Sound Design: Hover car (dubbed)

PREPARATION

First thing I always do is I watch the clip a few times to get the feel of it, then while in Pro Tools (my preferred software choice) I will set markers for each movement/action that I see fit to require sound, taking note of everything both on and off of the screen, even once I think I am done I will watch the scene a couple times more just to clarify that I haven’t missed anything (sometimes I’ll notice a week later I’ve missed something, it’s normal..I think).

I’ll then write a list breaking down each part for each sound, once I know what I need I will search through my personal sound library (originally recorded) to see if I have anything I can re-use before I start recording more sounds.

THE FOLEY STAGE

I start by adding in the foley sounds like the garage door, persons movements and the ambiance before I make a start on the main attract (being the hove car).

Judging by the snow and the lingering cloud of steam the air is frosty, and I can assume that there is minimal wind if any from the lack of movement from the trees, no other cars or civilians are in the camera shot (not to say that there couldn't be) so just the casual ambience of the open outdoors will do, and with this I used and edited pink noise to suit.

THE HOVER CAR

For this I used ableton because I love the flexibility and built in plugins that it provides, my favorites being the arpeggiator and the auto filter which were my main tools for this clip. I broke down the car into 4 sections for the sounds involved when on and driving by setting up 4 MIDI tracks installed with a sampler plug that had a generated wav. file of pink noise that I imported into the sampler as the fundamental sound, with an arpeggiator and an auto filter also applied to each track. I then set the desired speed rate and percentage on the gate signal passage of the arpeggiator to get that jumpy broken chord effect on the pink noise for it to have the rhythm similar to that of a car engine.

1) Engine

The EQ was applied to cut out some of the higher frequencies that weren't necessary and could be used elsewhere in the mix. An auto filter was set to focus on the lower end frequencies with the rate of the Low Frequency Oscillator sent to the macro control for me to change the speed of the rate when the car in moving. An amplifier was included to provide more distortion and power to the sound.

2) Throttle

This had almost half the amount of the signal from the arpeggio rate passing through the gate control and at half the speed of the engine did but had the speed rate same macro control as the engine so that each track changed in synchronization with one another.

3) High hover pulse

4) Low hover pulse

The auto filter is slightly different for this track than it is on this, this was set to a Low Pass Filter rather than focusing on a specific area of the of the spectrum.

After recording the automation from the macro controls to match the speed rate of the hover car the tracks were then exported as audio files and imported into my Pro Tools session where the foley sounds were in place, it would had been more efficient to rewire Ableton into Pro Tools but due to my new computer having a small amount of RAM at the time I was forced to take the scenic route of production.

I made my volume and panning automation to suit the needs of the video ensuring that the hover car become more prominent as it came nearer the camera and I then bounced as a Quick Time video at 48 kHz 16 Bit as if it were to be put into a film on dvd (after adding in the dialogue).

DIALOGUE

I chose to add in some dialogue for extra relation to realism, I know that I'd be talking while filming (but I talk too much at times) but even if that wasn't the case dialogue helps to fill the emptiness of the scene, there doesn't seem to have much happening in the background to add in.

I hope you enjoyed this short demonstration, if you have any feedback I would love to hear it, good or bad. Thank you.