https://soundcloud.com/mcb-productions/audio-sound-effects-experiment
SOUND EFFECTS EXPERIMENT REVIEW BY MICHAEL C. BUNGAY
On January 15TH 2016, I was assigned to work with Tom Joy, Leony Isaacs, Sam Marchetti and Robyn to experiment with recording the kind of sound effects we would expect to hear in an audio book of The Gruffalo. Ollie Samuel gave us an hour to record. Tom and Sam took charge of the boom mic and the Zoom H4N while Leony, Robyn and I took turns to volunteer to provide the Sound effects but to be honest, I ended up doing most of the volunteering apart from the stereo ambience of a busy area sound effect which the three of us all took part in.
Communication was not that much of a problem apart from when we were discussing where we were to go and record our sound effects. There were not a lot of ideal locations or surroundings to work with, even on campus but we stayed within the grounds of Oaklands College for the duration of our experiment.
Most of the sound effects we were assigned to record went well, particularly the reverberant space, even if we did have to resort to using the stairs and the stereo ambience in a busy area that we recorded in the student lounge. The dry sounding dialogue provided by me and the mouse scampering across the ground provided by Leoni or Robyn (I cannot remember who) tapping on the glass panels in the doors to the Performing Arts department and footsteps crunching through leaves also provided me all went reasonably well.
Recording the snake slithering through the grass was particularly difficult as we were not sure how we were going to do that and not helped by the fact that it meant going outside which not all of us and least of all Robyn and Leoni were keen to do as it was quite cold and windy. Having ruled out the woods next to campus, we eventually decided to try hooking the cable linking the boom mic to the Zoom H4N around a bush and pulling on it slowly. We succeeded eventually somehow but it still took 3 attempts and a lot of our peers were in the background doing their experiments as well and we also had to be weary of the wind.
I learned, albeit with some difficulty and some help from Ellouise Marney, how to upload sound experiments to my Sound Cloud account and to my website, that is not quite as simple as uploading footage to YouTube and especially not if it is your first time as it was in my case.
Next time I would like to try operating the Zoom H4N and/or the boom mic as well as providing the sound effects as on this occasion, the latter is all Robyn, Leoni and I did while Sam and Tom operated the Zoom H4N and the boom mic.
We used a Zoom H4N and a boom mic to record our sound effects and we used Adobe Premier Pro on the computers in F308 and our hard drives to edit and export our finished sound experiments. The main problem we encountered was background, especially from the wind outside and other peoples’ voices nearby and we also had a lot of difficulty finding suitable locations for us to record the required sound effects. Another problem we encountered was when we first listened to our sound effects on Premier Pro as we could not hear anything or at least I certainly could not so Ollie Samuel raised the gain to 20 decibels and then I could hear, having borrowed a pair of headphones from the Media Technicians.
I edited and exported my sound effects using Adobe Premier Pro and uploaded them to my Sound Cloud Account and my website, all with a little help from Diane Fensom, Ellouise Marney and Chris the Technician.
I need to learn how to use the Zoom H4N most importantly as I did even touch it on this occasion, let alone use it and also to put more thought into where my peers and I should go to record sound effects and keep a closer eye on the weather and other sources of background noise.