Sound For Moving Image-Godzilla

This is an old overview of a project I co produced a couple of years ago.

I have to start by crediting the co producers of this project. Graham Callaghan and Chukuemeka Obiorah.
We started the project by watching the movie through with the original sounds to give us some ideas on how we could make our own sounds and music.

I then imported the movie file into a Pro Tools session. But before I did that I had to convert the file type to mp4 as the mpg would not play on my Mac for some reason unknown to me.
Once the file was imported I went through the project on my own and placed markers in the timeline these were colour coded. I made markers for the script starting points, music changes and sound effects.

Pro Tools Screen Grab- Memory Locations

The group then decided to assign these three main components, one to each person. I got the voice over recording and vocal over placement. Graham got the sound effects and Chuck got the music.

First we all sat down and talked about the type of music to be used. We went through music libraries finding music that suited as a ghost track (A track similar to the type of music we were hoping to create). These ghost tracks were inserted into the project. Whilst I was doing this I made some fades to blend the music together. Later adding fader automation to achieve the right levels. After all these changes were made we decide we really liked the music already in place so decided to keep it where it was.
There was not a lot of processing/effects needed the only place I added an effect was on the music in the shop which I added an EQ to cut out all the mid. This made it sound like it was being played on a small radio.

Voice over recording is a hard thing to get right. Firstly I decided to work out how many people I would need and book them into the studio. I used one person Alex for Nicks voice he was American anyway so it helped a lot. I then used Matt and myself for the inspector and representative. For the three female voices I used Hannah.
On the day of recording the voices I set up my laptop in the vocal booth with a RE20 condenser microphone. I used this microphone because it is great for voice over recording due to its ability to capture voices clearly and naturally.
I got the voices just about in sync by counting down with the voice talent so as I press record they pressed play at a designated point. This was not the most disirable method but it was the only method avaliable at the time. After all the voices had been recorded I edited them and placed them in the correct positions. Some lines had to be chopped up word for word so they fitted with the video better. I added compression to even out the large dynamics in some of the vocal passes. A couple of reverb busses were set up for different environments and room sizes.
Because Hannah played all the female parts and her voice did sound similar when playing the chemist and Audrey in the same scene. So for Audrey’s voice I pitch shifted it up a couple of semitones to change its sound.

Graham using a M-Audio Micro track portable record collected sound effects. These were specific sounds that would be hard to find on any Internet site or sound effects CD. A lot of the other sounds used, I had on a sound effects CD collection. These included some of the weather and animal sounds used to make up the Godzilla sound.
Chuck made the Godzilla scream using animal noises including dolphin and elephant. These were added on different tracks and mixed together to achieve the right balance between the different sounds. On some tracks such as the dolphin sounds, the audio was pitch shifted down to achieve a bassier growl. A lot of audio suite plug-ins were used on sound effects including pitch shifting, reverb, distortion and many others. Audio suite plug ins were used because there were lots of different sound effects on the same track so if we used Audio Unit or VST plug ins we would have had to automated them to turn on and off for each sound effect and this is a lot of unnecessary work.

As we went on through the project we had to bounce audio out to 1 track because we ran out of room in the project. So once the levels were mixed nicely we bounce out to another project called Godzilla Mix Down. Using the mix down project I mastered the group outputs for sound effects, music and the voices. I also added in any other miscellaneous sound effects needed like some low-end sweeteners, Lightning strikes, extra rain.
I also automated some volumes changes with the music to fit in with the sound effects and voice over parts. There was some clicks between different types of music where they overlapped but I sorted these using a cross fade.

The only technical problem the group came across was when moving a session from Pro Tools 7.3 to 7.1, 7.3 being the version of Pro Tools in the vocal booth and 7.1 being in the Mac suite. The video would not reappear. I did look into this but to no joy. So we had to do the most of the audio editing in the vocal booth and on my laptop.

I really enjoyed this project and I am very pleased with the result we achieved together in the group.

Hope you enjoy the film.

You can view the video of Godzila Here.

Mixing Cookbook

Vocals Most voice has little below 100HZ so use low cut to remove unwanted bass.
•    Boxy at 200 HZ to 400 HZ
•    Nasal at 800HZ to 1.5 KHZ
•    Penetrating at 2 to 4KHZ
•    Airy at 7 to 12 KHZ
Electric Guitar Cut below 80HZ to reduce unnecessary bassy cabinet boom.
•    Muddy at 150 to 300HZ
•    Biting 800HZ to 3KHZ
•    Fizzy at 5 to 10KHZ
Bass Guitar
•    Deep bass at 50 to 100HZ
•    Character at 200 to 400 HZ
•    Hard at 1 to 2 KHZ
•    Rattly/fret noise at 2 to 7 KHZ
Acoustic Guitar
•    Boomy at 80 to 150HZ
•    Boxy at 150 to 300HZ
•    Hard at 800HZ to 1.5KHZ
•    Presence at 2.5 to 4 KHZ
•    Bright/Scratchy at 4 to 8KHZ
•    Airy above 8KHZ
Drums
•    Kick drum weight at 70 to 100HZ
•    Kick drum click at 3 to 5KHZ
•    Boomy below 120KHZ
•    Boxy at 150 to 300HZ
•    Snare definition 1 to 3 KHZ
•    Stick impact 2 to 4.5KHZ
•    Cymbal sizzle at 5 to 12KHZ

Sourcing Sound Effects For Radio Play

I want to explain how I determined what sound effects would be need for Unholy Behaviour’s first episode. Followed by how I sourced those sound effects.

The first task I undertook was to read through the script numbering the sound effects and atmosphere effects. At the same time I made a list of the effects on a separate sheet of paper corresponding to the numbers on the script.

\

So, after compiling a list of the sound and atmosphere effects needed. I set about sourcing them using a variety of different methods.

Some sound effects can be recorded live by the actor as they say their line. For example “coughs” “slaps” “clicking fingers” “whistling”. These effects were marked in the script. During the recording of the script all effects to be added in post production will simply be shouted by a member of the production team. For example “ring” where a phone ringing sound effect will need to be added.

Not all sound effects can be produced live, it is just not practical. They need to be sourced from sound libraries or recorded by a Foley recordist. There are hundreds of sound effect libraries available, some on the internet, some on CD. A popular internet site is www.sounddogs.com.

Of course there will be some effects that are hard to source or so unique to a script that they will need to be recorded or created. Recording sound effects from the real world is known as foley recording. Once foley recording has been completed the engineer will then need to edit down and mix the sound effects to suit their purpose.

Some effects can be used more than once. This saves time in sourcing multiple effects, however you need to be careful that you do not use the same effect too regularly or close together as they will sound like they have been placed into the audio, rather than sounding natural to the scene.

Once all the sound effects have been sourced they will be edited and mixed to fit with the scene. It would be silly to have a sound effect that has a lot of reverb applied to it in a scene that is supposed to be set within a dead sounding room, or vice-versa. Reverb can be added to an effect to give the impression of depth or a larger space. A lot of effects will need to be edited down to fit their purpose, this can either be done in preparation for post production or during post production.

Finally, all effects will be compiled corresponding to the order of the effects list. This makes it easy when going through and adding effects in post production.