SONIC DESIGN - PROJECT 3 AUDIO STORYTELLING

Week 8 - Week 10

Project 3 - Audio Storytelling

Siti Zara Sophia Binti Mohammad Reeza (0359881)

Bachelor of Interactive Spatial Design

INSTURCTIONS

Project 3 - Audio Storytelling

For this project, we were to choose a popular fairytale or folklore, find visuals for it then record a voiceover and choose suitable audio to bring the story to life! The duration of the recording should be about 2 to 3 minutes. For this project, we were to compile everything (mixdown, video, Adobe Audition files and folders) in a Google Drive and submit this to MyTimes alongside our blog link (which you are currently reading hehe).

Frankly, I was excited to commence this assignment as it seemed right up my alley since I love fairytales! I felt that this was gonna be much more fun than the previous assignment, thus with a hopeful mind, I started my two week long journey in completing this assignment!

Google Drive

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rHNt9IP5Qn43mRKYCLg65XGv40UJxxZq?usp=sharing

Script

After much deliberation deciding which story to use (based on the story's length, the dialogue, the characters, the visuals), I landed on a variant of Thumbelina by the Little Fox which included the script in their website and visuals through a video they uploaded.

Unfortunately though just based on the video, the full script was too long so I condensed this into the document you see above! Here's the draft recording I recorded:

Having the script fully written out DEFINITELY helped me when I was recording my lines and during the editing process as I was easily able to refer where each thing needed to be. As you seen, I initially colour coded all the lines of the characters and then added where I wanted each planned SFX in purple text next to their corresponding line.

After recording, inputting everything into Audition and arranging it accordingly, I listened through the full audio and wrote down what needed to be edited within the script document in red so my voiceovers could be as clear and clean as possible! Additionally, I made sure to add my potential effects to the character voices based on bus tracks in Audition to make sure everything is nice and organised! Some of the proposed effects were changed later on based on what I felt was appropriate in the audio as a whole when listening through.

Recording

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rtSx9X9cFNd0yKfpRjY-mnPWtHERk6mP?usp=sharing

(Original Audio Files)

For me, recording definitely took a big chunk of time committed to this project. It wasn't easy at all. Trying to get a quiet environment, saying the lines to the best of my abilities, and so much more. I ended up recording at 1am on a random weekday, without aircon (in this heat!!), on my bed cause it was the farthest from the window outside (though, apparently not far enough sometimes cause my phone (which I was recording on) could still pick up the motorcycles that would zoom by on the road. It was exhausting. It took several tries to get my recordings, done on my phone with some sheer stockings over the microphone in order to try emulate a pop filter/windscreen, to satisfactory and even good levels. In the end, I definitely think all the effort was worth it though since it meant that in the editing process, I didn't have to denoise and remove the ambiance sounds!

Editing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oD4IulvYff1RJZpfjTwKDe0lMWLrMJVl?usp=sharing

(Working Folder in Gdrive)

When it came to the editing process, here are the general steps I followed for the whole working process after I finished recording + finding my ideal SFX! This will be a breakdown on the audio post production process. As for the video, I did that on CapCut after exporting the audio using images I took from my visual reference.

Arranging the audio files (voiceover first)

Self explanatory from the title! The first step I do when starting a new project is blocking out where everything goes. In this step, I typically stick to just splitting and arranging the audio in order to make it coherent and flow well. After arranging everything, I created 3 stereo bus tracks, one for each character (Mrs Marigold, Fairy and Thumbelina) then proceeded to route all the relevant tracks to said buses. I actually had a problem with this as initially, my Adobe Audition did not let me change the input and output of all the tracks (which is why I didn't implement or use any buses in the previous assignments). However, as this assignment had character specific voices, I knew by hook or by crook I was gonna use the bus tracks as it 10000% simplified the process. I searched high and low, Google, ChatGPT, Adobe Community, and none of them had the answer... Eventually, I messed around with a setting in Audition (turning off hardware acceleration for drawing) based on a community post that brought me halfway there, then found a YouTube video on how to completely restart Audition to defaults and that seemed to do the trick!

Editing the individual voiceover tracks

After arranging everything, I used destructive editing to edit all the individual voice tracks. As seen in the script section, a lot of my recordings had either mouth clicks (aka lip smacking, even though I really tried my best to avoid them!!!) and harsh 'Es' sounds! Thus naturally, I relied heavily the on DeClicker and DeEsser features on Audition.

These features were literally incredible! It really helped clear up my audio tracks from unwanted sounds super easily. Additionally, I also did a few manual edits where I decreased the volume of a certain audio section to attempt to FULLY eliminate breath sounds, lip smacking (if it didn't get caught in the DeClicker) and other odd sounds.

Arranging the audio files (again... SFX this time!)

After doing destructive editing on all my voiceover tracks, it was time to arrange the SFXs in accordance with the script and my voiceovers! This is where sound layering really came in, especially for certain sections! From the voiceovers, to the sometimes multiple SFX, and the music, this is where I believe the audio storytelling really came to life! Here are some small snippet examples of the audio layering done

Adding effects

Finally (audio wise), to make everything come together, it was time to add the effects! Like I mentioned above, I used buses for all the character voiceovers so their vocal tones and sounds would stay consistent throughout! In addition to that though, I also added some effects to the sound effects to really give it the vibe I wanted (as seen in the 'Arranging audio files: SFX' section above). The below are the effects applied on each character bus to give the characters extra personality!

Mrs Marigold

For Mrs Marigold, I wanted to bring more warmth and gentleness to the way she talked so I tried my best to keep the vocal sharpness at bay using the Parametric Equaliser. Initially, for the Pitch Shifter, I wanted Mrs Marigold to have a slightly lower voice—maybe around a -0.5, scale wise—but unfortunately, I couldn't do that as the Pitch Shifter could only go to whole numbers and -1 sounded WAY too low. I wanted her to have slightly more vocal distinction from the narrator as these two are the most prominent in the recording. So, I shifted Mrs Marigold up +1 and ended up loving it. It still sounded warm and gentle and it added some distinction between the narrator's vocal tone and Mrs Marigold.

Fairy

From the start, I wanted the fairy to have the highest voice out of the trio, to really emphasise how small she was (I mean, if she can compared to a bug, wouldn't the Fairy technically be smaller than Thumbelina herself HAHAH) but also wanted to add an almost... wobbly? or rather fluttery quality because she's a fairy. So I messed around a little with Modulation—Chorus—to give her that effect! Shifting her pitch decently high and adding this wobbly quality to her voice made her sound almost annoying? Which was honestly what I was aiming for as the character in the story struck me as quite sassy, which is what I emulated in the voiceover when recording her dialogue and what I wanted to bring forward in the post production process as well!

Thumbelina

For dear Thumbelina, I wanted to find balance between Mrs Marigold and the Fairy. She was still a very tiny character (it is in her name...) so I wanted to make sure her voice was high pitched but not high pitched enough to the point where you're mildly annoyed HAHAHA. Adding on to that, since she's Mrs Marigold's daughter, I wanted her to still have that warmth and gentleness her mother possesses. So with those things in mind, I edited the above Parametric Equaliser, Pitch Shifter and Modulation (Chorus) to bring that vision to life!

Siti Zara Sophia Binti Mohammad Reeza (0359881)

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