Daisy Leigh-Phippard: Creative Media Production at BHASVIC: Production: Sound

Sourcing the Sound Effects and Non-Diegetic Music

Diegetic and non-diegetic sound was included in my storyboard, so I had to source both sound effects and background music for my animation. Though I began looking for single soundtracks to layer over my entire animation, I found that smaller sections of several pieces of music worked best to capture the atmosphere and mood of my stop motion.

I used Incompetech to source my non-diegetic music, as it had a wide range of works available to me, and were separated into categories of mood (e.g. suspense, wonder) which proved helpful in directing me towards what I was looking for. The pieces of music I decided on were all licensed under Creative Commons, meaning I, as a creator, could use the music provided I give appropriate attribution to the composer.

Finding sound effects was more difficult for me, as I had never out-sourced them before. After looking through several different websites to see what sounds they had relevant to my project, and the licensing accompanying them, I found FreeSound. This website offers a wide range of sound effects for free under varying licenses after you sign up to their service (this is to keep record of the ways in which their work is being used). I had several different sounds I needed to use (including footsteps on leaves, an axe in wood, a wolf's howl etc.) and FreeSound was able to provide me with multiple options for each. Again, most of the sound effects were licensed under the Attribution Creative Commons (some commercial and noncommercial), as well as the Sampling+ License, meaning I could use the work for noncommercial purposes, or transform it in some way for commercial purposes.

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution NonCommercial License

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution (Commercial) License

Terms for Creative Commons: Sampling+ License

Recording the Dialogue

Canon recording simultaneously with GarageBand.

Originally I had planned to have consistent voice-over and dialogue throughout the whole of my animation to mirror the traditional fairytale aspect mentioned in the brief, however as I created my stop motion I realised that the narration I had written in my storyboard was too long to fit over the film - and potentially distracting from my work as well. I still felt that some dialogue would ease the storytelling of my film, so decided to condense the script to two small sections of dialogue between Red and the Wolf.

I was familiar with the style of fairytales from my childhood, and so was able to easily cut down my original dialogue to fit with the timings of my animation. I had my actress for Red (Saskia Steene Faulkner) record the voice-over for her character, as well as that of the Wolf's, which I then planned to overlay with sound effects of growling to add to his persona and differentiate the two tones.

GarageBand, the script and my draft film.

Due to availability of my actress I had to record the voice-over in my own time. If I were to redo this project, I would organise a separate studio space where I could control sound more effectively to record my dialogue - instead of using my own equipment in my bedroom. I recorded two versions of the voice-over: one on GarageBand on my Mac, and another on my Canon EOS 70D using a Takstar Stereo Shotgun Microphone. This made sure that I had a backup if any files became corrupted, and also gave me the opportunity to learn which gave me the best quality recording (unsurprisingly, the microphone on my Canon, though GarageBand was a lot more convenient to transfer to my edit).