stephan schütze
  • Home
    • Contact
  • Stephan Schütze
    • Biography
    • Scores
    • Music
    • Professional Services
  • Listen-Blog
  • Reel

Kicking the Bucket...uhm Bag!

11/25/2008

0 Comments

 
Location
Royal
Park Melbourne
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom pole array

As part of a new project I am working on I need a large number of impact sounds to represent people hitting the ground in various ways. Basically body fall sounds. I have made a few of these in the past for smaller projects but I never committed any of them to the library so I thought I would be extra prepared today and record a huge amount.

In the past I have read various forums and had discussions on the audio mailing list I am on with people about how to make good convincing sounds of people or bodies hitting the ground. There are several elements that make up a good body fall sound, obviously the impact itself, but all the sounds need to have a softer organic feel to them than the sound of a brick hitting the ground. People have suggested using empty boxes to create a good low thud, as well as sacks of potatoes for a good weighty sound. I discovered a rough combination of these tow works pretty well. The sack of potatoes is a good idea because it is not a rigid item, it will bend and flex as it tumbles and falls in a similar way to a human body, but it lacks the convincing thud sound that a hollow container like a box produces. My approach was to use a cloth bag and fill it full of shoes or boots. They have enough weight to fall convincingly and the hollow nature of each shoes acts as a small sound box. Because there are several shoes in the bag you also get the flexible nature similar to having a bag of potatoes at about a quarter of the weight. So armed with my bag of boots I went over to the park.

Picture
Movement Foley Recording
One of the big disadvantages of being back in Melbourne and specifically in the CBD area is that it is completely impossible to find somewhere away from noise contamination. The best I can do is limit it as much as possible. I walked across to Royal Park and made my way down to a small reserve area near the back of the zoo. Although there were both train and tram lines running nearby, there were no roads close by. This meant that I could mostly record without too much background noise. Melbourne’s Public transport system is crap enough that the trains only come along every ten to twenty minutes and the trams aren’t much better. For once this was actually beneficial to me. I spent the best part of an hour pushing, kicking, tossing, swinging and generally throwing around my bag of boots. (I think some of the people in the nearby sports stadium were convinced I was completely insane and possibly quite dangerous)
 
Generally when I am trying to record new sounds that I am creating myself (i.e. Foley) I try to think of as many ways as possible to manipulate the items I am working with to see what I can come up with. As I said I used the bag of boots in many different ways, but I also took the boots out and banged them together, banged them on the ground, swung them by their laces onto the ground, scraped them along the ground etc etc. The amount of material I sampled should allow me to add a huge number of new body impact sounds to the library. I ended up with all the boots in the bag all tied up kicking along the road for about a kilometre. I kicked it across gravel, road, grass, getting it to tumble slide and bounce along the way. It’s going to be time consuming going through and cutting up all the material but I am looking forward to what I can get out of it. Looks like another good days recording.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Stephan Schütze has been recording sounds for over twenty years. This journal logs his thoughts and experiences


    Categories

    All
    Aircraft
    Animals
    Aomori
    Articles
    Audio Production
    Augmented Reality
    Canberra
    Creative Industry
    Equipment
    Firearms
    Fmod
    Foley
    Game Development
    Hachinohe
    Historical
    Industrial
    Japan
    Korea
    Melbourne
    Military
    Musical
    Nsw
    Queensland
    Sannohe
    Sound Effects
    South Australia
    Sport
    Trains
    Updates
    Vehicle
    Vehicles
    Victoria
    Virtual Reality
    Work Life Balance
    Work-Life Balance

    Archives

    April 2019
    August 2018
    June 2011
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008
    April 2008
    February 2008
    January 2008
    August 2007
    March 2007
    December 2006
    August 2006

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
    • Contact
  • Stephan Schütze
    • Biography
    • Scores
    • Music
    • Professional Services
  • Listen-Blog
  • Reel