Dual Granular Synthesizer... CRAZY sound

As I'm sure you all know by this point, I am a sound guy. Designing sounds, arranging them, making an instrument with them, all of it. Sound is, to me, a technically limitless medium; if you can capture it you can play with it. Thats where the Collidoscope comes in. This machine is easily one of the coolest tools for manipulating audio that I have ever laid eyes on.

The Collidoscope is a prototype synthesiser designed by researchers Ben Bengler & Fiore Martin.
Based on a granular synthesiszer engine the instrument can be played by two performers at the same time (as they stand opposite one another on the sides of the unit) using the 2 built-in sets of keyboard, gooseneck microphone, color display and controllers.

The Collidoscope samples from the microphones (or line inputs) and displays in real time a waveform of the sample and allows it to be played back instantly. The main sliding knob positioned below the waveform allows for the visual selection of a portion of the sample to be played by moving it horizontally, and for the modification of the size of the portion being looped by rotating the knob. There are also two backlit octave selection buttons and a sturdy metal button next to the microphone base to start sampling.

This is easily one of the largest steps toward closing the gap between the performer and the sampling process, something almost every audio engineer encounters.

What happened at the Grammy's?

The 58th annual Grammy awards aired Monday night and as I sat and watched the event all I could think about was 'what is going on with the audio team?' While Adele managed to perform beautifully despite what was happening, the clip illustrates the audio issues that plagued the Grammy's all night long. Microphones were cutting out, equipment was being dropped, but still the show went on. While it is a testament to the artists for still being able to perform despite the problems, it is vital to have back up plans upon back up plans in any production--but especially live productions. While Adele took a little bit of an emotional hit, I can only imagine what the audio engineers are experiencing right now.

Binaural Audio

Sound is extremely interesting when you sit down and think about it. From the volatility of its nature to the seemingly endless uses and applications for it, sound is all around us on a day to day basis. However, very little thought goes into how that sound is received in various situations. Since the inception of speakers and headphones, sound has been received more or less as it was given, head on. That was until the inception of Binaural Audio; audio recorded on microphones designed to mimic human ears. I could attempt to explain this more in detail, but I figured the guys who are pioneering this technology, 3Dio, could do a better job...

Binaural recording is the process of capturing audio using two microphones that are shaped like human ears. When audio is recorded using a conventional microphone, sound is typically captured without any physical obstructions blocking incoming audio waves, other than the body of the microphone itself. Binaural microphones capture audio the same way your real ears hear sounds.  The ears (pinnae) dramatically alter the incoming sound waves, but our brains understand these alterations as directional cues.  In addition, the time delay between the ears gives us proper left/right directional cues.  When you listen to binaural recordings using headphones, the result is natural "human" three-dimensional sound that gives the listener the sensation of being in the space where the audio was recorded.

The Wilhelm Scream

Like many of us in this class I am a huge movie buff. I enjoy watching movies almost to a fault, and one thing that I am very good at is remembering lines and scenes. Mainly because I watch films again and again. This is why I wanted to clue some of you in on arguably the most famous sound effect in movie history. The Wilhelm Scream. This sound effect is a stock sound effect that has been used in over 200 films, usually to represent someone dying. Whether you've noticed it before or not, you have undoubtably heard it if you have seen films like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Saving Private Ryan, and even animated films like Toy Story and Hercules.

The sound effect is credited as first being used in the 1953 films The Charge at Feather River, it gets it's name from the character, Wilhelm, who gets shot by an arrow. Since then it has become sort of a running gag among some movie directors. Most notably George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, and Peter Jackson, who pretty much use it in every film.

The thing that I find so funny about it is that the director's are making a conscious choice to include this sound effect in their film. I originally thought it might just be a coincidence, but the sound effect is used in too many movies for nobody to know. Christ it has it's own Wikipedia post  for it.

However if you still don't believe me, here are two videos dedicated solely to the use of the Wilhelm scream.

... And the other one.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Audio... and the Outside World

Today, our group embarked on our final shoot for our project and the semester.  I kind of wanted to save my post for this past week for today because I wanted one more shoot under my belt doing audio to write a good blog post on it (Arturo, I hope and plead that you can forgive me).   Originally, we planned to shoot inside, but due to a noisy refrigerator, we decided to shoot outside; boy was that a mistake.  When we arrived at our destination, everything was great.  It was a perfect temperature outside as well as little noise (besides some nature noises that we'd accounted for).  But then, the Geese came. And my god did they come.  Hundreds of them from all directions swarmed in front of us to lake cayuga, honking with everything they had in them.  Clearly, we could not shoot their anymore due to the obnoxious noises they were producing and the fact that we could barely hear ourselves talk, let alone try to record it for our project.  We then decided to move all of our equipment and our shot farther down in the park to move away from the Geese.  The geese must have had all hell planned for us because they decided that they would follow us.  We finally decided to move farther back into the park next to a river, far from the lake shore and the Geese.  I had my headphones on and finally, thought we were in the clear on noise and were finally going to be able to get this shoot done.  Little did I know, that the worst had not happened yet.  As we were ready to go for the shoot, a bunch of cars decided that it was an opportune time for them to drive past us as we were shooting, making the recorded audio completely inaudible.  If you would have seen where we were at in this park, you would've thought that these cars were doing everything in their power to screw up our shoot.  I clearly remember one car driving around the gigantic circle at least ten times, and perfectly timed to pass us every time we started shooting.  Once the car noise died down and we finally were able to start shooting, the unthinkable happened, a train decided to come out of nowhere and blow its extremely loud and echoing horn.  This lasted for about 20 - 30 minutes because as you know, in Ithaca, we are surrounded by mountains which creates a whole lot of reverb.  It was not ideal, not ideal at all.  Finally, the train had passed, or was at least far away enough that we could not hear its horn.  We began to shoot again, and are halfway through the dialogue when I hear a loud ping.  I look to my right and realize that there are golfers teeing off at the golf course on a rainy saturday morning across the river from us.  This happened several more times and was followed by more cars and police sirens from in town that echoed throughout the valley.  Needless to say, it was an audio nightmare, and something you can only truly laugh out loud to due to its absolute ridiculousness.  This shoot taught me a lot about the patience it takes to be an audio guy and how well trained your ear has to be to be one.  I'm not saying that I absolutely want to do audio again or in the future as a job, but it was a great experience and is an incredible important thing to have in your films.  Respect your audio guy.  He has to put up with all of natures and mankind's ugly sounds and somehow make them listenable to your ears.

Castaway Audio

I have never seen the movie Castaway  up until last night, but before that I remember learning about its sound track and how it was only composed of wind, water, and wood.  Up until actually seeing this movie I really didn't have any appreciation for this random fact that I knew.

However upon seeing the movie I have a new found appreciation.  I just assumed the audio was in the background and was no big deal, but now I see that for a good portion of the movie, background audio was the main source of the scenes.  Most of the scenes involve little to no dialogue and if there is any it is just Tom Hanks shouting at his friend Wilson, who is in fact a volley ball.

Most of the time it is very long shots meant to capture his emotion as he faces his situation or comes to a realization to his survival.  All of these long shots however are complimented by strong audio.  The constant sound of waves or the whistling of a strong wind really completes the movie.  It is the second half of a being that alone would be useless and unusable. So you have to give credit to the audio crew and the work that they put in to only use very basic natural sounds to create the environment in which we would spend the next hour of our time in.

Creating Suspense: Zombie Style

After Breaking Bad ended and before Dexter starts in a couple weeks I decided that I needed a new show to watch. Naturally I turned to my Netflix account to see what I could find. My housemate Pat, a self proclaimed TV buff, recommended that I check out The Walking Dead. This is a show on AMC that only has two seasons so I figured it would be easy to catch up and add to my collection of TV series that I follow. One thing that caught my eye about Walking Dead is the fact that it was created and developed by the critically acclaimed Frank Darabont. I wrote about Darabont before and his work on Shawshank (one of my favorite films).  This seemed like a no-brainer.

The pilot episode starts in a run down town in what appears to be hit by a Zombie Apocalypse. The main character of the show that was in a coma during this Apocalypse leaves the hospital hurt and stunned that no one is tending him in the hospital. From the start of the episode it is obvious that the director is trying to create suspense in the episode. The first scene was brilliant in not only creating suspense but also sustaining this suspense throughout the first couple of scenes.

The camera work was exceptional. Each shot created a mood that something was seriously wrong with this world and bad things were to come. One of the first shots was of the main character walking on to the streets alone. The camera was at the characters feet. The camera was focused only on the characters feet for about 10 steps. This was a great way to create suspense. By only showing part of his body raises questions about where this character is, where he is going, and what exactly is around him. As the scene continues it is obvious that this town has been deserted. There are various shots of run down houses and empty cars parked on the street. One of my favorite parts of this scene was the patience the director showed. It felt like 10 minutes until another character was in the scene. Obviously there was going to be Zombies at some point, but by showing how alone the main character was at this point, really developed the plot and suspense without any dialogue.

Not only did the camera work create suspense in the opening scene but the audio also played a major factor. The scene really focused on natural sound and no music. Hearing the footsteps of the main character created a more fitting mood than any music of sound effects could have. The audio selection made it feel as if you were the character.  By not using music suspense is created. The audience is waiting for something to happen. The relative silence in the scene creates a scary environment, which is exactly what the director wants.

Darabont’s work is usually visually stunning and the pilot episode of The Walking Dead did not disappoint. In a series about Zombies, creating suspense is essential and the directors and producers did this in a unique way. By using natural sounds and multitude of camera angles this show had me on the edge of my seat for the first 20 minutes. Especially for a pilot, getting the viewers attention is crucial. I am going to continue to watch this show and I will report back more thoughts in the future.

-Michael Vulcano

The Morning After

The morning after, or rather the day after, I directed my first project for this class might have been as much or more stressful than the day of shooting itself. I think we certainly have proved Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." After all of the mishaps of the night before, I was actually very pleased with how the footage turned out. The next day, however, I had a problem: I could not get the audio files from the Tascam. Yesterday it took me from 12-5pm to extract the audio data. I think I am the first and only Parkie to have had this problem. Because of how the data is organized in the Tascam, it turns out if even one file goes astray and is not in a new project, but is just a new file, Macs cannot find it. So when I took out the fire wire adapter, I discovered that my project was Project1s, but I could not access the files. It said that there was no data. I freaked out and went to PPECS and luckily Phil was there to help me out.

He told me that the only way to get my files was to find a Windows or PC computer with a fire wire port. This was no easy task. After going through Park and multiple computer labs, I went to the IT desk in Friends, but they told me there were no computers with a fire wire port on campus that I could use. Having to sit through an Intro to Theatre lecture after that was really tough. Then I remembered my friend Sean, one of my actors from the night before, has a laptop with both Mac and PC software. I met up with him and we were able to extract the files. Another problem, since my hard drive is mac oriented, I was unable to copy the files to my hard drive while he was using the PC software. He had to upload the files to Google and share them with me so I could get the files. What a day. All of this happened before I had to turn my equipment in at 5:30 before the files were lost forever. It was pretty nerve racking, but I'm glad at least that at the end of the day, I got my audio files.

After 5pm, however, my day wasn't over. I also had to return all my equipment to PPECS and then return borrowed props back to their owners. Having a cold on top of everything did not help either. I was exhausted because even after this whole debacle, I could not rest. I had to teach a Zumba class from 6-6:45, go to an ICTV post-production meeting from 7-8, and then from 8 on I had test shooting as a 1st AC for a thesis. By the end of the night, I was drained.

Luckily, today is a new day, I'm well rested, and I'm ready for more.

Sound

Below is a video that explores how the movie Inception went about creating its sound.

After the binaural sound post I found myself searching for more on just creating sound for video and stumbled upon the above video. Inception is one of my favorite recent movies and a large part of that the sound is responsible for. I think its amazing the level of detail the sound team went into when creating the movie. In the video they mention how they tried to gather as much real world sound as possible and I think this is important and really makes a difference in your final work. Although databases pre-recorded sounds are extremely helpful, especially to those without the resources, I think that getting real world sound when possible should be a priority. The most important thing I think one should come away from this video with is that sound in general is extremely important and paying close attention to it can be rewarding.

bright and early

whats going on fiction field. almost done with the ADR. I exported to quicktime though and it knocked my audio track off by like half a second thats pretty annoying. on the plus side my finals arent looking too bad (bc i know all you were wondering). hope everythings going well for you guys..except sean yoo and luke

Voice Changing

I never knew there was a pitch-changing tool in Final Cut before, so now I'm having fun trying to figure out what all the various attributes do. Does anyone know how to make a voice more feminine (there is a female character in my edit, but I don't have a female voice actor)? Just changing the pitch doesn't really do the trick, it just gives it a chipmunk-like sound. Also, what are all these variables? Smooth, analysis window, overlap, reset scale...What is all this?

Second shoot went great!

Hope everyone who shot this weekend had a good shoot. I know Becca and I did!
We shot Saturday at a house on South Aurora, and sure, the house was a disgusting mess. BUT it was the perfect location. Our audio came out good and the lighting is amazing thanks to my awesome roommate (Rachel Rothenberg) who is practically a lighting goddess.

So basically all we have left to shoot is the outside stuff, its about 3 very short scenes. So please keep your fingers crossed that we have some decent weather soon.

PPECS XLR's are unreliable. seriously.

Alright so Becca, Ellis and I shot 2 scenes this weekend. Luckily they aren't dialogue intensive scenes because guess who has terrible audio? We do! That's right. The XLR that went from the mic into the mix pre was good, which means Ellis heard good sound. However the XLR that went from the mix pre into the camera, was bad. So we got terrible audio that we didn't know about until we looked at the footage. So beware, even if youre racing the sun for sunlight, make sure you test your audio. It was a silly mistake we made, but it cost us. Now we'll ADR the scenes.

The New Wave

I am really curious as to what you will do. Surprise yourselves!

Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical

It is interesting how even the New York Times, prodded by falling number of subscribers looks to present data in a way that can truly add to your experience. In this very simple "audiolization" they convert time data in a fun way that our senses can clearly understand. It is apparent from this forage into creative data visualization that the makeup of their work force is actually being renewed. Click on the title of the post to go to the permalink.

Observations and recommendations

Thanks to those of you who attended the Team3/Gator Quest event in the Swamp on Thursday. The virtual Gods were smiling on us and all the technology came together for the presentation so the folks in the real world were able to see the virtual world, and the virtual audience was in fact able to see both the SL presentation and the live webstream from Weimer Hall. Along the way, we learned a few things I thought might be worth sharing right away.

Regarding audio and video, in order to see and hear multi-media effectively, you should load the newest version of SL AND the newest version of QuickTime. THEN, spend a few moments learning how to use the new navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. You can turn on/off the music, turn on/off the multi-media, and adjust ambient sounds, etc. with the volume controls. If, for example, as was the case on Thursday, the audio/visual came from the streaming media. SO, the master volume should be turned up, music and ambient sounds turned off, and the media button turned on. And viola! Sound and video in real time. We got quite a few IMs with people having difficulty initially, but I believe, in the end, everyone was able to see and hear effectively. Hope this is helpful in some way.