Audio Project 2 – Creating audio for the Game Indu

For both of my visual media pieces I used music I downloaded from http://freemusicarchive.org/music/BoxCat_Games/.

I looked on many websites, but couldn’t quite find anything that I felt matched the visuals. As I am not as musically talented as other designers, I looked throughout many libraries and downloaded many pieces. I placed each piece over the visuals and tried to implement it so it didn’t sound like it had been slapped on. But I struggled to find any that fit.

I managed to find 3 pieces, 2 for Rayman Legends and 1 for Bio-Shock Infinite and I felt confident that they both fit with the visuals and that they embedded together nicely.

This week, I focused on editing the sounds for Bio-Shock Infinite so I would have a fresh mind when it came to looking music for Rayman Legends.

My main focus was diegetic sounds, instead of trying to manipulate sounds to create a certain mood within the clip. I choose this strategy as I wanted the section to sound isolated and lonely throughout, especially with the notion of the previous games in the series.

Starting with footsteps, I tried to build spatial aspect within the clip. Then I started to build up on diegetic sounds of anything moving within the building. Once the characters are outside, I added bird song and wind so it gave a realistic feeling towards the end of the clip.

I added a small piece of music to the clip, to emphasis the feelings and emotions portrayed by one of the characters, however throughout the clip I haven’t used any music as I felt it was more effective than any music I could find in any libraries.

This week, I started compiling all my sounds on to ProTools so I could start the editing process. I imported all of the recordings that I had taken earlier in the month as I didn’t want to limit myself to what sounds I should and shouldn’t use. I, also, started a session for Bio-Shock Infinite with all the recordings as well so it didn’t matter if I lost any or couldn’t remember where I had saved them to. Firstly, I started making sounds for Rayman’s footsteps. As he is the character that the player is controlling and goes through two different levels in the 5 minute section, I thought it would be the most frustrating part of editing so I choose to get it over a done with first. I quickly moved on to punching and kicking movements so I had all the sounds that the main character creates and everything else can revolve around him.

I used the sounds of a man punching a punch bag, which was laid on the bed for footsteps and downloaded a cartoon which sound as the sounds I had didn’t quite sound right. For the movements of the wooden posts I used the sound of a metal garage door sliding up and down. With any posts that landed heavily I added to punching sound at the end to give it more oomph.

For the ghosts that pop I used the sound of a condom being popped from a distance, this worked well to give the impression that they are only made of air and are not that scary. I used the same technique for the fat goblin creature at the end of that section.

 

My aim was to gather as many sounds as possible in my first day. This then gave me three more days to correct any sounds that weren’t quite right before I had to hand back my equipment. I am using a H4N Zoom to record everything for my visual content. Once I had my equipment at my disposal I went and bought plenty of batteries, and had a quick run through the manual to double check I knew how to do everything correcting. All my sounds were recorded in Stereo so everything was the same, even though many sounds will be manipulated in the editing process. Altogether I ended up with roughly 53 recordings, the majority of them being between 30 – 60 seconds long.

The majority of my recordings were in my parents garage. I chose this place because looking at my list of recordings it seemed like I would be able to find objects that could produce the sounds I was hoping for. It happened to be a windy day and my parents house is an end terrence (meaning that the distance between my parents house and the neighbours to the right created a wind tunnel and the garage was at the end of that), so many objects had to moved around to avoid catching any wind, as well as placing the cover on the microphones to minimise the wind. On the upper hand, the street in especially quiet during the day so I aimed to get as much recording between midday and 3pm. However, it rained heavily between noon and 2pm and with the metal roof I ended up recording between 2pm-5pm, just missing everyone coming home from work and having traffic in the background of all my recordings.

After each recording, I listened very carefully, through headphones and in the house, at least twice to be 100% sure I didn’t have any unwanted sounds beneath them. I also recorded each sound twice aiming and placing the microphones in different directions so I could use the recordings and provide the impression of distance. Once I was happy with the sounds (or even if I wasn’t) I numbered each take and noted down what I had recorded so when it came to transferring the sounds from recording to computer it would be easier to rename and organise them.

Overall, I was happy with each sound and was pleased with how the day went. I managed to capture a few more sounds that I couldn’t seem to capture in the garage. For example, popping a condom and latex glove. I chose to record both as the condom was very sharp and the latex glove gave a slight poof sound which was what I was aiming for as I had the sound in mind to use for the ghosts that pop in Rayman.

After double checking the list of what sounds I wanted and the sounds I had collected, I decided it was time to move on to music for my games.

Here is a rough list of sounds that I may need to record for my editing process:

• Footsteps (on concrete and wood)
• Wind
• Bird Song
• Steam
• Metal Thuds
• Burning Embers
• Vocals (speech within Bio-Shock Infinite)
• Creaking Door
• Wooden sticks against concrete
• Bashing pillows against laminate flooring for Raymans soft footsteps
• Vocals – (ghostly groans and pirates “Arrrr”, panting in Rayman)
• Kitchen knifes
• Electronic Humming
• Party Poppers / Streamers

This may be added to in time as I start recording