"Candle" by Joe Kieninger is my first film presented for my online reel. This blog allows a maximum of 100 MB of space for video. This one clocked in at 91 MB. So you will most likely find my films on Youtube where they offer a 2 GB/10 minute limit to their videos. If you prefer, here's a
link to this video on that site. The film runs quite dark on my monitor. But when I played the DVD version on my larger HDTV screen, it was not as dark. Nevertheless, I believe the story still comes across well.
Candle was filmed last year. I had recently upgraded my music composition gear in November and I had asked Joe to remix another one of his films I worked on called Dream. He said that he'd like to re-cut that film but in the meantime, he offered me the opportunity to remix Candle. We scheduled a meeting to go over the film on campus. At that meeting, we discussed what needed to be addressed. For example, in the original version, the clock ticked only when it was seen on screen. But I changed that to play throughout the beginning of the scene until the power went out.
Another item we addressed was the light bulb going out. Emily needed a reason to look at the bulb so I added a buzzing sound that drew her attention. At this time during post production, I had yet to dive into synthesis programs like Hybrid. So I went to freesound.org to listen to what other people came up with for light bulb sounds. One person named Freqman on the boards posted a file called Lightbulbwink. He used frequency modulation to emulate the burning of a filament. To simulate the sound of a bulb blowing, he tapped the base of a bulb with a pencil. But I was not satisfied with his version of a bulb popping. The buzzing was fine however. So I edited out the pop by eye. Looking at the waveform, it looked like I made a clean cut. But all of a sudden there was this more satisfying pop that occured. For a moment, I scratched my head and zoomed in to find that I had cut in the middle of a waveform just as it was descending from its peak. This is something we're taught NOT to do when we first learn how to edit in Pro Tools. But in this context, the artifact of sound created by this edit actually worked for me and the director liked it as well. Of course, I didn't tell him that the sound was a fortunate happenstance! Everything that is heard in the film is by design alone. That's why we're called sound designers (sometimes with tongues firmly planted in cheeks).
After the light goes out, Emily lights a candle near a picture featuring her mother. The ominous low rumble was created using Digidesign's Hybrid Synthesizer. I employed the noise generator, filter cutoff and resonance to get a nice low pitch rumble. I also shaped the sound envelope so I can get the right performance while recording from a MIDI keyboard. Later on there is a sound of a higher pitch wind blowing on her candle. That was also a noise generated sound created in Subtractor which is a synthesizer that comes with our Mbox/Pro Tools kit. That noise had its filter cutoff frequency modulated by an LFO. I also extended the attack of the sound envelope so I can have greater control of the performance on the MIDI keyboard. Later on, when Emily approaches a nightgown hanging in the closet, I use Hybrid to create the pitter patter sound effect as well and added delay and panning for added effect. At Flashpoint, we establish a firm foundation in Subtractive Synthesis where we take a complex signal and apply filters to remove harmonics from that signal to create a new sound. Once we get comfortable with Subtractive synthesis, we should feel comfortable enough to explore other forms of synthesis outside of the classroom.
On top of the rumble we have a patch from the Absynth 5 synthesizer called Artifact. The patch is a product of Granular and Distortion Synthesis.The Artifact patch employs a sample of a guitar twang loaded into three oscillators. The oscillators are placed into Granular synthesis mode which breaks up the sound into small microsecond pieces called grains. These grains of sound are manipulated by the granular synthesizers along with a waveshaper (which introduces distortion synthesis), several low pass filters, one high pass filter and some sound envelope shaping. The end result is that a single pluck of a guitar string becomes a haunting, pitched and breathy sound effect. I am going to have a lot of fun with this synthesizer during and after my final year at Flashpoint!
For footsteps, I pulled the sound of someone with socks on shuffling on a carpet. I then selected the best sounds from that sample and edited them to fit the scene. Of course, I could also have tried to Foley that sound effect in. Just recently we had a workshop featuring an artist from Hollywood who has worked on many, many projects including Spongebob Squarepants, Metal Gear Solid, and Mr. Brooks. His name is
Vincent Guisetti. The pictures also feature our sound design production studio where we perform our foley work. Foley is hard work! It's more than just shuffling feet on pebbles or flipping pages of a book in front of a microphone. There is a level of artistic performance that only comes about through practice. If you know your art and your materials, you can certainly create sounds faster than mining through a library of sounds on soundminer.
My favorite sound effect that I learned of last year is reverse reverb from a 2nd year student. This is the ghostly effect applied to the dialogue of the mother. You are actually hearing the reverberation of the mother's speech before you hear the dialogue. This effect is used very often in film and video games. If you're a fan of Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins, then you'll hear this effect on some of the ethereal ghost creatures of the Fade.
Since the mid 1990s I have had an obsession with MIDI programming that was probably spurred on by my fascination with the music of Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of many popular themes in the Final Fantasy series. The students who selected the sound design for games track had a blast when he visited last month. I had a prior engagement which kept me away from campus that morning. So I wasn't able to sneak a peek when he was here.
Although Nobuo Uematsu has done wonders with his 8 and 16-bit performances, I was never satisfied with the sound quality of MIDI music until I came across the sound samples provided by EastWest/Quantum Leap's Composers Collection featuring many high quality professional samples of instruments recorded in a reverberant symphony hall and played with tons and tons of articulations that can be recalled in MIDI. The price for the collection had dropped drastically as of late. The sales have been spurred on by the upcoming release of their new production, Hollywood Strings.
For the music in Candle, I used the samples of several bass players drawing painfully hard across the low pitched strings to get that creaking sound effect. The violins section patch also provided the feverish and scratch sound effect when Emily approaches a nightgown in the closet. I also used a solo soprano sample for the singing near the end as well as the solo violin from Quantum Leap's Gypsy collection. When I score a film, I have to watch a scene several times until a theme calls out to me. Usually, the theme comes to me when I am away from the computer and thinking of the scene while on the train or on a long walk. Then once it hits me I have to make a mad scramble home to record the theme as I hear it in my head. Fortunately, I received a Zoom H2 recorder as a gift. So now I don't have to break my neck to get home anymore. Scoring music as a profession is something I would like to do down the road. After Flashpoint and after I have established a steady income, I will enroll in a course for formal training in music composition so that I can produce the ideas in my head much more efficiently. I guess I'll go back to taking piano lessons, too!
If you have any questions regarding the sound design of Candle, then drop a note here or email me at hcampb3@gmail.com
