So in The Twilight Zone episode “The Midnight Sun” Mrs. Bronson goes completely cray because of the sweltering heat. Ā She takes one of Norma’s paintings of a waterfall claiming she can hear it and presses herself on to it.
This assignment was to create a “bird call” for someone and, appropriately, I converted the sound of rushing water into and mp3. Ā Mrs. Bronson would definitely come running.
This was super simple to do I just downloaded the sound on to my desktop and used a youtube to mp3 clip converter site and then uploaded to sound cloud.
For my next audio assignment, I chose to create a Character Bird CallĀ (**). The task was the create a call or something that would attract a character from a TV show/movie/book. I chose to call for Meredith GreyĀ from the hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy.
Meredith Grey is a surgeon at the hospital in the TV show. I chose these specific sounds because in the show, Meredith is obsessed with surgery! It is really her life. She loves hearing the sounds of being in the O.R. {operating room} and hearing a heart beat. She was not able to perform surgery at one point {for a reason that I am not going to spoil if you have not watched the show} and she went crazy! She had people call her to tell her their every move about the surgery and the different medical cases. I chose to have the coffee sound bit at the end because at the end of a surgery, the coffee stand is the first stop. After scrubbing out, of course!
My inspiration for picking this character came from the fact that it comes on Thursday nights. Tonight is Thursday. I cannot wait!!!!!
I came across the assignment Character Calls and thought it could be interesting to do. The only question was, which character should I do? I looked at some of the previous posts, however some of them the blogs had been deleted. I ended up discussing the assignment with my roommate. I explained to her what I was supposed to do. She immediately came up with Ace Ventura Pet Detective. And all I could think was how come I didn’t think of that one! It was perfect! I came up with the idea of combining animal sounds that stood out in the first movie to make one big animal call. I used a dog bark because in the beginning he saves an abused dog. I used the dolphin call because his big job is to save the dolphin mascot. The monkey call comes from his pet monkey as well as the macaw call. However, these calls weren’t enough to satisfy me. I ended up think of the “dun dun dun” signifying danger. Ace Ventura is a pet detective and rescues a pet in danger, so it only makes sense that his call would include some sort of indicator of danger.
I used audacity to put all of these sounds together. I had to cut most of the sounds down to try and get the perfect animal noise. I then had to rearrange the sounds in an order that sounded best and made sense. I put the dog first (in the movie he comes first), then the dolphin (he is the big job), and then his two friends in the end. I put them in order which I thought sounded best. I tried to change the pitch on the dolphin noise to get it to be louder, but it just didn’t sound like a dolphin noise so I took that out. Turns out, the sounds were perfect the way they were made.
Like some people use special whistles to attract birds, your task is to create an 30 second or less audio file that might be used to ācallā a particular character from a movie, tv, or real life. It cannot feature voices, but sounds only (try http://freesounds.org). Write a description why this sound would be attractive to the character, why it would be effective (be inventive, write a story about it).
(Stranglely the example I did, Calling Dr Oliver never got added, hmmmm).
So began to consider maybe a pair of characters calling each other, who might that be? My brain mulled back to the childhood TV shows I watched, so here is my bird call (details below the fold) (don’t peek)?
To reduce qa lot of track clutter, in Aduactity I use the SPlit command to break up parts of a track. Using the cursor tool, mark the point where you want a track split into two pieces, and select Edit – Clip Boundaries – Split (or command I):
(click for full size image)
And you can then use the Time Shift Tool (line with arrows at both ends, I keep calling it the “Move tool”) to slide the split clip to a different location on the time line:
You can also achieve this with doing a copy of a selection and pasting, but the Time Shift tool on its own is worth knowing about for adjusting where sounds occur on the timeline.
I wanted to bring my sounds up so they call back and forth, and I did some copy pasting on the kazoo to have it repeat, but applied the “Shift Pitch” effect to make it sing higher. The Congas is cool and steady and never breaks from the beat.
A Kazoo sound and a steady congo going back and forth? Do you have it yet?
I Love Lucy was a rerun staple in my childhood TV watching days, and without over analyzing it, it had to be the sheer energy of Lucille Ball, and her pranks– the loudness and use of high and low audio in this show emphasized the atmosphere so much, that you felt like you were inside the apartment (or down at the Tropicana Club).
It would be the role Lucy would be almost forever cast in, although she certainly did more than I Love Lucy. From IMBd I learn she and Desi Arnaz were innovators behind the scene, creating the standard 3 camera set up used on most sitcoms and developing the concept of syndication for TV. She was also the first woman to be the head of a film studio (Desilu Productions).
Lucy was a character for sure, few things can match the slapstick of the Chocolate factory scene
I cannot help but wonder how much of that was improv?
This assignment was to create a “call” that would attract the attention of a certain character.
My favorite Ā TV show is How I Met Your Mother. MyĀ favorite character is Barney Stinson, a witty womanizer. A call that would get his attention is the cry of Ā a vulnerable women, which would allow Barney to use his pick up lines on her.
Task : Like some people use special whistles to attract birds, your task is to create an 30 second or less audio file that might be used to ācallā a particular character from a movie, tv, or real life. It cannot feature voices, but sounds only (try http://freesounds.org). Write a description why this sound would be attractive to the character, why it would be effective (be inventive, write a story about it).
Ā Eli Gold Triumphs Again
For those followers of The Good WifeĀ this is the sound for Eli Gold. As a crisis manager Eli is often called out to put the public spin on a person’s misdemeanours. In this case he’s been contacted by a top executive of cheese company who has had a big night on the town. Eli is clearly not impressed with being woken from this sleep. He takes command of the situation , telling the man to stop everything and just shut up. The bloke who is drunk, fails to head Eli ‘sĀ so instructions so he gags him. This situation is grave and Elis has to make an all singing and dancing appeal to the shareholders to save the Stock market from taking a dive. HeĀ succeeds and so home to bed… another crisis averted and about a few 100K in his pocket.
_cokwr: Like some people use special whistles to attract birds, your task is to create an 30 second or less audio file that might be used to ācallā a particular character from a movie, tv, or real life. It cannot feature voices, but sounds only (try http://freesounds.org).
Write a description why this sound would be attractive to the character, why it would be effective (be inventive, write a story about it).
, _cpzh4: Audio, _cre1l: http://cogdogblog.com/2011/10/16/dr-oliver-bird-call/, _chk2m: CogDog, _ciyn3: 193, _ckd7g: AudioAssignments193, _clrrx: AudioAssignments, _cztg3: AudioTutorials193
After watching @scottlo & Rowan Peter decipher wtf is going on with cogdog and learning that the answer lies somewhere in the network I came across this audio advice. It’s not quite a bird call but when navigating networks, it just might work.
