Finished Film

Vimeo Link:

http://vimeo.com/82372563

How its made

I ended up doing all of the sound design in Logic and Soundtrack Pro, as this meant I could work from home, and I'd also had some issues with access privileges in Pro Tools. I had intended to draft the piece in STP and then re-edit a final mix in protools, however due to an oversight in exporting and some naivety on my part this would have more trouble than it was worth. When exporting edited clips I hadn't noticed that the submix was set to 5 channels for surround sound.

This wouldn't normally be a problem ,as in STP you can alter the channel so the clips will become mono or stereo, and each track can contain any sort of clip,

whereas Pro tools requires specific mono and stereo track designation from the outset. I had also foolishly hoped to be able to drag clips straight out of STP to Pro Tools, which was wishful thinking.

For the first act my directors notes were 'no woodland sounds!', 'low hum' and 'high contrasting tone. When trying to record atmos tracks I had found the overhead planes infuriating however in this instance I decided to enhance the sound by manually automating the lower frequencies of the EQ in Logic with the latch function, and applied some reverb as well, creating a whooshing motion that compliments the slow-mo of the footage shot at 50fps.

The higher tone was made by sustaining a note on the Sculpture Modeling synths' Wind Cyborg preset, and I again used Sculpture to create the faint flute motif using the aptly titled forest atmosphere preset. I originally didn't to use any sort of melodic score, relying instead on building an atmosphere tonally, however this fit nicely, and I also automated the volume and modulation as I played it so it did not impede too much, and it ended up blending well with the other tones to almost sound like forest ambience itself.

The final enhancement to act 1 was to accentuate the swinging of the characters thurible, which was done using a 'swoosh' sound effect, transposed in pitch and fed through a tremolo with a 1/16 rate with minimal smoothing and mixed in at 69%

All of these sounds build to a mild crescendo that peaks as the character blacks out the screen before the title appears.

The Kill List (2011) inspired title drum was made on the ESX24 by making the attack and sustain as short as possible to give it a percussive edge.

I wanted the second act to be naturalistic whilst building suspense through the ambience of the forrest itself. The only artificial element is the creaking tree sound effect, which I had tried to capture using a contact mic naturally, but failed to get a satisfactory result. The sound instead used was a creaking door, shifted down in pitch with EXS24 sampler. 

It works effectively to make the forest feel alive. My atmos tracks were a little lacking due to how sparse the trees had become. Though you could faintly hear owls and other birds in the distance I added in a few owl effects to enhance the off-screen presence. Though I didn't want the day time atmos to be too busy it was still a little lacking, so I added tracks of crickets and popping wheat to give it a greater texture, and chirping birds once the camera was closer to the trees.

I also added rustling leaves to suggest something is moving off-screen, and a sudden caw from a crow and the fluttering of wings to accompany a whip pan of the camera, adding a P.O.V element.

The fluttering was slightly extended and panned to follow the direction of the camera.

The ritual scene is preceded and introduced by the echoing beat of a drum that gets gradually louder, and continues to accent each cut until the climax. This is the section I was really able to go to town on, and I wanted to create as much sonic discomfort for the viewer as possible. To do this I wanted to create extreme dissonance without really using music, so I built frenetic layers of sound effects over a gradual drone. Many of the sound effects are percussion sound effects, reversed on Logic's Ultrabeat drum kits drag and drop samples function.

The xiaoluo sound in particular sounded very creepy reversed, and was used several times at different pitches with the EXS24. Another repeated sound is a recording I made hitting a wok with water in it and swilling it reversed. 

This compliments the steady drone of tibetan bells that become gradually more intense. I also included sound effects from the mise en scene, such as horrific pig squeals reversed, and the sound of a blade being drawn, which had the dry signal turned down completely and the wet reverb at 100% in space designer, also boosting the low frequency EQ the second time its played.

There is also a pitch shifted dry ice sound effect used to herald the characters approach. An idea i came up with early on was to include some sort of chant or whispers to accompany the ritual, and I wanted to homage Jocelyn Pook's 'backwards priests' composition from Eyes Wide Shut (1999) since our characters cultish attire is so similar to those on display there. The end result was something of an in-joke, I recited children's nursery rhyme 'this little piggy' in German which I found to be an amusing reference that no one would really understand when reversed.

Dieses kleine Schweinchen ging zum Markt,
  Und dieses kleine Schweinchen blieb zuhaus,
 Dieses kleine Schweinchen hatte Roast Beef,
Und dieses kleine Schweinchen hatte keins
 Und dieses kleine Schweinchen machte 'Wee wee wee' den ganzen Weg heim

This was also made to sound a little more demonic, as a nod to Evil Dead (1981), by pitch shifting it several semitones down, and extreme panning was applied to make it more disorientating.

What keeps the piece sustained and drives the crescendo home is the drone of the sculpture synth's ambient intrigue, which was double tracked with one note unchanging whilst the other gradually increases in pitch over an octave. I altered the bender range to twelve notes and manually automated it, making a few adjustments in the hyper editor to alter any mistakes.

This was in some part inspired by Hans Zimmer's theme for the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008).

This was also manually panned in 5.1 as I had originally wanted to do the piece in surround sound, with the build up of sounds coming from all directions, however as you can't monitor surround in STP I settled for a stereo mix for now.

AV13 Playlist Contribution

For AV13 myself and Jordan took on playlist duties for the intervals in-between the film blocks. It mainly comprised of easy going instrumental trip-hop songs, with some indie and 80's thrown in there for some variety. I also provided a HDMI to mini display port adaptor to connect the mac to the projector at the screening.

Tremolo Score Idea

Listen Here:

https://soundcloud.com/skudsounds/tremolo-synth-idea

Whilst experimenting with a tremolo on Sculptures crystal pad I came up with an ominous score Idea I may use next year or commission to someone else, inspired By Cliff Martinez' score for Drive (2011), Vangelis' Music for Bladerunner (1982) and the Baseball furies theme from The Warriors (1979)

It was recorded live on my MIDI keyboard adjusting the modulation as I went, with a few alterations to velocity afterwards.

The Tremolo rate was set to 1/16 with virtually no smoothing and a depth of 69% was used so it wasn't entirely a choppy staccato sound. 

Surreal/Experimental Inspirations

Eraserhead (1977)

Lynch's dark film atmospheres are often fuelled by a lot of Low frequency tones as evidenced in this clip, with heavy reverb increasing the ambient level.


Tetsuo the Iron man (1989)

Another surreal industrial horror, this clip features and ominous droning bell like sound which is built up along with some technoesque percussion.

ROLI Seaboard

A dream piece of kit (and with its price it will remain just that), the Seaboard takes the layout of a piano and turns it into a soft continuous surface, allowing you to modulate the pitch, volume and timbre through one seamless motion, similar to the control surface of a Kaoss Pad. Sensitive to pressure, the polyphonic pitch-bend and vibrato functions give it action similar to a guitar, whilst the sustained notes respond to the subtlest alteration of touch, fluctuating from harder crescendos to soft resonance.

This would be a fantastic tool for scoring films with its intuitive design allowing for very expressive playing, especially when combined with further FX such as Delay, reverb and tremolo to enhance the already superb ambient quality. Sadly, with the full piano scale costing $8.888, and just three octaves costing $1.999 I won't be getting to play one anytime soon.

Glass Works

http://www.soniccouture.com/en/product/g14-glass-works/

I've been contemplating for a while what upgrade to my arsenal I will acquire before the start of second semester, new monitors, hardware instruments (Akai's MPC drum machines and Korg's Electribe caught my eye) new software (Pro Tools), but I think I've found a winner.

Linked Above is Sonic Couture's Glass works, a software instrument that combines the ethereal tones of Le Cristal Baschet, the Glass Armonica and a set of Crystal Bowls, all exceedingly rare but beautiful instruments.
Some of the other soft/hardware synths I've looked at with an eye geared more towards music production than film composition, but this is ideally suited to creating celestial, haunting cinematic textures.
It offers the kind of ambient crystalline quality I'd had in mind for my score for our horror film next semester, at times comforting and at others extremely unnerving.
I cannot stress enough how much I love the haunting moods Cliff Martinez sows into his Solaris (2002), Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013) scores, and his influence is sure to continue to carry into my future works. All of the above films feature the use of Le Cristal Baschet, an instrument played by running wet fingertips over glass rods amplified by fibreglass cones, creating a gentle tambre that can quickly become ominous when the bass octaves are projected. This and the Glass Armonica were so rare that they were recorded by seemingly the only man to own them, French musician Thomas Bloch, seen below demonstrating what the Baschet can do. The softly-tuned percussive Crystal bowls proved so rare to find (they were originally used in laboratories to track subatomic particles apparently!) that the samplers had to build their own set for use in this software.

I'm very excited at the prospect of being able to incorporate sounds like this into my work, and that thankfully a midi keyboard doesn't require the refined complexity necessary to master the real thing.


Update: I managed to download a version but sadly its only a demo and times out after 15 minutes or so. It looks promising enough to invest in the full thing however.

Night Time Atmos attempt

After finishing a late shift at work I set about trying to record a nighttime atmos so I cycled up to Whitely woods at 6am with a Zoom H2N to try my luck. Though I could hear owls off in the distance there was not a great deal of activity owing to how sparse the trees had become with winter, and I didn't go too deep in as it was pitch black and my vision was limited. With the sensitive mic picking up the tiniest of rustlings it was quite an unnerving experience recording in a dark woods, but I couldn't get too immersed as the silence was broken too regularly by distant early morning commuters. Around 7am as it began to get light there was a greater activity of bird calls.

In future I will plan to find a more isolated wood and go to greater lengths to travel out of urbanised areas.

Freelance Work

Earlier this year a friend on a different Film course asked me to make hime some original music for an advert he was making for a local tapas bar/restaurant.

http://www.mojobarandtapas.co.uk/index.html

The song can be heard here:

https://soundcloud.com/skudsounds/sodson-super-salsa-snack

Though some of the drums are taken from a sample pack the rest is composed by me, I watched a tutorial to get an idea how to play salsa piano and went from there. I was only given a deadline of a day or two, and would have liked to have recorded a real guitar as the Logic one sounds rather artificial, but did not have the time. I also removed a trumpet as it did not sound authentic enough.

A friend recently started his own gaming company, with the intent on designing and selling flash based arcade style games. He asked me if I would be willing to make some sound effects and music for 20% of the games profits. I would happily do it for free as it has been great practice and taught me a lot about Logic.

You can play the full game here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/626135

You listen to the full song here:

https://soundcloud.com/skudsounds/density

I wanted the piece to reflect the floating nature of the gameplay and objects onscreen and have an ambient quality whilst also retaining the aesthetics of an arcade style game. Several of the instruments used have different kinds of delay and reverb on them.
The piano ostinato was one of the first ideas I came up with, and I used delay designer to repeat the note three times, with each echo become quieter.

The analog percussion synth already had a preset stereo delay, which i then altered by turning on the beat synth function, and increasing the level of panning in the echos. This synth plays the sustained bass note progression and is looped throughout the piece, whilst the delay gives it a percussive edge with the initial attack.

Another great delay preset was the one on the Ultrabeat's 'Ghost Town' kit, which leaves each beat ringing out atmospherically. The snare is also quite distorted and has the perfect 16-bit game quality I had hoped to emulate.

Also featured is a Sculpture Synth vibraphone, with an ostinato inspired by a melody from Tensnake's 'Coma Cat', which I had been enjoying at the time over the summer.

The main melody is also played on Sculpture, with some lines using a call and response form with the piano. I originally wrote the piece in three sections, the intro, breakdown and final section, which was then also incorporated into the first section before the breakdown, as it is more lively and the designer wanted the first minute of gameplay to get players hooked.

I spent a good while mastering the track, especially getting a good mix of the drums, which was a little unnecessary as I would only be exporting a low quality file at around 128 kbs, owing to the small overall filesize requirement of the game, however it was good practice to relearn the basic principles of EQing and the right place to pan instruments, and the use of compression and limiters.

AVOID/FLUXXIL

The game is still in development, but you can listen to the full song here:

https://soundcloud.com/skudsounds/avoid

Inspired by future disco songs such as

Similar to Density in terms of it's sections, with a gradual build up in the first section breaking down into a sparse middle before building up again for the final act. This piece however features a much greater range of instruments and sounds, with beats taken from 6 drumkits, and around 8 synthesisers used.

The melodies used are all derived from an earlier demo I made for the game, https://soundcloud.com/skudsounds/avoid-demo-1 , which was a lot more frantic and arcadey, and may still be used in the more hectic higher levels. Rob asked for something upbeat with two melodies that play at different speeds, so I came up with an arpeggio somewhat inspired by Cliff Martinez' 'Wanna Fight' from the score of Only God Forgives (2013).

The song didn't entirely fit with the slower early levels however and I had wanted to try my hand at a future disco track for a while, so I opted for something with a tempo of 110bpm with a more funky disco vibe.

I created the highpass filter effects using the ES P synth and an autofilter, with the cutoff set at 50% with a resonance of 32%, going at a rate of 3 bars.

I again used a delay designer on one ES2 synth which I had molded from scratch to get the glittery quality I was after.

The delay recurred eight times, with each one alternating between extreme panning and gradually decreasing in volume.

I also assigned an arpeggiator to a snare to create an automated drum roll, at 1/8 length with a resolution of 1/32. This was again applied to the sustained chords of the EXS24 blue carpet synth in the outro, creating a nice sweep of notes spanning three octaves, with a length of 1/64 and a resolution of 1/16.

This synth is also soft throughout until the final section when I used the modulation wheel to crank up the cut off.

Both of the Saw synths are set to the legato function, with one playing a variation of the main melody from the early demo.

I have learned a great deal about the Functions of Synthesis and various effects through the creation of these scores, and it is a good and convenient working relationship that benefits us both that I look forward to continuing into the future.

Crickets

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/someone-recorded-crickets-then-slowed-down-the-track-and-it-sounds-like-people-singing/

A came across very interesting recording, a stretched out track of crickets, that sounds like an angelic choir. The natural track is also played over the top for comparison. Recorded and produced by Jim Wilson, this raises interesting questions about the nature of animal communication and consciousness.