Final Trimester 3 blog - What a Trimester it has been...

The project I decided to tackle this trimester for my jingle assessment was the short film Time Trap, my intentions for this project was to try and bring sound and music closer together, I also wanted to change the feel of the film through the sound and music as the original music and sound was quite fun and playful I was trying to get a more serious tone, added to this I wanted to utilise multiple DAWs and use the strengths in each one to create good sound without sacrificing CPU or user friendliness so to begin with I would do all my “sketching out” and ideas in Logic Pro X and then move synth sounds that I wanted to improve into Ableton Live using midi information and then do my final mix would be done in Protools. My plan to complete the project was this, chronologically go through the film and complete each section of the film as I went, this would allow my to keep the feel of the film the same the whole way through, allow me more time on creating a better atmosphere in each section and create smoother transitions between scenes, etc. My plan with sound was to use a lot of synthetic sounds or modulating or warping natural sounds to sound more synthetic or futuristic, for example I used a flanger, chorus and phaser on a sample sound I got from a video of a space shuttle taking off to create the mid flight sound of the space ship in my film. I found that to be a common theme for a lot of the ship’s sounds, flangers especially came in handy when making the engine and fly by sounds for the ship. I don't think I really followed any conventional processes when doing sound design or music for this film but I did follow my planned process to go through the film in chronological order. I found this process really good but it did take me more time than I expected but in saying that I was able to run through the film as I went a long and make sure everything was coherent and the right levels. One thing I didn't do was take my project to different DAWs the main reasons for this was firstly I didn't see it as a necessity for it my project was sounding fine and I was having no issues in Logic Pro X, I also decided to use Logic for most of my synth sounds and music composition just because it was easy for me to use and I was actually able to modify the sounds in Logic to what I wanted I saw no reason to create more work for myself. Something I didn't plan on doing but did do was changing the sounds for the main character, in the original piece of work the sound engineer worked human sounds, grunts and moans into the sound design despite the character not speaking the entire film, in the beginning I attempted to work the human sounds into it but just couldn't do it properly I think this was a mixture of inexperience and bad performance also no matter what I did to the sound it didn't seem like the characters natural sound and so to remedy this I tried to create the same sort of feel but with synth sounds basically giving the character a more R2 D2 feel which I preferred and also think fit the character better, the only time I didn't do this was at the start when he is snoring in the pilots seat of his spaceship that was just because you can see the characters face and that is obviously occurring plus to create that sound wasn't to difficult, the issue with the other sounds was mainly timing and emotion. Reflecting on the process as a whole and how well I achieved the objectives I set, I think when it came to the project collectively I think I did well, the work is not outstanding but covers the bases I also give myself credit for attacking a hefty project and achieving the standard I did, if I break down the project down into two groups music and sound, I think on the sound front I did some really cool stuff with trying to create sounds that obviously don't exist in real life especially when looking at the sound of the ship and the explosions, both of these took a fair bit of time and effort as they were not only modulated sounds and samples but also layers upon layers of different sounds to create one sound i.e. an explosion. As for the music I was going for a more serious tone and chose my sounds based on that idea, although one thing I realised was that because of the way the film was put together it was very hard to avoid some comedy in the film no matter how serious the music was, so that was definitely a task trying to make the comedy fit the dark music and atmosphere that I set out to create but I think I made it work by splitting those moments up, for example when the character crash lands on earth and goes to check the damage to his ship you hear there is no music only ambient sound to keep the feel of isolation without sacrificing the comedic moment he has when he rips the part off the side of the ship. The last thing would need to improve upon is my time management skills when taking on a project this size, I defiantly didn't make it easy for myself as 7:30 minutes is a lot of time to get through with the approach I was taking, if I was to change anything about my process it would be more about my preparation before actually starting the project, I had notes written on what I wanted it to feel like tone wise and had rough ideas for music and sound but I needed to go deeper, one of the issues I found myself in constantly was the fact I was trying to figure out how to create a sound and I think if I had done a bit more pre work before done more research into how others made similar sounds I think I would have run into less of those issues. All together I think I produced some great work for this project and produced a different and unique sound scape and musical feel in comparison to the original.

FREELANCE WORK:

Over this trimester I have tried to get myself involved in several project inside and outside of uni at the beginning of the tri I hoped on a project called Lipstick where I wrote and composed music for their film, I also helped out 2 people with demos and the in the studio, one was a woman I met through playing in a production band this trimester and we experimented with some great ideas in the studio the other person was a young guy I’ve known for a while and wanted to have some work done for uni. I have also started working on building and running a recording studio and just recently I joined a team of composers and EMP producers to create some really cool music.

All together my trimester has been very crazy and I have learnt a lot about prioritising and time management.

Jingle Website Link - http://oaoo45.wixsite.com/sonicsolutions

My Freelance Work: http://oaoo45.wixsite.com/oscarantonik/music

you'll find them on the left side of the page in this order.

Lipstick Opening Theme -

Saying Goodbye by Josh P. Barry -

Half Pint Heart by Jo Murgatroyd -