Audio

The Things Many Tend to Not Notice

    As recommended by my teacher, I've decided to dedicate a blog post to music I wish to use, sounds I wish to incorporate, foley, and figuring out how I want to layer all the sounds together. Sound is very important to every single piece of media, even though you may not always notice it, especially the diegetic sounds, they're still necessary because without them, the scene may feel awkward or empty. Also, as a side note, scenes that lack sound are typically only seen in horror movies, since they create that tension for the viewer, and that's not what I'm going for.

   Some basic sounds that I know I'll need to have, and will most likely use foley to create them, include footsteps, chairs moving, opening and closing books and counters, crayon and pencil noises, and the sound of one little Emily's photograph slowly hitting the floor. These will be pretty easy to make since most the noises are pretty basic, however, timing them up correctly is what'll be the hard part. The footsteps will have to be in sync with what's seen on screen, the crayon sounds have to match up as well, and the drawing falling can't be too loud or too quiet. 

    To go into exact scenes and be more specific, I'll talk about the scene where teenager Emily is coming back to her room after going to the kitchen. Obviously, since she'll be walking over I'll need to record footsteps that match up with hers and I'll also want to layer that walking sound with the sound of Emily moving her chair so she could sit in it, which is another thing I'll have to make sure to time correctly. Later on in the scene, while Emily is looking through her sketchbook, about to draw something, she gets a notification from a reminder she set to get back to work. For this little bit, I'll need the sound of paper moving, and maybe even the sound of someone fidgeting with a pencil, to show how she's concentrated and thinking about what she should do. Then, I'll layer the sound of the notification onto those sounds and abruptly stop them just as she looks up from her desk to peek at her computer, that has the reminder. These sounds can, once again, easily be created but, I think I'll probably use this alert sound that I found on FreeSound, a very useful website that was introduced to my class near the beginning of the year.