Upon reading the title of this post, you might be going “what the heck?” I don’t blame you.
Basically, the first, four-star assignment I chose from the Assignment Bank was to create a Spooky Soundscape that’s a little over a minute long.
I began by browsing some that were already posted for inspiration. Jess–the creator’s–example was fun, and then, I stumbled upon an audio by Quinntero that initially caught my eye because it’s titled after a Shakespeare quote (trigger warning: blood!) and then ended up scaring the heck out of me–as you can see from my comment in the post.
After making an account on freesound.org (thank goodness for royalty free creators), I brainstormed on what scene I wanted to set with my creation. Immediately, my brain went to my favorite book/black-and-white movie Dracula. The opening scene always sticks in my head as one of the creepiest ever, because can you imagine how the protagonist, Jonathan Harker, must have felt standing all alone in front of that looming castle in the wilds of Transylvania in the haunting night?
I began to act out the basic scene: appropriately frightening background ambiance, footsteps along a dirt path, a knock, a door opening, the noises from inside the bastion, and then…well, I wasn’t sure, but I decided inspiration would strike me as I went along.
Finding just the right sounds that were at an acceptable 16 bit rate was tricky, and I tried a lot of files. My folder looked like this:
AKA a bit messier than I like my folders to look.
My workspace wasn’t much better:
As I’ve said, I’m a perfectionist, so I messed with the volume levels of each track and sliced and diced them up to make sure fade-outs and timing were exactly as I wanted them and certain details more than others were emphasized (think: backtrack to a movie scene). I even added a stutter to the woman’s voice by copying and pasting the teeniest sound snippet to a larger one!
The story morphed into something Dracula-esque: a woman wandering through the woods stumbles upon an old manor, dares to knock and venture inside only to be greeted by haunting organ music and maniacal laughter. She then–as everyone should–proceeds to run away.
A note: the female voice isn’t me, despite the fact that it actually sort of sounds like me. The original vocalist has an Australian accent, though, so I’ll take the compliment. (;
When I posted it to SoundCloud and then tweeted it out, a SoundCloud promoter favorited it, which made me feel cool.
And now, for the burning question…what’s with this post’s title?! Well, I had my mom listen to the piece once it was finished, and before the end when the character runs away, when she’s just standing in the mansion, my mom simply said, “Wow, this chick must have really had to go to the bathroom.”
Then, when she heard the footsteps finally racing away, she added, “There we go!”
Yeah, I wouldn’t mess with manor ghosts or ghouls no matter how badly nature was calling, either. My character made a smart choice.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and here are the amazing people who created the audio samples I used!
mistersherlock’s “Graveyard At Night”
gregswinford’s “Large Creaking Door”
fishwithfeathers’s “Ghost Sounds”
digifishmusic’s “Female Hello”
Robinhood76’s “running on dirt path”
