Daniel Marnie – How We Made Our Soundscape

Reflective Summary: Daniel Marnie

Daniel Marnie / December 17, 2014 / Editing

This project has been very enjoyable. Being able to create a soundscape of anything we wanted was a freedom that I had not anticipated we would enjoy right at the start of the course, and I thoroughly enjoyed this module as a result. I had an idea for a soundscape during the presentation on the assessment, and as I thought about it I liked it more and more. I caught Ross, James and Declan as they left the lecture and asked if I could work in their group, and then pitched my idea. By the time we got downstairs we had agreed to use it, and arranged to meet up a few days after to talk more in depth about what we wanted to create. Group work is something I have never particularly enjoyed, but working within a group that I was comfortable with, who were all motivated to make something good, was a really nice experience. When we delivered our presentation, I felt confident about our idea, and aside from running over and being unable to play the test sounds we had recorded with a H4N Zoom a few weeks prior, the presentation went well.

When it came to recording in Skegness we had several problems concerning closed attractions that were to be in our soundscape, so we were forced to focus on the town rather than the funfair. This was due to us as a group not organising our time effectively. We also had problems with some of the recordings that had unwanted sounds within them, and should have been recorded better. Having a list of all the sounds we wanted to capture would have been a great help here.

Unfortunately we left the editing of the soundscape a little close to the wire, and next time I will be sure to being work on projects far sooner, both when recording (see above) and editing. Editing did go rather smoothly though, and I was able to put many of the techniques I had learnt in David’s workshops to practical use. I particularly enjoyed experimenting with the automation of panning clips, and gradually seeing the soundscape come to life was a very rewarding feeling. Ross, Dec and I all met up on Tuesday 16^th Dec to work on the soundscape, and Ross began editing the arcade scene. We decided to share the editing between us, giving each member creative control, whilst remaining open to feedback. Dec and I wrote some blog entries, and then Dec and Ross swapped, and Dec worked on the seaside scene. I then worked on the town scene, and ended up re-organising a lot of Ross and Dec’s work. I cleaned up the walking track, and automated the panning and volume of certain tracks in the town and arcade scenes, as well as adding the small section at the end with the subject walking onto the pier. I’ve learned that editing and producing a piece of audio of this complexity takes a lot longer than I thought, so proper planning is definitely something I need to focus on improving.

I feel far more confident using Pro Tools as a result of this project, and am happy with how the soundscape has turned out. I’m aware that it no longer fits the brief perfectly, but that is due to our inexperience in project planning, and next time I do a project like this, I will endeavour to be better prepared.

Problems We Faced Recording in Skegness

Daniel Marnie / November 23, 2014December 17, 2014 / Uncategorized

Our trip to Skegness was ill timed, and this unfortunately meant that we had to make some sweeping changes to our plans. We recorded on 20^th November, which in retrospect was far too late. Our soundscape had originally had elements of the fairground in it, but the fairground was closed for the winter, and we were unable to record as a result. The same could be said for several of the nostalgic seaside elements; summertime was over, and so the beach was pretty much empty. This was due to us not organising our time properly, and if we were to redo this, recording everything earlier would be the number one priority.

This has caused our soundscape to differ from the original brief somewhat, but we felt that the setting and transitions we had planned would still make for an interesting and engaging piece of audio. On the day of recording, I did quite a lot of it, as I was the one walking and recording footsteps. I used a pair of boots that produced a nice sharp clack on concrete, which contrasted nicely with the soft crunchy sound produced when walking through sand, as well as the thud when walking on carpeted arcade floor. When recording, I held the H4N towards my feet, and recorded in stereo, so left and right footsteps came through on different channels. When listened back to with headphones, it placed the listener right in the shoes of the subject, which is an artistic decision we decided upon when experimenting earlier in the term.

Audio was either recorded whilst I was walking, or as static clips. Much of the arcade was recorded this way, and we are going to use layering, fades, and panning to produce the effect of the subject walking past machines. The pier was also shut, but we managed to find some decking that wasn’t locked off, and so recorded footsteps on there, with the intention of adding wave and bird sounds, to bring the journey back round to the beginning. I liked the idea of the subject stopping and grabbing onto the guardrail to end the soundscape, and recorded several versions of this grab with the H4N.

Apart from several key features that were locked off to us, I think that the day was a productive one, and we returned to Lincoln in the evening confident that we had recorded good quality clips, that would all fit into a coherent soundscape.

Making the Soundscape Presentation

Daniel Marnie / November 2, 2014December 16, 2014 / Planning

We all arranged to meet up and talk about what we wanted to say in the presentation, and then divided up the workload. I went away and completed a rough draft of my slides, and uploaded it to Google Drive so other group members could add their own. Once this was done, I took their material and made bullet points for the slides, keeping their notes intact in the notes section below. I hoped this would give our presentation a bit more quality, as we wouldn’t just be reading off the screen. I then added some colour and scene transitions, and Dec sent over his slides, along with the test recordings we did on campus. We then reviewed the final presentation, to see if anyone had any differing opinions, before saving it ready for presenting to the group.

The Idea

Daniel Marnie / October 12, 2014December 16, 2014 / Planning

We settled on the idea of creating a nostalgic seaside journey almost straight after the lecture on assessments, and arranged to have a group meet up on the 1st October. It was here that we decided on the nostalgia being the focus, as we all held pleasant memories of the seaside, and wanted to inject that feeling into the soundscape itself. Three distinct scenes formed, as a non-descript person walked from the beach up through the town, passing through a funfair, and then through a busy arcade, before coming to a stop by the pier. Throughout this we would add in sounds that we felt were typical of the seaside; donkeys, buckets and spades, seagulls, waves, etc. We created some lists of these sounds and from those a rough storyboard was produced.