My role as sound desinger

My role within our drama production group is the sound designer. It will be my job to create foley sounds, do additional dialogue recordings, edit and process the recorded sounds and create the final soundtrack for our piece. This job will require me to work closely with the director, editor and sound recordist so I know exactly what sounds I am working with and what they want me to produce as the final cut. The director will be working with me frequently at sound design sessions to give his input into what they want the sounds to be like and where. This teamwork can be done through directors notes, my sound design notes and rough edits/rushes of the sound, however I believe if we work side by side we can always be on the same page and understand one another's ideas to minimalise the risk of something going wrong due to lack of communication. The sound recordist will give me a list of the sounds that have been recorded and we will collaborate to determine which ones need to be used as raw sound, ones that need to be edited in some way and also sounds that need to be created. Finally the editor and I will collaborate in regards to the narrative and sequencing of the soundtrack and making sure that it will link in well with the video, this will most likely be done through exchanging rough cuts with one another, as well as notes on timings in the sequence and syncing the audio/dialogue.

As our project is a drama piece most of the sound recorded will be in-sync with the video to keep the realistic convention apparent for the duration of the film which could potentially raise some issues with the levels (loudness) of some recordings over others. This will be one of my main jobs, to edit and adjust the levels of different sounds to create mood/atmosphere and attempt to manipulate the audiences emotion. I will do this by keeping the dialogue in the script at the standard audio level of -12/-6 (excluding specific circumstances e.g non-diegetic audio) with an underlying atmospheric track at about level -20/-30 and using diegtic sounds that occur within the scene to build up and peak as the loudest sounds to create atmosphere and drama within the scene.

I will also be looking into using the small Midi keyboard in conjunction with garage band and Logic Studio to create ambient and atmospheric backing tracks that will provoke emotion and set the mood for certain scenes which require it. Although we have only had one workshop involving the Midi keyboards, I will be using them in my own time to get acquainted with them so I can produce a clear and well composed piece of music. As I have no prior experience with keyboards or any musical instruments, this will be quite a challenge to make an outstanding piece of music, however I hope I will rise to the challenge and with help from the rest of the group, be able to create sounds that work in cohesion to the visuals to make a moving and outstanding drama film.