Force-Fields

I don’t know what a force-field sounds like. Do you? Since this was a fantasy sound, I went for the fantastic. In order to get just the right sound, I ended up taking a balloon and thwaping it. Then I lowered the pitch a bit, and ended up with a neat “Boiinnng” noise.

Giant Slugs

For this sound I wanted something akin to the caterpillar in A Bug’s Life. The slurpy, bloppy sound that his movement triggers seemed to fit a giant slug. Enter hot water bottle. I filled one about half-full and sloshed it around for awhile, and I’m expecting it to work rather well.

Never Underestimate a Wall

I have to chuckle when I think of all the sound that I’ve created for iSundae II using my hands and my computer desk, chair, or a nearby wall. For when a small character climbed up a chair, I recorded myself drumming my fingers on a wall. Sounds great, and it took me all of thirty seconds to do. If you remember that the object from which you obtain the sound does not have to be the object in the film, you’ll find that you turn to household objects for sound effects more often.

Crazy Things Are Sometimes Necessary

Creating a walking sound for one of our characters had me stumped for awhile. Since he is a stuffed puppet, he never really walked, but instead seemed to shuffle along. Plus, he had to drag a sword sheath, creating more problems. After I tried slapping my hands on a table with poor results, I turned to the crazy. I got a broom, put on a pair of slippers, stood on an office floor mat, and shuffled around while dragging the broom handle. The result not only produced the needed sound, but also made my siblings laugh.

Things are falling together quite nicely. All of the scenes have been placed together in a rough cut. Although I haven’t found time to watch the whole thing yet, I’m sure that somebody could watch it and understand the story.

Right now, I’m doing sound effects. This has been a fun part for me, because I have to be creative and try to come up with objects that will sound like the props in the film. Yesterday I did a horn sound, using an Australian didjeridoo, played by my younger brother, who plays it much better than I do.

Rebekah and her mom have been recording the musical score for the movie. I heard some of it for the first time yesterday and I was blown away! This is quite a notch up from last year’s score.

My other brother Ben has been creating some great effects. Again, this is a notch up from our previous film.

I hope you’re getting as excited as I am!

To fix this problem, I dug around in the garage and found some old pieces of metal. Time to have some fun doing foley work!

Foley is the art of creating sound effects with real props. However, the props sometimes are not anything like the item being represented. For more on foley, check out the DVD extras on animated movies (Monsters, Inc. is particularly good!). They usually show how they did lots of different sound effects.

Anyway, here are some photos of me creating some sounds.