critical writing

In Harry O'Donoughue's most recent sound piece he takes us into one of the most relatable scenarios there is, which is that solitary battle with your alarm. He uses diegetic and non diegetic sound within the piece to grasp the audiences attention especially in the scene where he incorporated non diegetic soundtrack from narcos to connote a gangster attitude when a gun is drawn. O'Donoughue invites the audience into the room of boy who just can't get away from his alarms. From a first person spectator camera angle emphasising on all different sounds within the room that are involved in this battle of boy and his many alarms.

We are given early signs of O'Donoughue's intentions when he follows in the footsteps of Ben Burt who was one of the original pioneers of sound. After he recorded the sound of him breathing in an old scuba regulator to achieve the sound of Darth Vader it is clear that O'Donoughue obviously had similar plans when recording himself blowing up a balloon to simulate the sound of snoring/sleeping.

Ever since the early creativity shown by Jack foley the possibility within sound has only been on the uprise, and with access to a foley studio O'Donoughue hasn't held back. Even the slightest sounds within the piece such as when the boy tries to grab his phone to switch off his alarm sound would go unnoticed unless pointed out. The clear and crisp sound that is produced from a foley studio is what keeps sound in film unnoticed. While people are quick to praise a film's cinematography, music, special effects and editing, the art of sound effects creation, or Foley, usually goes unnoticed.

However, unlike those other aspects of filmmaking, Foley artists don't want their work to stand out . And whilst the concept of O'Donoughue's piece may seem simplistic it is the magic of foley that keeps you from knowing the true complexity of it.

The ending of the piece should be specifically highlighted as in the clip all three alarms go off at the same time, during this scene the camera focuses on each alarm one at a time and O'Donoughue has managed to smoothly blend each of the sounds together by fading in and out of one another whilst keeping them all playing at different volumes, giving you the impression that you are as close to the alarm as the camera is. The camera then pans out and all of the sounds increase in volume heavily to express what the boy in the clip is hearing and the laziness of the boy is almost contagious as the three alarms at top volume give the viewers the same feeling of annoyance. The clip is then ended with the boy drawing his covers over his head which brings an end to all the sound completely by cutting to black.

Whilst O'Donoughue has a unique range of acoustic sounds and transitions he has achieved that of which to give the audience the illusion of that they might not be hearing what they think.


http://www.techradar.com/news/video/foley-the-art-of-movie-sound-effects-1301281

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Burtt

piers presentation

editing final part

On the left is the final part of my editing process and id say the it was the trickiest it as all three alarms are playing at the same time. However the camera zooms into each alarm individually at different times, so I had to fade each alarm into the other whilst they all still play at the same time. Then its one big clash of sounds at the end until the boy eventually gives up his battle with the alarms and draws his duvet over his head, which I achieved by waving a shirt infant of the mic.

And below is the finished result of my edit.

foley studio

So this was our session in the foley studio and we learnt how to set up the microphones and link them to audition so that we could record our sounds. you had to make are that the input and output were connected to the right mic before you started recording. You could then have your video in the studio and watch it while you recreate the sounds in your own way.


I found the foley studio very helpful as it allows you to capture clear a crisp sounds as apposed to sounds with background noise in them.

Also below you can see my results from the foley studio which I will proceed to labelling once I determine which ones Im going to use.

On our second visit to the studio we had an issue with connecting up the proper microphones as we forgot to activate them, however we used the standard microphones and still got a good result, and learnt from our mistakes.

editing part two

So heres the second part of my sound piece and as you can see added the first alarm sound which I recorded in the foley studio off my phone. In the video you can see that the volume button is slowly turned up so I have edited the volume to gradually go up as well while matching the video.










On the right you can see part three of my editing process and in this part I have added the second and third alarm the second alarm is a phone alarm which I again recorded in the foley studio. I also had to include where the boy reaches for his phone and for this I have simply recorded myself reaching for my phone but when recording it I needed to put the mic quite close as its a quiet sound. I then added the third alarm with some added sounds of me snoring to add some comedic effect but I had to change the pitch on the snoring to a bit of a lower one.

I then added the soundtrack from the film narcos when he pulls the gun out to shoot the third alarm.

editing part 1

 So as you can see on the left this is my first sound which is the sound of the seagulls I recorded down in Brighton, the yellow line represents the volume and I have faded it in by starting off quiet.






Here you can see I have edited the the sound of the sea gulls by changing the pitch. I have done this as I felt the pitch of the seagull was a bit too high so I changed it to a bit lower. I also turned the volume down on the clip so it would bend in with the other sounds I have for the opening scene.

So these are the sounds of my opening clip and as you can see I've been playing around with fading the volume in a and out and layering them over each other so they contrast and recreate the sound of a neighbourhood by the sea.

starting clip and labelling layers of sound

So I've started my project off by first trimming the clip to 2 minutes, and then labelling each layer of sound so I know whats going to go where.