Portfolio 1 Documentation

1028 Words3 Pages

For my portfolio project, I chose to create the soundtrack for Kuvastin – Reflector.
I kept the mind-set of achieving audio/visual harmony that would seamlessly integrate into the film. I chose this movie over the others because I hadn’t previously done any sort of animation sound design before and wanted to broaden my range of skill.

I first started by choosing a 5-minute section of the film to compose the soundtrack and create the effects for. I put the video file in Final Cut Pro X to trim the section I wanted to use, and re-encoded the video’s resolution to 1920x1080 and a frame rate of 25p. Because the film is dated, the analogue to digital conversion process has left the film encoded at a low resolution and low frame rate. Because the video is a stop motion animation, the upscaled frame rate won’t affect the video, but improve compatibility. In Logic Pro 9 the lowest frame rate synchronisation available is 25p, and ‘Reflector’ has been encoded at 12.5p, so re-encoding the film to 25p makes difference, but ensures proper synchronisation with the audio and video. Converting the videos resolution to 1920x1080 also allows better compatibility with modern monitors whilst still retaining a 4:3 aspect ratio. Video quality won’t improve, however, the film has upscaled well and is perfectly watchable at this resolution. Doing this helped solve (and prevent) a lot of problems with synchronising and cueing sound effects and viewing across different applications.

I studied the film intensely to get a feel for the aesthetics and generate ideas for the scope of sound effects and musical composition required. I found a copy of the original film and extensively listened to the original score and sound design to generate compositional ide...

... middle of paper ...

...ia SD card, and more importantly the recordings I was able to make ended up sounding far better to suit the film on the iPhone 5S than the Zoom H4N.

As my sound design progressed, I found that Logic Pro 9 had some great FX sounds that I could use for some obscure scenes and character movements that required sound. Whilst I created most of my effects, I used the samples and processed them to reimagine them for use in my sound design. For sounds like motors and impacts, the loops provided a quick way of getting the right sound without having to spend time trying to create them through recording.

In conclusion, I am glad I chose to do this film because it has taught me a lot on the aspect of sound design and composing for animation. I received a lot of incredible feedback from my colleagues I never thought I would get, and overall I am proud of the finished product.

Open Document