Directions Unit: Sound effects

I decided that the best way for collecting sound effects was first to make a list of all the sounds i thought i would need.
When this was complete i had my housemate add what else she felt would be needed. This was a good strategy as had the sound of the bus pulling in but forgot to include the sound of it pulling off round the corner. This was important as if the bus stayed at the stop, the driver and passengers would see the girl get attacked.

Here is my list:

I thought the best way to get the voices was to ask friends and family. Chris & Hannah from the course kindly offered to help, and my mum and housemate were persuaded with the offer of chocolate. Due to not being able to ask anyone else i decided to do the final voice of waiter. 

The first sound i searched for was a good background ambience. I had done some research for this my sitting in my garden at a similar time to the time I'm portraying in my picture (Dusk), and listening to all the sounds i could hear. There was a lot of bird song and after trying that sound out on the track it just didn't feel right, there aren't that many trees about and it didn't seem to get across the cold atmosphere. The next sounds i looked for were wind or winter sounds but they always seemed to sound like a blizzard which really was too much for the stillness and calm i wanted to portray. Although there is snow its not that thick just yet so having the blizzard sound seemed a bit much, and it would be difficult to hear anything over a blizzard wind. My housemate suggested i look for city traffic which i did but they all sounded too busy, so i tried distant traffic sounds and found one that fitted really well so decided to try this one as my initial layer for all the other sounds.

I started collecting my sounds from youtube and sound bible and when they were not realistic enough i decided to take matters into my own hands. Armed with my trusty new iPad mic i went to the car and started messing about with the boot. I placed the mic in the boot and recorded the sound of me opening and closing it. Then i placed the mic at the side of the boot to record the closing from another angle. Then i decided to record myself getting in to the boot and kicking and punching the surroundings in order to get realistic sounds for the clip. It worked well but i still felt i needed more so i recorded the sound of someone punching seats and kicking the footwell in the car. 

Armed with all these sounds i feel ready to edit it all together.

Stay safe,

Helen