Switching gears this week after doing more research and connecting with Matt Tracy my focus became generating an audio piece against a pre-existing cutscene. I choose a night raid scene from the video game Battlefield because it has the first person shooter drop into an already immersive war scenario. I edited the scene visuals down to just under one minute because that is about how much time you have for someone in the industry to hear what you are doing and know that you have skills.
Edited scene:
I also picked the scene because it has a nice beginning, middle and end with the initial parachute descent, the hectic battle as you make your way through the scene, and then a closing with the tank smashing through a wall and firing as the climax to the scene. First I had to gather all kinds of sounds in order to simulate the experience and this is the most audio I've ever collected for a project:
I approached the soundscape similar to a 3D art approach by thinking of aural experience as having a foreground, midground and background, so there will be layers to what the audience is hearing. In my first pass I needed to incorporate all of the first person shooter weapon sounds the firing of the automatic and the reloading sounds, and also things like when the person first lands on the ground, having sound effects to give that sense of drop and hitting with their body.
By far the most challenging aspect in this initial first pass was to get each shot fired to match the kick back of the gun, and I had line up each of these shots going frame by frame slowly, playing back over and over to get it right. This was by far what I've logged the most hours on, because if one shot was off, in that split second the human eye can see and hear something isn't right. It became very specific. I also included a couple sounds in the intro and in the outro I wanted to get the tank smashing through the wall because to me this was also a main event that should be up close and visceral.
First pass video:
After I had things sounding decent for the first person foreground, I approached adding the other guns shots occurring from surrounding comrades which proved challenging almost like finding the correct rhythms against what the first person shooter was doing, and those sounds had to be heard in the midground but not compete with what I had already created. I also began adding bomb explosions both close and distant, to get the right feel for the auditory experience given where the bomb was being dropped and how much the impact would affect the viewer.
In the distant background I needed the air raid sirens which gave the aural tapestry a nice backdrop as sounds played out. Finally during this pass I tried to hone in on certain sounds that were missing from the original cutscene reference to improve the overall sound re-design such as the power line boxes that explode when they get shot, two different bullet attacks to the first person one of which injures the character. Overall the soundscape is now incredibly visceral. The next step will be to add voices from the soldiers as they yell and call out to each other during the battle.
Second pass video:
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