Im Back........

Ok, so it’s been a while since my last blog but things have been a bit hectic and I just haven’t had time, so I will try and update you as much as possible.  First off, I have finally chosen 20 minutes of horror video clips to use in my final project, these are: The Evil Dead, Eraserhead, An American Werewolf in London, (the transformation scene) and The Ring.  I have purposely chosen clips that are going to allow me to focus on Sound FX and eerie ambient music.    

To make things easier when it came to recording, I created spotting lists for each of the clips as a reference to what sounds to go and record.  After studying the spotting lists, I spent time going around the house to see what I had available and gathering stuff for the recording session. Surprisingly, I had a lot more than I thought. i.e. chains and wood etc. 

Here are some examples of what I have recorded so far:

·         Footsteps on a wooden floor

·         Dragging a heavy bag across the floor, (to imitate a body being dragged)

·         Stair creeks

·         Throwing/crashing large bits of wood around.

·         Smashing glass

·         Body impacts

·         Shower curtain

I also had a lot of fun recording some of the gory sound FX using all sorts of vegetables, like celery for cracking bones, and stabbing melon skin for axe chops - all fun and games until it was time to clean it up.L  It’s also not the easiest thing trying to operate a mic and the computer with your hands covered in fruit juice, so I have learnt my lesson and will have some help at hand next time.

All recordings have taken place in my home studio so far, but I have some arrangements for location recording in the pipeline.  All recordings have been captured using a shotgun microphone (Rode NTG 2) and an AKG C1000’s, both have done an exceptional job so far, but I am going to check with Uni this week to see if they have any other shotgun microphones to experiment with.

Finally, today, I have recorded the dialogue/screaming for An American Werewolf in London and The Evil Dead.  Fortunately, I have a friend who is great with voice acting and ADR, so I gave him a call and got a hefty supply of Strepsils in HAHA!!!  The results were great.  I also began working on the vocal effect for the werewolf.  Again, great results using only pitch shifting and slowing the samples down.  So, really happy with today’s work - that’s almost 2 video clips done. :)

So my project is coming along nicely.  Plans for the rest of the week are to finish An American Werewolf and finish recording the foley samples for all the videos.