Sound Story

 Sound! Sound! Sound!

Welcome again! It's been a while since I last blogged, but I am back with a boom! Over the past few weeks, I have been learning all about sound: How it is created, the different types of it, and how it can be used in film to enhance the visuals. To experiment with my knowledge, my friend Eugene Oh and I worked together to create a "Sound Story." This is where we made a short, two minute collection of scenes to tell a story - with a catch! There was NO visual output. Rather, we attempted to convey the scenes in the minds of listeners using ONLY sound! I attached our final edited version of our sound story below, telling the story of a man in the woods who encounters an entity... Have fun!! 

Sound Story

The sound story narrates a setting in a deep forest where a man is chopping trees. Upon receiving a phone call to head back home, he begins packing up his belongings for the hike back when suddenly, danger strikes... Accompanying a thunderstorm, a creature emerges from the surroundings and chases down the man. The end of the story is left to the listener's own interpretation! To create this masterpiece of our own, various objectives were completed. First, we planned out a rough draft of how we wanted our story to go, along with the sounds we would use for each element. Then, we decided on four sounds to create on our own in a "Foley Stage". Eugene did an outstanding job with this. He replicated a bag opening and closing using his bag's zipper, crunched a bottle and drank in big gulps for a realistic effect of drinking water, and made amazing sounds in nature: Shaking a bush (imitates sudden tree rustle) and moving swiftly on grass and leaves (imitates walking/running in a forest). After this was complete, I went over to YouTube to find a chill, light instrumental to add tranquility to the opening of the story. Finally, in the hardest step, I used CapCut to complete the rest of the project. I downloaded any sound effects that we did not make on our own from CapCut's massive library of "SFX". Carefully choosing the right sounds and their intervals, I proceeded to organize, layer, overlap, shuffle, and more with the various sound files to get the proper chronological order and desired emotional effect.

Foley Stage

After spending some time to reflect on this project, I think it was quite a challenging one, but not as hard as I predicted. While I do have some minor editing experience with a few other projects for both school and recreational purposes, I learned plenty from this sound story. The main aspect being how to overlap numerous audio files at different volumes and lengths to produce the sound I brainstormed. Other learnt skills include being able to extract audio from a sound clip separately, learning how to reduce background noise via editing, and learning about copyright issues and how to incorporate audio from external sources without violating any terms. Overall, the hardest part of this project might have been the sound layering stage, as it took precise movement and lots of time to perfect. Despite that, the sound story was still much easier than previously thought. I had anticipated myself to struggle with amplifying the right mood since no visuals can be used. Now, I believe the project captures the calmness, suspense, and drama in the right moments! Ultimately, this was an excellent experience and learning opportunity that I will use to grow!

Sound Story Script

 

Scene 1: Lumberjack in a calm forest

1.      Slight wind

2.      Trees rustling

3.      Birds chirping

4.      Background music (Instrumental “Embrace” by Sappheiros, no copyright)

5.      Chopping wood with axe

6.      Phone ringing

7.      Sigh

8.      Footsteps

9.      Opening bag

10.  Pulling out phone

11.  Answering call (Ringtone stops)

12.  Man saying, “Hello?”

13.  Man saying, “Okay, I’m coming back.”

14.  Closing bag

15.  Footsteps

16.  Grabbing water bottle

17.  Drinking water

 

Scene 2: Danger in the forest

1.      Music stops

2.      Birds chirping

3.      Loud thunder

4.      Creature moving around nearby

5.      Gasp

6.      Heartbeat

7.      Bird screaming

8.      Running footsteps

9.      Heavy breathing

10.  Running stops

11.  Breathing stops

12.  Heartbeat stops

13.  Creature roars

 

END