds in the Star Wars franchise, some sounds cannot be used in certain films, unless they have been changed dramatically so that some part of machinery doesn't end up sounding like a robot character, like R2 D2. Taking that into consideration this part is very important so that each part of the film is individual and doesn't included unnecessary or unusable sound.