Project Research

I have never created sound for a horror based media. For this reason I decided to start my research by reading academic material on the art of sound design for both Film and Video Games. Marvin M. Kerner, author of The Art of the Sound Effects Editor wrote that ” The function of sound effects is threefold: (1) to simulate reality; (2) to add or create something off scene that is not really there; and (3) to help the director create a mood”. When relating this point back to my project, I realised that all three areas Kerner states can be related to my project and I had to design sound for each area. Point one which was to simulate reality was used when creating sounds such as the alarm, lights and footsteps. Point two was a point that is really important in this project, this relates to giving the user of the game the feeling that their is an alien in the room with them, even though they can’t actually see the monster. For this I will have to use distant sounds such as items being knocked over by the alien, shuffles in the distant etc…. The final point Kerner makes is to help the director create the mood, in my case Rhys is the director as he has created the room that the game will take place in. The user needs to feel scared throughout the game and the atmosphere of the room will have to play a part in this.

Filmsound.org

Filmsound.org is a great source for all types of sound design. They have also got some very useful articles on game sound. One article talks about the important of actually planning the sound design before starting the process.

“Poorly thought out and implemented audio is the one thing that still consistently disappoints the gamer, and as a result can ruin the whole gaming experience. From annoyingly repetitive spot effects to poorly acted voice-overs, game audio has up until recent years been the poor relation to other media. Now however, all that is changing, with recognition from BAFTA and other interactive awards for audio such as the G.A.N.G and GRAMMY awards, clearly there is an opportunity for games developers to do something truly outstanding with audio and to push forward the expectations and emotional experiences of gamers. A concrete idea of how the finished game will sound will never fully happen at the design stage, experimentation during the sound design process will tell you what is possible and what is not possible. However, consideration should be made to ideas such as ways in which audio may be used more creatively can be introduced here” (Bridgett, 2002). 

You will be able to see from the early weekly blog posts that me and Rhys spent a lot of time discussing and planning the audio that needed to be designed and created. We both understood the importance of planning out what we needed. I believe that planning out the basic sounds that we need and the overall theme of the design will help to improve the creative side of the sound design as I will have more time knowing that we have sorted all the basic sounds that we need. The quote saying that “annoyingly repetitive spot effects” can have a massive impact on the downfall of creating sound design. However due to Rhys being a beginner at coding the sound, it may mean that some sounds will be repeated and certain triggered points. However I will try my best to avoid this.

Sound Design and Science Fiction by William Whittington

William Whittington’s book Sound Design and Science Fiction features a case study on the sound design for the 1979 film Alien. I mentioned Alien in my introductory post as a inspiration for the sound design of this game. William describes Horror sound as sounds that disrupts expectations on all levels. I wanted to take this quote on board when thinking about my sound design, I will apply this to my work in order to scare the user (2007, Chapter 8).

Whittington also goes on to talk about the sound design for the Alien film and describes how the film uses ambiences. Whittington describes the ambience in the opening scene of the film, he says ” The ambiences for the various spaces shift subtly, providing different sound perspectives and cue that indicate the geography and breadth of the environment” (2007, Chapter 8). When the virtual reality game starts I want to use the same technique to introduce the user to the environment that they are in (an operating theatre), I will use subtle ambient sounds to create the atmosphere of the room.

Sound designer – Paul Sumpter http://www.thefutzbutler.com/

After recommendation from my project tutor I got in contact with a professional Sound Designer called Paul Sumpter. I emailed Paul explaining what my project was and ask for any advice that he could give me.  Below is Paul’s response:

Game Inspiration Research

Below is an edit ( edited by me)  of games that have inspired my sound design for this project.

Dead Space:

Dead Space is a fantastic Sci-Fi horror game, it has great sound design and the atmosphere and music plays a huge part in the game. As you can see from the video the music and impact sounds help to build the tension and play out the scare, this is something that I have tried to incorporate into my game. You can also see a great example at the end of the Dead Space clip where the monster jumps out at the character. I incorporated this impact into my sound design for the ending of the game.

Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is a game that takes a lot of inspiration from the original Alien films, which I have spoken about in my research. The game uses a lot of low end drones to build its atmosphere. This gives the user a sense of danger and also builds on the games Sci-Fi genre. You will also notice from the video that the Alien noises that it makes are (sort of) similar to my design. The sound for this game is very cinematic, something that is often achieved with a high budget.

Outlast

Outlast, again like the other two games, uses a lot of its sound for tension building. You can see from the video that the game has very good impact sounds. I tried to use similar effects with my sound design.

YouTube

Youtube has been a great research tool for me on this project. There is some very good specialised horror sound design tutorials available. Jim Stout has two videos that concentrate on creating sound for Horror, he talks about the importance of ambient sounds and in this tutorial shows a good effect that you can use on voices.

Another very useful video is this video on the sound design for Dead Space 3. Again the designers put across how important the sound is in a horror game. The designer also talks about how the natural Foley sounds are important in making the user believe the realism of the world and creating a reality for the horror to exist in, I will apply this to the sound design I am creating. The video also goes on to stress that video game sound has quite a few differences to Film or T.V sound, this is because with Film/T.V the viewer is directed at all times where to look. During a game however the user can decided to walk and look anywhere in the game, this means that everything has to have a sound to create realism.

Stereo Microphone Techniques

During this project, after advice from my project tutor, I decided to recorded all Foley in stereo. I decided to research some of the best techniques to use and back up why I had decided to do this. The whole idea of stereo recording is to try to fool our auditory system into believing that a sound source occupies a specific position in space (Robjohns,1997). For part of this recording I decided to use a spaced pair. This can be less accurate and can sometimes cause phase issues, to avoid these I will make sure in pro tools that they are both in time with each other (Tutsplus Blog, 2011). The spaced pair will be used on Foley recording such as a door and light switch. the reason being for this is that with a door, different recording angles will make a different sound, so using a spaced pair should help to bring that sound to life.

Other problems when recording Stereo Microphones is mono compatibility. If the outputs from all of the microphones are mixed together (to produce a single mono signal), the sound will become coloured because of a process known as ‘comb filtering’ — the beginnings of phasing or flanging (Robjohns, 1997). However this won’t be a problem for me as the game will always be played using headphones, meaning that it will always have to have a stereo output. However this still will be something I will be careful with.

Chanel Summers Interview (musictech.net)

Chanel Summers is a sound designer for games and gives advice on the difficulties of sound design through her interview in musictech.net.

Well there is a little bit of a paradigm shift as you’re working with non-linear forms in the gaming world. Because games are non-linear, the audio too should be non-linear. But in a lot of ways, the game audio production process does resemble the film audio process. There are similar recording techniques for live sounds and Foley and there are similar techniques for spotting – however in games this is really more event, dynamics, and emotion mapping, and many of the same tools are used in terms of recording and software. Summers talks about the differences between sound design for games and films. There are significant differences in the processes. In a linear medium like film there are a few things that define the parameters of audio design – a movie contains a fixed set of actions, each scene is perfectly planned and the sound designer knows exactly what to create and where to take the audience emotionally, because it’s all scripted (the timing and progression of events are known beforehand). Therefore sound can be really tailored with precision. It’s a passive form of entertainment. One of the biggest challenges in game audio design is that unlike other media, the player controls the pace and timing of how the narrative unfolds. The player controls the action and determines what’s going to happen (Summers 2013).

Summers also talks about the importance of emotional moments that arise from the user actions. I think that this is important to remember this when creating the sound for my project. Emotional moments arise as a result of user actions, so game audio really needs to be able to adjust as players navigate through a game environment regardless of what order they do it in – and without bringing any undue attention to itself (Summers 2013).

Another area that Summers talks about is musical scores within games and the importance of smooth changes in between different sounds. Non-linear musical scores need to smoothly change intensities and musical styles without the advance precise knowledge of when those transitions will take place, but still those transitions must happen in a musically satisfying way that does not bring any undue attention to itself (Summers 2013).

 Filmmaker Magazine

An article on the Filmmaker Magazine website entitled ‘So you want to make a Horror film? On jump scares and other basic frights’ breaks down the fundamental aspects of creating a Horror genre film, all of which can still be applied to the game. A good horror film has an underlying atmosphere, a moody visual undertone that creates a sense of dread, wonder and mystique and leaves us with snapshots of unforgettable imagery (Calvo,2013). The importance of atmosphere is outlined in the article as it goes on to explain the best ways to create an atmosphere. They create an ominous, brooding tone without being overt in their use of horror (Calvo,2013), I will take this into account with the second half of the game. For the first half were Rhys is interacting with the user everything is supposed to seem calm and controlled, so the atmosphere will sound relatively relaxed and normal. However when Rhys leaves the room in the game( see blog post six for the story running order) the atmosphere will change to a more serious and atmospheric sound in order to tell the user that something is about to happen.

The article also goes on to talk about the importance of suspense. Darkness and dramatic shadow are often used to elicit suspense, like when we hear something and can’t see what it is, or catch a glimpse of something moving in the background but can’t quite make it out. The sense of blindness increases tension. It’s creepy to hear something and not know where it’s coming from (Calvo,2013). My blog post (post 8) gives examples of sounds that may be used to build suspense. After reading this article suspense is something that I will put a great deal of thought into doing and will concentrate on creating the right sounds to achieve this.

The Sound Effects Bible – By Ric Viers

Ric Viers is a sound designer who has worked on many film and television projects such as Lost, Heroes and Super Troopers. His book ‘ The Sound Effects Bible’ breaks down the important aspects of sound design and provides advice for creating individual sound effects.

The most useful part of the book for my project is the Horror Effects section, In this section Viers explains how to make popular horror sound effects. Ric Viers explains that when creating sounds for the monster in the horror genre the best way to do this is using humans. Humans have far more range than almost every other creature in the animal kingdom, so try to produce the sound yourself. Vocalise the sound you’re looking for into a microphone and build from there ( Viers, 2008, 263). This is a practise that I have taken on board with my project, merging Ric Viers advice with Paul Sumpters tutorial video.

Another aspect that Ric Viers talks about is the use of vegetables for noises such as flesh ribs and bones braking. Fruits and vegetables can offer a plethora of sounds to work qith: breaks, cruches, dull body sounds, juicy impacts. You can use them to sweeten other sounds, layer them to get juicy hits and impacts ( Viers, 2008, 263).

Reverb Research Using – Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki 

During this project an important part of the game was the Reverb of the room. I was put in a difficult position when deciding the time of Reverb to use. I wanted to keep realism, however often a heavier reverb adds a lot to the ambiance of the Horror genre. Everything I recorded I made sure was as dry as possible in order to give more more control over the final ambiance of the mix (Izhaki, 2012, 401). Decay time on reverb plug-ins hint at the size of a room – bigger rooms have longer decay times as the distance between the surfaces is bigger and it takes more time for the reflections to diminish (Izhaki, 2012, 425). The room that the game is set in is relatively small with a slightly higher then usual ceiling, this means I would have relatively small reverb times. This isn’t what I want. However Izhaki also makes the point that the materials on the wall also make an impact ” decay time also gives us an idea of how reflective the materials in the room are – painted tiles reflect more sound energy compared to glass wool (Izhaki, 2012, 425). This gives me a more head room as the operating theatre that the game is set in has tiled walls. On most of the recordings I went for a decay time of around four seconds. However, sometimes for certain effects I increased it a little more. I felt that this ambient creation was more important than the realism.

Target Audience 

The target audience for this game is a difficult one to narrow down. If this game was to be released it would appeal to Horror fans as well as game fans. The merging of the two means that it will appeal to a wider audience. It is hard to pin point an age range for this game, however it is most likely to appeal to a younger audience as they are often associated with video games.