Sonic Design - Project 2

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Sonic Design - Project 2

Week 9 - Week 12 (24/05/22 - 14/06/22)

Ng Mei Ying (0340563)

Project 2: Audio Storytelling (20% Individual)

Final Project: Short Movie Audio (30% Individual)

📌Project 2: Audio Storytelling

Week 9 | Voice Recording Exercise

This week, students were tasked to search for the story for their project 2. The duration of the story should be maintained within 2-3 minutes. After the project briefing, Mr Razif shared with the students a Google document with different advertisement dubbing scripts. Mr Razif required the students to do a simple audio recording exercise by choosing one of the provided scripts.

The advertisement script I had chosen was the wedding company as the voice requirements suit me better than the rest of the advertisement scripts. The device I used for recording was the iPhone 8 Plus, and I did the recording in my bedroom as it provided an ideal sound-absorbing environment. The completed voice recording exercise was uploaded into Google drive and submitted in the Facebook group comment area.

Mr Razif also provided students with some tips while doing voice recording at home such as using the blanket, recording in the car and so on to provide a better recording outcome. Students should be aware of the noise floor so that the sound does not pop too much.

Sample Voice Script:

Voice-over Testing:

# Consultation Note: Mr Razif mentioned that my voice recording sounds like it’s being compressed and over-processed by the phone voice recorder. I needed to download a third-party voice app to produce a prominent sound output with auto noise reduction. Mr Razif suspected that my phone had auto-applied the Dynamics Auto Gate effect that caused the voice recording sounds like its “stopping” too much.

Week 10 | Story Selection & Consultation

During today’s tutorial class, our lecturer guided us on the common industry workflow to create an ideal outcome. Furthermore, the lecturer proceeds to check on students' current progression of the audio recording with feedback given. The lecturer would demonstrate the proper way to enhance the sound recording based on each of the students’ works. The story I had chosen for voice recording was “The Little Prince: Chapter 20” as this chapter provided a sufficient conversation between different characters within the duration of 3 minutes.

Video Sequence Screenshot

Sound Effect Audio

Voice-over Testing:

# Consultation Note: Mr Razif mentioned that it was a good choice of story, however, I should try to reduce the room noise as it affected other sound frequencies. Besides, someone’s sneezing sound in the background couldn’t be eliminated by the software. Hence, I should need to redo the voice recording to ensure it didn’t sound amateur. Moreover, I should emphasise the voice acting, even more, to make them sound more immersed.

Week 11 | Sound Adjustment & Final Editing

In order to get a clearer sound recording, I decided to record the voice-over in my bedroom near the closet and record it in the car. After I complete recording the voice-over, I found that the sound acting for the different characters was not consistent. Therefore, I record the voiceover again for each of the characters separately. Moving on to the sound editing stage, I listened to the recorded sound repeatedly and apply different sound editing effects based on the needs.