Author: Chi Shun Woo

I have intentionally alternative the colour tone of the scenes to distinguish them and boost the impression of the themes visually. As suggested by Jessica, I will put these three clips in one, with the Comedy theme coming first, then the Realistic theme and finish with the Beatboxing theme. To make sure the audience have a balance state of listening after the previous theme, I have put white noises between every theme with black screen only showing the next theme.

It was not difficult to import all three themes into a single session simply by using the import data function (option + shift + i on mac). Once I imported everything, I first put these sounds in the correct position with the spot mode in Pro Tools. Have a look at my session:

As I was checking the session. I recognised that the comedy theme is very quiet while the Beatboxing theme is too loud. To solve the problem, I tried to route all the tracks from each theme to an aux track according to their themes for better control. Unfortunately, for some reason there is no sound nor signals coming out from the aux track. I assume this happen because there may be issues on playing a mono/stereo track to a 5.1 output (But it plays normally on a normal track that is a stereo clip with 5.1 output). That was unlucky, but still there is solution for that. The solution would be increasing the clip although I feel that this is not a good way but at least it is working.

And I guess that is the end of the project. Honestly, it is hectic, very hectic. But I have tried something that I have never done before and in the end it doesn’t look too bad as well. As an art student, the process is always the best thing of the entire production. I can definitely feel the joy and I know I am enjoying it especially when I experiment different things in a way and messing it up. After this project, I guess I am actually quiet a chaotic person.

I think I forgot to explain why I use Ableton only for this theme and use Pro Tools for other themes. The reason for that is that the recordings for this theme require a lot of editing. I need to use different plugins for editing and unfortunately, Pro Tools’ plugin runs in a different format and it does not provide enough effects for editing so I had to use Ableton which has more plugins.

As I mentioned in Week 8, all the recordings are just me improvising by repeating the same thing but in different tones. I found this more fun for editing and gives me ideas on the ways to edit. Anyway, I will now show what I have done for the theme.

You may notice that all the tracks are mainly in white except some are blue. I colour them on purpose to separate the sounds that need to be panned. As shown in the screenshot, that would be the sound of Neo dodging bullets and Agent Smith walking down from the helicopter.

Almost every track has been edited with at least one plugin but they are mostly the same ones. I will list the plugins and editing techniques I have mainly used and explain what they are for:

EQ 

I use EQ mainly for two purposes. Firstly, I use them for subtracting and removing the frequencies I don’t want. This will help balance the mix so that it will not sound muddy, especially when combing them with other foleys or sounds. On the other hand, I use them to boost certain frequencies in order to make it sound better, as well as fit into the soundscape in some situations. 

Compressor

In the music production scene, compressors are mainly used to process sounds with a lot of transients like drums or vocals to make it stand out of the mix. I apply the same concept to the impacts during the scene to make the impact sound more powerful and punchy, which are mostly guns and pistols.

Reverb/Delay

In my opinion, reverb has an amazing effect that helps to smooth out some glitching or unwanted sounds. Furthermore, I use reverb and delay to shape the sounds that fit into the soundscape of the scene which are all rooftops.

Overdrive/Saturator/Distortion

These effects work in similar ways, where they either amplify the signal or boost the harmonics of the sound. I mainly use them for two purposes. The first one would be making thin sounds sound richer, another reason would be creating some impactful sound effects, including the bullet dodge sound effect as shown below.

Pitching down

I pitch down the sounds to make them unrecognizable and sound more dramatic as it has more low frequencies when I pitch them down. I may pitch some sounds up to match the tone of the sounds that I want to mimic.

Reverse

In some samples, I would reverse them to create a whoosh effect. They are mainly used in Agent Smith’s dodge movements and the knife-throwing movement from Trinity.

Here are some examples of the sounds edited with plugins:

Neo dodging bullets sound

This sound is made by 3 layers with effects. Have a listen to some of the sounds I have made.

Dry:

Here are the effects I have added to one of the tracks:

So first I added a pitch bend tool to tune down the sound to get a very low pitch tone. Then I put a flanger effect to boost the resonance to move the sounds around and fill the space. I added a multiband compressor and a saturation plugin for distortion to make the sound richer and more impactful. Following is EQ for making the sound less saw-like as well as giving space for other layers with high-frequency details. Finally, I put auto panning to make the sound travel more in terms of direction.

With all the effects on:

Pilot transforming into Agent Smith sound

In my opinion, this is the most ridiculous sound I have made for the entire theme. Before explaining it, please have a listen first:

As shown below I have added Decapitator, a distortion plugin; a spectral resonator that boosts a certain frequency’s harmonic and an EQ for shaping the tone. I have pitched down the audio for 2 octaves.

Any ideas of what the original recording sounds like? No? Well, here you go:

That’s it. It’s me speaking gibberish that does not make any sense.

I believe that is pretty much it for the theme. I don’t think there are any more special edits and thoughts on designing a specific sound. Most of them are mainly designed by the same logic. Hopefully you will find this interesting 🙂

As mentioned in the previous blog, I will now show my session here and explain some of the approaches I have made.

Adjusting the amount of reverbs by using the sends

One of the focuses in this theme would be thinking about the rationality of space. In the scene as Neo was shooting the soldier with a rifle gun and the camera switched to the soldier being shot and quickly switched back to Neo. I adjusted the levels of volume and reverb sends to match the camera change and make it sound more realistic.

This is what it sounds like:

Chopping off the ambience and adjusting the gains

This is similar to what I did to the gunshots from Neo as mentioned above. But this time, I adjusted the gain and separated them into different groups for the shots instead of adjusting the send levels. Have a listen to the ambience from 0019 to 0029. You can hear that the frequencies and dynamics have changed over the shots:

I have separated the ambience into 3 tracks.

The first track is mainly the ambience of the shots, where we can see the smoke coming out from the vents in the shots. I have adjusted the gains based on how far the shot is away from the vent.

The second track is the ambience for the bullet dodge scene. I have pitched it down by 1 octave and low-pass it to mimic the effect of bullet time.

The last track is the ambience of the shots that are far away from the vents. I have cut the high and low frequencies to fit it into the soundscape.

What I found here is that playing with frequencies and dynamics gives a sense of disruption to the audience, making them notice that the POVs keep changing. I believe this will sort of pull them into the “reality” of the scene and make the soundscape more immersive.

Authentic foleys

I have recorded some foleys for the scene as some are more suitable than the ones from the sound library. Here are some of the examples.

Punching/Kicking sounds by actually hitting myself

I hit myself with my fists to make realistic punching and kicking sounds for the beginning of the scene. I mainly hit on my chest and have done several takes with different ways of hitting. This sounds very stupid yet it really works. It was a bit painful after that but thankfully I did not hurt myself. Well, I have learnt that I am quite tough in some ways.

Have a listen to them. Does it sound painful to you?

As you may have heard, some punches/kicks sound different. I have put a little effort in here on selecting the suitable sounds for each hit. In the fighting scene, Neo’s third kick is hitting on the helmet of a soldier which would sound different from hitting on a chest, so I have picked a higher pitch sample from my recording to match the tone. The same idea applies to the last hand-knife chop from Trinity, where she hit a soldier on his chest, which would sound lower in pitch.

Inaudible dodging sounds and body fall sounds by playing with cloth

I have made some recordings with the use of the white cloth found at the foley materials corner. I was planning to record this for all the movements that involve cloths moving, which is mainly dodging, turnarounds, and body falls. To be honest the sounds for Agent Smith dodging bullets are nearly inaudible but I think adding a bit of this will make the movement a bit more present. Have a listen on the sound effects of it:

Agent Smith transformed into pilot sound by waving a water pipe

This is the sound when the pilot turns into Agent Smith in the helicopter. Have a listen to it. Can you guess how I made the sound?

The answer would be waving up and down quickly with the water pipe I found at the foley material corner outside M110. I stretched the audio to match the duration and low-pass it to get rid of the metallic sound from stretching and fit the space as he was inside the helicopter.

This is another creative approach towards sound design as in reality, it is impossible for someone to transform into another person. And so I make decisions on sound selection by finding the balance between common sense and creativity. On the side of logic, I notice that the face of the pilot was stretching as he transformed into Agent Smith. And on the side of creativity, I know that I need to use a sound to represent something that is impossible in reality, I cannot explain why I end up choosing this sound for the transformation, but it seems that the sound lies at the sweet spot of between the two sides.

It is interesting to see how my common sense and creativity work together. Although I believe this is definitely not what it sounds like back in the film studio (they are definitely using props for guns but who knows if it’s actually a real gun and the stuntmen are simply invisible), at least I am making something that makes sense. And making sense is already good enough to persuade the audience that they are listening to something that sounds realistic.

There are no “realistic” and “authentic” sounds for movie scenes. This is like attempting to write the Egyptian hieroglyphs: We never knew what they meant because the writing system has been lost and gone extinct. However, we are able to understand a few thanks to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a guideline that defines the hieroglyphs.

I believe that in the movie sound scene, our common sense is our guideline; the Rosetta Stone to the authenticity of the sounds. We can never be 100% sure what the sound could be in the film studio, but we can make sounds that are close to the original one by observation and comparison, just like what the Rosetta Stone did. I think these “realistic” sounds for movies are constructed mainly by common sense. However, there is no fixed definition of every movie sound and the sounds can still sound very realistic even if they sound very different. It would be great if there was also a small gap in personal creativity and imagination.

And in this theme, I will find the balance between reality and creativity. What I will do is try my best to imagine how the sounds would be if I were in the scene in which the angles of the shots are my POVs. So I start with finding sounds that are easy to define: The guns.

During one of the lessons, Jessica mentioned that we are so used to the Hollywood gun movie sounds. I agree with her and sometimes I think what I hear is technically not so accurate although as I mentioned above, we cannot make the exact sound but at least we can compare them with common sense or creativity.

Luckily, I have found a website that records what guns were used in different movies and I found the bullet dodge scene in this page:

The Matrix – Internet Movie Firearms Database – Guns in Movies, TV and Video Games (imfdb.org)

With this information, I am able to find more accurate sounds rather than just impactful gunshots that sound the same. Based on what the website said, there are 4 types of guns in the scene:

M16, Beretta 92FS, IMI Desert Eagle Mark XIX, Beretta 84FS Cheetah

Unfortunately, I am not able to find all the sounds. Some of these gun’s review can be found on the web but they are either poor in quality or does not match the soundscape of the scene.

This is probably the most detailed research I have done on this theme, as all the other movements are mainly just fighting moves. I will show more about the project in the next blog.

I spent the least time working on this theme. This is because firstly, I have put too much time into the beatbox theme and secondly, in my opinion, this theme is easier to complete by mainly putting all the cartoon sounds.

However, I believe there are still challenges for this theme. One of them would be finding a suitable cartoon sound for a specific movement in the scene. Due to the theme setting, the sounds I made are totally inauthentic. This means that the selection of sounds will no longer based on rationality and authenticity. I will need to make judgements based on my creativity.

Such an approach reminds me of the nature of humour: A joke can only be funny when people understand the joke itself. It is just pure nonsense when no one gets the idea but only yourself. Therefore, I believe getting sounds that make people resonate and understand will be crucial to making a great comedy theme so that they will find it funny and silly. Therefore, I need to get the right sounds to provide meaning to the audience.

Another challenge would be making the cartoon sound effects connected. These sound effects are very different from each other in terms of tones, frequencies and dynamics. I need to find ways to combine them together in a way that makes them sound good with each other.

As I was finishing the theme, I found that music is very important to the theme as well. Music helps to boost emotions that strengthens the feeling I want to bring through the sound effects.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the foley and sounds are all made by recording my voice only. The theme mainly focuses on the editing techniques using different plugins to alter the sound and discover the editing possibilities. Out of all the three themes I personally found that this theme is most challenging yet also rewarding. Due to the limitation of the theme, which I can only make the foleys with my voice only, my editing skills of sounds are fatally crucial to the outcome.

I found this theme is between the other two themes in terms of the rationality from the realistic theme and the creativity from the comedy theme. On one side, I need to make sure that the sounds I create make sense to the scene so that it won’t sound silly enough to feel like a comedy. Last lesson, Jessica mentioned that she felt a bit of humour towards this film as she saw my work. This was not my intention although I am really trolling and messing up with the theme. Therefore, I had to find ways to distinguish the two themes and so I decided to remove my pathetic off-sync dialogue on the pilot with a slightly Southern Chinese accent.

I probably have mentioned already that this theme has taken me a lot of time to complete, which is at least 60% of the time. Most of the time was spent on experimenting with plugins and editing, then the selection of suitable takes for the movements in the scene as well as syncing them together.

One thing I realised when I was editing is that it is so easy to lose focus when I am listening to the results that I am happy with. It is okay to appreciate myself that I am doing a great job of designing sounds. But the problem is that time is limited, and I need to keep reminding myself of it so that I can carry on (Keep Calm and Carry On!). However, it feels really awesome when something that sounds stupid turns into something that actually sounds good.

In the next blog, I will demonstrate my project and the workflows.