thoughts on project 1a

i thought that this sound effects project was a really great experience. first off, just the idea arising of the importance of sound was good. it is all too often that our senses become dulled from any angle.

also, i had never spent much time playing with a shotgun mic, or taking into account all of the things one must do when attempting to record not just sound, but sound effects (i.e. get the clearest and cleanest recording possible.)

we had a few different "scheduling" issues, so although it wasn't the way we wanted it to be done, we were incredibly pressed for time when it came down to actually recording the sounds. there was about a four hour window on tuesday (the day before it was due) to get the sfx recorded, not to mention post-production (which was virtually inevitable, again, mainly because due to a time crunch, we had to record looser and cut down later.) but... it worked out (we got the camera! yay!) and went to my house straight away to start working on it. we decided that my shed was the quietest and roomiest place to record most of the sounds, although we did use my garage for a few of them. we had lists prepared, and a good bit of props to use (which we did) so once we started actually recording, the process was fairly fun and easy.

at one point, taylor and russ had the camera over my fence, trying to record my neighbors talking and their dog barking as an ambient noise. when you have the headphones on, it's amazing the tiniest little details that the mic picks up. for instance, almost inaudible by me, the sprinkler in my neighbors yard was picked up wonderfully by the mic.

just in case anybody was wondering, the pepper dialogue came from taylor and myself sniffing pepper. we were trying to sneeze. (voice based sounds were the hardest to come up with.) i had been sneezing ALL DAY LONG because of allergies, until, of course, it's time to record something like a sneeze. and so i was trying to waft pepper fumes into my nose to provoke a sneeze, and it didn't do anything except make my nose burn. so then taylor tried, but still to no avail. alot of the pepper dialogue is us joking around (it did get pretty funny), and the actual sneeze sfx recording is a forced one from taylor. so the conclusion: pepper leaves a burning ball of feeling in the back of your throat, but does not actually make you sneeze. we even tried ground pepper. don't do it.

but as a group, we had alot of fun, although i think we all wished we had had some more time to go to a few different places at least. it was a good time to get some hands on experience recording my own sound effects (something i've never done) and an interesting experience, to say the least.