Monday 2nd October
Finally back in university after the holidays, my first class was in the sound for screen specialisation taught by Jessica Marlowe. I chose this as I believe I have a vivid history, or at least a liking for on screen entertainment such as video games and tv shows. In the class, we experimented with different equipment such as the familiar H5 recorder and the new (to me) shotgun/rifle mic.
I started off by sitting on a bench in the park and recording my surroundings with the intention of making a sound map. I heard all sorts of sounds from people to cars and what I can only assume was construction – The funny thing about sound is that you can hear something but not truly know what it is. Eventually I went with Amani and we went through the playground messing with the different sets and recording them with the shotgun mic. We realised that the audio on the shotgun mic was quite strange, but added an interesting effect. Once we were done recording we reconvened with the others and realised we had forgotten to ‘verbal ID’ our clip.
Unfortunately for us the distortion was only there while recording live so when we uploaded it to my laptop it was simply a normal recording. We did get a really unique sound from one of climbing apparatus, something that was like a bow which can be heard around the 3:25 mark. In future I will try to verbal ID my clips and also create a more comprehensive sound map.
I feel like the park is a great place for recording ambience for on-screen media, as well as easy listening. Depending on the location, you could pack a lot into a piece such as people, work vehicles and animals to be broken down and utilised in different forms, or to be used for one big piece.
I watched ‘Disappearing Sounds’ by Stuart Fowkes and I believe its a very interesting concept. We are always going forward, things are being discovered as well as forgotten. This is no different for sounds. I feel like it isn’t common to document sound compared to how people take photos of things. How often to you see a payphone being used, let alone heard compared to a smart phone? There are things you will see online, in other countries, but will never hear them.