What Sounds am I Adding and How?

  In our title sequence, there is a lot of silence accompanied by our protagonist Lionel moving in different ways such as walking, getting off of the bed, etc. Because of the fact it is so quiet throughout most of the title sequence, it is important that we recorded those very small diegetic sounds to ensure that it is as realistic as can possibly be. Also, because of the intensity factor we are trying to achieve, there is bound to be a jumpscare or two, or three, in our title sequence, so I needed to add musical stings to those parts that fit with the scene. There will also need to be a very low and natural ambient sound to hold suspense, which we agreed would be the slight breeze of the air conditioning. Our director Pierce chose to also take the role of sound design, where he was responsible for recording the sounds so that I am able to place them into the video in the spots they need to be. After he got done recording them, he sent them to me through a Snapchat group chat that our whole group is a part of, where I downloaded them, emailed them to myself and then put them in the video. Getting the sound in the right spot can be a challenge however, so there are a few ways I have chosen to make it easier on myself. Sony Vegas has a marker tool, which allows you to place a small orange line on any part of a video track by pressing M on that specific frame so that you are able to use it as a reference when adding sounds. For example, say I needed to know the exact point to add the dripping sound, I would just go through the video frame by frame and pause it exactly where the droplet would hit the bottom of the sink, and then press M on that spot, where it would be marked, so I now know where to put the audio of the dripping.

What the markers look like

 Another way I've chosen to add the audio more easily was through using multiple layers throughout the video. A difficult part of adding in sound is picking out which ones need to be louder and which ones need to be quieter. The way I decided to adjust the levels of audio was to have several audio layers each of different audio levels so that the quiet noises can stay together and the loud ones can stay together.

The Layering of the Sound