OUAN603 - Sound Design

Sound is very important in this animation in the way it is presented because the action is very limited in terms of what happens on screen. As well as this, the action and some of the sounds I ended up using are key themes in the story itself, so it is best to demonstrate these without anything else obscuring the sound.

I knew early on that I wanted to go the foley sound route for all of the sound. The scene will be quite delicate in terms of the on screen action and I think having the sound stripped back where possible is a must. There is however a lot of opportunity to develop different foley sounds. I used a H5 zoom microphone to record a variety of sounds that could work in the scene, from footsteps to a knife going through objects on a chopping board to the sound of a wooden chair scraping along the floor for when characters sit down at the table. Overall it was quite enjoyable to try and create different sounds using various items. For example, the sound of the tofu being cut was made using a knife passing through a banana, which gave the almost fibrous sound that I needed for this. It would have been difficult to cut actual tofu because it doesn't make a sound so this kind of problem solving was quite an interesting part of the process.

News broadcasts from a television station will be on throughout the animation at varying volumes, with them being turned up at the beginning and end so they are understood as key parts of the scene.